They don’t seem to understand not every game needs to be a red dead.
I’d love to play AAA games- Crimson Desert and Spider-Man 2 are on my wishlist. But now that they’ve been optimized for frame generation, my 3070 can’t play them to my standard.
If I’m going to stare at a pixelated mess, I’d rather it be curated by an indie artist than technical difficulties from DLSS compression
That and they are also $70 new. Like yeah no thanks
to me, aaa = mark of inferior quality, barring some exceptions
To me, AAA means but it in 6-12 months for $10-20
For me it’s a lack of creativity and innovation when it comes to gameplay. Indies or just smaller studio productions take more risks and that’s a lot more exciting.
Yeah, AAA productions:
- Must be multiplayer, ostensibly because people ‘demand’ it, but a narrative easy to believe when you know players are stuck with your servers and you can effectively shut down the game when it no longer makes money for you.
- Relatively fewer games to be made, no chances may be taken. Conventional wisdom tells them that people got over turn-based in the 90s, so even the FFVII remake refused to do real turn-based, while Clair Obscur showed that it was still absolutely welcome gameplay.
I admit I was thinking about E33 as well, but my niche is narratively strong games or puzzle games. Too many AAA games are narratively disjointed open world messes and when it comes to puzzles indies are just king. Animal Well, Blue Prince, The Witness etc.
that is my point exactly. doesnt matter how nice the game looks, if its uncreative crap nothing will save that.
People forget what gaming was like before the consoles went mental. It’s just returning to it’s roots. Greatest pc games have always been small teams of passionate developers.
You know what this is called? A healthy and competitive market.
Yeah, I get there’s layoffs, but that’s mainly at AAA studios and is a symptom of a previously unhealthy, highly consolidated market. The job losses suck, but now diversity and competition is coming back, and that’s generally a good thing for consumers.
Whenever investors get involved things go downhill. If the only two parties are a buyer and a seller, the only way the seller can make money is by making a product the buyer wants to buy. But investors don’t care about the product. They may not even understand the product. They only care that the product makes money.
AAA studios are failing because they want to please investors, not buyers.
Well then they are simply stupid. Because if they did care that the product makes money, they would care about what the buyer wants to buy, because thats how you make the money.
Good, nearly all AAA games provide is pretty graphics and little to no substance. Those that do are the very rare exclusions. Like CyberPunk2077, its story was good, graphics if you could run them good, but the gameplay was hollow until a lot of reworking.
Like when BG3 came out and other devs whined about being unable to deliver such a game? Maybe they shouldn’t be considered AAA studios if all they do is waste their budget.
Do they still make AAA games anymore? They take so long to develop and lots of them get cancelled at the very end or a month after release.
Believe most games people perceive as AAA are actually AAAA but its all a load of hogwash
What game is a AAAA game?
Whatever Ubisoft or Microsoft deem to be a AAAA game because they’re the only ones using that term.
I’d pay the $70 or even $100 for a AAA title…if it released complete, relatively bug-free, and didn’t try to soak me with microtransactions and subscriptions.
But that’s not what’s they’re selling.
This is whats wrong with gaming.
idiots being too eager to throw ever increasing amounts of money at companies, to get what they used to get for 50, with zero self awareness that they are the cancer thats killing everything.
Counterpoint: games were more expensive in the past, sometimes even before adjusting for inflation. Goldeneye was $70 new.
The problem is that back then you bought a complete game to play forever. Now you buy an unfinished mess that despite costing as much, makes it abundantly clear that the game isn’t yours through DRM and in your face micro transactions.
To provide a relatively decent source: https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalog/1997-Sears-Christmas-Book
Around page 286. So 1997 christmas season, Starfox and Goldeneye going for $80… FFVII for $60…
N64 had the challenge that every single game was a circuitboard, so that inflated costs. Nowadays the price is for just the right to download a copy.
Exactly. AAA is supposed to be pushing the standard forward and compete for my attention by making a better product.
If i can get an equally good or better game for less money i will obviously go for that.
All those stakeholders be like
Well duh. Most of those AAA’s launch in broken states with lots of bugs and performance issues. And a lot of titles don’t even run well on the best hardware you can buy. Borderlands 4 ran atrocious on even the absolute best GPU you could buy.
And with the whole season pass, day one DLC, preorder bullshit, shit is more expensive than ever.
The industry only has themselves to blame for this.
The $70 is the introductory price, like the first dose of a drug that you get for cheaper to get you hooked. The actual price has been tabulated by a department with psychologist support to ensure it’s into the four digit range.
The last 3 games I bought were from indie devs. Road to Vostok being the last one purely based on the fact I wanted to support the guy and look forward to its continued development.
I just bought a game from a solo dev. Before I Go is a metroidvania reminiscent of Ori. Loving it so far.
I knew I wanted to buy Road to Vostok when I saw his devlog explaining that he was switching from Unity to Godot as a matter of principle, even though he was well into the development of the game. That kind of dedication should be rewarded. Also the game itself looks really good
Just saw it and man a single dev is making this? Like, seriously, it looks good. Though I’m not a perma-death fan so it is out of my wheelhouse. Still, that’s exceptional and wish them the best of luck!
Slay the Spire 2 switched from I think Unity to Godot halfway through. Absolute gigachads.
Other than cyberpunk, armored core, and elden ring I can’t remember buying a new aaa game. Usually humble bundle keeps me busy enough.
Is RE Requiem considered AAA?
Yes. Emphatically. Although Capcom has been doing pretty good with RE since the piles of crap known as 5 & 6.
Who can afford £70? Especially given the price increase consoles and PC components are seeing. Like many people, I wait a few years until it’s on sale.
Not only that, buying £70 of a broken game on initial release.
I find this a bit entertaining especially hearing advertisers and executives occasionally vent on stuff like this. A huge portion of modern people especially the younger they are:
- Don’t go outside
- Don’t read billboards, bus wrap advertisements, bus stop advertisements, ignore advertisements in sporting arenas and uniforms, etc
- Use adblockers online/ignore online advertisements
- Mute the television when ads are on
- Don’t have television subscriptions
- Pay for streaming services at a level that removes ads
- Watch like no advertising shows like award shows or late night/daytime talking head interview shows
- only watches TV for the finals of a sporting league championship and when advertisements comes on mutes the TV or focuses on their friends or phones
- Don’t discuss advertisements with friends like people did in the past
- Show up to the movies late to avoid advertisements
- Generally have an anti-consumption/anti-advertisement attitude even if they are consumerist. Being advertised to is an annoyance enough to buy something else
- Throw away mailers immediately without reading
- Ignore people trying to advertise on the street/passing out flyers
- Don’t answer the door
- Don’t answer the phone
- Generally has no idea when anything new is coming out and mostly exists in a social bubble
- Practically no monoculture
- Doesn’t read emails unless they specifically searched/expected it
- Etc
Besides the not going outside and problems that can arise from being in a social bubble, it’s all good stuff to me. For decades advertisers and businesses have optimized everything for selling products and now people are so desensitized to it to not care. Like no one actually cares about times square takeover advertisements anymore. It’s not a big deal.
“OMG it was advertised all over time square.” Responded with: “I live in Wichita.” “I live in India.” “I’m from NYC and tourist just look at them, they don’t read them. Fuck no I don’t read them. I don’t fuck with times square.”
It’s actually incredibly hard to advertise media now. Advertisements have to manage to seem organic or come off as predatory. So in comes the influencers but no influencer is as influential and trusted as a prime time advertisement before social media/YouTube went mainstream with people children to elderly. The vein to sell souless AAA/blockbuster media is busted
Yould think the ad companies would get the message…
They do, just interpretation is different with their smooth brains.
Google made record profits last quarter, so it can’t be that bad.
Some of the most wildly out of touch professors and students I’ve shared space with were business peeps.
- Don’t discuss advertisements with friends like people did in the past
This one is big and I never noticed it until a few years ago. My wife and I never got cable when we moved into our own place. One time my mother in law was talking to my wife about some commercial and my wife just said she hadn’t seen it. My mother in law got really weirdly upset or something, like my wife was trying to be condescending or something. But she was talking about it the same way people might talk about a funny skit from a show. It wasn’t until being away from it for years that I realized how odd it is.
You forgot
- pirates a lot of media
When you’re not allowed to own anything, piracy isn’t theft.
This is the way.
