>>719765289
Yes, up until 2008.

For the most part the game industry at that time was small, because gaming was still viewed as toys for kids by most investors due to the mindset fostered by the Atari crash of the 80s. There was no infinite cash flow from investors chasing the next big thing, but smaller studios getting smaller loans from investment companies who would cap their budgets forcing developers to actually make something or die trying. This meant that if you wanted to make the best games you needed the best talent who were dedicated in making something great, not throwing more into the fire hiring more interns and asset developers hoping that it all comes together into something that resembles a game.

But 2008 happened, the financial crash caused every industry sector to fall, except one: video games.

This and the way EA, Ubisoft and Activsion restructured themselves and created the new publisher-developer IP farm model drew in a ton of investors thinking that gaming was a safe bet, even though the new Publisher-Studio IP farm model was just the same shit that Atari was doing in the 80s robbing studios and developers of their IP rights and putting managers and executives in charge and pushing creatives out of leadership roles.

The 2010s was a festering rot, where the big publishers and investment groups cannibalized the industry, pushing creative talent out of leadership roles and either forcing them to go indie or pushing them into contractor roles. By the 2020s, there were no major studios with any creatives in leadership roles left in the publisher-studio system.

TL:DR, more AA and AAA games came out in the 00s, with smaller budgets and better developers who had more creative control