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   PalePimp (palepimp@poa.st)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 00:00:20 JST PalePimp

   in reply to

   • Boiling Steam
   @boilingsteam 100% agreed, and I will add that Nitendo and Sega paved the way with their consoles a few years earlier, at least in Europe where the cartridges looked very attractive to European publishers ravaged at the time by rampant computer Piracy.
   
   The consoles made most small studios to close doors eventually due to Sega and Nintendo's policies forcing the publisher to pay hefty licenses for the dev kits and making them pay for the cartridges in advance and in too large quantities, yes; kids couldn't pirate any more but also couldn't buy that many expensive games on a market completely saturated of shovel-ware made in USA/Japan. European studios had to eat unsold cartridges for breakfast.
   
   By the time the Playstation came game development had become so expensive and games required such a level of polish and complexity that it was impossible for a lone bedroom coder or a small group/company to compete, that it almost destroyed the gaming industry in Europe overnight.
   
   Some well known studios were directly absorbed by Sony such as Psynogsys/DMA (Lemmings) from their ashes later arose Rockstar. (If my memory serves me well) the over financialization began at this point I think.
   • Embed this notice
     Zealist (zealist@poa.st)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 00:00:20 JST Zealist

     in reply to

     • Boiling Steam
     @PalePimp @boilingsteam nice history lesson, but i'm a simple man, and i jsut hate hte things i enjoy nickle and diming me all day
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     PalePimp (palepimp@poa.st)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 00:00:21 JST PalePimp

     in reply to

     • Boiling Steam
     @boilingsteam I get what you mean, to be honest I should have said "many" rather than "most".
     
     I still remember when EA published Deluxe Paint on the Amiga.
     
     Microprose was another "large" dev house for comparison with Origin, and so were Lucas Arts and Sierra.
     
     Most of Doom and Doom clones of the 90's were indies, and so were many revolutionary titles from that era including early Maxis titles. Also most games from the 8 bit era were made by one or two guys in their bedrooms but published by a large publisher who sometimes provided support with better music and art to try to increase sales.
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     Boiling Steam (boilingsteam@mastodon.cloud)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 00:00:21 JST Boiling Steam

     in reply to

     @PalePimp
     Yeah - the market took a big change when the Playstation released with a single platform where you could easily sell millions of copies at once - this gave rise to the AAA industry that we know today.

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     PalePimp (palepimp@poa.st)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 00:00:22 JST PalePimp

     in reply to

     • Boiling Steam
     @boilingsteam The AAA of the past were technically all indies. It wasn't until the videogame industry became over-financialized that we started with the yearly sequels and the annual plans to create live services that "will earn all the money", why make something new that can earn us some money when "Grind online 9000" will bag us billions!!!
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     Boiling Steam (boilingsteam@mastodon.cloud)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 00:00:22 JST Boiling Steam

     in reply to

     @PalePimp yes and no. EA was a thing as early as the 80s and they had massive development power and marketing campaigns at the time. Look also no further than Origin Systems, the guys behind the Ultima and Wing Commander series - those were clearly AAA games in their time - with way higher budget than you average garage dev.

   • Embed this notice
     Boiling Steam (boilingsteam@mastodon.cloud)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 00:00:23 JST Boiling Steam

     Seen on Twitter, thought I'd share here as well
     #gamedev