Scare us away? Some of us are on instances that make the connection more obvious.
eRac
The game prints enough money that they could afford to have a writing staff and illustration team. I think the idea is that building character depth will make a subset of players more connected to them. This keeps them playing and also increases the odds of them buying a skin for the character.
It's similar to the Meet The ______ videos from TF2 and the comics that built on them.
I've been reading through the books and I'm astounded by just how well the authors have thought through the little details.
I'm also even more impressed with the adaptation to TV now that I've read them. The only thing they weren't able to adapt was the difference in tone and mindset between the perspective characters.
Almost done with the Inaros books, looking forward to the unadapted books.
There is a spammer begging for money in DMs using that picture.