What’s driving this trend? The enshitification of triple AAA titles fucking slapping surcharges on EVERYTHING; day one dlc, microtransactions, always online DRM, the ability to revoke access to the shit we pay for, it’s death by 1000 cuts. EVERY anti-consumer action, every attempt to squeeze more of us while delivering the same rehashed shit over and over just drives me further into the arms of indie developers. The intent of us withholding our money and refusing to purchase your shit is to provide publishers with a sense of pride and accomplishment for retaining their customer base.
to me, aaa = mark of inferior quality, barring some exceptions
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.
Zero creativity, zero innovation, zero passion. Too many AAA games feel like all of the design and decision making happened in a boardroom full of executives and market researchers, then the actual designers and developers just churn out whatever the higher-ups have decided the product will be.
that is my point exactly. doesnt matter how nice the game looks, if its uncreative crap nothing will save that.
To me, AAA means but it in 6-12 months for $10-20
They don’t seem to understand not every game needs to be a red dead.
I’m happy with every AAA game striving for RDR2 level of quality if we also get AA games from the same studios. And of course indie games are always gonna indie.
If they try to make only super huge AAAs and nothing less, then games are infrequent and quality suffers when they have to be rushed out when money’s getting tight.
I’m too lazy to find my 3 year old comment but it went something like “AAA games are about as AAA as the mortgage bonds were in 2007”.
The era of the AAA gold standard is long gone. You no longer need a million dollar studio bankrolled by a big name publisher/console to make a groundbreaking AAA game.
Most if not all of those studios have been cost cutting for the past decade to maximize profit which is how we reached the current market of UE5 slop and DoA live service games.
There’s even an entire YouTube channel dedicated to showing how many current “AAA” titles have regressed in graphical optimization and quality from older game engines due to the lack of proper development, despite the advancement in consumer hardware.
Care to link the channel for the curious friend?
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.
It’s this.
and it’s always worth distinguishing between executives and investors.
Executives are going to push the problem, but the core issue is shareholders. In the US, where most of these companies are based, a publicly traded company is expected to make money for its shareholders. Shareholders have subplanted customers in the companies ethical obligagions. The law has been used to make this national policy. Controlling shareholders can (and do) vote to remove company leadership that won’t act how they want. It is not just that they have to generate revenue, they have to generate as much revenue as possible as determined by shareholders. It’s corporate cartel tatics. Fail us and die. Do well and you’ll get rewarded with some of the take.
If a company goes public, It’s only a matter of time until it’s product goes to shit.
I want to upvote this one million times
It was my understanding that it was a misconception that companies are legally bound to have an ROI or whatever. Not an economist so IDK. I just remember hearing that from several places. Regardless, the buyer-seller relationship is “I give you money, and you give me a product or service”. The investor-seller relationship is “We give you money, and you give us more money, and we don’t care how you do it.”
It was my understanding that it was a misconception that companies are legally bound to have an ROI or whatever. Not an economist so IDK. I just remember hearing that from several places. Regardless, the buyer-seller relationship is “I give you money, and you give me a product or service”. The investor-seller relationship is “We give you money, and you give us more money, and we don’t care how you do it.”
Only very technically. Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. still made the shareholder a priority over the product or the customer (technically it only set the precedent). It’s a misconception that actual profit is the legal requirement. I suppose I’m guilty of furthering it, but it’s easier to keep the oversimplification than to explain the nuances when the outcome is the same. The controlling shareholders are the ones that create this issue because their votes affect company policy, and if they don’t like the way the company operates, they have more direct legal avenues to change and challenge it than you or I would.
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.
In their mind they can just take their money and invest in something else. They don’t care about long term value, just milking it for all its worth. Pump and dump, then move onto the next cow.
It all costs too much now, and my backlog will hold me over until I die of old age. I’m at the age now where I don’t care about the new stuff.
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
3070 can’t play them to my standard.
You’ve poisoned yourself. Chasing fidelity and refresh rates has done for graphics what short-form media did to attention spans. I’m emulating PS1 games and playing Fallout 4 on a 970 while my computer fans blow like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and I am free.
That and they are also $70 new. Like yeah no thanks
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…
Still feels crazy though how aware you’re forced to be about ads lurking in every corner. I check many of these boxes plus some others, use independent OSs, 3rd party apps etc. And still, although I hardly see any ads, they are so present just lurking under the surface.
Good example are sponsor comments in yt videos/podcasts. Some I can filter out with Sponsorblock, but the little video glitch reminds you every time that you have to stay safe. Podcast ads can easily be slipped with the fast forward button, but if you’re washing the dishes etc., sometimes you can’t react directly.
It’s really insane how ads are just everywhere these days.
- 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
The only AAA game that I have legitimately enjoyed and played more than once is Red Dead Redemption II. Other AAA games are okay, but they feel a bit hollow and lack the immersion that RDR2 has. Then again, RDR2 was showing off a bit with what the industry can do.
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.
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.
I wouldn’t even consider Cyberpunk AAA. AAA to me is like. Ubisoft. Ea. Activision/blizzard. Those kinds of people. AA are games with decent funding but made to be good rather than a live service microtransaction slop. They’re your rockstars, atlus, segas, those kinds of studios.c
Rockstar is absolutely AAA.
Yeah I suppose. Can I at least call them 2.5 A? because they have AAA budgets but generally make good games that people want to play
AAA isnt inherently synonymous with bad games that nobody wants to play. Its about the budget and size of the game/studio. Rockstar games are firmly AAA.
I fear for the new Mass Effect game.
Same thing happened with music.
It doesn’t mean AAA will go away, just like big stadium packing artists like Taylor Swift never went away. They just accounted for less of the industry’s total profits than they used to.
More of people’s disposable money is spent on a wider variety of music and games, often opting for more “indie” and cheaper versions of both. It’s a good thing, honestly, for people’s tastes to be more diversified and unique.
Except almost no one can live with music now, with the spotify model.
I pirate my music and keep it in my local storage.
I mean, it’s ok I guess, but as a musician myself that’s not helping much either. Buy some stuff on bandcamp (85% goes to the artists, cheap and often pay what you want) or if you need streaming get Tidal, they give 3x than spotify and didn’t give 100 millions to joe rogan.
Huh. Just found out that Bandcamp isn’t owned by Epic Games anymore. It was sold off to someone else back in 2023. Guess I don’t have a reason to boycott it now
There wasn’t really a reason to boycott it anyway. Epic just wanted “free” access to a massive library for their games, like how EA Trax used to be a thing. Nothing changed about bandcamp in the meantime.
The reason would be fuck Epic.
There wasn’t really a reason to boycott it anyway.
Yes there was. It’s called “fuck those monopolistic cunts at EGS, they don’t get my money”
I’m not gonna get started on this, but Epic or not, this is and was one of the only way to give money directly to artists. If you boycott Epic I really hope you boycott steam also cause they’re no better.
Fuck off with your false equivalence bullshit.
EGS has used anticompetitive and anti consumer practices from day one, all because Tim Swiney is a petty asshole that wants to be at the top of the pile.
Meanwhile Valve has generally been pro-consumer and built a relatively good service
Also bandcamp gives you high quality DRM FLAC files (or really whatever audio filetype you want) and those files are yours to keep, forever. You can also stream stuff you’ve bought through the bandcamp website. They also still do bandcamp fridays where 100% of the sale goes to the artist. Next bandcamp friday is May 1st.
Another option is direct-from-artist sales if they have their own website and store. Do vinyls still come with codes for an mp3 copy? I remember my vinyl for The Mean Jeans - Are You Serious? had a code and a link to download an mp3 copy of the album.
I got into music piracy back in the day because it used to be that record companies paid artists badly so I spent money on concerts and merch, now Spotify pays artists badly for the record companies. Anyway, if used at all piracy is best used to find artists you really love and then spend your money on legitimately purchasing their music.
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!
There’s mods to disable that. Dev is very mod friendly.
I’m presently full up on games and hobbies on the side but I’ll wishlist it.
Totally get that. Enjoy it when you do!
Thank you and have a nice day. :)
I’m OOL. What’s wrong with Unity?
A few years back, they announced that they would add a fee to be levied on game devs using their engine, and the fee would be calculated based on the number of times their games were installed by players. Not only that, but they would also apply it to games that were released before that BS.
They walked it back slightly but, at least for me, their intentions were crystal clear. Unity cares about nothing but the bottom line. If it weren’t for the massive, immediate blowback, they would have been all too happy to plunder their indie devs. To hell with that company.
Lmao, dick move. Yeah, fuck em.
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.
