Comment on Hrr hrr
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 week agoA color box and manual, how… chic. As to salaries, of course you’re right, but Atari was paying a couple of dudes vs. several teams creating a modern game.
Anyway, love to see gamers whining about prices as we head into a world where obtaining food is a challenge.
Takumidesh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Economy of scale, the market has grown with the scope of games and also, most games do not require a team of hundreds of people to develop.
I covered it in another comment, but game development is easier now than ever, many of gamings greatest hits in the modern era are made by teams of less than 10 full time workers or even completely solo.
The Atari developers didn’t have unity and Internet forums, they didn’t have managed programming languages, they didn’t have asset libraries, they didn’t have modern art toolchains and 3d modeling software with high level easy to use features.
Additionally, looking back at old games is looking with biased eyes. The tech was just as cutting edge as it is today, and the learning curve was steeper, it was harder to just get a computer, let alone, learn how to program one. The talent pool was smaller and it was harder to get funding for a game, the higher prices reflected that you were paying for niche software. That isn’t the case anymore.
And the argument doesn’t even make sense. Should a Blu-ray copy of avengers cost $500 because it cost hundreds of millions to make?