yes i read your first post and i interpreted it as a direct comparison between triple a games and the indy games. sorry for my misunderstanding but it felt like a comparison between apple and pears.
Would you agree with me that they change or add content based on the input of their fans? You are right that they nearly never overhaul the entire game but that also never happens on other games. For your example about the comics you are unfortunately wrong, lots of comics change during their serialization after input from editor ->publisher ->readers. (ask me how i know, did this shit for more than 30 years). As writer you offer an overview aka global storyboard. Later you change it on demands of your editor, publisher, reader response. Trust me i had my fair share of "you cant write like this!" or "it doesn't fit our line" or "the character is not pleasing" or "too long, too short," , " it need's more...."
edit: back to the original, i got distracted. I could agree with your thesis that the games here are more like a comic series, but there is maybe a reason: lack of money and lack of experience. There are very few indy-devs asking for pre-testing their ideas or gameplay, most devs are just like"i have an idea, let's try".
In my mind the support via patreon (or similar) is important, unfortunately some devs misused this as a "quick money scheme".
no, not the entire movie, normally the movie is split in small chunks and the animatic of those chunks is screened and discussed. The character screening is a separate task. If any of these tasks failed this chunk will be changed or dropped (worst case)
Sorry, but you wrote it differently in your previous post, the sentence " No, they play the entire song and then gage the audience reaction" is misleading and gave a different impression
Oh, that's a nice wish unfortunately the real world is not so kind. You even mentioned this somehow in your post. You will find lot's of examples where the artist has to change their work up to the point it's no longer their original work. Let me phrase this like : the artist is always right until job or money is involved. Best example would be the patreon drama when the fanbase decide the content of a game. Or as an artist try to create a film for company's like netflix, you are in for a bad surprise.
exact my thought, haha. Heck, sometimes i wish we could discuss such things direct in person and not in a limited area with written arguments