I have my line in the sand and I essentially use it to sort publishers/developers. I fling the ones who perform acts worthy of it across the line and they're barred from the awesome beach party I'm having on this side until they prove they can stop being complete and total idiots.
A couple things were already mentioned here.
1) "Always-online DRM."
Besides the obvious problem of some people with bad net connections, I know of 7 people out of my collection of friends who game who have NO net connection on their consoles, 3 of whom don't use the internet period. They live on shoestring budgets and they can't afford it, or they might only buy an internet connection for the purpose of gaming since they do very little other things on it (unlike me, they don't surf forums, check online magazine and news posts, or particularly care for social networking) - and whatever they do do on the internet they can do on their phones, anytime, anywhere. This eliminates them from being customers of the game AT ALL. 3 of them are diehards about not buying games used, ever, and supporting game companies directly whenever possible. And yet they'll never be able to play any game online without also forking over the monthly cost of an internet connection they otherwise won't use/don't need.
Yeah internet connections are really freaking common but they are not universal - and will become less so as mobile computers get bigger and people cease needing to use a -computer- to read escapist magazine articles, check in on Facebook, or write posts in their favorite forums. If I didn't have to use a computer to access school-related materials, I would only fire up the thing when it was time to do art in my resource intensive art programs, program in Visual Studio or some other massive IDE, or play games.
Add to it that quality internet connections are even less common. Every night at midnight my internet cuts out for about 15 minutes, like clockwork. Periodically throughout the day, my internet connection is unable to connect to the router due to the distance it is from my room, and I can't bring the router closer because other people use it for more important work related things that outrank me playing Diablo III. I can't game in the living room next to the router because, once again, other people are using those public spaces for work, homework, or watching TV programs.
I suppose I could try to boost the signal. Lets add yet another cost to the requirements every hardcore gamer needs to play modern games: HDTVs (for all those game that use white text on glistening backgrounds without the option - the barest option - of enabling a box around the text; I'm looking at you ME2 and 3), a Console or an adequate gaming rig, an internet connection separate from the one I already receive on my phone, and now additional tech to boost your router's signal. Alright, its time to buy that 60$ game from the publisher to show my support for their developer's awesome skills and creativity.
Okay, lets go for line number 2):
"Not understanding your Core Aesthetic" or also probably "Publishers fucking with developer-side things they shouldn't be messing with."
If a company has a good game, and it sells well, and they begin to make sequels or similar games, innovation is important. They want to try to change things in their game for the better - find the faults the original game had, and fix them, or find ways to improve upon existing features that were already good.
However, as a sequels or ideological children are created, there's always this change to make things appeal to 'more people,' or trying to snag additional demographics. On the surface these goals are not bad, and can in fact be done well, but if a company must do this, they HAVE to understand what made their game good enough to stand out in the first place. There is a (or multiple) core mechanic and/or theme and/or aesthetic that made the game appeal despite its original faults that the company is trying to fix. Understanding these things and making sure that changes to the next game emphasize those traits, or at least do not alter them in a negative way, is important.
If a company's not doing that then the game has become just a business transaction. Games are both art and business. The art makes the money. When the end goal is making money only, the art suffers, and the company's wonderful franchise gets tossed across the line - do it one too many times, and the company follows. Realistically, companies cannot simply focus on making only 'good games' and not considering business decisions - this is understandable and acceptable - but the two must be balanced. Time and time again I see companies - usually big publishers, I'm looking at you EA - force decisions and alterations to a franchise, or even a promising new IP, to make it appeal to 'more people.' Yet it seems that they lack the vision to understand what will actually appeal to 'more people' because every game slowly moves towards a cookie cutter copy of the definition of the genre that it is in.
Don't mess with what makes the game unique! Product differentiation is an important economic principle, and in games it involves more than just a different name and a different face on the cover, and a different UI. Core story elements, gameplay features not offered elsewhere, unique settings and lore, and more are facets of games that players connect with, associate with the franchise, and realistically don't need to be homogenized into something more 'industry standard.' Companies should simply take what they have and make it faster, more attractive, easier for the player to implement, etc.
Don't mess with your core aesthetics. Just don't do it. Or get your butt across the line.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread so far:
3) "Breaking the foundations of the world."
Look. Halo: Reach. It was a fun game, okay? It was Halo and I shot stuff and there were birds you could punch and Dr. Halsey who is always worth an extra gold star when you can work her magnificent slightly psychopathic genius into the story.
But you just took the canon, the existing knowledge of everything that happened on Reach, and basically ripped it to shreds. You now put the player who is a huge fan of your series and read the books in the difficult position of trying to decide what to consider canon and what not to: the book, which came out earlier, was far more detailed, and whose characters are a whole lot more memorable (plus features extra helpings of Good Ol' Halsey?), or the game, which is known by more of the fanbase, is in the media the original story was introduced in, and otherwise kinda sucks plotwise by trying too dang hard?
This is a bad idea, companies. Let me tell you something, that lore? You want to control it as much as possible. Halo: Reach is the easy example. What about games that contradict themselves from one game to another? Okay okay, you know I get some things. Like, you made a mistake on the previous one and now some things don't make sense to you have to retcon some stuff and make it work. Like I get that. Lets fix mistakes.
But things that are completely valid, not broken in any way, and often referenced heavily in game mechanics or plot limitation, are simply changed later for convenience? Lets beat the popular, meat-tenderized dead horse of Mass Effect 3 and its horribad ending (we won't even discuss the novel that should never have been written - one subject at a time, right?). The StarChild's explanation of the Reapers pretty much contradicts directly Sovereign's own explanation of his 'people.' Also I dunno why the hell the Reapers have done this cycle for so long, tried to build a human-shaped version of themselves, apparently harvest organics for 'preservation' in reaper form, but only have one uniform shape everywhere? They are those crazy space-bug-squids. There's no Promethean Reaper, even though the Collectors were clearly not harvested for preservation in Reaper form and plenty more prometheans were goo-ified than there are humans currently existing in the story! And so much more! *beats dead horse again*
If you've directly stated something, just, don't contradict it, okay? you have the art bible, the design bible, the Scripts and all the notes archived somewhere, probably on a Wiki where its easily searchable if you're smart, so Design Team, if you have an idea, let's see if we've touched on it before, shall we? Okay, simple rule there. Not hard to follow.
This is another part of the industry where games become simply a transaction. You're just coming in to do your job and it doesn't matter what flop of a story you throw together so long as its done by the release date. Nothing wrong with making games as a living, yeah? But when companies start seeing their royalty checks first and the game second, they start dropping the ball on everything that's important in a game. As much as possible, don't break the lore. People relate to your game through its setting. If you do something to destroy people's perception of events in the game as 'real', then while they may enjoy your game they won't be a super fan of it. It will be a 'meh.'
Nobody really wants more 'mehs' in the market. Everybody could do with a lot more 'oohs and aahs.'
and lastly:
4) "Used games are bad" and more importantly "We're going to try to prevent you from purchasing them ever cause we're heartless and stupid."
Alright I like supporting publishers who are good. Okay? I buy new games from my favorite companies. I pay for DLC. Even sometimes Avatar items on my Xbox, cause I wanna wear a stupid Mass effect T-shirt when my little avatar dude shows up dancing his little Avatar dance on my friend's dashboards. I will buy collector's editions of games. I will give you my money directly if you even seem like you're going to make it worthwile.
My little brother is eleven. My parents don't have a huge amount to spend on luxury items for him, but he gets a small allowance. He loves games. He will carefully scrimp and save his little allowance to go to the store once a month and buy a game - used, obviously, because he's poorer than the 60 bucks needed - or maybe a Skylander Giant and a normal Skylander. These outings are the things he looks forward to the most. We sidle into gamestop about once a month, when I don't work on a Saturday, with his tiny cheetah wallet brimming with dollar bills and coins, and pour carefully over the selection of games in his price range. We get a good stack of possibles going. We read their summaries, check some reviews, I help explain to him what an RTS is, and he makes a selection. If I can, I'll usually toss a skylander on there out of my own monies, cause there's always a dragon-type we don't already have and when I co-op with him on that silly game cause he pesters me to for hours on end, I like to play dragons.
Do not take this from my little brother. Do not take this kind of experience from my friends who support their ailing parents and have a hard time making rent and would like to just knife some people in Assassin's creed now and again and enjoy the view from ridiculously tall towers.
Just don't do it, okay? Don't be an ass. You want more people to pay for your games upfront, find a way to produce them without these ridiculously inflated budgets. Make it so my brother, with his 20-25$ a month allowance, could buy one of your new games, and a candy bar. And then you can try to prevent used game sales, company. Then it might possibly be deemed acceptable.
I mean its not really acceptable but at least my brother could still enjoy his favorite past-time. It'd still be shitty business practice and my god just about the dumbest shit ever, but people who enjoy games and aren't upper-middle-class or above could, you know...enjoy them more. or at least pay you for their enjoyment.
