As much as I agree with the reasons that made Payday 2 successful (not blowing the GDP of several small countries on graphics and advertisements, and instead investing enough to make the game fun and challenging, while having it's "own" style), I really have to disagree with his idea that the problem with big games is trying to make it more appealing to "casual" gamers, since, if anything, casting a wide net over people who aren't hardcore gamers would be a good marketing strategy (see the success of the Wii, which mostly had simple titles that were nevertheless easy to hook entire families on). The problem is that the types of games that are being "dumbed down" are ones ostensibly tackling non-family friendly material, such as bloody violence, scantily clad women, foul-mouthed language, and/or "mature" humor. That quickly isolates most of the casual gaming market down to XBox Live trolls that trade sexist, racist, homophobic, and downright mean insults at one another while using every exploit they can find on their FPS-Deathmatch arena to camp and aim-bot. Who, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, arrogantly proclaim themselves to be "hardcore" gamers, and will bully any noobs out of their digital frathouse.
As for the obsession with spending money on graphics and marketing, I think the obsession isn't being callous and stupid, but misguided. I recall reading some magazine articles a few years back, where developers eagerly talked about how quickly they were improving gaming graphics, claiming they could be "photo-realistic" within twenty years or so. I even recall an advertisement for a flight simulator where they held up four photographs, claiming that one was from the game, and the rest were photographs of actual jet fighters, daring the reader to spot the difference. Presumably, every major developer is thinking that making their graphics 100% photo-realistic would be the Holy Grail of gaming, and they're risking damn near everything to ensure that a game under their company reaches that historical milestone, actual "game" be-damned. The closest analogy I can think of for the situation is all the times in the past mankind has tried to achieve flight, or the Space Race between the US and USSR. The problem with gaming companies is that these races of technological innovation often relied on trial and error, and that the errors often prove fatal. Only instead of a spaceship blowing up on the launch pad, or a would-be Icarus splattering across the ground, the "fatal" errors in videogames involve massive commercial wipeouts that are barely minimized by omnipresent advertising suckering in buyers and pre-orders, and results in an ever-growing disdain for the gaming industry by both gamers that play their piles of over-polished crap, or non-gamers that are hearing all the spew and bile from the sidelines.
Frankly, the reason indie-developers and smaller studios like Payday's OVERKILL are doing better isn't because they're more talented and resourceful than people working in the big industry. It's because they have their sights solely aimed at making games over digital realism, not because they cater to hardcore gamers: some hit indie titles are patently simple and "easy" compared to Payday 2, and market to a family-friendly crowd, but are still focused on being games.
Also, not to be petty, but claiming that Payday 2 relied on word of mouth alone isn't exactly accurate, as there was that whole web series thing going on that Jim himself was using in his video. Although it certainly was a lot more low-key than the explosion of advertisements triple-A games use to inflate their importance, and even more so because Payday actual had gameplay movies, not pre-rendered trailers that try to show off graphics, and hide non-existant gameplay.