>"Kinda sad to me that a lot of the greats from those eras of gaming end up fizzling out on things they shouldn't really be working on and are not to their strengths because of industry ideas of the sorts of games that should be made today."

I'm sure his bank account disagrees. All games are, ultimately, commercial ventures with the express purpose of making money. It's why they are so hard to classify as "art". There are a select few auteur driven passion projects that can transcend this now and again, but they are generally extreme outliers among even their creator's careers, let alone the industry as a whole.

Artists have to eat, it doesn’t make them not artists. Games are not hard to classify as art. You may not like the art or think a lot of it’s not very good, but they are art, because art is not the exclusive domain of “auteur driven passion projects”.

That seems a bit silly considering how many of the most famous paintings and artworks are/were commissions. Do you disqualify anything that was made for monetary reasons?

Thief is something more than a commercial venture. The Black Parade getting released decades after, for free, is a testament to that.

https://www.moddb.com/groups/2023-mod-of-the-year-awards/fea...

Cyberpunk 2077 creators bank account is bigger, and arguably that game is he true spiritual successor of Deus Ex.