Probably not a popular take, but it's fairly common to have CEO's for big company who where never part of the production of one of the product they company sells. The idea is that at some point, your business is so large and oversee too many projects. Intuition, and experience doesn't cut it. Big firm want rationalization. This is why management become obsess with metrics, KPI and such. It rationalizes business decision. This won't be business that innovate, but that's not what their investor wants. Shareholders at EA want predictable reasonable growth, and governance match that. You don't get brought up by EA, Microsoft, Activision, etc, and then act surprise that management want you to produce "generic AAA game with a coat of paint based on X popular franchise".

Innovation and risk taking is something that smaller business do.

Hey, everybody (who matters) knows that an MBA can successfully manage any kind of firm; there is no field-specific knowledge required, nosirree.

Not defending execs but having worked in games for nearly a decade, it is difficult for even the most passionate game studios to really understand what makes a good game. Creative processes are difficult; and for every BioWare or hot indie darling there are probably 10 or more studios who've failed and that you've never heard of.

It's much worse than they havent played games at all. They would probably object and say that they do play games, they've played some mario cart that one time, and they play mario party and some monopoly game with their children. They almost certainly have played at least a few brief moments of their flagship games at a show or something.

They assume their own experience is more or less what everyone else has, including their players. A sort of dabbling, disinterested experience, flowing from one piece of content to another.

It is worse than not having played games at all because when people around them take on the task of making games with intensity and zeal and solemnity and great care, they can roll their eyes and think "it's not that serious, nobody really cares about this stuff". When people have passionate arguments about creative direction they feel they can see the bigger picture and rise above the petty squabbles by saying that the artistic direction doesn't matter. They know it doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter to them, and to all the other people who, presumably, are like them.

I think that they are wrong, but I think the task of explaining to them why they are wrong is like trying to teach a devout atheist why religion matters. It will be a long and hard uphill battle and in many cases likely utterly impossible.

Okay, devil's advocate:

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) cost over $700 million to make.

I can't imagine anyone qualified to run billion dollar projects has much time for any interests other than running billion dollar projects.

These projects wouldn't be sustainable without an audience of gamers rewarding it with purchases and microtransactions.

and I'm OK with most of that.

The business side is more critical than the development side - so business folks should be running what is a business. If the business goes down, it'll take the down game, however great it is.

The big but though, is that to be a successful business you need to feed, nurture and protect the creative side. The creative side in turn has a responsibility to the business - if you've burnt through a hundred million and decide you need to start-over, that's on you.

My completely uninformed opinion is that once the business screws with dev ("Let's turn this thoughful narrative game, into a free-to-play-shooter!") dev probably just check out, do what they're told, and take the pay-cheque until it stops. I'm not a game dev, but I've had dumb corporate overlords.

Basically EA can burn in hell - but the development side is rarely faultless.

I don't think Indie games "are better" - but I think they tend to better deliver on a coherent vision. Most crash and burn, but the few that make it to my Steam account are wonderful. Not because they're all perfect - but because I heard a voice in it.