In the past 3 or so years, more and more people seem to be realising (and are surprised by that same realisation, which is a fascinating phenomenon to observe) that if they want their game to be successful, to whatever degree, they need to do something about it and take it seriously.

The industry has developed huge echo chambers. Subsequently, a very damaging culture of "trying to fit in" and conformity (cue Locutus of Borg memes) has grown. I would normally have expected the opposite i.e. for it to fuel a desire to innovate, break out and get ahead of the crowd. Perhaps in 5 years or so it will be a different story, once Darwinian theory really kicks in and when the group of people mentioned in point 1 above grows even bigger. However this will have a huge ripple-effect, a mini-extinction event, which is not altogether bad: to continue the evolutionary analogy, it's detrimental to the individual but good for the survival of the species. We've seen smaller versions of this happen on a micro scale within regional clusters. This will be a bit bigger.