Hi LDW.

I've been wondering, how involved are the old-school developers in your recent games like Virtual Villagers Divine Destiny and Virtual Families Cook Off. Basically any game after Virtual Town and VF3 to an extent. Who came up with the idea for those games? What about the gameplay and story, if any? Ever since VV Origins 2 came out, everything seems so impersonal now, from the customer service to the company interactions with their fans.
And don't get me started on the AI art and the clickbait. It's so obvious and poorly-done and it's an absolute mockery of what your games are supposed to be - honest, lovingly made and fun for the player. To be honest, the recent games are showing their age gameplay-wise in that there are many bugs and less cohesion between tasks. I can tell there's certain quirks being introduced to make the games appear more fun, like bonus "levels" such as the Mansion in VF Cook Off and the Resort in VF3, or making the goals in VF Cook Off impossible to complete due to the cheating AI. Unfortunately there's been a lot of complaints about how the games are so hard to enjoy now. "It takes too much money/tech points to progress. Their original art is being replaced with terrible AI art on the app icons. All the ads are cringy TikTok memes."
Alright, I know things have changed a ton since the golden years of the 2000's, and everyone's certainly much older. But, where is the passion? The care? As they all say once corporate takes over something lovingly crafted by indie developers, it usually doesn't go over well, to put it lightly.