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While I agree that from a AAA game studio, "Interacts with its community" probably means worthless nonsense, it actually is possible to do right. A lot of indie game developers actually talk to their fans and keep blogs of their plans and take input on them. Factorio's weekly blog is by far the best example of that I've seen, but they're not the only one.

Single player games seem to have disappeared.

Not so fast.

He alluded to a "crazy, complex network of conveyor belts" the company had previously used and said the company eliminated it after it became clear it wasn't working.

He didn't hire the right people. He should track down the top https://www.factorio.com/ players and have them design the conveyor belt system. We do that shit for fun.

The plan was to build miles and miles of conveyor belts.

You mean like in factorio

Often performance issues are caused by a sub-optimal algorithm. It works, but a different approach would be better. A recent dev post about the game Factorio highlighted a more straightforward issue:

Finally the blueprint tooltip preview: this one stumped me for a while. I've known it was slow since I first started with Factorio 2+ years ago but could never pin-point exactly what was causing it. The drawing of the blueprint preview is near identical to what happens when you view the normal game but would always take 4-5 times as much time to render. Finally recently I found that we did zero batching of sprites to be drawn when rendering the GUI: for every sprite that we would draw it would go out to the graphics card and tell it to draw it. Fixing that was as simple as turning a flag on and now it has no measurable impact on performance when rendered.

A one-parameter fix to a long-standing bug. Gotta love it.

This is why Steam OS exists, to try and help stave off this future where Microsoft controls the PC gaming market.

LOL. Because a future where Valve controls the PC gaming market is so much better.

I don't have a Steam account, because its terms are unacceptable to me. I used to call myself a gamer, but thanks to Steam, I stopped. Most games I used to play became Steam-only (here's looking at you Paradox and SI). Which ment they were no longer available to me. After paying for years, I was locked out. Nowadays I get my gaming fix mostly from GoG. Acceptable terms of use, full no-drm ownership and an optional client. Thanks to games such as Factorio (indepently launched, now also available on Steam, not yet on GoG) (also, shameless plug, I *love* this game), I am starting to refer to myself again as gamer.

From where I'm standing you're part of the problem: complaining about the chains of Microsoft while offering your wrists to Valve. I am thankful games are being released independently, or through competitors, and that more and more people seem fed up with Valve. Here's to GiD (GoG's new Games In Development, including rollback, yay!) outperforming Steam Greenlight.

If only we could get Linux ready for the desktop. ..... I wish I was kidding.

Of my new games, the ones I play the most at the moment are both in paid working status (with free options)

Kerbal Space Program $27 (Free Demo link) (now teaming up with NASA officially)
        A fantastic rocket sim builder/sandbox, now working on the career mode side of things, if for some reason you haven't herd of this then give it a shot, learn about orbital mechanics and have fun at the same time, or just see how many Kerbals you can crash into the moon in an hour.. This game will remind you just how hard real physics for your tiny CPU to crunch.

Factorio $13 (Free Demo link)
        You have been sent to a new world to establish a colony and start industrializing it for settlement.. unfortunately your ship crashes and you are isolated from any other survivors, using you ''advanced'' technology you will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies so that you can reach the final goal of building a defensive space port. An ever improving 2d world with 3d models for a fantastic effect.

Older games, warning these are older games.. If you cant stand to do retro games, don't bother.

Master of Magic $6 @ GOG
          Fantasy 4X game, that once some of the bugs where sorted became one of the best fantasy 4X's ever.. Others have tried to copy, non have succeeded. All Green magic FTW!!

Master of Orion 2 $6 @ GOG comes with number 1 as well
          Space based 4X, AI is unfortunately lacking a bit, but still quite engaging, Silicods FTW!!!

Populous $6 @ GOG
            How the Sequels for Populous missed the mark so much is anyone's guess.. Damn it, update graphics, tweek sound a bit, keep the game play/spells the same.. pure win for all!! And I shall put this out there for all, the DOS Roland theme music is the best of the old school versions :P

Evil Genius $10 @ GOG
          Build your evil lair, send your minions out into the world to plot, teal money and recover cool artifacts, and finally take over the WORLD!! Why Despicable Me has not cloned this is totally beyond me..