Are games becoming more or less overall complicated to develop?

Before I though that obviously they were becoming more complicated, but lately, all devs have been talking about is how easy and workable it is to develop for next gen consoles, and how their having a much easier time etc... I remember watching this developer commentary of Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal I while ago and they mentioned how in this one level, a crate was accidentally placed in the middle of a level. To remove the crate, they had to run this program all day and overnight just to remove that ONE crate. So I imagine stuff like that is more workable now, and there are much less limitations with things.

With games nowadays though, a LOT more work seems to be put into every aspect of the game wether it's AI, graphics, art, particles and whatnot. So obviously that would take up a lot more time in general (it seems like to me) as opposed to older games. BUT, Bungie said that each area in Destiny uses an amount of geometry (area/land/space.. i guess) equivilent to 2/3rds of Halo Reach. From another perspective, they said each area is about 6 by 6 kilometers. Skyrim's map is 9 by 9 in comparison. There have been over 10 areas announced so far too...  Plus they said they don't want it to feel empty so they are working to add tons of content too. So that's clearly a ton of stuff. So maybe things like that are easier to do now since there are less limitations? But more work is being put in in general... Idk. What do you guys think? 

To remove the crate, they had to run this program all day and overnight just to remove that ONE crate.

IcyFlamez96

I'm no lawyer but that sounds like some BS.

To answer the question, the tools are probably much better than they once were, but there is undeniably more work. More moving parts means more can go wrong.

[QUOTE="IcyFlamez96"]To remove the crate, they had to run this program all day and overnight just to remove that ONE crate.

Cherokee_Jack

I'm no lawyer but that sounds like some BS.

To answer the question, the tools are probably much better than they once were, but there is undeniably more work. More moving parts means more can go wrong.

Yeah, pretty much.

The tools are always getting better, but the job is always becoming more challenging.

Game development is constantly becoming more of a challenge to meet rising expectations.  And expectations can be fairly ridiculous.

[QUOTE="IcyFlamez96"]To remove the crate, they had to run this program all day and overnight just to remove that ONE crate.

Cherokee_Jack

I'm no lawyer but that sounds like some BS.

To answer the question, the tools are probably much better than they once were, but there is undeniably more work. More moving parts means more can go wrong.

Any more thoughts?

Just wondering, in relation to game artists, what do you think has become more complicated?