Since you have 5 speakers, one of them should be the center speaker, which is focused on dialog. Some Denon receivers have a 'dialog level adjust' or 'center level adjust' setting that you can turn on and then turn up the dialog level. If you don't have that setting the solution is to try to turn up the center speaker (or turn down all the other speakers) some way, such as using a mixer or some such (may require some research for specifics).
I switched to a mini pc about 1.5 years ago, and it's been working out fine. I'll probably get another one when it's time to move on. One thing I like about my new setup is it's more modular. I have 2 external SSD drives and a USB hub, both of which I can continue using when I swap out the 'main' pc. I have a fancy audio interface hub as well, so I'm not concerned about any lack of enough audio ports on the mini pc.
Based on your interest in being an ethical person, it seems like this situation could work out very well. It's totally possible to get the place set up so that you rent out a nice, very livable space for a tenant that is less expensive and/or nicer than other options they might have, and you will likely be a considerate landlord, which would make you and your tenants happy and comfortable with the situation.
Being a landlord is not inherently evil, nor is it inherently a complicated and frustrating existence. In fact, the world could probably use a lot more nice, considerate landlords. You could be one of them!
Sure. He made many millions of dollars within the first couple years of releasing it. That's why he can pretty much do whatever he wants, including continuing to work on the game without charging additional money for it. And of course, it keeps selling more copies, and will for many years to come, so he has tons of money continuing to flood in.
He certainly seems like a pretty grounded guy, and it's nice that he tries to be cool about stuff, including not gouging the player base for more money. Being an individual has huge advantages compared to being a corporation, in some ways. A corporation would pretty much be obligated to maximize profit. He can just be pleased that he brings joy to millions of players, and has already made a fortune.
I worked as an Outsource Manager at a couple of game companies (in addition to working for many years as a game artist). I outsourced mostly art asset creation, mostly to cheaper countries. It was kind of bittersweet, since it was clear to me and the artists at our studio that we were outsourcing really enjoyable work, work that our internal artists would rather have done than spend some of their time reviewing the cool art stuff these outsource artists created. But doing this allowed the studio to make a bigger, better game than our limited size team could do on their own.
So basically, I disagree with your premise. There are many sorts of jobs, for many reasons.
There were probably professions that long predate history, and any of those are a bit hard to prove. There were 'shaman' in pre-history, and good shaman were quite possibly supported by their communities. There may also have been things like dedicated cooks. Trading sex for food however, is clearly hundreds of thousands if not millions of years old, so it's hard to argue that other professions came before it.
This article has some elements of truth, but skips over some important stuff. In particular, the odds of making a living writing books when on salary, writing the books for a big company or celebrities etc, are vastly higher than just writing your own books. You don't have to beat insane odds if someone hires you for 70k/year to write books...you simply make that 70k/year. It's the same as e.g. people working in the video game industry. The odds of earning a middle class income as an Indie Game developer are super bad, but there are many thousands of people working salaried jobs in the mainstream AAA game industry who are definitely 'making a living'.
Also, this is nothing new. There is a reason 'starving artist' is a common term. For centuries, a lot of the most well known people in all creative fields were people who already had money when they started e.g. nobility, and some of those people were able to become famous, largely because they didn't have financial pressures that the vast majority of people had.
People do talk about this. At least, they do in the game industry. It's well known that when an independent studio gets bought (usually by a publisher they have been working for), this often results in the studio closing down a number of years later unless they crank out hit-after-hit. Of course, sometimes that doesn't happen and the studio gets more stability and more financial support, now that they are part of a larger company.
In regards to the people who sell their studio (founders), it's important to keep in mind that for most of these people, selling their studio while the studio is fairly popular results in life-changing wealth. Maybe selling the studio and becoming rich by doing so was not their original goal, but it should be no surprise that studio founders can be very tempted to sell the studio (at the right price). Owning an independent studio can be a gigantic amount of stress, and a huge financial reward that also allows the founder to simply get rid of all the headaches and stress is nothing to sneeze at.
Everyone who works at an independent studio knows the risks involved (to their own job eventually, if the studio is sold), and they often have mixed thoughts on what the founders are doing, but they don't all demonize the studio owners, since they would be tempted by the same potential rewards if they owned the studio.
Climate change really be kicking in rapidly at this point