Interesting thoughts, thanks for taking the time to write them up. I think the crux of this situation is the bargaining power of these creative types. Clearly if the status quo is as you claim (see quote below), it's a buyer's market (so-to-speak).

: Basically, companies focus not on the professionals that made the game, but on the game franchise itself. I think everybody can agree this is true in a large amount of cases.

I don't even disagree - this is most likely the case. But what is interesting to me is why. In other tech industries, talent is precious. Precious enough that creative types (mathy types, statisticians) are in great demand. I should know - I’m being offered a lot of money to leave my PhD work behind (can't bring myself to do it). But this isn't just anecdotal. Across the tech industry, it's a seller's market for data crunching and analytics, which is absolutely creative. My friend just got poached from google to go work for amazon for a small fortune. We've all seen the extent to which companies like Facebook and google et al. try to retain talent. Hell, Bungie was doing that too back in 2005 if I remember correctly. I wonder if they're still doing that (I doubt it).

The point I'm making is that some industries seem to value talent more than others, and I think this might be a clue as to why the gaming industry does not. My guess is that in the games industry, talent is less important on the back end, and more important on the front end. Games sales are just made by a less informed consumer base, whereas amazon's and Google’s main customers are highly informed corporations with entire floors of people to make purchase decisions. But in the games industry, "We do all the things we can to essentially brainwash people into liking it before it actually comes out." Hopefully you've seen that quote.

Summary: I suspect quality is just less important for games, and if you looked at a different creative side of games production (marketing and advertising) the contracts would favor the talent to a greater extent. Maybe I'm just overly cynical post-Destiny.

Fun fact supplement: your bungie.net avatar can still be Marty's face. Mine is.