This is exactly why I would love to see a bunch of crappy Zarfian (or Innocentian!) speed-IF. Open the floodgates.
I think of Ryan Veeder as an interesting counterexample: he has multiple acknowledged masterpieces, but those masterpieces come within an oeuvre of dozens (!) of other three-and-a-half-star “random Veederesque games you will like if you like random Veederesque games”. And people do like them. Somehow, the joy of creation has overcome self-pressure for every game to be better than the last.