Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doom cost $30 in 1993 ($60 today) and only had a handful of developers. By all rights, games should be costing $150-200 given the complexity and amount of human effort required. Instead, they've cut costs everywhere. When you pay your devs 50k per year while requiring 60-80hr work weeks, experienced devs aren't going to apply. Young, inexperienced devs fill the roles instead and make junior dev mistakes all over the…
>Doom cost $30 in 1993 ($60 today) and only had a handful of developers. By all rights, games should be costing $150-200 given the complexity and amount of human effort required. Instead, they've cut costs everywhere. Except the number of people with the skills to make games has increased (which depresses gamedev salaries), the tooling to make and publish games has become cheaper (or outright free with tools and engi…
As they say: Cheap, fast, and good -- pick two.
With a larger talent pool and all the hard problems already solved, you'd expect games to INCREASE in quality with fewer bugs and issues. If they threw cheap out the window and were charging $200, they could hire and retain experienced talent who would make far fewer mistakes and the quality would increase dramatically.
EDIT: To address number of people further, lets say there are 100x more talent now than in 1993. If 5 people developed Doom and 500 people are needed for a modern AAA title, then the effective supply to demand ratio hasn't changed.