Are smaller/indie developers making games better than AAA Games?

[deathmaster snikch]

Basically I bought both Nier:automata and MF:Andromeda played both for 8 hours and didn't feel happy with my purchase now i bought this Game for a quarter of the price of these two games and i just cant stop playing it

[The Duck Knight]

never trust AAA games.
Most developers in big companies are just there for the money.
IN this game you can feel all the blood, sweat and tears the devs spend for it.
It's like a child to them.
A mean child that will keep kicking the player in the nuts.

[Shogun]

Um, yes that's the whole thing about games in the recent half decade. AAA has become an embarasment at the least.

[Blastom]

Now indies are generally good on mechanic, while AAA good on graphics.
So if someone cares mechanic more, he would go indies.

[Ironwithin]

Been thoroughly disappointed by a lot of AAA titles lately ... they tend to look amazing but then the gameplay/story/background mechanics are just plain boring and uninspired.
The product of industrialized game-making, fixed timetables, people who simply "work" on a product.

With indie games you get way less in terms of graphics and hype sure but you can feel that the people who made them did so with passion, not just to get a paycheck. Atmosphere, teh feelz.

[FroBodine]

Then everyone should stop calling them AAA titles, which many of them certainly are not. They are just crappy games made by big developers and publishers.

I have many more indie AAA titles in my library. These are my AAA titles.

[Trapmaker]

Publicado originalmente por FroBodine:

Then everyone should stop calling them AAA titles, which many of them certainly are not. They are just crappy games made by big developers and publishers.

I have many more indie AAA titles in my library. These are my AAA titles.

AAA doesnt reflect the quality of the end product, more the resources put into it and the scale of it, Battle brothers is good but it isnt AAA, Thats not saying most AAA releases are good, Nor are they bad really (They're samey and unwilling to take risks when it comes to gameplay features and innovation.)

[FroBodine]

Yeah, I know. I used to work for one of the so-called AAA companies, Electronic Arts, for 15 years. However, back then, in 90s and and early 2000s, they actually made some pretty good games.

I was just making my opinion that a title should only be called AAA if it's super great. I don't care how many resources are put into a game, if it's not good it shouldn't be referred to as AAA. Just a different way to look at them.

[NixBoxDone]

Seconding FroBodine - a title is AAA when it is polished, engaging and shows that the developers care.

This game qualifies, some of the stuff that hits the shelves for 60 bucks certainly doesn't.

[Trapmaker]

Publicado originalmente por NixBoxDone:

Seconding FroBodine - a title is AAA when it is polished, engaging and shows that the developers care.

This game qualifies, some of the stuff that hits the shelves for 60 bucks certainly doesn't.

You can second him as much as you want but that doesnt make you right, If someone says a spade is a shoe and you second that that doesnt make a spade a shoe, a spade is still a spade, AAA and Indie arent terms where one is better to the other, it just describes a different scale of project.

EDIT: I mean you dont have to call Battle Brothers AAA, Cant we just call it a good game?

[NixBoxDone]

Oh, we can certainly agree on that. But on your assertion: if enough people start to call spades shoes, they'll eventually change the dictionary to accommodate you.

Back when I was young, triple A meant a high quality product. I don't care how high your budget was or how many people worked on your game, if it turns out a buggy mess with shoehorned ideas and mechanics stuffed in to this "focus groups" and target audiences, you don't deserve that moniker for your product. ^^

[FroBodine]

Yep. AAA means high quality product in my book, too. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Battle Brothers is good, I don't think it's AAA, because doesn't have very much variety, it needs real quests, more of a story line. It's a wonderful battle game.

An indie game that I think is AAA is Darkest Dungeon. But, this is the BB forum, so I'll stop right there talking about other games.

Anyway, and now for something completely different . . . a battle brother on a horse. And we all know about horses in this game . . .

[gungadin22000]

Guys. A AAA game means "game from a huge, well-established studio." Stop trying to redefine the meaning of a banana here.

AAA games require enormous investment these days due to things such as snazzy graphics and full voice acting being pretty much demanded by the fans of the larger studios. This means that AAA companies often dislike taking chances with their new games and tend to stick to tried-and-proven formulae with regards to game development.

This is why so many AAA games are almost exactly the same. It's the same reason Hollywood movies tend to be similar as well - nobody wants to run the risk of creating an expensive flop.

Tiny dev studios, on the other hand, don't really have much to lose and can as such afford to be innovative with game design, meaning that a number of indie games are far more enjoyable than contemporary AAA efforts, despite often looking like garbage by comparison.

[FroBodine]

According to the wiki (so it has to be correct, right? ) - AAA is an informal classification of games as Trapmaker described. It became popular in the early 2010s. So, it's a super new term that is informally applied. Nobody is trying to redefine the meaning, because it is not really defined, but more just internet and gamer speak.

My PERSONAL opinion is that a AAA title has to be earned, not just inherited based on who made the game. Again, that's my opinion and how I will go about life.

But anyway, it's no big deal. If everyone wants to continue calling big box developers AAA game developers, then that's fine. But, a game should EARN the title of AAA.

[Zorp]

This game was made with love, the developers wanted the game to be good so they can enjoy it themselves.


What do ALL good games have in common? The developers of the game wanted to create a good game, first and foremost. Developers who don't even play video games themselves on an enthusiast level are much more likely to make a bad game.


All of the above is extremely simplified of course, but you get the point.