English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Off with the rose-colored glasses! The hard look back at your Amiga childhood

AmigaHope · 16 October 2019, 17:59

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Amiga's Achilles Heel was it was almost entirely support by the Bedroom Coder culture. It was a culture of poorly organized small groups that could show amazing coding, amazing game design, and amazing audio/visual experiences, but rarely coordinated enough or funded enough to produce all three at once.

On the 8-bit systems, it was less work to create the needed components. A competent coder with a great game design could create a great game for not a lot of time and money. A great coder with an okay game design could create something impressive though maybe not as fun to play.

The Japanese made the best games because they had the best organization and funding to coordinate the work of talented coders, designers, and artists. American studios took a while to catch up, partly because they didn't have as much emphasis on code quality, but they did have the organization. Europeans, with their bedroom culture, took *much longer*, and the studios that finally managed to organize well enough were mostly funded for projects that would target platforms with global appeal rather than the mostly Euro-only market of the Amiga.

In the modern world you can see a lot of the same barriers, only without as many geographic differences. The number of people you have to coordinate and pay to make a good AAA 3D game in a reasonable amount of time is in the hundreds. There are no more mass-market games made in bedrooms because it's simply not possible.

On the other hand, retro "16-bit style" games have gotten better and better. The tools and sheer power available mean you don't need an expert coder anymore, just a good game idea, a decent artist, and perseverance. The bedroom developer (though we call them "indie" now) can make a great experience that would have easily been AAA-quality back in the Amiga days.

What could have given the Amiga better games? Better organization of its software development. Look at what the Japanese managed to do with absolute shite systems like the PC-9801. When they were given a roughly Amiga-equivalent system (I'd say the PC Engine was pretty close -- though its sprites were better and it had a tilemode, and a far worse CPU) they worked graphical wonders like the great Amiga coders did, but they paired it with great game design.

16 October 2019, 17:59	#65
AmigaHope Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: New Sandusky Posts: 942	I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Amiga's Achilles Heel was it was almost entirely support by the Bedroom Coder culture. It was a culture of poorly organized small groups that could show amazing coding, amazing game design, and amazing audio/visual experiences, but rarely coordinated enough or funded enough to produce all three at once. On the 8-bit systems, it was less work to create the needed components. A competent coder with a great game design could create a great game for not a lot of time and money. A great coder with an okay game design could create something impressive though maybe not as fun to play. The Japanese made the best games because they had the best organization and funding to coordinate the work of talented coders, designers, and artists. American studios took a while to catch up, partly because they didn't have as much emphasis on code quality, but they did have the organization. Europeans, with their bedroom culture, took much longer, and the studios that finally managed to organize well enough were mostly funded for projects that would target platforms with global appeal rather than the mostly Euro-only market of the Amiga. In the modern world you can see a lot of the same barriers, only without as many geographic differences. The number of people you have to coordinate and pay to make a good AAA 3D game in a reasonable amount of time is in the hundreds. There are no more mass-market games made in bedrooms because it's simply not possible. On the other hand, retro "16-bit style" games have gotten better and better. The tools and sheer power available mean you don't need an expert coder anymore, just a good game idea, a decent artist, and perseverance. The bedroom developer (though we call them "indie" now) can make a great experience that would have easily been AAA-quality back in the Amiga days. What could have given the Amiga better games? Better organization of its software development. Look at what the Japanese managed to do with absolute shite systems like the PC-9801. When they were given a roughly Amiga-equivalent system (I'd say the PC Engine was pretty close -- though its sprites were better and it had a tilemode, and a far worse CPU) they worked graphical wonders like the great Amiga coders did, but they paired it with great game design.