A bunch of content packs isn't really pushing the bounds. That you end with a discussion of money and survivability of the FPS somewhat drives the point home of how different our views are: an open system doesn't necessarily attract commercial value, it attracts eccentric purposes. AirQuake wasn't made for money, it was made because someone wanted to take something known and explore. Conversely, CoD and MW might be fighting for life because it's only the same commercial hacks doing the same thing to death and not letting other people come in and muck around with shitty barely working mods. Not that people necessarily still do wide-scale show up and start building mutators, anymore: most would rather get paid by the hacks to do "blockbusters."

As per Gibson: "The street find's it own uses for things," and it's that ability of the street to do so that gives long renewing interest into the thing. Either let oneself be reborn again and again, or die of certain irrelevancy.