>>712513204 (OP)The reality is that most indie devs have no idea why they're doing this shit either, outside of some vague "vibes" notion that really doesn't mean anything.
The result is that the foundation of the majority of indie games is nothing more than unclear slush, a mélange of elements mixed into a bowl without purpose or even an understanding of why you'd put [component A] into a game but not [component z].
Go back a few decades to the arcade era of gaming and you'll notice that this same "fatigue" isn't really a problem because just about everything on the arcade floors understood why each ingredient went into each game. This wasn't luck - it was out of pure necessity, because one wrong design choice would immediately, brutally, and ruthlessly see your game fail against the crowd of other games with good core design. Game developers were like well-trained chefs at Michelin-starred restaurants and knew just how a game would "taste" before ever even putting its ingredients together. They also had much clearer goals in mind due to the restriction of the format (get players on the cab and trained quickly, then get them off the cab quickly through intense gameplay) which necessitated great, focused, purposeful design.
