Appreciate you not jumping down my throat. You’re right, it is a low bar, and HD2 does clear it pretty easily. But you and I both know that publishers won’t hear the part about the game being fun (or they won’t care). My point isn’t that HD2 is bad, just that publishers will see its success and completely misinterpret why it’s successful. They’ll see a live service game doing well and think that people want more live service games, not fun games.
The point being most games do all of this except the fun part, so the bar is pretty low, and companies are all buying shovels.
Appreciate you not jumping down my throat. You’re right, it is a low bar, and HD2 does clear it pretty easily. But you and I both know that publishers won’t hear the part about the game being fun (or they won’t care). My point isn’t that HD2 is bad, just that publishers will see its success and completely misinterpret why it’s successful. They’ll see a live service game doing well and think that people want more live service games, not fun games.