Ok, you have half of the story. Now, how does this compare to industry? In the defense field when comparing private contractors to public employees, the cost structures and jobs are very similar. IOW, private industry isn't doing appreciably better.

Furthermore, the waste rate isn't the measure you should be using. Think about the common venture capital statistic that people use: VCs expect 9/10 companies they fund to fail, but the one that succeeds makes funding the other 9 worth it. The same concept applies to research. It would be interesting to compare private vs. public success rates, if such data existed.

Some have correctly noted that studios could have gained more return on investment by making another movie that was not rated R.

However, if ROI was the only standard by which movies were made, that would encourage studios to be very risk averse at the expense of art.

I would much rather have the studios take gambles so that we do actually get to see creative and original movies get made.

I also suspect that the actual ROI calculation doesn't take into account the soft benefit of allowing actors, writers, and directors to do the projects they want, regardless of prospects of return.

I just started playing grand theft auto 4. The worst part of the game is exactly what the video describes -- when I get killed in a shootout, I have to go back to the start, waste a bunch of time getting across the city, only to risk more time wasting.

Why not just send me back to the start of the fight so I can give it another shot? Going across the city again is

- not fun
- doesn't teach me anything! (read: taking the tedium out doesn't make it "training wheels")

On the other hand (even if it is less work) succeeding in a shootout is fun. If this is what call a "neat trick," then I would say it's the neat tricks that are fun.

The goal of any game designer should be to make a game challenging but not tedious. Most games like GTA4 are tedious because game designers are simply not skilled -- it requires less skill to make a game challenging by simply making it more tedious.

Bad game designers ratchet up the tedium. Great game designers are able to find the sweet spot.

(Honestly, it almost feels like most games cater to obsessive compulsive traits.)