Some gamers get too involved and forget that these companies are businesses and need to make money. Fan appreciation doesn't keep your doors open. Look at Platinum, they make great games but are going from project to project hoping they can stay afloat.
The market has gone this way because that is where the money is.
Making videos is fine but getting paid by using other peoples IP isn't. Trying to cover over this fact by calling it free advertising is stupid. If the youtubers want to make money off licensed content then they need to buy a license like in every other digital market.
The problem is these development studios must first adhere to strict release guidelines and pricing models as set forth by their publisher. They aren't given much flexibility, outside of simply making the game (and doing it within a set period of time).
As to media sharing with other IPs...I'm attempting to hide over the use of an IP for profit. I'm simply saying that the approach isn't forward thinking, it's reactionary. Publishers should be working WITH Google to make things more viable for all parties. If you could simply select the publisher for the game you were using, and a cut of those advertising dollars goes to the publisher, then things would be better met than simply remaining rigid and out of touch, saying "No, you cannot do this at all." Particularly when you still openly welcome users to do it absolutely free.
Okay so you present a giant list of closed developers as part of your evidence for this, but which of the studios that were closed were doing all, or even most of the above, versus the ones that are still open and alive and known to be doing so?
Well, I can probably try to go through the list, but I'll instead say that a bigger reason they went under is publisher rigidity. Poor pricing structure, short development cycles, and publisher involvement in product creation / IP management. Low budget titles should be priced accordingly, not sent to die competing against titles with huge player followings. You don't go to Wal-Mart and buy Sams Choice products for the same price you would Kellogg, Tyson, Wonder, or any other brand product. The gaming industry needs to adjust.
Main problem is that you want graphic quality to keep increasing?
That will coast more money then a generation then before so budget of a video game gets bigger so less risk is taken because if you invest $40+ Million you can't make to much risk other wise you will end up like THQ.
Cycle repeat.
And it has always been an industry were creative vision and creative freedom have struggled with cost and making money.
+ Please remember that we are the "informed 10% hardcore" of the industry and we can NOT fund the entire industry on our own even if we all both all "good" AAA and smaller games NO games would ever make any money anymore.
We and the publishers NEED the other 90% of the game playing audience to buy the games other wise there wouldn't be anymore video games to begin with.
Investing in tools first and content later would help this. There are things the industry does that are outdated, and not embracing the digital age correctly is one of them. These costs would be significantly lower if things were managed better, and products weren't marketed the same as they were in 1995.
Take that list of dead developers and beside it write down what games it was that they released. Then take a look at what the general feeling from NeoGAF was when they released those games. Most of them will have been met with apathy or derision.
Did the industry kill those developers or did a player base that didn't care about their games kill them?
I would wager that strict pricing models hurt those titles, rather than gamers not caring. If your game cannot compete with a $60 game (and that would / should be evident to every publisher or developer) then do not price it at $60. For all the focus testing the industry does, I would wager they do extremely little to focus test "prices". If you brought in 200 people to play a verticle slice of your title and asked them to tell you their acceptable price range, I think that would be far more useful, as compared to asking them what they think about the game, which ultimately will result in "I want this to be like it is in my favorite game". Useless and a waste of money / time.
Pardon me for asking, but what's a community team (as opposed to a community manager)?
Community managers are usually "solo", as far as I've really seen. There are people behind the scenes responsible for things like websites, video editing for trailers, etc, but they need more presence. Having multiple people managing your forums, twitter and facebook accounts, pumping out more meaningful pre-release content, contests, and community outreach programs...that needs to be handled by a team. There are games / studios out there with dead communities. Handing a few people an additional responsibility, or hiring more people to help manage your community / promote your game on the internet is a better cost to a title than spending millions of dollars to advertise a product that you release annually, IMO. Particularly when you can accomplish the same feats via cheaper, readily available means. However, most studios view this type of transparency / connectivity as "poison" apparently, given how rare it is. They simply have one person gloss over their message boards to find things that they can improve on for some titles / MP component, and move forward from there. In todays day and age, that simply is not sufficient.
