It's more "indie vs AAA" than "then vs now".

And getting to the same quality as "then" now is much, much easier. Bunch of people are making games solo that would've been the best game of all time 20-30 years ago.

Or how Hellblade core team is about the same size as Mega Man 2 credits. (But no idea about how much who contributed etc.)

To be fair, even though the comic is mostly true, it's because of how much people's expectations have gotten up (which is because of how much more mainstream gaming has become).

@Guido Junior Valdez Sotelo: I've seen the pics, can confirm. Some rather large mugs of beer. But if a series like that results, bring on the booze!

@Teruo Hirai
forgot to add copious amounts of beer.

And them you have Touhou that continues going strong as a 1 man team developer.

As someone who made my own amateur games from roughly 1987 to 2002, I can confirm this comic is so on the nose that it's painful.

It is so for almost all areas of expertise in modern world.

What started as "two guys in a shack" becomes governed by huge corpoorations which crush all the competition. Then guys from the shack are filling the niches too small for big fishes to see.

is what happens when you have open world, full HD, 3D, VR, massive multiplayer, adaptative A.I., cinematic, story rich, custom char...

which is why indie's happened but then that is getting screwed up too