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Comment by cco | Hacker News Reader

For fun:

Federal minimum wage in 1982(2020 dollars): $3.25 ($9.11)

Federal minimum wage in 2020: $7.25

So that copy of Pac-Man was 15.38 hours of minimum wage labor in 1982, a $70 game today is 9.65 hours of labor. Minimum wage is slightly lower today than it was in 1982, but video game production has apparently become significantly cheaper.

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Production costs have increased by several orders of magnitude. Just look at the credits of a modern game vs something like those 80s Activision titles that were developed by a single person.

A larger video game market has created economies of scale that make larger development budgets viable.

Ah yeah, you're right for these AAA games, it is economies of scale that have made it cheaper, not lower production costs.

I remember back in 1987 going to my local pub/bar and paying $1.40 for a beer. You only needed $20.00 in your pocket to have a really good night out.

These days you pay between $5.00 and $6.00 for the same beverage with some establishments charging way more that.

Not a great comparison since outside of rural Mississippi and similar, the cost of barebones living is much higher, so people on minimum wage have much less discretionary income today.

I think they are just trying to point that inflation exists...

Installing Unity or Godot and having something move around on the screen is significantly faster, more intuitive and therefore cheaper than dealing with all the processes around racing the beam.

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