The thing about forum user being paid is not statement, but theory, and even there, is more about irony/suggestion, as it would be a shame to waste that energy for free.
The thing about critics being paid is not an area i am fully aware. But considering the easily corruptible of human nature, it doesn't seem to me unlikely.
But i is not forbidden not to believe in it.
On the other hand, quality being different than number of selling is a fact, not a theory. If you take movies, for instance, there are many mainstream action movies with big actor, that sell pretty well in the summer. Many people go for it to share a moment with their friends, with no intend of invest themselves into the product. Most of them will forget this one, when they will see another movie. (as i am fairly confident that most Fallout 3 players will no longer play it, as soon as they will get Fallout 4) Even there, with low expectation, it is possible that some of them will hate that movie. This mean shit, for those who distribute it, as they already took your money. There are actually many films that i watched and paid for that were very awfull. There are other movie that i watched without expecting anything. I just wanted to go to the theater that specifc day, and i forgot those movies a week later.
On the other hand, there are movies that were made by unknown directors, from independant studios, that didn't sell as much as the mainsteam, but made an ever lasting impression for those who watched them. (some of them sold well, some sold poor, some directors were famous while alive, other not)
You take Melies, for instance. The guy was almost an homeless guy by the time he died, while he is considerer as god almost a centuary later. Guys like Lovecraft were almost uknown when alive.
I am NOT saying that Quality = Poor sells. But that those factors are not related to each other. You have good selling, you only need to sell units, not make people love it, or play it for decades.
Beside that, kickstarter doesn't mean "We are doing shit, give us money or we die hungry", but "The big studios think that only some genre/kind of games (HD open-world for instance) should be made and refuse to invest money on our projects. So, i ask you, gamers, do you think you would want to play that kind of games ?" Managing to make millions in just a few days seems to mean that the answer is yes, many players want that kind of game.
I would say, on a side note, that most revolutionay games/movies/books made history by going agains't the general consensus of the studios/publishers. They were the free thinker in the middle of an army of clones. And they did touched the audience.
But once again, the point is not to forbid some kind of games, like open-world, but to remind there are other genre, as the audience is not made of endless identical brainless clones, but players are different kinds of people that have different kinds of taste. So top down perspective, Turn-based combat, RPG, should be as available as RTS, FPS, Open-world, sport-game, culture quizz, Race etc...
Another point that i am fairly convinced is that if you want to make a proper sequel of a franchise, you have to be faithfull to its core aspects. That's why you will never hear any complain about GTA players that GTA 5 is too open-world, that there are many pointless places, that the character don't have a deep psychology (i didn't say no psychology), that cars make travels too easy, that the games lack of focus, that some moments make no sense, that the dev put more effort in scenery than writting (although the writting is ok). People don't make this complain about GTA IV, because it is faithfull to what the GTA franchise was always about. The same cannot be said about Fallout 3.
Even if i don't like a game like Fallout 3, it could be okay to make a game like this, and okay for anyone to like it. It is not okay to sell it as a sequel of Fallout 1-2 when it share too little in common. It is not okay to tell it is an improvement over Fallout 1-2 while they sacrified all the identity of the franchise, everything that made it deep, enjoyable and different from other franchises, to make a product that stand poorly on its own, is not differents that other games of the same period, and seems more like a way to promote their map designers that a proper RPG. Unfortunatly, this isn't even free to play.
) are posting in the Fallout 3 boards looking like jackasses.