When I first joined these forums over a decade ago, most of the game and game engine had to be designed, engineered and coded manually! Now we have libraries and game engines to empower game developers more than ever before and these tools repositories improve and grow every day.
That's not even the half of it, there were design complexities that were debated or unknown solutions for only for games of the genre to come out and offer interesting ideas on ways to figure things out. The power of the internet also now allows us information, historical documentation, photos and even videos that show and answer questions and provide direction and historical fact that can now also aid the design process as well as aid with creation of art assets and or design of said art assets.
What was once 90% a question of man power and cold hard cash has shifted more towards a matter of drive and time, as in cost not inevitability.
Even if it never comes to fruition there have already been several tech demos made, the first 2 of which were made with far far fewer softwares, tools and information available.
