I Can't Get Excited About (AAA) Games Anymore

[Majin]

me too, 90% of new games just have to include open worlds even when it isn't needed

[Amaruψ]

The last big game that I actually gave a crap about, like watching all of the trailers and stuff was CSGO, and that was all the way back in 2012... I think? I've never owned a beefy rig to even run these games, let alone have time and storage to horde these 100+ gigs games in the first place. 

 

Plus, I've just started to simply prefer games developed by indie studios anyways, since they at the very least bring out something new instead of milking the same franchise for decades to come and then axing the studio once the franchise isn't profitable anymore.

[Kinsie]

I personally enjoy playing video games.

[Gez]

38 minutes ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

The thing I would push against is about this from an older ign article.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you here. Money isn't going where it should be.

[jazzmaster9]

The only Triple A Developer i've show any hype towards in recent years is From Software. No Bells and Whistle, No MTX, just dying in Poison Swamps and getting demolished by every boss I come across, Like god intended.

Edited June 10 by jazzmaster9

[TwinBeast]

Newest AAA game I have seems to be Doom Eternal, and I haven't even tried it. Not enough hdd space. Why does it need to take nearly 100gb. I only have 5gb free.

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, Kinsie said:

Haha. You know i was playing in jest. Esp. since Selaco is more of a full title that just so happens to launch as EA.

[Kinsie]

3 minutes ago, TwinBeast said:

Why does it need to take nearly 100gb. I only have 5gb free.

It's been nearly 20 years since Blu-Rays were adopted as the physical storage medium of choice for console games, with dual-layer Blu-Rays that can hold 50gb emerging the same year. The widespread growth of digital distribution doesn't change that particular equation.

 

Needless to say, I have a couple of portable HDDs hooked up...

 

[Naxius]

I have the problem where I can get excited for AAA games....after they've been out for like 2 years.

 

Like I was excited about Cyberpunk but I KNEW that was gonna be a buggy, broken mess when it came out.  I wasn't expecting it to be THAT bad, but I knew it would be a while before the game was perfectly playable.

 

I'm also not really excited for the new DOOM game for that reason because I know if will probably have numerous issues, or missing features at the least, at launch.  

 

So while people can get hyped over gameplay trailers and teasers, I just ignore them and wait until people say "It's playable now" and THEN I may get excited.

 

The fact people STILL pre-order games after we have been burned SO many times just...destroys my brain.

[Dynamo]

Personally the thing that worries me the most is online-only requirements for certain games, including single player ones. This was most notably seen recently with video game franchises from Ubisoft, The Crew and Assassin's Creed. Why should my ability to play a single player campaign depend on me being able to connect to some central server owned by a corporation that is going to get inevitably shut down? I absolutely do not trust, nor expect, most companies to be able to maintain them long term. And why should they? They are corporations acting to pursue profit, not preservation.

 

I think this practice should end. Ross Scott of Accursed Farms fame recently launched a legal campaign to try and get this examined by the courts. Unfortuntely, this seems to be a phenomenon that will become more and more widespread in the AAA space, and it's definitely something that will dampen my excitement for virtually any game featuring such behavior.

[Mr. Freeze]

I've been having a great time with AA games like Robocop: Rogue City, Helldivers 2, Ready or Not and Lethal Company. You just gotta avoid the slop made by the slop artists. 

 

Still excited for The Dark Ages though. 

[Zerofuchs]

I avoid AAA largely for the fact I consider the prices a ripoff and detest the monetisation strategies the big corporate crack smokers dream up in their drug fueled frenzies.

 

Sometimes a good game manages to raise itself from the depths but, almost inevitably, corporate fucks it up on the followup.

Attempting to ape the mindset and fake glamour of Hollywood was never going to end well I suppose.

 

Thankfully, I've got a high tolerance for lesser technical fidelity as long as it's made up for in gameplay quality, or solidly executed story, or a really good art direction.

 

Indy or the mid-size publisher houses therefore have a cornucopia of entertaining options for me. Not that I really need them at this point as my unfinished game backlog is longer than your average fantasy dwarf's list of grudges, and there's retro gaming too.

 

I don't have a problem with people enjoying AAA games, and I get that on some level you're not going to get the same fidelity from lower budget titles. But if the AAA bubble were to burst today, I'm fairly confident the indy/mid scale market would continue without a pause, and that's where my focus is.

 

@Dynamo yea as a retro gamer and general fan of game preservation as culturally relevant (not important, but relevant)... situations like The Crew grind my gears and I'm FULLY onboard with Ross' campaign. That said, even he's not sure it'll create enough of a wave to change the practice. But one can hope, we can't rely on enthusiastic experts reverse engineering server code for everything.

[Gravepicker]

1 hour ago, jazzmaster9 said:

The only Triple A Developer i've show any hype towards in recent years is From Software. No Bells and Whistle, No MTX, just dying in Poison Swamps and getting demolished by every boss I come across, Like god intended.

 

Except now you get to do it in a barren open world fighting endless retrains of the same bosses and mini-bosses. And if you get bored of that, you have 40+ copy-pasted dungeons. All that just to stretch what could have been a well-paced 40-60 hour game into a 120 hour marathon of sameyness. Exagerated a bit for effect, yeah, but Elden Ring reeks of "end of an era" for FromSoft, even if I would like it otherwise.

 

As for the topic at hand, not much to add but echo the sentiments that if the AAA industry can't afford much experimentation with their current business model, they're gonna have to get accustomed to not taking my money. Which won't hurt them, as there are endless consumers for their products. Maybe a shame, but whaddaya gonna do.

[EraserheadBaby]

DOOM and Red Dead are the only AAA games I've bought in the last decade or so.  I don't like abusive, gaslighting narcissists, so I stay away from hollywood and AAA gaming. 

 

It's good to support the indie scene too.  Helps keep the creative soil fertile. 

[Uncle 80]

AAA movies (i.e Hollywood productions) and AAA games are generally of little interest to me. The last "big" new game I actually purchased was StarCraft 2 and one of the expansions - but it didn't grab me the way the original game and its expansion did. Less focus on quality time in single player and catering to the E-sports aspect of online multiplayer kinda ruined it for me - it's just no fun when the "main" component of a game is playing online and having to deal with the moronic "gamer" culture. I just can't stand the worst cases of that at 45 y.o - too old for that crap. And when single player turns into grind-fests, hand-held tutorial missions, or campaigns that are over in a few hours, I feel kinda cheated. Paying additional fees to unlock more content, or to get a second episode when the main game itself is already expensive enough isn't the way to go either. And when games I've already bought gets a lobotomy update, removing some of the content because the publishers have lost the rights to certain stuff in a game you "own" - like e.g the soundtrack - that's pretty infuriating as well. Being required to log on to an on-line service when you want to play some single-player all by yourself... I could go on and on.

 

Another aspect is needing to upgrade the computer time and again to be able to play the newest, awsomest nth incarnation of a game. I know PC gaming has basically always been like that - at least since '92 or '93, but it's not something I'm willing to "invest" in anymore. I'm not interested in getting a new console every few years either.

 

The endless sequels, prequels and remakes in both gaming and movies is also of virtually no interest. I was done with Marvel at 13 years old - I did see a couple of the first superhero movies, but I thought they were worthless, save for the Dark Knight trilogy of the late '00s. When it's been going on for so long that they acually make a movie of Madame Webb or Ant-Man, it's time to look elsewhere for visual entertainment. I wish I had the time, interest and money to look for actual good AAA games, but I just don't care about them anymore. I'm more than happy with "remasters" of older games I didn't check out at the time or that fell out of compatibility with the newer OSes - and quality "DIY" games.

 

As for movies, there's literally a whole world of options. I'm particular to Asian and French cinema myself. No lame spandex-clad superheroes there.

 

As for how to "improve" the situation with big, incredibly expensive studios in both the gaming and movie industry - I really don't see that happening until there's a paradigm shift of some kind, as there's too much financial risk involved in trying new things. Looking forward to Fast & Furious 19 and GTA 12.

Edited June 10 by Uncle 80

[RHhe82]

I can totally relate. I effectively stopped playing at 2020 when Covid took over the world -- which was counter-intuitive, as there was very little else to do. Then I thought it was just my age; I was turning 40 soon, maybe I had finally played enough of games... But then I picked back Doom 1993, and have been spending way too much time with it since 2021. My next guess is the new games just aren't that interesting. As stated numerous times, they're mostly sequels, remakes, remasters... They may be professionally made (...?) but they seem to lack that little something that would excite me. For instance the new Doom trailer. I also didn't want to sour the excitement in the other threads, but when I watched the trailer myself, I felt nothing. It looked like Doom Eternal to me, just with different coat of paint. I think I've had this feeling ever since PS4 era, post 2016 or so. By each passing year I grew less and less interested in AAA games, and focused on indie games developed by small teams of people who I think love games.

 

It's something I've been feeling with Hollywood. There are lots of technically advanced movies, big budget visual orgasms, but I'm just finding it reaaaal hard to get excited, because most movies seem to devoid of something like a soul (for a lack of a better word). I feel like no creative risks are taken, and as such blockbuster movies feel like a lifeless compromises that offend no one, but please no one either, except maybe younger people who haven't seen much yet. I don't know. Luckily there are indie movies and off-Hollywood movies.

 

(And I'm afraid something similar might happen with literature. It may not be a global issue, but in my home country I sometimes feel the flourishing audio book platform businesses steer literature into a consumerist, easy listening direction).

[Gifty]

New Id software titles are just about the only thing I DO get excited about (and recent gross market consolidation and staff mistreatment is definitely putting a damper even on that), but the commercial industry has been leaning more and more into a release paradigm that just isn't sustainable--something will have to give. Studios physically can not keep up with the level of development churn and personnel turnover that is now considered normal. There just literally won't be any studios left standing if the current rate of exploitation and liquidation continue apace, minus some stronghold studios like Blizzard or Treyarch who can rely on mostly unlimited hires through prestige alone.

 

I sort of scoff whenever people say "games have just gotten SO expensive!" as if this is an unsolvable fact of the universe, when it feels that costs have mostly ballooned out of control due to wastefulness and bullheaded (un)coordination. Games ARE expensive, to be sure, but the industry seems to lack any sense of scale or economy in how it structures projects. Hundreds and hundreds of workers toiling away for months in isolated sub-teams, duplicating labor, doing labor that might get really far along before being axed, doing labor that is good but maybe at odds with the overall project direction... there's no reason things need to be this sprawling, this uncoordinated, this excessive. Smaller teams with better project management and, slipperiest of all, better project vision (think how much production sweat and expense Portal spared itself by taking a definitive stance early in development not to have fully animated, lip-synced, humanoid characters. Think what a disaster it might have been if a man from upstairs had come down and told them to reverse this a month or two before launch) would go a long ways towards controlling costs and producing games that ship functionally and on time.

 

BUT, that won't happen without some kind of industry calamity because people who only understand capitalist ideology can only understand MORE! as the solution to any problem. Planning, craft, vision, foresight, these are all personnel-driven qualities, and as such not quantifiable commodities that business majors will ever trust.

Edited June 10 by Gifty

[Ru5tK1ng]

For every good AAA game there's two handfuls of Triple A Trash clogging up everything. Unfortunately, games are products first and it's less risky to make a game with standard mechanics and design compared to a fresh and bold idea. As someone already stated, games are made for the investors first and the gamers second. Some of these investors are questionable as well and can very well have a negative influence on the end product. Furthermore, some games that are released aren't even finished or they are in such a bug ridden state that it will take multiple patches day 1/week 1/month 1 to get it into a decent state (effectively making everyone who bought it a paying bugtester). A couple of posters mentioned not feeling hype anymore and that's largely due to the fact that most 'hype' is manufactured. Studios and publishers will invest in marketing and some will go all out in order to raise engagement (including negative) by paying for websites to write articles about the game, have top streamers and content creators talk about the game (or play it), firing up the Twitter & Youtube bots and sending their interns to post about the game on places like reddit and the chans.

 

Going back to the design of the games themselves, everyone is just copying successful formulas (or in the case of Chinese devs they just copy the damn game entirely) and no one is really experimenting within the Triple A realm. It gets to a point where you don't feel like you're seeing anything you haven't seen before because it's just the same games reskinned and repackaged that you've played before. You can only release so many shooters, mobas, survival craft, open world, souls-likes, remakes and remasters before it gets extremely tiring and uninspiring. What is also tiring are the number of games that resort to some sort of predatory micro-transaction model that's borderline (or full on in some cases) gambling. A lot of games are looking to stretch your wallet thin and the next step of this is the addition of in-game ads that you can't skip. It's all pretty bleak and sadly many gamers are conditioned into believing that everything is fine and nothing needs changing because it's the status quo. These gamers eat up the triple A slop which leads to the state we are in where there is no incentive to change anything as long as it works and the products sale.

 

Fortunately there are still good games being made in the indies from smaller studios and dev teams. The kind of experimentation you saw in the 90s and early 00s with the 5th and 6th is what you'll be more likely to encounter with indie developers. Since Triple A devs don't really make the games some pockets of people want, they'll just make it themselves which benefits everyone (as long as it's done correctly)

 

[DoomGater]

The future will be bright and shining for AAA titles. With next incarnation of ChatGPT you'll only have to tell the AI your
PHANTASTIC, REVOLUTIONARY game idea and the machine will build the game not in three years, but in three minutes.

Edited June 10 by DoomGater

["JL" was too short]

If AAA games produced experiences for me that were worthy of the label, I'd love to keep throwing money at them.

Last game that did that was DOOM (2016).  And, I don't mean to derail this into a discussion of nu-Doom, but I think this makes an important broader point about the AAA space in general—what I perceived as DOOM 2016's almost total awesomeness was, as far as I can now tell, a complete accident that happened despite, not because of, any of the minds and energies at work.  There's no other explanation for why, as far as I know, the same creative leads and corporate structure that brought it to fruition are the ones that turned around and shat out Eternal/TAG/what Dark Ages looks to be from the trailer. 

 

It's only very mild hyperbole to say that they will never intentionally make a game that I will enjoy, and if they manage to stumble drunkenly into it, they will view it as an error which must be remedied as soon as possible.

[magicsofa]

8 hours ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

This thing you said in the article really got me. Feeling obligated to buy the new doom, even if it doesn't seem all that appealing just so id software wouldn't get broken up.

 

That part really hit me as well.

 

I think supporting these giants will be counter-productive in the end. The id Software that produced the best FPS ever was still a very small company, staffed primarily by people who actually wanted to make cool games. It is a completely different company today and there is no reason to believe it will put out anything worthwhile. Their main accomplishment was creating a modern FPS with a few scraps of oldschool gameplay. When you give money to the employees executives of these companies, you're basically saying "thank you Sir and may I please have another."

 

Sometimes you really have to take two steps back in order to take one step forward.

 

In my opinion the best way to proceed as a player is to spend more time on finding games you like from smaller companies. (I'm starting to dislike the "indie" title because pretty much anything that isn't a manybilliondollar corporation is now "indie" simply because they don't have those hundreds of unnecessary employees). Once found, buy them, share them, talk about them in blog posts or review sites rather than transient YT videos that will never resurface. I spend a lot of time on itch.io but one thing I don't like about it is the lack of a "center." We need websites that support the Good Companies with real articles and meaningful social interaction. Probably they are out there (still) but Google doesn't want to tell me.

 

You see, the video games industry is just one facet of a greater problem, which is that all internetting is becoming more and more streamlined. Or rather just Streamed. And most people are just kinda going along with it, which is understandable since many people aren't techy enough to even see what is happening. Hell, I AM techy enough and still I'm dragging my feet... I've been planning to completely de-google/de-microsoft my virtual life, yet I continue with the same habits. It takes effort to break out of the stream, no effort to just float along with it. But the good news is that we DO have a choice and we can act in a constructive way by supporting the companies whose philosophy matches with ours.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

I've been purchasing indie games for a good while now and personally speaking it's been a wild, fun ride! The majority of AAA releases to me seem either buggy to the point of unplayable, attempting realism too much or chasing a worn out trend. Why pay £50-70 for the next AAA release from most major companies when I could spend that much on a whole mini library of games?

[Firedust]

There are still some AAA games I get excited about - it's just there is so much rushed uninspired paywall-ridden jank, it sort of depresses the general outlook on the industry as a whole. There are still a handful of titles that I've greatly enjoyed over the past few years (like the recent God of War games and RE Village).

 

Besides, there have been some indie (ish) studios that have also dropped utter shite in recent memory (Slipgate Ironworks ololol with Wrath Aeon of Ruin, Phantom Fury, Graven, and Kingpin, what a fucking shitshow), but in this case, this is offset by the great influx of fantastic releases spanning pretty much every genre - Sea of Starts (jrpg), Blasphemous 1 +2 (Metroidvania), and obviously the bazillion super well done boomer shooters we've been blessed with (Prodeus, Supplice, Turbo Overkill, etc.)

 

So, all in all, there are great games to be played regardless of budget/team size, but obviously in terms of good-to-bad release ratio, the AAA industry has def been on the decline. Maybe I'm not being harsh enough but I don't really keep up with the news anymore - other than game announcements, studio openings/closures, and trailers.

Oh, but the whole games as a service thing needs to die already, but I highly doubt it will.

[Bauul]

16 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

We've been stuck in sequel/prequel/remake loop for over a decade now because it's become the only way game studios are allowed to live, and even that's shaky

 

It's true that sequel/prequel/remake loop is very pervasive, but I'd argue it's been going on for way longer than a decade.  

 

Look at the global top 10 selling games of 2004 (according to Wikipedia), twenty years ago:

• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
• Pokémon FireRed / LeafGreen
• FIFA Football 2005
• Halo 2
• Madden NFL 2005
• Dragon Quest VIII: Sora to Umi to Daichi to Norowareshi Himegimi
• ESPN NFL 2K5
• Pro Evolution Soccer 4
• Need For Speed: Underground 2
• Pokémon Ruby / Sapphire / Emerald

Literally not a single new IP, they're all sequels and remakes.  

 

I wonder if it's less that the big AAA titles are becoming more unoriginal, and it's more the relative lack of new IP to fill in gaps is making the whole industry feel less creative.

[ebrl]

The good games/bad games ratio is rather similar for both AAA and indies, it's just that good games are a rarity no matter where they come from, but you get all the bad AAA games shoved in your face all the time while the hundreds of shitty derivative indies being released every day simply rot away in obscurity.

[yakfak]

those aren't equivalent at all

[magicsofa]

18 minutes ago, ebrl said:

The good games/bad games ratio is rather similar for both AAA and indies, it's just that good games are a rarity no matter where they come from, but you get all the bad AAA games shoved in your face all the time while the hundreds of shitty derivative indies being released every day simply rot away in obscurity.

 

It isn't just about the surface-level quality of each title. (In fact I would argue that there are many, MANY more crappy indie games just due to the fact that they get created faster, and are more likely to still be released even if they miss all sorts of their targets).

 

It's also about good studios (read: the actual developers) being shut down by ruthless execs, and just hard money squeezing in general. Making ridiculous promises and doing release now, patch later (maybe). Requiring online connection, then later killing the game that you paid for by simply shutting off the server.

[Mr Masker]

58 minutes ago, Bauul said:

I wonder if it's less that the big AAA titles are becoming more unoriginal, and it's more the relative lack of new IP to fill in gaps is making the whole industry feel less creative.

I feel like AAA companies are too scared to take risks with new IP's, unless they are done via another company (Even then, said company will probably get shut down due to poor sales, which always sucks...)

 

I can imagine Bethesda going back to their ES/Fallout hole after what happened with Starfield, and the success of the Fallout TV series. Monetarily, I can't really blame them. At the end of the day, these are companies with higher ups and quotas and all that. Not that I'm excusing the shitty practises towards their workers and owned companies though, don't get me wrong.

 

My computer probably won't be able to run the "NEW AAA GAMES" anyway, so I'm content with my older games and Indie games. I'll happily play my 50th Indie Rogue-Like Boomer Shooter, Souls-Like, Cozy, Rogue-Lite Farming Sim. (I'm kidding, Indie Games are cool, good on them)

Edited June 10 by Mr Masker
Changed to better get my meaning across

[jazzmaster9]

12 hours ago, Gravepicker said:

 

Except now you get to do it in a barren open world fighting endless retrains of the same bosses and mini-bosses. And if you get bored of that, you have 40+ copy-pasted dungeons. All that just to stretch what could have been a well-paced 40-60 hour game into a 120 hour marathon of sameyness. Exagerated a bit for effect, yeah, but Elden Ring reeks of "end of an era" for FromSoft, even if I would like it otherwise.

 

Everything sounds bad if you exaggerate enough. This isn't the gotcha moment you think it is. 

 

Thanks for reminding why I don't talk about Elden Ring or Doom Eternal in this cesspool known as the internet 

Edited June 11 by jazzmaster9

[Lucius Wooding]

It's classic capitalism. The studios pump out games with lots of hype and get tons of purchases, then the interest wears off quickly in a couple weeks in most cases. It's far better as a business to treat games as a disposable product and never try to give them any polish or staying power. Then as soon as all the streamers and people who follow the latest trend are ready to discard it, the next new thing is ready to come out. It's like shitty bubble gum; the sooner the flavor runs out, the more people will buy.

 

I don't think it's going to change either. The big studios will leverage any means they can to try and keep the profitable model and reduce costs. For example, having a staff of hundreds of specialized developers, often utilizing their proprietary tools. It's impossible for individuals these days to become a John Romero or Miyamoto because the projects have so much less personality and individual vision behind them. And even if you're a solid developer who worked on some well known title, it wouldn't guarantee you any kind of career progression. You can either make the same money writing the left testicle texture shaders for another game with no long term security, or spend years of your own time making a passion project with no income. The devs tend to be hungry and interchangeable. Soon most of those positions will be cut in order to use AI tools and reduce the staff, and this will be hailed as a step forward. In reality it just means the industry will rot even more and I expect the biggest titles to suffer in quality the most. But due to gamers' buying habits and the reduction in costs, they will remain hugely profitable and the CEOs will continue to rake in money. But at least the fans of those franchises will get games regularly that always hit their deadlines. You might even have a certain amount of meme appeal about how hilariously uncanny the AI shit is. Don't engage with this content in any way. Even shitting on it or review bombing is only going to draw more eyeballs.

 

The only thing to do is hold on to the games we enjoy and keep their communities alive with new content and discussion long after they came out. If you think people dickride retro games now, wait until 5 years from now when every AAA title leverages AI content. It will be a choice between AAA titles and half assed remakes of classics with the prices jacked the fuck up (looking at you on the latter, Nintendo). Don't give either of those fuckers your money. Consider boycotting every title unless they earn your money, rather than considering a purchase by default. Consider checking out a book from your local library, or cleaning up litter from the park rather than helping Ubisoft's CEO make another payment on his latest platinum and diamond studded buttplug.

 

In closing, keep your retro consoles and games. Keep backups of your purchases and even old PCs without internet connections if they can still play old installs that have become obsolete. It will save you money later and your little personal game library will get better and better as the new stuff gets shittier, which it's inevitably going to do. Support some indie devs and consider Patreon donations or merch buying if you're inclined. And also, don't feel bad about pirating the tits off some of those games if you're so inclined (just be careful, don't fuck up your family's PC with Limewire).