AAA Gaming Sustainable?

[Zardnaar]

Mostly on consoles but this applies for PCs as well.

Long story short around 2010 we had games hitting 200 million to develop. The average AAA game passed 100-200 million and sonething like Spiderman 2 apparently cost 300 million.

Nintendo arguably checked out on traditional consoles after the game cube.

This year we are into the 4th year of the next generation. There's very few games comparatively worth buying compared with previous generations or even the last one.

This trend I noticed with PS4 and Xbox one. It's worse now. Games aren't getting better either with microtransactions and loot boxes.

For me gaming peaked Xbox360 and PS3 era and I think you could make an argument for PS2.

Year 4 that's halfway through a generations lifespan. A comparison might be with 2000-2004 or 2006-10. Look at the amount of great games in those years by comparison.

 

[Gorbles]

Nope.

I could write a lot more on it, but short version: nope.

It also has little to do with consoles. It's mainly games development.

 

[Farm Boy]

Ah, so Elden Ring/BG3 was the year of the industry's magnum opus, like Calvin and Hobbes was for comic strips? Gran Turismo in the day was great, but wouldn't you rather play Forza?

The highest quality games are silly high quality. But writing isn't a skill that's subject to the march of progress. If anything, writing for a global audience is more challenging and one needs to water cultural taboos down.

Or maybe crap cell phone games will eat the full games like crap cell phone journalism killed the local news?

 

[Zardnaar]

Nope.

I could write a lot more on it, but short version: nope.

It also has little to do with consoles. It's mainly games development.

That's what if figured.

I had the thought circa 2006 HD graphics require more coding translation more staff higher costs.

 

[danjuno]

Nope, we need to move away from big studios and put more focus on indie gaming.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Seriously folks, if you all just played Path of Exile, you would not have to worry about games again. It is the only game you need, and will fill all your gaming needs.

 

[Tee Kay]

no one needs anything more than Civ3

 

[Zardnaar]

no one needs anything more than Civ3

Fancy. Played SMAC today.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Ever since Big Fish Games decided to screw over their non-American customers by making their games unaffordable unless they're on sale for the one or two days/month that it's a decent enough discount, I've been very picky about what I get. I have a few favorite series and rarely try anything new.*

'Cause honestly, there is absolutely nothing on that site that's worth $28 CAD (for Collectors' Editions). I used to buy about half a dozen games/month. Now I might buy half a dozen/year, and they have to be when there's a 65% sale and I've got enough points. So I'm saving for my next planned game purchase, which will likely be Park Ranger 15.

People on my other gaming forum talk about the latest in such-and-such a series... honestly, what I want from a game now is either good mental exercise or inspiration for my writing. When I get both in the same game, that's the best. So Jewel Match gives me both a mental workout with puzzle-solving (plus they've got so much bonus material that it's like 3 games for the price of one), plus inspiration from the castles and manors and rooms that get built.

Park Ranger/Cruise Director gave me story ideas years ago, ever since I started pondering about the Immortal Pizza Box that sits on the roof of an abandoned mine shaft and has survived not one, but two wildfires.


*except for the inexpensive cat games on Steam, and a few hidden object games that involve puzzle solving so they're not merely finding stuff on a list.


Actually, I'm thinking of digging out some of my Fighting Fantasy gamebooks I haven't solved yet and taking another crack at them. Some of the new people on the FB group have just gotten into these, and have been asking questions about both the books and the best way to use the character sheets (the supplied ones are inadequate, so I make my own). They also want to know if such-and-such a book is solvable without cheating...

Well, most are. Some have really annoying errata that may have been fixed in later printings, but the price of some of those has really spiked and I'm not going to spend the monthly food budget on a later edition.

 

[Kyriakos]

Can't you release indie games for consoles (and any other format) now?
It'd explain the lack of interest in risking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars when you are competing with thousands of games each year.

 

[Zardnaar]

Can't you release indie games for consoles (and any other format) now?
It'd explain the lack of interest in risking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars when you are competing with thousands of games each year.

You can.

Iccasionally something breaks out but often buried in crap.

Nintendo might "win".

 

[Gorbles]

Can't you release indie games for consoles (and any other format) now?
It'd explain the lack of interest in risking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars when you are competing with thousands of games each year.

You can, and indie developers frequently do. But all that does is increase the market saturation. Success, when it isn't a fluke convergence of various factors (e.g. luck), is done through spending money on advertising. Games don't turn up on the front page of any Steam sale for free, for example. Valve takes your money for the visibility (that translates to better click-through to something buried three pages down / in).

The indie scene isn't as tied to the flaws of the industry, but you still need the industry for indie games to get their game out there. itch.io is good, but you're going to get a ton more visibility on Steam or Epic. Visibility is a lot of the puzzle, and marketing your game effectively is something that indie veterans I've followed for a while champion. It's not just as simple as making a game (never has been, outside of the lucky successes - there's always some hard work not related to the game itself involved).

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not sure how Steam operates (never had a game there), but word of mouth spreads in some cases and can make more than a dent. Various indie games have become not just popular but arguably emblematic of their entire genre (eg Banished, for city-building games). I suppose that also games mentioned frequently in this thread, are indie (or were originally), such as Factorio and They are Billions. Also the original Darkest Dungeon. Iirc Against the Storm was made with Unity, so it couldn't have been by a major studio either.

 

[Gorbles]

I am not sure how Steam operates (never had a game there), but word of mouth spreads in some cases and can make more than a dent. Various indie games have become not just popular but arguably emblematic of their entire genre (eg Banished, for city-building games). I suppose that also games mentioned frequently in this thread, are indie (or were originally), such as Factorio and They are Billions.

Banished is a 9/10 game on Steam with over 35,000 reviews, that was released in 2014. It was also covered by a bunch of the regular video game sites.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking word of mouth. But statistically it's irrelevant. I personally know indies that have studied the impact of going to cons, expos and the like, vs. just talking it up and advertising it on their own socials. I've played around with games development from the technical side a bunch of times. But I don't know marketing, I'm barely any good at branding (or iconography, etc). This would be something I'd have to learn, or pay someone to handle, to release an indie video game in 2024.

 

[Kyriakos]

I agree, yet you don't need to expect (say) 100 indie games/year to be popular to make you lose money if your budget is 100 times or more of what they had to spend. Even 3-4 decently popular indie games in the genre your game is in, will make things pretty difficult for you.
And while I am sure there are game sites with meaningfully bigger audience, getting an indie game reviewed at a gaming site is not that difficult. Even my own had (afaik ) 4 reviews, and my budget was zero dollars and a week of my time. And only one medium-sized youtuber covered them (it's not rare to see indies covered by massive youtubers= more written reviews follow).

 

[Zardnaar]

I agree, yet you don't need to expect (say) 100 indie games/year to be popular to make you lose money if your budget is 100 times or more of what they had to spend. Even 3-4 decently popular indie games in the genre your game is in, will make things pretty difficult for you.
And while I am sure there are game sites with meaningfully bigger audience, getting an indie game reviewed is not that difficult. Even my own had (afaik ) 4 reviews, and my budget was zero dollars and a week of my time. And only one medium-sized youtuber covered them (it's not rare to see indies covered by massive youtubers= more written reviews follow).

If you want to make a living or go from indie to AA studio it's rough.

Getting on something like gamepass is great for exposure.

 

[Kyriakos]

Eh, it's not my style. I am all about the niche type. But first I plan to release some youtube videos, and go from there
Besides, indie adventures rarely make money, not sure if that Five Nights at Freddy's made money from people buying the game or ad-related stuff. But a few do become extremely famous (another one would be Ao Oni).

 

[Gorbles]

I agree, yet you don't need to expect (say) 100 indie games/year to be popular to make you lose money if your budget is 100 times or more of what they had to spend. Even 3-4 decently popular indie games in the genre your game is in, will make things pretty difficult for you.
And while I am sure there are game sites with meaningfully bigger audience, getting an indie game reviewed at a gaming site is not that difficult. Even my own had (afaik ) 4 reviews, and my budget was zero dollars and a week of my time. And only one medium-sized youtuber covered them (it's not rare to see indies covered by massive youtubers= more written reviews follow).

Potentially, but AA / AAA games don't tend to compete directly with indie titles that much. And "indie" is a very whatever term these days - for example, it describes you (and I) perfectly. No financial backing, out of our own pocket (time is money). Originally it meant "self-published", because a games publisher would typically provide significant financial backing (at the cost of enforcing deliverables and targets). But there are "self-published" indies that do like venture capital fundraising rounds and the like, or "game developers that are also publishers". It's messy.

 

[amadeus]

I wonder if the costs wouldn’t actually come down as technology improves, moving away from needing as many technical personnel and more into the creative aspects.

I think the more unpleasant outcome is additional reliance on DLCs, moving “essential” content effectively behind a second paywall rather than having a large up-front price. It makes me less motivated to buy anything if there is a commitment beyond that first sale.

 

[Gorbles]

I wonder if the costs wouldn’t actually come down as technology improves, moving away from needing as many technical personnel and more into the creative aspects.

I think the more unpleasant outcome is additional reliance on DLCs, moving “essential” content effectively behind a second paywall rather than having a large up-front price. It makes me less motivated to buy anything if there is a commitment beyond that first sale.

The problem isn't so much DLC as it is the concept of eternal money farms. Which are impossible, but hey. Hence the more recent drive to "live service" games where the actual concept of a game (say, the new Suicide Squad one) gets taken apart to serve a theoretically-endless gameplay loop that ultimately puts off fans and results in the game being shuttered before the content even gets fleshed out.

(while also being sold for the premium AAA bucks release price)

DLC was an earlier iteration on the same concept that you don't see as much of, despite the fact that the EA meal-chopped-up meme is still a pretty common reaction image online. Still used, of course, but not the current trend all the big publishers are chasing.

(the additional problem with live service games is, like mobile games, they require a relative monopoly on player time, which means by default you can't have a player paying for ten of them with the intent to keep playing all ten - it's just unsustainable)