Confessions of an AAA-supporter.

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Lately it seems as if the cool thing to do is curse triple A games for being... Well, triple A games. To blame producers and large developers for everything that's wrong with contemporary gaming while holding up the major titles of the last year as examples of why everything in gaming is getting worse.

So I figured I'd make this confession, because it feels like I am becoming a minority:
I love triple A games. I am not kidding, I love them. 2013 was a great year for me. Bioshock: Infinite, Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, Diablo 3, Grand Theft Auto V and Assassin's Creed 4 were all games that blew me away, that had me hooked from start to finish (well, end of the main story anyway) and made me really appreciate how great of a medium gaming can be. I love these huge titles were everything i so well-crafted that it seamlessly comes together to form a great immersion into the game, from graphics to audio to gameplay and narrative.

I realize I am not alone out there to feel like this, so I figured this is a chance for all those of us that actively like AAA games to speak up. To tell everyone how much and why we like these big production value games. Tell us why you play AAA games. Or alternatively let us know why you don't want to play AAA games.

 

[Tiger King]

Lately it seems as if the cool thing to do is curse triple A games for being... Well, triple A games. To blame producers and large developers for everything that's wrong with contemporary gaming while holding up the major titles of the last year as examples of why everything in gaming is getting worse.

So I figured I'd make this confession, because it feels like I am becoming a minority:
I love triple A games. I am not kidding, I love them. 2013 was a great year for me. Bioshock: Infinite, Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, Diablo 3, Grand Theft Auto V and Assassin's Creed 4 were all games that blew me away, that had me hooked from start to finish (well, end of the main story anyway) and made me really appreciate how great of a medium gaming can be. I love these huge titles were everything i so well-crafted that it seamlessly comes together to form a great immersion into the game, from graphics to audio to gameplay and narrative.

I realize I am not alone out there to feel like this, so I figured this is a chance for all those of us that actively like AAA games to speak up. To tell everyone how much and why we like these big production value games. Tell us why you play AAA games. Or alternatively let us know why you don't want to play AAA games.

I'm not objective to triple A games but I think the main beef with them is they are watered down occasionally because the shareholders are a bit worried the game wont appeal to the masses.

basically (in my opinion)this means a game could be great but has been watered down.
honestly, I'm not bothered if a game robs elements off other games, I just hope it has a decent story!

in a positive note for AAA games, I have to say that it has opened up a huge market to casual gamers.

 

[Clowndoe]

No need to make a confession out of it, even the games in that list that I don't like have qualities that I can accept other people liking. The conceit is this: I don't believe you like those games for being AAA games. I'd like to believe that if EA made a turd of a game with terrible mechanics but spent a billion dollars making it pretty so that it counts as AAA that you wouldn't buy it just because "pretty!".

Conversely, not counting completely unreasonable people because "haters gonna hate", to "hate" AAA just means that you believe the majority of AAA releases just don't speak to you. That's my position, simply that almost none of the big-name games happen to be things I want to play. The reason I play Red Orchestra over Battlefield or Call of Duty is just because it has the design I prefer in a shooter. A recent example is taht I would totally have bought Thi4f if people said it was like the first couple where it counted.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Gimme five!

I love Triple-A games as much now as I did when I got my first PSX. Maybe even more since a lot of niche titles have been getting Triple-A injections, like Journey, Rayman, and the Tell Tale games.

Last year I've gotten experiences that I could've only dreamed of 10 years ago with The Last of Us and Assassin's Creed 4.

Saying you like Triple-A on the Escapist these days is like saying you support anti-gay laws.

 

[senordesol]

I think 'Triple-A' gets a lot of hate because it's meaning has been inflated. Titanfall has -what?- 3 or 4 hours of unique content and that's being marketed as 'Triple A'.

For me, 'Triple A' used to mean 'if you buy nothing else this year; buy this'. Aliens: Colonial Marines was technically 'Triple A', Call of Duty: Ghosts as well...and I wouldn't characterize those games as exactly 'quality' titles.

Sadly triple A these days seem to refer more to budget than quality --not that high-budget games can't be good quality (see: Last of Us), but that mediocre and even sub-par games can now be considered 'triple A' just because a few million dollars were spent on them.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I love triple-A, I'm pretty much guaranteed to like any game like it. I liked Aliens: Colonial Marines, I like all CoD games, I loved Mass Effect 3 and and just about any game people say is 'watered-down' or bloated or rushed or whatever word they think they know what it means. I think EA and Activision are great companies.
And I'm not a huge fan of indie so hey, sue me.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

If a game is fun to me, I really don't care who made it or how much money went into it... as long as I don't have to install a whole bunch of extra bullshit on my PC to play it. Lookin' at you, Uplay.

 

[Racecarlock]

We ALL love AAA games here, dude. It's just that the business practices are short sighted and retarded. Always online DRM, games with more microtransactions with gameplay, PR people dismissing people for not liking those practices, it's a mess.

Why do you think people are mad? Great games, wonderful games, games that had so much potential are being ruined by people who care more about money than making a good game. Does this mean there were no good games? Of course not, but these business practices are horrible. Releasing games buggy as hell just because you can patch it later while also saving money on Quality Assurance. That's another one.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I just enjoy games. I don't fret about how big the budget is, how much indie cred it will accrue for me, how big the marketing push is, etc. I just want enjoyable experiences, and AAA games definitely can provide that for me. Of course, indies do too and I love them as well. Games are good.

 

[Evonisia]

We like AAA games, we hate AAA Developers and the publishers. At least that's what I can gather from the internet's consensus.

Spec Ops: The Line, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Silent Hill Downpour, Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Hitman Absolution are my favourite games of 2012 and they're all AAA.

 

[TrevHead]

I like AAA BUT - The problem is the collapse of the A / middle market which has harmed niche genres like Stealth and horror as they've had to go mass market AAA like Hitman / Dead Space or get axed and turned into a different genre like Legacy of Kain / Nosgoth.

It's important that the industry finds a way to make the middle market viable again and be able to budget a game for the size of it's audience rather than having to shoehorn in naff features to draw in a extra 3 million sales.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I just enjoy games. I don't fret about how big the budget is, how much indie cred it will accrue for me, how big the marketing push is, etc. I just want enjoyable experiences, and AAA games definitely can provide that for me. Of course, indies do too and I love them as well. Games are good.

I'm of this opinion. I don't care who made what game or how much they spent making it. So long as the game is good I will buy it. All I want is good games and there has been a ton of them lately.

Saying you like Triple-A on the Escapist these days is like saying you support anti-gay laws.

Hahaha that really does seem to be the case these days.

 

[josemlopes]

To me I just like what I think its good, if EA launches a good game with good support I buy it, if they fuck up and screw the entire thing then fuck them (that applies to everyone, even if Free Radical came back from the dead and made Haze 2 I wouldnt buy it, fuck that shitty game, how did it manage to send a top quality studio to the trash? They really werent prepared for the 7th generation).

 

[Zhukov]

I like some of 'em.

"AAA" just means it's had a buttload of money spent on it. That isn't a case for automatic hate, nor for automatic love.

If I think a game is shit, it's because the experience of playing it was shit. Not because someone said it was AAA. Likewise for if I think a game was awesome.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I don't have a problem with recent triple-A gaming but the problem is that it seems like those games aren't being released complete. I'm not going to come out and say games are being released in bits and pieces but it seems like publishers are only willing to release about 75% - 85% of a game, making the rest available if you pre-order the game from one if not multiple retailers. If you want the rest of the game you may also want to buy the season pass. Again, this isn't EVERY triple-A release but it seems like more and more games are being sold in smaller and, smaller packages. It also seems like the lack of backwards compatibility was planned by a consortium of publishers and, hardware manufacturers to sell us the same games twice within two years...it was kind of lame when Bethesda released the 5-year edition of Oblivion.

...

That being said no, I won't be able to resist the 5-year anniversary of Skyrim once it's out on the PS4.

I waffled but just wanted to bring about the point that we, gamers, have received better in the past and deserve better than what we seem to be getting now.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Confession? Ok.

I have bought every Battlefield game ever released, on release day.

Every release has been the same, yet there I am every time for the last twelve years. It seems I like pain.

 

[SKBPinkie]

You don't have to confess for liking something.

You want an actual confession? Here's one -

I think indie games are mostly garbage. They're unique in the same way that the Wii was. You play them for about 3-4 hours and they're done. They lack the replayability, the mechanics, the depth, the storytelling, the artwork, and so much more that AAA games have. And as for the games being "risky" and "different", a good 90% of them are 2D side scrollers with pixel-art style graphics.

Now, of course, there are exceptions to this (Braid, Swapper, Journey, Brothers), but a substantial majority of indie titles are nothing more than conversation starters. If you love games for the discussions / debates that you can have rather than enjoying the game itself, then they're fine.

 

[fix-the-spade]

To me I just like what I think its good, if EA launches a good game with good support I buy it, if they fuck up and screw the entire thing then fuck them (that applies to everyone, even if Free Radical came back from the dead and made Haze 2 I wouldnt buy it, fuck that shitty game, how did it manage to send a top quality studio to the trash? They really werent prepared for the 7th generation).

Free Radical died because hardly anyone bought their games. Haze was a dog, but Second Sight, Timesplitter 1, 2 and Future Perfect were all great, but are still reputed to have sold under a million copies each.

Going all the way back to Rare they never topped Goldeneye's 8million, even Perfect Dark was in the region of 2.5million sold and Starfox Adventures was their last confirmed million seller (although the Free Radical guys left late in it's development).

When it came down to it, Free Radical couldn't get publishers to invest in them, never mind. What they've done as part of Crytek suggests the publishers might have been right...

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

There are plenty of Triple A games I like too - most of the problems people have with the Triple A are with the industry and it's practices and some of the really odd things they are doing because they're the suit-wearing, non-video game playing, corporate people they are. I recently read an article in Game Informer interviewing a suit who basically said outright he had no respect for gamers or their opinions because he was a business person and he knows enough about money and business to make any product sell, regardless of the consumer. That's? bad for us.

The games themselves though - yeah a lot of them are still good despite all of that. The thing most people around here seem to object to is that they have to overcome so much of the BS and the guys like the one I just spoke about above to get there and they'd be much better if they didn't have to jump those hoops in the first place.

It's love of AAA Games that make people care about and speak out against the AAA Industry.

 

[Felix the Human]

Here's my confession, I loved Resident Evil 6. you can say whatever you want about it, but it's a damn good game. it just bugs me so much how hypocritical gamers are. they harp on and on about people who play mainstream games. calling them casuals or fake gamers because they don't like the same stuff they like.