And Stardew Valley... which took 4-5 years. Vampire Survivors. I'm aware of these. They all have one thing in common: limited in scope or massively simplified in some area
Dwarf Fortress still has basically no animations after close to 20 years in development, and spent most of its life in ascii for good reason. The final art pack I'm fairly sure was contracted out
That's my point. Larger scoped projects are gated by capital or bigger founding teams. Maybe they don't have to be. Maybe in the future 3 friends could build a viable Overwatch competitor
I mean, the point I'm trying to make is that AI could be used to expand the scope of what can be achieved. I never said that it's impossible to develop any game without it
Baba is You Exists.
Nethack Exists (and similar games).
Dwarf Fortress Exists.
Mountains of Indie Horror games made of Unity Store assets exist.
Coal, LLC exists.
Cookie Clicker Exists.
Balatro Exists.