OK, then why fucking make them? Aren't games supposed to be fun?

This whole genre really bugs me, and I'm someone who LOVES space games. The best game in the genre IMO is elite dangerous, because their ship to ship combat is so damn fun to play that I can hop in for a bit and have a blast without having to engage with the other systems that are often painfully boring.

The problem here is that people what the feeling of being explorers and finding new things, but video games inherently can't provide that. There aren't computers strong enough to produce thousands or millions of planets that all have genuinely interesting features on them that are worth exploring for. "Exploration" in current space Sims is basically "stick your name on something someone else hasn't already stuck their name on, maybe grab some resources from it, and leave." That gets dull very fast.

Developers COULD choose instead to make a couple of good, big planets that are interesting and full of actually good content. They could give you a reason to explore beyond "look other planets cool."

If you made 1000 planets and only 10 of them are at all interesting, and your game is centered on exploring other planets and not really focussed on much else, you've made a boring game.