[GaelFG]

I'm not sure that's right. Video game customers are wrong (or dishonest) about what they think they want. They want to see themselves as intellectual gourmets, only in research of exotic gameplay and rich stories but still spend the great majority of their money on blockbusters with decade old recipe and ip (while being vocal about their price or their lack of originality). No problem with that in fact, video game are leisure time activities.

Where the big producers ARE totally not listening is monetization. But here again 'globally that work' and most (not all) customers see themselves as more 'moraly right' than they really are. Everyone is happy to bash f2p immoral economic system, but are glad to enjoy free games. They will all speak about how possessing your games is important, but will take gamepass anytime because it's less costly. (here again they are just pragmatic and nothing is wring with that).

A funny thing when you discuss and do post mortems with little game development studio, is that each time they try to avoid a notoriously 'shady' practice, first critics will be about them missing (mainly gamble/casino mechanics and timesink/grinding features) ^^

[qwery]

When you say 'listening' you're talking about listening to what customers are saying and I don't disagree with your characterisation of that relationship, but this is different to being attuned to the market. One could argue that in the case of abusive monetisation tactics, the publishers are very much "listening" to the market (and ignoring the complaints) and profitting immensely because of it.