What does a healthy game publisher/developer relationship look like?

Relationship building in games is very hard, there is a lot of distrust. Milestones can be very hard to pin down as a task being complete is very subjective (when are player controls done? when implemented or when they feel good? what does feel good mean?). You can meet every milestone and deliver a game that isn't fun, you can miss every milestone and deliver a best selling game.

At it's core the industry is trying to use the Hollywood movie model for financing, designing and developing games. It's not working, they are far less linear, far more interactive and significantly less well known as an art form.

There are no (or few) unique problems in videogames but they do tend to be in the extreme compared to the other arts and engineering problems.

This seems perverse. Game development seems to require a high amount of skill and creativity in terms of design, art and development. But whenever I read articles or hear talks about the business of things it seems like there is a huge disconnect between requirements and the compensation. And not only that but the economical impact of games is rather large. It seems like big publishers are doing very well.

Another (very general) field where this is the case is STEM research. Even though I would guess that you generally earn more and have more financial security, the discrepancy between skill, impact and compensation is even larger. I know it is an extreme example but it showcases a complex problem and other fields can partially relate.

Examples like these at least seem to falsify the notion that the market rewards skill and impact in general. It specifically rewards market and business skills. We as craftsmen often laugh at stuff like the Dilbert comics but there is a truth behind it: The ones that have the most actual leverage, skilled workers and problem solvers, seem to be controlled by people who focus on negotiation and even bullying.

Should the lesson here be that everyone needs to be a negotiator? Should we teach/learn this in school? Are we playing the game of capitalism wrong or is it actually rigged? I honestly don't know, but I personally feel that it all looks imbalanced and even phony.