Does it bother anyone else that over the last 20 years, money has become increasingly central to game design? I find that more often than not this cripples the game.
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10-15 years ago, (generally) even big titles were made to be fun first, and profitable second.
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I find this humorous as that only recently games were allowed to be classified as a form of art. Thoughts?
Well, it's not so much that money has become so central but that with better hardware comes better graphics, which means bigger teams and those cost more money. People need to understand that those textures don't texture themselves, those models don't model themselves, and the more detailed everything becomes, the more effort has to be put in to make it work. A modern AAA title has a team of more than 100 people, who need to be paid for three years.
Hence the return to low res 2D graphics for indy titles. FTL is just not possible to make for a team of two if it looks like Homeworld.
But yes, as games like Shovel Knight or FTL show, it's still possible for a game with simple graphics to be a lot of fun and very successful. But that doesn't mean I don't like my Witchers or GTAs.
The only sad thing is that games have essentially become movies and for every Mad Max: Fury Road there is three Transformers.
