https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5qKN2Yxaok&t=1s

Halo went from <200 people making a game from scratch to >2k people making the same game on an engine (without multiplayer) - so the design scope is even smaller now.

I don't get how you can lower the scope, have 10x the staff, and still overwork yourself - I mean, I certainly think it's possible, but that speaks of colossal mismanagement.

I mean the graphics got better (not that anyone cares, people still play old games, if graphics were a true differentiator, people would say new games are better because they look better, but they don't).

This is very hard to explain - and so expensive it's actively killing the industry.

It became a corporate job instead of a smallish team excited about building the games they wanted to play.