The business of video games is a precarious one, especially as technology has improved and standards have risen. Multi-million dollar budgets often result in a lot of meddling by the game publishers, eager to release their products in time for major purchasing seasons and generally acting like focus-group-influenced movie studios. Not surprisingly, a lot of great games get stepped on in such an environment. The business has become so stifling that a lot of programmers and designers have turned to independent outlets for the sake of creative control, resulting in new classics like Braid and an endless supply of Internet browser games. In the past decade, perhaps no major studio game was more unjustly hurried, and thereby crippled, than Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Read more
