I have a sneaking suspicion this has to do with companies either erroneously or indifferently labeling audio as "post-production". So like if you were a graphics artist and you showed up to work on a game and the programmers said, "alright, we're done, just stick the textures in this dir and the models and animations in this one, and burn a cd when you're done," you would probably be a little concerned. But this is probably about the level of "sound design" most games receive, judging from the product. For example, I can load up numerous AAA shooters from the last year or two where bullet impacts sound the same irrespective of what they're colliding with.
I figure the current state of affairs is probably due to the industry's unhealthy obsession with graphics, but also the unhealthy and deranged obsession with emulating movie/TV productions.
OT: Anyone else getting pretty excited about this here game? I am.
