"Triple-A is in crisis" and games "don't have staying power because they're bad," says ex Gears of War director and Painkiller creator
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EA is great for small and medium sized studios to get games out that might be a bit more ambitious than they could manage with traditional models. The point of AAA is that they have the money to do big impressive things. They can already do focus groups and closed betas to get community feedback. The thing that might attract AAA attention is you could make a good amount without actually releasing anything.
Idk, id love to see it properly done from AAA. That would be a great way to prove you right or wrong.
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And then you have Clair Obscur schooling studios on how it should be done.
I just started playing this game. I cried at the end of the fucking prologue. What amazing writing and voice acting.
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It’s okay, we can just not play AAA games.
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I just started playing this game. I cried at the end of the fucking prologue. What amazing writing and voice acting.
Buckle up, mate.
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Buckle up, mate.
Uh oh. I’m starting it tonight.
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How about you stop releasing unfinished live service shit and put out something that is genuinely fun to play and not just another money trap for unsupervised children.
The amount of genuinely good and successful live service games is so minimal that it’s actual insanity seeing AAA execs trying to reinvent the wheel and failing every time.
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Almost all AAA games are online live service games. I have absolutely no interest in those games. I have been surviving off of indy or lower budget games pretty well while the big guys are off trying to make all the money doing boring shit.
The only ones I play these days are Warframe and occasionally PoE2, both relatively smaller dev teams with large publisher backing but mostly left to their own devices to do whatever the fuck they want. Coming from the predatory FOMO hell that was Destiny 2, getting into similar games but ones that actually respect the players is refreshing.
I have zero interest in throwaway AAA slop in general, let alone with all the usual live service shit tacked on.
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Buckle up, mate.
Uh oh. I’m starting it tonight.
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I just started playing this game. I cried at the end of the fucking prologue. What amazing writing and voice acting.
Some dude pushed himself to finish it all in a weekend because he had a busy week ahead and was in shambles. Man was not made to handle that much feels in such a short period 🥲
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I just started playing this game. I cried at the end of the fucking prologue. What amazing writing and voice acting.
This is… but the prologue. Steel yourself. You’ll need it.
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Wholeheartedly agree. Games these past few years have been big letdowns for the most part. There’s been a couple exceptions, but for the most part it’s been disappointing.
The gaming scene outside of AAA studios has been about as vibrant as it’s ever been.
Most of the nominees for GOTY have been AA studios at best and this was a stellar year imo with titles like Silksong, Hades 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Clair Obscur, Blue Prince, Dispatch, and The Alters to name a few!
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The gaming scene outside of AAA studios has been about as vibrant as it’s ever been.
Most of the nominees for GOTY have been AA studios at best and this was a stellar year imo with titles like Silksong, Hades 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Clair Obscur, Blue Prince, Dispatch, and The Alters to name a few!
And all of those games (other than Dispatch and Thealters, which I haven’t played yet) are absolute bangers with hundreds of hours of content for the price of 1/7th a stick of RAM.
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This is… but the prologue. Steel yourself. You’ll need it.
::: spoiler spoiler <e: apparently spoilers don’t work for some users> :::
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Right? After AC3 i stopped caring.
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I firmly believe we are entering the dark ages of AAA games, with the cost to make and GenAI they are going to be shit.
Support indie devs.
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Because filthy rich is more attractive for capital.
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We are at a point now that games from the PS3/X360 era still look and play well, so newer titles need to contribute something new in order to make an impact.
If a AAA-studio releases a 7/10 title in 2026, it’s not just competing with the 8s, 9s, and 10s also releasing the same year - but also every single such title from the past 20 years!
This will also only continue to get worse in coming years as the backlog of exceptional titles will continue to build.
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We are at a point now that games from the PS3/X360 era still look and play well, so newer titles need to contribute something new in order to make an impact.
If a AAA-studio releases a 7/10 title in 2026, it’s not just competing with the 8s, 9s, and 10s also releasing the same year - but also every single such title from the past 20 years!
This will also only continue to get worse in coming years as the backlog of exceptional titles will continue to build.
For the last little while now, I’ve been finding that my most played games have been on my old 360 that I decided to plug in again, and my old old PS2 collection that I ripped and loaded to an emulator because the old hardware broke a long time ago.
Third place is “new to me” games that I finally buy when they go on a good sale years after they were “new” (is. RDR2 and Cyberpunk)
I haven’t bought a new AAA title in years on console because I can’t justify the cost.
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This is the problem with capitalism now. No one is happy making a good profit. They have to extract maximum profit by cutting everything else.
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The only ones I play these days are Warframe and occasionally PoE2, both relatively smaller dev teams with large publisher backing but mostly left to their own devices to do whatever the fuck they want. Coming from the predatory FOMO hell that was Destiny 2, getting into similar games but ones that actually respect the players is refreshing.
I have zero interest in throwaway AAA slop in general, let alone with all the usual live service shit tacked on.
The only ones I play these days are Warframe and occasionally PoE2…
I didn’t know they made Power over Ethernet into a game, let alone a sequel.
