In some respects the scope of the objective when creating a new engine was a bit smaller back then, and thus a little easier to program from scratch.
Although at the same time, a lot of programming tools back then were also more prone to bugging out and breaking, especially compilers.
Still, I generally agree that game developers of yesteryear were exceedingly competent by comparison. Producing extremely solid games within 1-2 years sometimes, with teams no larger than 20. And while yes, some might say, "games are more complex than they used to be", the actual workload required for said features in a lot of games does not actual line up with the amount of bloat that companies end up hiring.
Hells, game developers used to have to create most animations by hand, without motion capture even being on the table.
In some respects the scope of the objective when creating a new engine was a bit smaller back then, and thus a little easier to program from scratch.
Although at the same time, a lot of programming tools back then were also more prone to bugging out and breaking, especially compilers.
Still, I generally agree that game developers of yesteryear were exceedingly competent by comparison. Producing extremely solid games within 1-2 years sometimes, with teams no larger than 20. And while yes, some might say, "games are more complex than they used to be", the actual workload required for said features in a lot of games does not actual line up with the amount of bloat that companies end up hiring.
Hells, game developers used to have to create most animations by hand, without motion capture even being on the table.