>>11861545
>Were developers simply more talented back in the day?
In some ways, yes, primarily programmers having to know how to actually fucking problem solve, but I think one of the really big problems with recent games is that there's WAY too many cooks in the kitchen and that big AAA games are "over-corporatized," or suffering from "Disneyfication."

That is to say, they are TOO focus tested, they are TOO strictly painted by the numbers, they are TOO calculated to be the most profitable as possible, because they have grown TOO expensive to make.
It's not that there was never focus testing or that people didn't stick to what works or there were never cash-in ventures, BUT, generally it was that the publisher wanted X or Y type of game and then have a studio get to work on one, and while there would be meddling at times, sometimes catastrophically, like just buttfucking the game or perhaps even a whole studio, those games wouldn't ever be effectively DESIGNED by a bunch of suits in a boardroom.

A typical big budget game now has basically an outline of a design document put together by some people who don't play videogames and only know market research, that's then handed to a massive legion of developers to hammer it together according to those exact orders, the vast numbers of people involved erasing the potential for any one individual dev's personality or style to shine through in design.

They generally have good production value, and overall the design of the game is probably competent, the gameplay loop functions and you feel you can engage with it, but what happens is that every such game ends up feeling more and more the same.
Where's the personality and variety? Why are these games from different series and ostensibly even different genres feeling like they play the same, have the same kinds of characters, have the same kinds of stories and themes, the same mechanics and design languages, and the same feel?

They were Disneyfied, just like movies were.

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Were developers simply more talented back in the day?