I'll admit I have never worked on a game. I know when we worked on huge creative projects at my last job, there would be a budget for marketing, a budget for creative/design elements, a budget for website, and so forth. We would readily pull from one budget if we determined that another would be going over due to changes if we needed to, and the client was always cool with it as long as it didn't go over the final overall budget. I'm not sure why gaming would be different but again, I've never worked on a game (lord I wish).
I have worked in game development before, and it's... pretty much what you see happening with DA fandom currently.
DAO was a very cliché hero's journey story, people criticized it for that and said "we need something different!"
DA2 was something very different, small, personal, the story of a failure rather than a hero, people criticized it for not being "as epic as DAO" and Hawke not feeling as powerful and heroic as the Warden
DAI goes back to the typical hero's journey, does this story where everything is EPIC and everyone WORSHIPS you, people again criticize it for being too cliché, the hero feeling too powerful, etc.
DAO had very linear environments, people said "it needs to be a big open world like Skyrim where you can wander wherever you want!"
DA2 had very small environments, people said "it needs to be bigger, not just a town, but a whole world!"
DAI goes open world (like Skyrim!), does big enviroments, people criticize it for being too big, too open, you can wander too much, etc.
Not that the criticisms aren't valid - they can be. But it's an industry where you get the sense that nothing you do ever makes anyone happy, because people are always complaining about something, and then complaining about the things you did to address the previous complains, and so on and so forth. It's incredibly draining to try and try and feel like you're never making it. I don't blame BW's devs for having mostly left the forums, and for leaving tumblr now - at some point you have to drown out the negativity or you'll never get anything done.
So yeah... I wouldn't go back to game development, to be honest, and I commend the people who are passionate enough about it to keep on soldiering on despite everything.