Not if that 'best trumpet' takes more effort to play. Every new generation of games hardware brings extra demands on the artists making the games (through expectation of increased level of detail). Their creativity isn't being unleashed, it's being forced into a narrow specialism.
Better trumpets are actually often more difficult to play because of extra weight and wider bore. Depends on the model of course, and in other ways they'll be easier to play, like for intonation, smoother valves, etc. A player might also choose to use a mouthpiece with a deeper cup, which gives a warmer / bigger sound but makes it more tiring to play, especially in the upper range.
That said, I'm sure Pops could handle just about any trumpet you threw at him!
It's said that Charlie Parker played a plastic saxophone at times because he would pawn anything he owned of value to buy heroin. Bet he still sounded great!
I'm not sure how this applies to AAA game dev, though... maybe something like, every new performance venue built is larger than the last, which results in bands getting more members, longer arrangements, lighting and set design, signers, dancers, etc.
> "Better trumpets are actually often more difficult to play because of extra weight and wider bore. Depends on the model of course, and in other ways they'll be easier to play, like for intonation, smoother valves, etc. A player might also choose to use a mouthpiece with a deeper cup, which gives a warmer / bigger sound but makes it more tiring to play, especially in the upper range."
That's interesting. I know next to nothing about trumpets, but the situation appears to be different than for guitars. Generalising, guitars are setup differently depending on the style of music and the technical demands, which has an impact on how easy they are to play. For example, tonally you can get a richer sound with slightly heavier than usual strings and higher than average playing action (more space for the strings to vibrate), however from a speed point of view you generally want lighter strings and lower action. These are just general rules of thumb, it's possible for heavy strings to sound 'muddy' and possible to get great tones out of lighter strings (guitarists like Page and Iommi are reported to have used light gauge banjo strings on their guitars, and I don't hear too many complaints about their tone).
> "I'm not sure how this applies to AAA game dev, though... maybe something like, every new performance venue built is larger than the last, which results in bands getting more members, longer arrangements, lighting and set design, signers, dancers, etc."
It tends to be the larger the team, the harder it is to build something with an interesting personality. Plus, to use your concert venue analogy, more creative effort is spent in overcoming how to fill the venue with sound, rather than exploring what that sound could be.
