I bring this up when people talk about how “hard” game development is.

20 years ago, games were being made in 12 months, by 30 people, with tools that people today would consider to be unreasonably slow, with even less detail than they would consider acceptable. Getting a workable prototype could easily take months, and storage space was severely limited.

Under all those restrictions, we got the greatest video games of all time.

Nowadays, its not uncommon for game studios to have over 500 people. Tools are extremely user friendly and fast. Someone could make art assets with 10x the detail than before in less than a 5th of the time. There is basically no storage limit. Getting a workable prototype takes weeks, if that.

And for tall that? Games take 6 years, and release as buggy unfinished messes. The budget is bloated by marketing costs and too many people on payroll. How many games under these conditions will go on to be among the greats of the 90s-10s? Not enough.