The state of AAA games today and why smaller/mid tier developers doing best.

[Yoshi178]

Nintendo remains as stalwart as ever.

Amiibos would disagree with that. So would artificial scarcity to drive preorders. Mercedes advertisement dlc in Mario Kart.

Innovative ways to screw your consumers and muck up your games aren't exempt for being innovative.

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Nah, if I was going to list the classics, I'd have said forced bundling (ya know, like when the TV company makes you buy 15 channels to get whichever 2 you actually want). Though the lone anecdote of one internet stranger is surely going to convince me in the face of friends, family, facebook people, other forum people here and elsewhere, actual news sites, and reviewers.

(Also you forgot to call me friend, and advocate the quality of a game that doesn't exist yet.)

Scarcity though would refer to the Switch itself, pro controllers, aforementioned Amiibos, the Wii-U. I'll give them a pass on the Wii itself, since everyone was kind of surprised at the demand for that one. While I admittedly don't live in major city, this college town that somehow supports 3 EBgames seems like it shouldn't run out of copies of a Mario game, particularly when there's a second Mario game somehow well-stocked sitting next to it (Kingdom Battle, which surprisingly enough, is Ubisoft publishing instead of Nintendo).

Did you ever stop and consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe you can't find odyssey atm because it only just came out and because Nintendo's actually doing pretty well right now and everyone wants odyssey?

if it wasn't then how did odyssey manage to be at the top of the NPD US sales chart in October despite only releasing at the end of the month?

a good Nintendo game is sold out because lots of people actually want it? impossible!!!!

 

[Erttheking]

Nintendo remains as stalwart as ever.

Amiibos would disagree with that. So would artificial scarcity to drive preorders. Mercedes advertisement dlc in Mario Kart.

Innovative ways to screw your consumers and muck up your games aren't exempt for being innovative.

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Still can't fucking find any in my hometown thank you very much.

 

[Yoshi178]

Nintendo remains as stalwart as ever.

Amiibos would disagree with that. So would artificial scarcity to drive preorders. Mercedes advertisement dlc in Mario Kart.

Innovative ways to screw your consumers and muck up your games aren't exempt for being innovative.

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Still can't fucking find any in my hometown thank you very much.

and that somehow = artificial scarcity?

for all i know you could live in a very rural area that doesn't get anywhere near as much stock as major cities do.

 

[Erttheking]

Nintendo remains as stalwart as ever.

Amiibos would disagree with that. So would artificial scarcity to drive preorders. Mercedes advertisement dlc in Mario Kart.

Innovative ways to screw your consumers and muck up your games aren't exempt for being innovative.

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Still can't fucking find any in my hometown thank you very much.

and that somehow = artificial scarcity?

for all i know you could live in a very rural area that doesn't get anywhere near as much stock as major cities do.

I live in walking distance of the fourth largest city in MA. So yes.

 

[Yoshi178]

Nintendo remains as stalwart as ever.

Amiibos would disagree with that. So would artificial scarcity to drive preorders. Mercedes advertisement dlc in Mario Kart.

Innovative ways to screw your consumers and muck up your games aren't exempt for being innovative.

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Still can't fucking find any in my hometown thank you very much.

and that somehow = artificial scarcity?

for all i know you could live in a very rural area that doesn't get anywhere near as much stock as major cities do.

I live in walking distance of the fourth largest city in MA. So yes.

move to a better country like Australia then? *shrugs*

 

[Erttheking]

Nintendo remains as stalwart as ever.

Amiibos would disagree with that. So would artificial scarcity to drive preorders. Mercedes advertisement dlc in Mario Kart.

Innovative ways to screw your consumers and muck up your games aren't exempt for being innovative.

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Still can't fucking find any in my hometown thank you very much.

and that somehow = artificial scarcity?

for all i know you could live in a very rural area that doesn't get anywhere near as much stock as major cities do.

I live in walking distance of the fourth largest city in MA. So yes.

move to a better country like Australia then? *shrugs*

That isn't a response to the original argument that I was addressing. Nintendo screwed the fucking pooch.

 

[Yoshi178]

Nintendo remains as stalwart as ever.

Amiibos would disagree with that. So would artificial scarcity to drive preorders. Mercedes advertisement dlc in Mario Kart.

Innovative ways to screw your consumers and muck up your games aren't exempt for being innovative.

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Still can't fucking find any in my hometown thank you very much.

and that somehow = artificial scarcity?

for all i know you could live in a very rural area that doesn't get anywhere near as much stock as major cities do.

I live in walking distance of the fourth largest city in MA. So yes.

move to a better country like Australia then? *shrugs*

That isn't a response to the original argument that I was addressing. Nintendo screwed the fucking pooch.

not where i live they didn't.

 

[Rangaman]

Shit on CoD: WW2, BF2 and ME:A all you want (I sure as hell won't stop you), but that's not representative of AAA gaming as a whole. This year alone we've had plenty of AAA games that didn't suck:

-Resident Evil VII
-Persona 5
-Neir: Automata
-Zelda: Breath of the Wild
-Horizon: Zero Dawn
-Super Mario Odyssey
-Nioh
-Assassin's Creed: Origins

ME:A was really the developers fault. They were far too ambitious with what the game would be (think No Man's Sky meets The Witcher 3). When it turned out that wasn't going to happen, they ended up building the vast majority of the game in just 18 months. That's a case of the devs getting in over their heads (though EA should've given them more time).

As for BF2 and WW2 (the game, not the actual war) I think blame belongs to both developers and publishers. On the one hand, a game should be given as mush time as it needs to be finished upon release. On the other hand, both of those games were in development for a while as far as I know. Neither required a new engine or anything that would warrant a buggy, unfinished game. Hell, CoD has been in development for three years now (again, as far a I know).

The problem here is publishers and developers overestimating what can be done in a certain timeframe. For as much as I gripe (and continue to gripe) about publishers I don't imagine them being vague with deadlines, particularly when millions of dollars of their money is involved. Developers getting to carried away in the planning stage is pretty much par for the course. Even really good games fall victim to overestimating a team's abilities (The Wind Waker being a great example of this). But I also think, perhaps, publishers should remember that developing a game, any game (not even a particularly good one), takes time.

It's not like indie games are the solution to the industry's problems either. For every good indie game, there's a thousand Bad Cats and Uriel's Chasms. Not to mention the Kickstarter fuckery that has reared its ugly head twice now (yes I'm still bitter over Yooka-Laylee).

 

[juanstrong]

To be fair, Yooka Laylee didn't fail

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The bigger something gets, the more food it needs to survive. Bigger companies can't sustain themselves on more niche products. Koala's couldn't feed themselves off of one kind of plant if they bigger than they are.

Disney, at the time when they were seen as THE place for the best quality of animation, was constantly just trying to keep up with their debts, it was only once Walt Disney made the theme park that they finally had a source of financial security.

The moral is that people should ask themselves when it's time to stop pushing the envelop and instead settle on something sustainable. Though this will be considered controversial, it's part of what I admire about Nintendo, they're a big company yet after the Gamecube they decided to take a step back and look at what they were capable of and what it would cost to try and compete in the hardware race and chose not to compete in it.

 

[Potjeslatinist]

For another funny trend, strategy games seem to somehow have been universally exempt from monetization strategies.

Paradox begs to differ. I'd have bought Crusader Kings 2 a long time ago if the complete package didn't cost so much. 268 euro at the moment, and that's with 15% off!
Europa Universalis: 251 euro, and that's with 10% off! (43 items in the bundle! 43!)

All great value for money, I'm sure, but goddamn I can't spend this on one game!

You mention Firaxis, weeeeelllll, obviously they're not as bad. But they are growing more and more of a tendency to keep key features out of the base game until the expansion, like religion in Civ V. And for Civ VI they're charging 5 to 9 euro's per extra civ, while people who have bought the base game fullpriced are denied the possibility of simply upgrading to deluxe.

These two companies are the two big ones right now in the (grand) strategy genre, and I'd say they're monetizing the crap out of it.

 

[sXeth]

For another funny trend, strategy games seem to somehow have been universally exempt from monetization strategies.

Paradox begs to differ. I'd have bought Crusader Kings 2 a long time ago if the complete package didn't cost so much. 268 euro at the moment, and that's with 15% off!
Europa Universalis: 251 euro, and that's with 10% off! (43 items in the bundle! 43!)

All great value for money, I'm sure, but goddamn I can't spend this on one game!

You mention Firaxis, weeeeelllll, obviously they're not as bad. But they are growing more and more of a tendency to keep key features out of the base game until the expansion, like religion in Civ V. And for Civ VI they're charging 5 to 9 euro's per extra civ, while people who have bought the base game fullpriced are denied the possibility of simply upgrading to deluxe.

These two companies are the two big ones right now in the (grand) strategy genre, and I'd say they're monetizing the crap out of it.

Paradox I'm admittedly not too familiar with. I knew they pushed out a ton of updates, but not that they're full on paid stuff.

For Civ, I've never been on board until the complete edition came out, but yeah that sounds kind of garbage. Granted, I'm mostly comparing Firaxis to the rest of Take Two's product. XCom 2 certainly reeks of AAA, with a buggy broken mess being pushed out at launch, and the seemingly complete game coming later with War of the Chosen.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

What makes something a triple A game? When they spend millions on development?

The definition has changed a lot since it's inception. AAA used to mean the highest level of development, budget and polish. A quality seal in a sense, that you were buying a flagship title and can thus expect a quality game with few/no bugs. That has not been true since about the middle of the 360/PS3 generation.

It means something else now. At its simplest, I would say it can be most easily thought of as any game published by one of the big players: Activision-Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft, Squeenix, Sony, Nintendo, Take Two. That's not entirely accurate tho since yes, as you suggest budget is kinda a factor too. Another parallel could be with the blockbuster in the movie industry. They are biggest budget/highest risk, made for the lowest common denominator (to try to get the most money from the largest audience) and most easily recognised by the least originality, creativity or new ideas. That last could be seen as controversial, but I assure you it's apt. The biggest budgets means the fewest risks and thus the blandest, safest, most tried/tested formulaic things possible.

An easy example would be Dead Space vs Dead Space 3. The first was a survival horror game with a sci-fi setting. Modestly budgeted, well received, cult following, financial success tho not a record breaker. By the time the third game rolled around, it was a 3rd person set-piece shooter with co-op, DLC and microtransactions and was famously described as needing 5mill sales to survive [https://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-Says-Dead-Space-3-Has-Sell-5-Million-Survive-43629.html]. A cult, survival horror game that was reasonably successful was made AAA and thus modified to please the widest audience to try and get the most money. It stood no chance before it was even released, but it didn't stop EA.

So it's no longer a sign of quality, more about the source and marketing clout behind it. Big budgets, massive marketing, bland, formulaic gameplay with few original ideas or innovations, microtransactions, season passes, published by one of the corporate entities mentioned above...these are the top signs of a modern AAA game.

 

[kilenem]

Right before EA shit the bed with shutting down Visceral and Battlefront II, they annouced they weren't in a rush to develop for the Switch, most people weren't upset by this news. For third Party, The Switch has pretty much has been banking on mostly indie Devs to developer good gaming experiences. Hell,even Red Button did the DOOM, port which is okay.

 

[Mad World]

what artificial scarcity?

you mean the same artificial scarcity that lots of escapist members kept crying over in regards to the SNES mini? how'd that work out for you guys? last time i checked in Australia at least, EB games, JB hifhi and Target etc still have shitloads of the thing.

Queue Yoshi and his inevitable defence of Nintendo. Try getting a SNES Mini here in Canada. I'm also quite sure that it's virtually impossible to grab one in the United States.

Anyway, people keep buying games like EA's Battlefront II. Until that stops, the issue will persist.