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Investors on the state of video games: "We are investing, but the bar is so much higher"
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Yeah, at this point, AAA is a negative rather than a positive for determining if I'm interested in a game.
Though with how regular steam sales are and the size of my backlog, even an AAA game that looks good needs a steep discount for me to consider it. I'm ok with not trying 2024 games until 2034, I'll just add it to my wishlist.
Hell, even if I see it at 90% off in 2028, I might just buy it and have it sit in my library until 2034 before I try it, anyways. Especially now that I'm pushing myself more to finish games rather than let myself get pulled in by the 20 next shiny things I see.
Not to mention seeing a AAA game at a AAA price with MTX on top of that makes me assume it'll be a shitty experience, even if they leave an in game way to get all of that stuff because I know that it's going to be tuned to incentivise people to just pay the money (aka grindfest). A lot of that psychological shit that pulled me into WoW so hard doesn't work on me anymore because the first sign of it turns me off. Daily quests to "keep me interested"? I don't want fucking video game chores to do. I now recognize the whole "how do we keep players coming back to our game?" question as inherently toxic, just like website engagement mechanisms.
The AAA market is filled with high-budget low-inspiration cash grabs. And the more influence investors have over companies to push them to make more money quicker, the worse the game is going to be. Investors need to be more patient than gamers.
Older gamers understand that AAA = bad. Large publishers = bad. etc.
It's a shame that most of the industry's sales are from kids under the age of 14. They don't know that they're buying garbage. They don't know that Ubisoft is 95% trash or that 2K is 95% trash. If it has colorful lights, kids want to play it.
Or parents/grandparents buying gifts for kids. As a parent myself, there's price targets for gifts that AAA games fit right into. I deviated from it this past year and gave my daughter a cheaper game that I figured she'd like. It was a dinosaur-themed Harvest Moon called Paleo Pines. The bet paid off since she's actually put down Minecraft to play this one rather than playing it for a bit and returning to Minecraft. Oh yeah, Minecraft itself isn't AAA. So I've got decently high hopes she will avoid wasting her money on the polished turds a lot of the bigger studios are putting out now.
You are lucky.
We reached the AAAA market.
Best I vould come up with on the spot: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1auigs0/comment/kr4h59v/
I know Ubisoft likes to claim AAAA, but I interpreted that as them assuming the number of A's is relative to the goodness of the game and using that to say it is a really good game.
The way I see it is that once the production quality gets to a certain level, the higher the odds are that the people who have the power to determine what that game will look like are out of touch with what makes good games.
And that pirate game sounds like a good example. The choices that ruined the game were likely made at the upper or middle management level by people who had only, at best, a passing interest at playing the resulting game.