indie vs AAA games

[Roran]

i like indie more as they are normally more creative and cheaper as im poor and♥♥♥♥♥♥

[※Tapu Lele※]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Roran SP00KS:

Początkowo opublikowane przez The Tamed Darkness:

This is true, but this is more rare to see in an indie game.

this more difficult as indie games have small amount of devs compared to an AAA game

Yeah true

[Hireath]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Roran SP00KS:

Początkowo opublikowane przez The Tamed Darkness:

This is true, but this is more rare to see in an indie game.

this more difficult as indie games have small amount of devs compared to an AAA game

Budget to, but it's always good to see indie dev turning shjt into gold since some AAA are turning gold into shjt !

[Roran]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ❀Snowflake❀:

Początkowo opublikowane przez The Tamed Darkness:

I much prefer 4k 3D graphics.

Yeah but some indies have that

:snowflakes:

eg journey

[※Tapu Lele※]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Hireath:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Roran SP00KS:

this more difficult as indie games have small amount of devs compared to an AAA game

Budget to, but it's always good to see indie dev turning shjt into gold since some AAA are turning gold into shjt !

X3

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

I don't much like the term "AAA", nor the "indie vs. AAA" dichotomy, because first it makes it sound like there's just a big gap between these two extremes, and second because it makes it sound like there DO exist only extremes.

From what I can tell people typically use "AAA" not to refer to the biggest most heavily marketed games exclusively, but more generally to anything from big-name publishers -- Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Squenix, Konami, Capcom, Activision, and so on. So you get some smaller companies (e.g. Falcom, Wayforward, even Valve, arguably) that sort of are in the semi-indie grey area in the middle. On top of that you get games that are developed by independent budgets and then published by a major company (e.g. Bastion, published by WB). And then we also note that there's a huge gulf of difference between games that are developed by teams of experienced designers who just happen to be freelancing for that project (e.g. Torchlight) as opposed to new devs working in very small teams or even simply working alone...and then some of those may be experienced pros themselves (e.g. Mystik Belle) while others may be just getting into the industry (I'm less sure of examples of this but this might apply to a number of indie games that sort of popped up out of nowhere).

For reference/disclosure: I don't play much in the way of big-name publishers' games, mainly due to cost and accessibility (those games cost more, and I also don't have a computer that can likely run many of them). My Steam library (and GOG library for that matter) do have an array of indie games, but relatively few "AAA" games or basically games from big publishers.

People usually say that AAA games are lacking in innovation and indie games have a lot of it. Perhaps that's the case, but...I also wonder if this has to do with consumer expectations? For example, people yell at big game companies for not releasing games with 4K and full HD, so basically the message that big game companies get is "we need blow huge budgets on making things look really pretty, or else we get flamed".

Which in turn means that they need to make more revenue on the game just to get a return on their investment. Which in turn means they need to make it appeal to more people, so now you just have feature creep, at best. And at worst, you get half-baked implementations of these features. And what happens then? People get angry and post all over the internet about it (because people these days are increasingly spoiled by the avenue of instant gratification and thus can let out their frustration over even the pettiest of things rather than being willing to sit through them and filter them through a lens of what actually matters because by the time they're done with it they might actually think something was actually kinda okay even if it wasn't perfect). Now your game is tarred for poorly doing a feature that you didn't even want in the first place and probably doesn't even really fit.

Do I know how to solve this problem? I don't. But at least we can consider a bigger picture of what might be happening.

[※Tapu Lele※]

Początkowo opublikowane przez ★Greed★:

None. Classic games forever:gt1cd::gt1datassette::gt1disk35::gtdisk525:

you DO realize classic games can be indie or AAA

[Jej]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Quint, Queen of the Giant Rabbit:

Which in turn means that they need to make more revenue on the game just to get a return on their investment. Which in turn means they need to make it appeal to more people, so now you just have feature creep, at best. And at worst, you get half-baked implementations of these features. And what happens then? People get angry and post all over the internet about it (because people these days are increasingly spoiled by the avenue of instant gratification and thus can let out their frustration over even the pettiest of things rather than being willing to sit through them and filter them through a lens of what actually matters because by the time they're done with it they might actually think something was actually kinda okay even if it wasn't perfect). Now your game is tarred for poorly doing a feature that you didn't even want in the first place and probably doesn't even really fit.

That reminds me of DICE's Star Wars Battlefront. People kept complaining that they didn't need a single-player campaign as "odds are it'd be crap anyways", so DICE didn't make one. People complained about there not being a campaign. People don't know what they want.

It's a loss-loss.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Jej:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Quint, Queen of the Giant Rabbit:

Which in turn means that they need to make more revenue on the game just to get a return on their investment. Which in turn means they need to make it appeal to more people, so now you just have feature creep, at best. And at worst, you get half-baked implementations of these features. And what happens then? People get angry and post all over the internet about it (because people these days are increasingly spoiled by the avenue of instant gratification and thus can let out their frustration over even the pettiest of things rather than being willing to sit through them and filter them through a lens of what actually matters because by the time they're done with it they might actually think something was actually kinda okay even if it wasn't perfect). Now your game is tarred for poorly doing a feature that you didn't even want in the first place and probably doesn't even really fit.

That reminds me of DICE's Star Wars Battlefront. People kept complaining that they didn't need a single-player campaign as "odds are it'd be crap anyways", so DICE didn't make one. People complained about there not being a campaign. People don't know what they want.

It's a loss-loss.

It's less "people don't know what they want" and more "different people want different things and can't agree on what the priorities of a devteam with limited time and money should be".

I think the ideal solution to this would be to build up a dedicated catalogue and customer-base in the long run that is wide enough to appeal to different subgroups of fans and also don't build people's expectations up too high. That, or make a product that's really niche but serves that one niche really well.

Not sure how this can be done for companies and series that already have existing giant and possibly really fractured customer-bases, though.

[JJ, Professional Fool]

Doesn't matter who is better.

All that matters is what makes money.