Corpos can’t make good games because they’re sociopaths who don’t understand art, only products. Understanding art requires a functioning connection to humanity and emotions, which they lack.
Games aren’t only products; they’re art. Good art is not capable of universal appeal. The more demographics you try to appeal to for the sake of appeasing your shareholder overlords, the more dogshit your game will be.
Games made to support the interests of mentally ill rich people cannot be well made categorically. This is why AAA has sucked ever since wall street took over every studio.
Remember when they said “we’re unable to make a game like BG3 consistently” and then 2 years later ClairObscure Expedition 33 releases, made by even less people than BG3.
Those games aren’t AAA, they’re S+ games.
A reminder that AA-AAA is basically just specifying how much money has been poured into its development. Not how much love, passion and hard work went into creating it.
Baldurs gate 3 is made by an indie game studio.
As in they’re independent and are not beholden to a publisher or external revenue sources that own their idea and forces them to take business decisions they don’t want to due to monetary reasons and outside pressure.
And yes, absolutely S+ tier games.
Number of As also don’t say anything about how skilled the developers/designers/writers are, or to what extent they’ve been allowed to cook without chains or directions.
A lot of AAA games would have been amazing, if it wasn’t for this meddling. The sad part of it, is that they’ve probably made the shareholders more money because of it. They’ve of course traded in brand value and goodwill for short term profit.
Consumers still preorder en mass. Buy the always-online single player games with DRM, and micro transaction stores. Then in the same breath, complain about the situation.
maybe if they were more focused in storyline, and gameplay. and not breaking through the uncanny valley, while squeezing gamers for every last penny, they could understand…whats its like…to be…human
Or “Ultra Realistic Graphics”
Indie devs want to make a game
AAA devs want to make money
It’s that simple.
Also, I can’t remember the last time I played a AAA game that was anything more than alright.
BG3 if that counts as AAA
Outside Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a triple A release since 2017.
I think assets being rolled over from one title to the next is what makes a game aaa, which bg3 didn’t do too much (I didn’t notice)
That’s not what AAA means…at all.
Art and profit are inherently incompatible.
You can have a safe profit, or you can have artistic integrity and vision.
One will always have to be the true purpose of the work at the expense of the other.
Art and profit are very compatible. But nepotism and profit even more.
Indie devs want to make a game they themselves actually want to play. They’re usually massively more open to user feedback and generally aren’t weighing that feedback against profitability.
Yeah. AAA higher-ups are very rarely gamers or actually interested in playing video games. They’re just business people who I think mostly want to chase the profitable trends and recreate whatever successes they had in the past under projects with actually decent leadership.
Indie devs also generally aren’t concerned with stretching the runtime out over return limits or in a way that will prevent people from reselling the game.
The suits always dictate what sells, and they’ll look for anything that would keep revenue coming.
Y’know, from a risk assessment standpoint, you can’t be too surprised they over rely on data since AAAs cost so much to make an a flop can lose millions, and sometimes even billions of dollars. Mediocre can still sell, and you and I both know they aren’t doing it for art or expression.
I do want to make one other point about survivor bias, though… there are plenty of crappy indie games, too. We focus a lot on the greats (and trust me, I hunger for the Silksong) but it makes up a pretty small percent in a world where everyone can make something. I sometimes will spin up a random game from regrettable purchases (like, indiegala bundles or those “mystery game” purchases) and some of them are really, truly horrible. I try to give is as much respect as I can, and sometimes I do find a few gems that nobody has played, but like… not every passion project is Undertale, lol.
Although tbh, I like streaming a bad game for friends because they can watch me suffer, haha, so I still appreciate the, uh, effort.
there are plenty of crappy indie games, too
This is a massive understatement.
There’s this fantasy that indie = high quality, but just look through Steam chronologically. 95%-99% of indie games seem to be good ideas that faded into obscurity, buried under the tidal wave of other games, that their creators probably burned out making for little in return. Many are just… not great. But others look like bad rolls of the dice.
Basically zero indies are Stardew Valleys or Rimworlds.
This is the nuance the Baldurs Gate dev is getting it. It’s not ‘games should develop like indies’; they literally can’t afford a 95% flop rate.
But that doesn’t mean the metrics they use for decision making aren’t massively flawed.
So don’t spend so much that a bad release will sink you. Spread it out over multiple projects. It’s not that hard.
Let your devs explore their wildest dreams! Nintendo gets it. Too bad they have too mny legal sticks up their ass…
Idk why people are giving you shit on that, you’re right. Not necessarily indie-level right, but people hired to do the next Mario or Zelda are given remarkable freedom. I read up on the BotW development and they pitched their crazy idea, got green lit, and when leading their team they took suggestions from every part of the team (quite literally, artists, marketers, localization specialists, etc.). If I could remember the link I’d share it, but it’s straight up good AAA management.
Though, to be fair it’s really team by team and it’s quite possible they got lucky with some of these. There are plenty of misses, after all. I’m kinda glad I’m off the Nintendo bandwagon after the whole Yuzu/Ryujinx legal crap.
Sometimes buy a used ps5 game just so I can feel somewhat justified in buying the stupid thing. Otherwise it’s almost all ps4 and indy games.
They’re not soulless game farms churning out shit for the large non-gamer audience of video games. Indie is like an Oregan alehouse; AAA is like a Vegas game bar.
dammit i will make that trip up to the pie shop and let y’all know how it is in a few months okay
I’m hoping Baldur’s Gate 4 has a battle royale mode with different skins you can buy, and crossovers with Star Wars, Monster Energy, and Nike. And a Season Pass you can buy monthly for early access to each seasons cool new crossover!
i won’t play it unless there are verification cans you drink for spell slots
Indie games reasonably start with more fleshed out and committed to ideas of what the game will look like in the end than AAA games. Constraints of money and less cooks in the kitchen
AAA games sound like it’s years of expensive pitches for gameplay and narrative, can be years of that even after publicly announcing the game, and then picking one and then deciding nevermind the markets hot on this so pivot. Rinse and repeat until cancellation or a stir fry of what’s about to expire in the fridge
