They really think the industry is in the shitter and that studios are being closed and developers being laid off left and right because Gamers are boycotting video games that have too many female/gay/black characters or not enough booba and because video game studios don't employ enough white dudes. I know they're terminally stupid and wilfully ignorant but the way Microsoft's shitty hiring practices have affected Halo are well documented and they have nothing to do with developers having blue hair or pronouns on their bio
THEY WILL FIND OUT THE HARD WAY
lmao
It is interesting to see how AAA dev budgets have ballooned at the same time that indie titles have exploded. Games seem like they're easier to make than they've ever been, but the big studios are spending like they're harder.
AAA studios used to compete on graphical fidelity, but once that got deep into diminishing returns, they started pivoting towards competing on budget and scope. That's why everything is an open world action-whatever with crafting and every mechanic anyone has ever heard of, because it allows enormous teams to put enormous amounts of shit into them and still have the game hold together, in a way that a linear first person with 1000 levels wouldn't.
Its because it isn't easier. It is more accessible. All these game engines made it easier for everyone to get in on the action. But what it didnt do was make a good game easier to make. Look at Cassette Beasts. I would say that has just as much content, if not a little more, than a Gen 2 Pokemon game. It is considered Indie. It took more than one hundred people working together to make. That sounds like it lines up with early 2000s GameFreak. Its not easier, more people just have access to game engines. Same thing with LLMs, its not easier, its just more accessible and faster. This is a good AND a bad thing if that makes sense. More good stuff, but also more bad.
As someone who has tried making games in Assembly, it's definitely easier now. Cassette Beasts also has a lot higher quality art/animation/music/sounds than Gen 2 Pokemon, a lot less jank, and a lot more quality-of-life features.
Cassette Beasts had 10x the people working on it than Pokemon Gold and Silver did. Pokémon gen 1 and 2 had so little people working on them that all of them are listed at the top of the wiki page.