Exactly. 12-16 was predominantly on the producer side.

The hidden deciding factor nevertheless was time. And that affected the whole production cycle: coding, graphics, music, crunching, copying, spreading (postal services!).

We had way more snow back then and we enjoyed working on something for hours till the wee hours.

18 was a deciding factor because after that military service killed quite a few scener careers.

Have a look at all the pr0n stuff pixel graphics that were cherished by the young studs as well as all the scroll texts as well as early disk magazines or pictures of programmers in computer magazines, with lots of profanity and simply stating age competition: 14 years old scolding 13 years old…