> I can't imagine a single self-taught programmer of my talent-level making something that could be mistaken for a 2018 AAA game today.
They might not look like 2018 AAA games, but there are so many indie games that vastly eclipse AAA titles in every other way... even "double A" or smaller big studio titles can be better than AAA titles if you judge by things other than flashy graphics.
And it's gotten much easier to make a game if you're willing to use something other than ultra-real graphics - Unity, for instance, has massively improved the ability for relative amateurs to make great engaging games.
Thinking of the games I play most days now, only one of them (Hunt: Showdown, by Crytek) is anything approaching triple A. I haven't touched a big budget big studio game in years.
So I think at least in gaming, things have gotten better, not worse. Yeah, the ceiling has been raised, but the floor has also dropped such that the level of effort required to make a decent game is lower than ever.
That's fair; I'm too busy to game these days, so I am certainly not in touch with what gamer's expectations are. I was just thinking that e.g. single-screen puzzle platformers were easy to make 30 years ago and wouldn't be too far off from something that would be "cool"
They might not look like 2018 AAA games, but there are so many indie games that vastly eclipse AAA titles in every other way... even "double A" or smaller big studio titles can be better than AAA titles if you judge by things other than flashy graphics.
And it's gotten much easier to make a game if you're willing to use something other than ultra-real graphics - Unity, for instance, has massively improved the ability for relative amateurs to make great engaging games.
Thinking of the games I play most days now, only one of them (Hunt: Showdown, by Crytek) is anything approaching triple A. I haven't touched a big budget big studio game in years.
So I think at least in gaming, things have gotten better, not worse. Yeah, the ceiling has been raised, but the floor has also dropped such that the level of effort required to make a decent game is lower than ever.