Why do we fixate performance? There are more important pillars to gamedev and yet we sunder them with technical thinkings! The greatest games of all time had crappy framerates and ran on imperfect hardware! Mario 64! Pong. 

A chessboard can't render a single polygon!

Fun is not derived from #'s of entities. And yet this industry is built on the faulty notion that framerate and burst processings equate to richness of experience. We fill our heads and our teams with this prime directive of optimized standards and create this culture of technical supremacy. 

The heart and soul of gamedev gets left behind.

Bigger is better! Throw around hundreds of enemies at the screen, create grand vista's of endless content. Stuff it with endless fetch quests.Throw countless bodies at the repository! Make the biggest game ever!

What are we compensating for?

The only thing that matters is the fun.

Fun is synchronicity. Fun is polish. Fun is ergonomic and tested and true. Fun is hard work, it's sacrifice, it's passion toughing it out year on year through endless setbacks and disappointments through the pain of bugs and feature creep. 

Fun is when every element of a game fits part of the unified vision and each and every lovingly hand crafted cog spins up in congruence with the rest of the machine and hums a not that resonates with a joyful chord of engaging care.

We would do far better as an industry if we put more focus on the actual practices and pursuit of fun systems, stemming from well organized, ergonomic  but dynamic code, and practices that allow for innovative systems that can change and evolve to find the fun.