IMO the video game industry has become very lackluster with more of the same being rolled out every year. In the late 90's, there were many games that I wanted to buy - but back then I wasnt able to afford them.

These days, I can afford premium games even at their ridiculous prices today - but it's almost like there's little worth buying outside of GOG. Would be nice if GOG had a prepaid card option in the United States, but they only have PayPal and credit card options - neither of which I would be comfortable with. So I'm locked out of GOG for now.

The way I see it, the 3 modern game development funding paradigms (Big Publisher, Kickstarter, Indie) have fundamental drawbacks that prevent anything legendary from being made.
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Big Publisher:
For many development teams, going with a big publisher is a widely chosen option, as a big publisher means that your team will have proper wages and equipment. However, the hidden costs are all too often handed on to the consumer.

As far as I know, the standard paradigm is that the big publisher pays the developers wages while they are developing a product. However, the publisher will own the IP rights to the finished product.

This creates a double disincentive against producing an excellent/legendary game. If a publisher pays a development team a regular wage, there's no incentive for the developers to make an awesome product - they are just incentivized to make it good enough for their publisher at the minimum cost. Furthermore, the developers would likely see their game as being just another task to work on and shove out the door once it's done - because their publisher owns the IP rights.

Big publishers also tend to force various forms of inconvenient DRMs on their end users - some of which can act like legalized spyware or even malware. As a further kick in the teeth, the consumer invariably ends up paying for the cost of the DRMs.

Big publishing also needs big media and big hype - and the cost of setting up demos at various conventions and buying advertising time is handed on to the consumer.

Big publishers ultimately answer to their stockholders, rather than customers or game developers. Obviously this doesn't bode well for any product - the objective is to make the most profit. (Just a note: there is nothing wrong with working to maximize profit, that's how capitalism works. It may result in a broken product, but if people will pay for it, that's their choice)

Bottom line: The big publishing paradigm results in games with good quality graphics and sound and a large, detailed game world, but has a bunch of fundamental flaws that severely restricts quality.
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Indie:

Short for "independent", this is the opposite of a big publisher paradigm. The game development team funds itself, either working on their project after their regular job, or taking on loans for funding.

The advantages:
-The developers own the IP rights to their own game - so they have an incentive to keep maintaining and improving it.
-On the other hand, if they make a lousy/nonfunctional/crap game, no one will buy it, and they lose their time and money invested. If they took out a loan, they might have to declare bankruptcy. This is a further incentive in that the developers have a real vested interest in having their product succeed.
-Advertising space is usually done in a social-network manner - if people like a product, they recommend it.

This sounds like what would happen in a perfect world, right? Well, not really:
-Indie developers invariably have much smaller budgets. While I appreciate classic-style 2.5D, 800x600 graphics, most people wouldn't.
-Smaller budget = smaller, unpolished game world
-Lack of testing can result in quality issues
-A lot of indie games focus on whimsical new mechanics and physics engines as opposed to well thought out mechanics or tactical depth. In extreme cases, some games are just a physics engine with sprites and a scoring system attached to it. One overused indie paradigm is "Throw some crap at the wall and hope it sticks".

Bottom line: Indie development is the polar opposite of big publishing. It fixes all the problems with the big publishing model, but the lack of funding for indie development poses other serious quality problems.
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Kickstarter/Crowdfunding:

Kickstarter and other crowdfunding services are a hybrid between big publishing and indie development. The developer team pitches an idea, appealing to a crowd for funding. Anyone who's interested can pledge a certain amount of money. In the end, the developer owns the IP rights to their game, and the people who funded the development are rewarded with gear (such as shirts and hats), special editions or special box packages of the game being developed, early access, free expansions, exclusive in-game advantages, and in some cases, a meeting with the developers.

The advantages are clear:
-Developers own the IP rights to their product
-No big publisher breathing down their necks, rushing their schedule or handing them new assignments
-Funding isn't as much of an issue as with straight-up indie development
-The development team's "boss" is their fans (who would like to see their game succeed)

What's the catch?
-Usually the developers have no legal obligations and there's nothing stopping the developers from selling out to a big corporation and leaving their crowdfunders with little or nothing. (See also: Oculus Rift Sells Out To Facebook)
-In-game exclusives can imbalance a game.
-If the project is unsuccessful, the crowdfunders lose their investment - and no one would want to invest with the same team in the future.
-There's no guarantee that a crowdfunded game won't collapse right after launch. The fans might support it all they like - but if it can't sell to a broad audience, it might crash anyway.

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It's clear that a new solution is needed. Preferably something with:
-Financial stability and advertising capability of a big publisher
-A publishing model that lets developers keep (or eventually receive back) the IP rights to their products.
-A development ethic that values making an excellent/legendary game instead of pumping out games as quickly as the developer is able to and then dumping them just as quickly
-An organization that manages financial specifics, putting the developers and gamers in charge instead of stockholders
-A stronger guarantee than Kickstarter/crowdfunding that the people funding development will get their money's worth

So... what can handle this?
A large nonprofit organization.
-No stockholders or earnings reports; no investors breathing down your neck
-Aggregates crowdfunding and income from games, redirects it to developer groups with minimal overhead and interference.
-A publishing model where the organization could hold the IP rights to games that they fund for a few years, and then hand the rights back to the developers afterwards. Developer teams could perhaps be given a significant cut of the profits from their games as a further incentive for excellence.
-A nonprofit could even encourage high-quality open source games, with various incentives to developers.

I'm not a finance or business major - I have no idea if having a nonprofit organization publishing and developing video games would even be feasible in practice, but it seems like a solution if someone can get it to work. My guess is that there's a reason why something like this doesn't already exist.

Questions or comments? Post them here. If this is an idiotic idea, let me know. I enjoy constructive criticism.