> Most published commercial games were made by a single 14 to 20 year old in few months.
This isn't really true. Yes, some games were made hastily like that, like E.T. for Atari.
Just one cherry-picked example, The Legend of Zelda for NES was made in about 2 years with 9 people in the credits.
Some popular modern indie games with similar team sizes and development schedules include:
Valheim, which went from full time development in 2018 to early access release in 2021 with a team of two.
Stardew Valley's initial development (not an early access game) took four years with a single developer.
Rimworld took one year for an alpha build, and about 5 more years to full release with 2-3 developers.
Minecraft/Infiniminer took about 2 years to reach a release version, with Notch handing off development to Jeb and Mojang only growing to a larger development team post-Microsoft acquisition.
The fidelity, definitely. I think quality is a harder sell. I do think we have more gaming history behind us now to draw from and I think we will be entering a new golden age soon but at the moment gaming feels like it's in a rut.
This isn't really true. Yes, some games were made hastily like that, like E.T. for Atari.
Just one cherry-picked example, The Legend of Zelda for NES was made in about 2 years with 9 people in the credits.
Some popular modern indie games with similar team sizes and development schedules include:
Valheim, which went from full time development in 2018 to early access release in 2021 with a team of two.
Stardew Valley's initial development (not an early access game) took four years with a single developer.
Rimworld took one year for an alpha build, and about 5 more years to full release with 2-3 developers.
Minecraft/Infiniminer took about 2 years to reach a release version, with Notch handing off development to Jeb and Mojang only growing to a larger development team post-Microsoft acquisition.