[lprd]

Personally, I think that AAA studios are due for a reality check. There's been _some_ decent releases from these studios in the past decade, but they are few and far between. I can't help but feel that these studios are very disconnected with their audience and have ultimately prioritized profits over passion. I know the bills need to be paid, but somewhere along the line it become more and more noticeable. The market consolidation that's happened (EA and Activision come to mind) has done nothing but hurt the industry. I'd like to call it a monopoly but I'm not certain if that's correct or not. Either way, the current landscape is not great.

I've been gaming since the 90s and I'm generally unhappy with the current state of affairs.

Thank god for indie devs!

/end rant

[anyfoo]

I don't know if I'm still in the target audience (or ever was), but for one thing, I can't even begin to describe how much "games as a service" games put me off. It's really not disgruntlement, but active repulsion, as in I'd actually rather wash my dishes while listening to a podcast than having to play them.

But the amount of people feeling like me might be rounding errors in today's landscape, I don't know...

[bluefirebrand]

You're not the only one.

Live Service games are dying off because not enough people are playing them.

Just like MMOs used to spin off and die two years later, Live Service Games are saturated to the point they can't last either.

[pdpi]

Then you have releases like Hi-Fi Rush that come out of nowhere, and are almost enraging, because it means they get it. They know how to make interesting, innovative, oddball games. They choose not to.

[phone[phone]]

Hi-Fi Rush is the prime example that games that are actually good don't need a media blitz before release.

[red-iron-pine]

They're publicly traded companies and oddball games don't keep the stock price up -- every quarter, too.

[colonwqbang]

Fortunately it's still possible to break into the games industry as an indie developer. You can be a solo developer and make a top selling game, if you're really good. Lucas Pope, Toby Fox, etc.

So I don't think we are in any kind of monopoly situation, nor are we in danger of ending up there right now.

The people who do buy AAA games, I suppose it's because they enjoy that sort of thing? I'm not really one of them.

[SXX]

Yes, you can work as lone indie dev, but only if you have savings to sustain you for 2-3 years or if you can live on ramen. For every successful indie game there are thousands of games that never been completed or failed on release.

With small exceptions people buy AAA games from EA / Ubisoft / Activision / etc for the same reason why people go to watch christmas movies - they know what exactly they gonna get. No surprises.

[KronisLV]

For anyone curious:

Lucas Pope, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Pope

> He is best known for experimental indie games, notably Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, both of which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize alongside other awards.

Papers, Please was a really nice concept, executed well. It even inspired a few other games, like Contraband Police, which recently came out and is pretty okay (like a 3D spiritual successor, sort of).

Toby Fox, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Fox

> He is known for developing the role-playing video games Undertale and Deltarune for which the former garnered acclaim and he received nominations for a British Academy Game Award, three Game Awards and D.I.C.E. Awards, the latter known as the video game equivalent of the Academy Awards.

Both Undertale and Deltarune didn't seem too impressive on a technical level (e.g. not going for flashy graphics like many modern titles), but the world building, the gameplay mechanics, the character writing and everything else just felt really, really nice and on point.

I guess both of those devs are a good example that projects with a good concept and even better execution are still likely to be quite successful. Personally, I'd definitely also throw the Outer Wilds game on top of this pile as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Wilds

Here's a documentary about its making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbY0mBXKKT0 (spoilers)

However, such success won't be likely for the majority of the developers out there, which is to be expected. Not that people shouldn't make games that they are passionate about, just that they should set their own expectations accordingly.

[robopsychology]

It’s almost a habit to buy the big AAA games for me - I’ve bought every AC since the first one and probably will do even if I don’t enjoy them now they’re open world RPG collection simulators. Same with CoD not being as fun as the original MW games.

[zahma]

Agreed. Speaking about passion, I just can't forgive Ubi for what they've done to my beloved Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six games. Nothing good can last forever, but I have a lot of nostalgia for those stories and the games based on them.

[grogenaut]

Normally I'd be with you but then CoD MW2 came out. It's got your normal old school shooty shooty pew pew... it's got a very good battle royale... and then they also added a version of counter strike that I acutally like, a version of tarkov I actually like, and several other game types, hell even multiple raids like ow2 was supposed to have. It's like an ur shooter with enough people to play in each and every one of these hoppers. It's kinda amazing that it's just fun across the board, so much so I haven't even tried the campaigns.

Stepping back there's been many excellent AAA games in the last 3 / 5 / 10 years. There have never really been that many (sub 30) AAA studios. People move in and out all the time. They each ship a game every 3-6 years. That's kinda the name of the game.

What games did you dislike? what did you try, what disappointing you? You talk really abstractly / vaguely.

[HeadsUpHigh]

All these AAA shooters feel the same to me. Tarkov/CS actually feel like 2 distinct games.

[corbulo]

That reality check is nowhere in sight. The games industry beats the TV+Movies industry combined in annual revenue.

IMO the real underlying issue is publishers being far too overbearing on the dev studios. There's plenty of industries where you'll really never hear of the parent company unless you actively look for who owns what. Which reflects a much greater degree of autonomy (do what you want, but meet the bottom line for our investors).

It doesn't appear that game studios today acquired by big publishers have ANY autonomy, which is why they get tanked with high frequency. If you were to do an E3 today (setting aside the political dimensions) the publishers are so self-unaware they'll smother every studio with their brand. It'll be one big microsoft booth vs one big sony booth. Totally idiotic.

[epolanski]

> and have ultimately prioritized profits over passion

Videogaming industry is going through its "Airbnb averaging effect" which already killed original movies in favor of remakes, reboots, sequels and the same formulas that are known sellers.

At the end AAA studios require huge investments they will only produce products that will sell and risk very little.

[qikInNdOutReply]

Do they? We are currently seeing the price of asset productions through AI dropping through the cellar floor. And what else remains then? Engine scripting? Can be done via CGPT. Level design..

My guess is that we are 3 years away from some indy studio showing up with a tripple AAA title out of nowhere..

[mrguyorama]

Why should they experience a "reality check"? They are absurdly profitable and very reliable in what they do. The exact same videogame but now it's this year is purchased by millions of people every single time. There hasn't been much change in madden since 08, except maybe in negative directions, but people still buy it, and have all sorts of cope reason, but they just don't really care that much.

The reality is, the "masses" don't want art, or carefully crafted experiences. What they buy in droves is junk food, reality television, and call of duty.

[juunpp]

Tell Blizzard about it. With WoW "classic", they are literally selling the same series of games... twice. You thought loot boxes were the cash king, these guys are on a whole other level. Or all the "remakes", a testament to the industry's lack of creativity; get a game from the 90s, redo the assets and rendering engine... bam, profits!

[nozzlegear]

This is ignoring the fact that WoW players had been clamoring for Blizzard to find a way to bring back classic servers for years. It even lead to the infamous “you think you do but you don’t” meme when a player asked J. Allen Brack if it would ever happen at Blizzcon. They’re not even being cashgrabby about it imo, a subscription to modern day wow means you can play classic wow for “free” and vice versa.

[themitigating]

What is your feeling over this?

Nintendo had like 700+ US games and most of them were garbage. The video game crash of 83 was because of how much hot trash was released. Today I think that most games are amazing quality, perhaps you could say some are milking a franchise but what about "Last of Us", "God of War (reboot)", "Ragnorok".

This notion that anything made by large companies is more likely to be feels like it comes not from some subjective assessment but a general anti-establishment attitude of the person. For some reason it seems everything new is always worse than before no matter when it happens.

[Karunamon]

Point of order, it was Atari rather than Nintendo who killed the industry with trash games. Nintendo came later and actively took steps to distance themselves from Atari, including monopolizing the ability to make games on their platform (ostensibly) to prevent such a thing from happening again

[pas]

yeah, what about Last of Us? It was great to watch on YT when it was released, but it's not particularly game-y.

[deterministic]

The games I enjoy playing are all indie games. However the AAA studios are making so much money that they don’t care about minorities like us. So obviously there is a huge market for what they deliver.

[dorianMander]

I mean at least one CEO said as much out loud: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bobby-kotick-wants-to-take-...

[mikrl]

The market is certainly different. Microsoft/Zenimax/Bethesda owns Doom and Quake.