Poll of the Day > what is everyone's opinion on the whole AAA Versus Indie games debate?

(+) Yeah! (+)

i mean the whole "Big Budget Games" versus indie games argument

both can be good i agree but there's some stigma lately that big budget titles are simply crapping all over the industry with loot boxes and rush jobs to meet a deadline

while on the other end Indie games can be seen as truly liberating because these are the games made by people who aren't being tethered down by insane deadlines and needs to squeeze every penny out of the fanbase with awkward dlc and microtransactions

indie games can be just as bad as big budget games but for whatever reason there's this side in gaming that thinks indie games are more often than not 100 times better than what you could ever find in the last big budget game you bought
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I will buy a game of it is fun...
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LinkPizza posted...

I will buy a game of it is fun...

without a demo or beta it's kind of hard to say if a game is fun or not
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I don't like indie games. But a lot of my favorite AAA game series have either died or gone to shit.
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NightMareBunny posted...

LinkPizza posted...

I will buy a game of it is fun...

without a demo or beta it's kind of hard to say if a game is fun or not

You can always guess. Or watch gameplay. Or play a little of the game if an acquaintance owns it.
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NightMareBunny posted...

without a demo or beta it's kind of hard to say if a game is fun or not

What if it has giant, cool, flashy displays at Walmart?
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Off-topic:

AAA? Says who? I am sure the gaming world does not revolve around American male gamers.
Niche? Says who? American male gamers prefer shooters over JRPGs and so, JRPGs are niche.
On the other hand, games like GTA and COD are AAA. I am so surprised! (sarcasm)

On-topic:

Indie games, I don't even buy them. AAA titles? I have lots of them.
I buy them because they were on sale and the game creators had put loads of money into them.

That said... The Witcher 3 is awesome! It has my badge of approval.
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I'll buy anything that's fun, but I've noticed that indie games tend to be long-time favorites for me for often. Minecraft, Terraria, Slime Rancher.. They just seem to always have that.. thing I like.

Many indie games are actually really really good. They've picked up the slack a lot where AAA publishers/devs have dropped the ball hard. Sometimes they are as good as if not better than some AAA attempts. Other times they've just unique and offer something great and interesting.

There's also a ton of "meh" indie games out there for sure. It's not hard to find the really good ones though.
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I had a lovely illustration of the state of AAA gaming the other day.

My parents have a vacation home near where I live and they came out for a couple days, so I went over to visit. My Dad isn't a gamer - at all - with one notable exception: the man loves him some racing games. So we head upstairs to play some GT Sport.

Or not. See, he hadn't updated the PS4 in a while, so it needed to download a system update. Which took about 30 minutes or so. That finally concluded, so we went to hop in... but the game had been patched as well. That patch queued up and we were looking at a 4 hour wait. Can't play the game offline, because of bullshit reasons (game will only save if you're connected to the internet), so we gave up on that. His PS4 came with Battlefront II, so I offered to show him how that one works.

...except Battlefront II takes close to an hour to install and had a patch to download that would have taken 12 hours.

And this is all without touching on all the crap surrounding microtransactions and accounts and points pay-to-win and DLC and other extraneous bullshit that gets in the way of the actual fun. Indie gaming seems to have this part figured out, because it harkens back to a time when playing a game involved plugging it in and turning it on. Nintendo still seems to understand this, but even they are starting to drift on that front.

I was huge into AAA gaming until last gen, when I slowly found myself drifting more and more into the indie scene because the games were more creative, simpler in execution and, frequently, more fun. I still have a Switch and a 3DS and love them both, but I have yet to buy a PS4 making it the first Sony console I didn't pick up within two years of launch, and I can't help but think that AAA gaming has simply become too bloated and expensive for its own good.

Hearing from people inside the industry, AAA gaming is being corroded by spiralling development costs, unsustainable business practices, horrendous turnover at the developer level and (consequentially) a management model that relies on outside talent that simply doesn't know gaming. In spite of the fact that profits are high, it feels like the whole thing could come crashing down at any time.
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My opinion is they are vastly different games. But a good game is a good game to me so I'll play what ever I feel is good, Indie or AAA or budget.

With AAA:

I say that there's always been a mass influx of shitty companies trying to get as much money from you as possible and caring a lot more about what makes a quick, huge profit over actual quality assurance, and there's also a lot of other companies that genuinely about quality control.

Do what you personally can, and vote with your wallet. and encourage others to. It's the only way that things are gonna change. It's gonna be a slow process, but it can work if we keep trying!

CD Project is amazing with The Witcher 3, so if you're into WRPGs, give them your money, and buy it full price if you can afford it. The company that mae Hellblade: Senua's Sacrafice is also amazing, so also give them your money and buy it full price if you can afford it. Meanwhile Ubisoft only makes good Assassins Creed games to do damage control, so either don't buy it, or rent it on Gamefly, and give them the finger.

And for the love of god, never, ever EVER buy a lootbox, cosmetic item, or a microtransaction. You're playing DIRECTLY into their hands.
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Both are garbage for completely different reasons, buy single A games for best balance.
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