Do you like Indie games?

Yeah definitely.

As for the high impact questionnaire.

1. No general like or dislike based on a classification like this. Game by game thing.

2. I'd game less, but that goes for any pick. Except AAA, probably would have already quit gaming if that's all there was.

Yes.

Probably a lot less. Variety is good.

Next question.

I'm not 100% sure where the distinction between indie and AA starts and stops. Are Guacamelee, Chivalry, Natural Selection 2, Slain or Subnautica AA or indie?

On the whole, I would say I have a negative mindset towards indie games. I hear that's where the innovation in gaming exists. Which is possible, because it sure as hell isn't in AAA. But my general feeling is that they are one-note. They seem to have one cool idea, and then talent or budget keep them at an underwhelming scope. I want to see them take that one idea and mix it together with five other similarly unique ideas. But my concept of what constitutes an indie could be wrong.

I haven't really played a game in over a year, and I pretty much hate modern AAA, so I doubt much would change. Honestly, I wouldn't be upset if the slate was wiped clean, and the industry started over.

Almost exclusively at this point. Most AAA's bore the hell outta me.

Indie games are some of my favourite games to play nowadays, as that's where you find most of the innovation and interesting ideas.

Planet of Lana is one I completed recently, highly recommend it 👍

Obviously I don't like every indie game but the label doesn't scare me.

I would be fine if all there was were Indies. There's not a single year that I don't play an handful of great indies, yet it's not unusual for AAAs to completely miss the mark.

Yes.

People typically bring up how the games can be more experimental, innovative, etc. which yeah, true.

Though sometimes, in a good way, it can also be the opposite. Where indies are willing to deliver on game types, or styles of certain game types that AAA would find outdated, too risky a venture for modern audiences™. Get welcome spins on classics. Can still get pure genre games, something a lot of AAA seems allergic to.

A lot of classic game types are being kept alive, in some cases taken to new heights.

And another benefit of being less risk averse, can deliver on challenge and complexity that most bigger pubs would axe in a heartbeat.

The industry is way better off having this stuff, indie boom is probably the single greatest thing to happen to modern gaming.

I don't know if i'd go that far. For every good indie game there is a lot of 2-3hr games that aren't worth the time.

Yes especially indie fps games. They are the only ones today that are making classic style fps unlike AAA companies that releases trash shooters.

Wouldn't knock games for being 2 to 3 hrs lol. SoR4? Can definitely have good/great games with short run times.

But I get what you're saying and agree. I'd say it about gaming as a whole. Most games suck. A small percentage are good. An infinitesimal amount are great. Indies are no different in that regard, you scrape the goods off the top.

But looking at all the large scale swings the industry has seen over roughly the past decade, think indies taking off has been the best thing to happen.

Yep

Far cheaper, generally more old school gaming and they focus on gameplay rather than grpahics

We both know SoR4 was built with replayability in mind, I put over 40hrs into that game, it was the best indie game last gen for me. I just think the market is getting to flooded with indies.

And most 2-3hr ones have little to no replayability is the major problem for me. I would be happy to see more AA games like Remnant, Evil West etc. I feel they hit the right balance for me.

I like games I like

Yes I like indie games, in fact up until TotK, my GOTY was an indie game (Pizza Tower). Last year my GOTY was an indie game (Symphony of War).

As for your other question, yeah I would probably play less. I still play AA and AAA games from time to time. But my main gaming diet these days come from Indie Games, as good as Tears of the Kingdom is.

Yes, I love indie games. There tends to be a lot more creativity in indie games when compared to big-budget games. Indie games like Limbo, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia and OlliOlli World are brilliant. I'm tired of every game nowadays being a shooter or an open world game. With indie games though, developers are much more creative.

For sure. Some of favourite games in recent years are indie. Streets of Rage 4 is the best game I've played in the last couple of years, while Among Us and Fall Guys are also up there.

Indie games tend to be significantly cheaper, and I'm cheap.

They also in most cases tend to simply be "game", without a pyramid scheme attached.

So yes, generally those are more appealing than rando AAA game now.

Oh yeah, love indies! They tend to have much more reasonable length and are more varied. Both mechanically and visually. Aka the opposite of 200 h GaaS grindfests where you do the same repetetive tasks over and over.

If it's a good game it doesn't matter to me if it's indie or not. I just like good games.

Yes and yes.

I like them but..... I'm not as high on them as other people.

It feels to me like most of them are 8/16 bit games with modern gimmicks or in genres I don't care about....

3d ones in general have a long way to go

As long as they aren't Metriodvania's.

Rather it's Indie or not. A game is a game. So therefore I just play anything that catches my fancy.

I'd go as far as saying that if you don't like indie games at all, you're not paying attention. Some of the dopest games of recent times have been indie.

yeah same. not a kool aid sipper. i'll play anything. how many "a"s its classified as is not part of the consideration

@hardwenzen: literally the only reason I game these days is because of independent and small-scale game development.

If all we had were so-called AAA games, I would have quit a long time ago. It's why I crine when a developer says "We aim to be a 'AAA indie game!'...it's like, no bro, just make a game.

I mean, AAA used to mean something. Even when I didn't like the direction AAA was going--loot boxes, battle royale trend-chasing, games-as-a-service,etc--AAA used to mean the game would at least be quality.

But even that isn't true anymore. Quality has gone downhill. Performance has gone downhill. We don't see any innovation anymore.

No, if you love games, you at the very least partake or dabble in the independent game scene. It's where the innovation and quality is these days.

AAA is stagnant. Yeah they have big budgets and if you like really cinematic games (with a lot of cutscenes!) then fine stick with AAA games, but if you actually like new ideas, new concepts, innovative art direction, and more...small-scale and independent development is the way to go.

I'm inclined to agree with that overall sentiment, but there really is a big difference these days between AAA and independent/small-scale development.

As I said earlier, AAA used to mean something, and you could chalk it up to just preference. But now it seems that even AAA have shitty quality, and you need to be worried about legitimate, objective issues.

I'm tired of paying AAA prices for unfinished games, when their only real advantage over indie studios is they can afford mocap for their fancy and [overly] lengthy cutscenes.

Can't remember the last time I was able to play a AAA without some sort of issue. Meanwhile I'm playing early-access indie titles that are as stable as a finished product.

Well that's something. I am the only one in this thread that couldn't care less about indies🤷‍♂️If they were to be deleted tomorrow, i wouldn't even notice. Yes, the likes of Hades is an swesome game, but so is something like Mass Effect 2, and a quality AA or an AAA game is much more important to me. Sure, plenty of AAA titles are all obout shitty mtx, gamepasses, and everything what's wrong with gaming, but nobody forces you to buy them, just skip that trash stain.

That's not exactly true. 80's or 2000's, devs were always pushing their games. There are zero evolution of graphics, animations, presentation, etc when it comes to indies. If all we had are indies, we'd be stuck in place forever. Now that, that would be incredibly dull and boring. Forget your bloodborne, totk, elden ring, dead space, RE4, BF4, etc, etc.

Now that I think of it, pretty much the only AAA devs I dont dislike is Nintendo and Sega.

Outside of Those two, pretty much all I play is Indie or AA.

I would argue the worst part of AAA games is the design by committee mentality. There is often a lack of vision, instead games try to do everything.

• Loot? check
• RPG elements? check
• Crafting? check
• Open World? check
• Ubisoft towers? check

Yeah, or even just design by CEO.

Sounds like this is what happened to Bioware's Anthem.

Basically they were tasked to make a game, came up with an initial prototype/presentation, had to show it to the EA president or some head honcho, and the guy was like "No, I don't like this get rid of it, make it this way, blah blah blah" and they just had to do this over and over and over again.

The thing is, Anthem had a really good foundation. What is not to love about flying around in "Iron Man" suits on the planet Pandora (from Avatar)? Sounds sweet! And it was!

But the problems stemmed when the business part of the game--the "service" part of the game-as-a-service, the DLC, the lack of focus on community building--came around.

Anthem failed not because it was a bad game, but because it was a bad business model. And that rests solely not on developers, but on publishers.

Basically it's like the corporate meeting cartoon meme where the guy with the good idea get's thrown out the window. And the idea he was suggesting was "How about we make a good game with an appropriate budget and it sells itself?"

Indies are often a great space to step outside the norm of big AAA gaming that can often play things creatively safe for commercial purposes. "Indies" is rather a large umbrella as well, doesn't necessarily mean novice developers, can include veterans off on their own outside control of large publishers. Even though most indies are crap, there will be enough good games to rise above rest. Even if most big AAA publishers fall due to their bloated sizes or some hypothetical Thanos finger snap event, others will fill their shoes and become the new AAA developers/publishers.

I judge them like any other game: If I like the art/presentation and gameplay, I'll buy it.

E.g., I've been playing SoR4 for 150 hours+, including the last two days, and I'd much rather play it than another shitty BotW or whatever.

I’ve played indie games, and only one ever stood out as fun and interesting, and it was Little Nightmares, but that could also be because it reminded me heavily of a studio Ghibli film, which name eludes me at this moment.

Indie games typically mediocre. I thought Hollow Knight would be a good one to pick up, especially with hearing how it’s “Soulsborne” in some capacity. Disappointed and boring, to say the least. I’ve yet to find them more enjoyable than triple A games.

And there is zero evolution of gameplay with AAA titles.

Worse, their quality is getting worse.

I'm not saying indies are flawless, but in the present day independent and small-scale development is getting better, while AAA development is getting worse.

Furthermore, AAA means very little. Is Zelda AAA? I mean, sort of? But only because they're owned by a corporation. From a gameplay and visuals stance, it seems more akin to something made by a smaller studio. Is Minecraft indie? Originally, hell yeah, you downloaded the game client from a website. Is it indie now? I don't know. What about Valve? Is a multi-billion dollar company indie? Is Half-Life 2 indie? Technically yes.

I want to like AAA games. I want to see folks like EA, Ubisoft, and so on start taking more gambles and be what they were (in terms of innovation and games) in the 90's and early 00's, but with modern sensibilities. But they are just going backwards in the worst ways, while simply advancing the agenda of the worst aspects of capitalism: infinite growth in a finite space via the exploitation of their consumers and workers.

The games you listed are examples of how we have been stuck in place forever.

AAA = stagnation.

I would love nothing more than to forget about Bloodborne because we've received something better but AAA publishers and developers seem to just keep making the same damn game over and over again because they don't know how to do so.

Sure, you folks enjoyed Elden Ring, but only because you had to. And you're here asking for more Bloodborne...

Most AAA titles are playing it safe, yes, but that doesn't mean its always a bad thing. If the souls formula is working, everyone is asking for more, why won't you give the fans what they want?

I don't have a problem with giving people what they want, but when the entire industry chases the trend it hurts gaming as a whole.

And there's a middle ground that needs to be met where AAA publishers play it safe, but also take acceptable risks for the sake of artistry. It seems the only risks they take now are for profit, with alienating people with DLC, microtransactions, and NFT's and such.

The issue I have is that if your top genres are battle royale shooter, soulsborne clone, and looter-shooter and you as a AAA publisher are diverting 95% of your funds into developing games into those simply because you see other people making money on it, that's not good for progress.

I swear I'm not a hipster, but games are art. There needs to be development and progress and creativity and risk-taking involved in order for it to be worth a damn. And the only sector doing any of that is the small-scale and independent game sector.

I still play and enjoy some AAA games but the days of me looking forward or expecting anything from them are long gone. And this isn't even taking into consideration all the game and developers that have been gobbled up, shut down, mothballed, or put in purgatory simply so some publisher can own the IP and do nothing with it. When you factor that in, AAA gaming is hurting the industry.

You ignore those games. In my case, i obviously love action rpg's, and i will never be tired of playing them IF they're quality, and not yet another 2014 Lords of the Fallen or Code Vein. Every single year, there is a good enough variety of aa and aaa titles for you to filter through, and if you're seriously incapable of finding anything that you enjoy, your love for gaming might be fading away.

Which is why I do enjoy some AAA games.

I think Jedi Survivor is a great game. But sadly it is marred by technical issues and was rushed. Yet another, more objective issue with AAA development that turns me off of the sector.

if it was just the games I didn't like, you'd be right. But I still love gaming. My tastes have changed, but my love for the hobby has only grown.

But there are more objective complaints I have. Quality has gone downhill. Technical issues are more prevalent than ever. Worker mistreatment is common. Studios are shuttered, even if they make good games. Exploitive business practices take advantage of people.

This isn't an just an emotional issue for me, there has been a measurable decline in AAA gaming across the board.

And it's only going to get worse as small-scale and independent developers keep taking a percent or two each year of the market each share from AAA publishers. I look forward to that future, at least.

Yes, quality went downhill, but this doesn't just magically applies to AAA only. Look at the metric ton of unfinished messes in the indies industry. Steam has these indie titles coming out on daily basis. The only difference is that when a big dev/publishes releases an messy AAA title, they get clapped on the social media, and that damages a multi million/billion dollars company, while when an indie studio messes up, most of the times nobody notices or cares.

@mrbojangles25: Even today, the largest share in gaming is the mobile phone gaming, by far. I dont care much for mobile games but at the same time it is not hard to see why.

AAA games, baring a few exceptions like Tears of the Kingdom are soulless husks. AAA gaming is also being flooded by these half assed Action RPGs all over the place, and ARPGs are probably one of my least favorite genres. It is the epitome of doing pretty much everything poorly.

Which is why I am so relieved Zelda remains an Action Adventure and stays the hell away from the RPG crap.

Games like Pizza Tower, Cities Skylines, Advance Wars Reboot Camp. These are games that appeal to me. Not these banal ARPGs flooding the market, all while sucking as both action games and as RPGs.

Indie games have been going up in quality. AAA games have been going down.

Compare the best indie games of today to the best indie games in the early-mid days of gen 7. There has been a tremendous improvement.

Now compare the best AAA games of today and the best AAA games of the early-mid days of gen 7. And you will notice a sharp decline in both quality and innovation.

Congrats on finding out you're not a real gamer. Just another casual who thinks they're a "professional" gamer 🤣🤣🤣

Prove it.

Look at the hundreds of indie titles that appear on Steam, and tell me with a straight face that they're improving.🤭

You will never be able to prove that because its just some made up copium of yours. Also, you said it yourself, you barely play anything nowdays, so how would you know what's good and what isn't in the aaa space?

And i have never said that AAA back during the 7th gen weren't better for their time than AAA nowadays. Even if there are less innovative games, many of which are just safe sequels, that does not mean that the AAA industry is dead, and is not worth paying attention to.

Indies are for a short term diversion. AA/AAA is for actual gaming. If you lost interest in AA/AAA, you lost interest in gaming as a whole, and it won't be long until you don't play anything at all, which is almost your case.

I am a Sony Professional. When you become one, talk to me. Until then, you're not worth the tip of my fingers typing what i just did.

I think people who don't recognize this trend are very out of touch with gaming as a whole.

At the same time, most gamers are "casual" (I don't mean that in the derogatory sense), so folks like @hardwenzen that are casual gamers can enjoy AAA games because they are not really enthusiasts that appreciate the craft of game development, merely people that want to be entertained and mistakenly associate high production costs with quality.

I want to like AAA games and I await the day I think they've earned my attention, but I just don't feel like it's worth it for the most part.

You can be a casual and still be a gamer, you just need to know your place 😋 And that's in the corner watching a cinematic.

The stakes are smaller, the games are less expensive, and they garner less attention as a result.

Let's say some indie survival game failed. OK, so what? Its five-person development team would be out of a job and the 20,000 people that bought their game for $20 bucks would be out a bit of cash. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And I'd say the few failures is a small price to pay in light of the huge successes.

Meanwhile we have Ubisoft games with thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, I'd say when a game like that fails, it deserves some shit. How do you have those resources and still manage to make shit games?

Or maybe they make shit games because of those resources?

I'd rather watch AAA studios take risks and fail on a smaller scale than do what they're doing now and become stagnant.