Issue is that in the NES days, an entire game was just one to ten people and less than 1MB of data. Not much overhead risk at all. Now games are 100 people or more and 10,000MB. Not many want to invest millions on so much risk.
It’s also why there’s so many good “old looking” indie games. Only 1 in 50 ends up being really, really, good, but the overhead to making the game is a tiny drop in the bucket.
Sorry, I’m probably nit-picking. My point was team size and game size gave ballooned, but it’s not broadly a AAA thing, it’s a very recent issue (last 10 years). They did just find when they hadn’t got so insane, but not much before the numbers you listed. Halo 3 and Skyrim’s are beloved games made by studios of around 100 devs.
Issue is that in the NES days, an entire game was just one to ten people and less than 1MB of data. Not much overhead risk at all. Now games are 100 people or more and 10,000MB. Not many want to invest millions on so much risk.
It’s also why there’s so many good “old looking” indie games. Only 1 in 50 ends up being really, really, good, but the overhead to making the game is a tiny drop in the bucket.
Not really true, Bethesda ballooned from ~70 around Skyrim’s launch to ~500 for Starfield.
The outer world’s dev team from obsidian was around 80.
Bungie has/had (bit unclear if this this before or after the ~200 layoffs) around 850 for Destiny
I think the AAA devs are proving that more devs don’t make things better. And Animal Well is 31MB, but I think that’s a bit of an exception really.
Not really to what? I can’t really tell what part of my Comment you disagree with.
Sorry, I’m probably nit-picking. My point was team size and game size gave ballooned, but it’s not broadly a AAA thing, it’s a very recent issue (last 10 years). They did just find when they hadn’t got so insane, but not much before the numbers you listed. Halo 3 and Skyrim’s are beloved games made by studios of around 100 devs.