Baldur's Gate 3 dev says AAA is "perversely fascinated" by indie games, because those devs still understand how to make good ideas that aren't reliant on data
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is this exactly, and is the same problem film, tv, and music has. They are all populated by people who are good at becoming and staying at the exec level, not people who are good at whatever field they are working in. Often the really creative are difficult to work with, they do not make a “good fit” with other execs, particularly when they actually understand the medium.
Its the same group of people who are heavily invested in AI to replace creative people in these fields as they do not understand the difference between AI doing a passable copy of someone elses style and someone actually creative creating a new style or approach.
the other thing is that you don’t actually need to rise the video game hierarchy to get an executive position like you might expect. You just need a business degree and some examples of successful leadership at other companies, even ones totally unrelated to video gaming
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I think it’s more that the megacorp business model is fundamentally incompatible with making good video games. Their only reliable competitive advantage is money, they can spend more on a single project. But if they spend so much, they can’t go as risky as indies go. A ton of indies publish shit games, it’s just that some are absolute gems.
Point is, AAA games can only match indies in originality if they are okay with tanking the IP and the studio just to make something original. But since they are megacorps, they will never be okay with that. The also can’t amortise the risk over a lot of small projects, because then they lose the ability to outspend indies and would have to compete with them directly.
It’s like a sort of inverse economies of scale.
It’s not just risk, you also can’t really target a narrow audience. Indies can afford to make a game that only 1/100th of people will be interested in. Even if the AAA studio was 100% sure they would succeed and gain a loyal fanbase, they won’t do that if the potential fanbase is pulled from too small of a group.
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Indie devs have a vision
triple A games just feel so bland and corporate these days, no passion
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Indie devs have a vision
triple A games just feel so bland and corporate these days, no passion
The smaller the dev team, the more pure the vision. Doesn’t always mean it will be good, but the good ones are great. The best AAA game still looks and feels like all the rest.
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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.
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I will give you that the first iteration of a series, like Mario Kart, is innovative, but the 16 next iterations, not so much. While Nintendo doesn’t make Pokemon, they are the publishers, technical platform provider and co-owner of the Pokemon Company, they would have all the leverage necessary to push the Pokemon games to innovate if they were interested in innovation.
What do you mean by first iteration of a series? Do you mean the first entry into the franchise?
I mean we can argue about the degree you can change a go-kart game but I think Nintendo does try different things. Mario Kart 64 was 3D with 4 players, Mario Kart DS did online play, Double Dash did the two drivers in one kart. Mario Kart Wii did motion controls. Mario Kart World Tour (I haven’t tried) but it has this open world driving concept, I think?
They also do milk their IP and they do release a lot of sequels like Mario Party and such.
However, at the same time Nintendo takes risks with their console/games like no other, I feel.
I won’t back their legal strategies though, I don’t think anybody should.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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They also miss really bad why those games become popular on first place.
For example, the text mentions Minecraft, and all that “crafting” trend. What made Minecraft great was not crafting - it was the feeling that you’re free to express yourself, the way you want, through interactions with the ingame world. If you want to build a huge castle, recreate a wonder you love, or a clever contraption to bend the world’s rules to do your bidding, you can.
Or, let’s pick Undertale. It’s all about the mood, the game pulls strings with your emotions. Right at the start the game shows you Toriel, she’s a really nice lady, taking care of you as if she was your child. And being overprotective. Then the game tries to make you kill her, and your first playthrough you’ll probably do it. And you’ll feel like shit. Then you load the save back, and… the game still remembers. You’re still feeling like shit because you killed Toriel.
Stardew Valley? At a certain point of the game, you start to genuinely care about the characters. Not just as in-game characters, but as virtual people with their own backstories, goals, dreams. You relate to them.
It’s all about feelings. But corporations are as soulless as their “art”; and game corporations are no exception. Individual humans get it.
Reminds of how Delta Heavy - Ghost got recommended to many people on YouTube recently, because the ever-present soulless algorithm detected people mentioning Clippy, engaging with videos mentioning Clippy, putting Clippies as their profile pictures, etc. - despite the fact that the entire Clippy surge is entirely against the endless data vacuuming and the algorithmisation of everything.
I really hate what data has become for the modern consumer at large - something’s everybody after to try and capitalize for, at an active disadvantage for you.
Cue the still growing thirst for more control, more data, more censorship.
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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.
CandyCrush would like a word
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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.
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Donkey Kong Bananza just came out.
Mario and Zelda games are constantly innovating.
Your complaint doesn’t align with reality.
Bananza is pretty darn similar to the studio’s last Mario game. Same gameplay loop at its core, but with a DK and map destruction skin thrown on top.
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CandyCrush would like a word
Candy crush is just another reskin of bejeweled; a game made by an indie developer in the year 2000.
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Bananza is pretty darn similar to the studio’s last Mario game. Same gameplay loop at its core, but with a DK and map destruction skin thrown on top.
map destruction skin thrown on top
That doesn’t make sense if you think about it for a second. The entire game is designed around the destructible environments. One of the reasons it’s so good is that they use the interior of the landscape. And the gameplay loop is absolutely different.
But Nintendo also gets credit for Super Mario Galaxy; you’re right about that.
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map destruction skin thrown on top
That doesn’t make sense if you think about it for a second. The entire game is designed around the destructible environments. One of the reasons it’s so good is that they use the interior of the landscape. And the gameplay loop is absolutely different.
But Nintendo also gets credit for Super Mario Galaxy; you’re right about that.
It’s a meaningful difference, but it’s still, at its core, “go into level, do little challenges to find a thing and progress the story”, except this time it’s banana instead of star.
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