I remember growing up playing Nintendo games up and other AAA games until I started watching YT. Particular TB and adjacent YouTubers.
Now-a-days, especially watching most of Summer Games Fest, I feel like I really am not excited about AAA games as I used to be and generally prefer indie games
Think it’s a combination of time, DLC, gamba bs, same game released 7 thousand times and broken games at launch that have mostly turned me away from AAA games. Nintendo, Ubisoft, Blizzard, SquareEnix and others, have further tainted the appreciation I once had for these companies with the level of abuse to their fanbases and even their own employees.
How you all feel about AAA vs Indie games? Which do you prefer, and has this changed for you over time?
I got into gaming as a young kid (3/4 years old) with super nintendo and genesis lol. Back then everything was just AAA and AA console releases (and some AAA pc games). Indies really weren’t a thing (maybe on pc, but not well known). Nintendo first party is always good, but I ended up loving the AA-tier games.
Nowadays AA-tier games are remarkably uncommon/rare unfortunately. And indies started picking up… was it a decade ago? or maybe a little further back. I’m fond of indie games since they have that AA magic, but at the same time indie games feel too “diy” at times and don’t have that AA-tier polish or professionalism a lot of the time. A lot of them end up feeling more like fan games than actual proper games lol.
As you mention, AAA games really have gotten quite bad in recent years. I don’t even buy playstation or xbox as a result. And Nintendo games this gen also have declined in quality. I think that’s largely due to modern game design, along with this huge emphasis on “big open world” and “very good graphics” so you end up with these really high-budget, shallow games that just push graphics and big worlds, and just end up not being very fun.
AA games in comparison never cared about pushing specs or graphics, and they existed before this “big game many hours” nonsense. So you just get these professional well-polished absolute gems. But since indies became a thing, and big companies focus on AAA, AA games kinda died. There’s not much demand/supply for them anymore unfortunately.
Especially now that indies are being published by these smaller “indie publishers” and getting physical releases, AA games are really struggling to get attention and it’s just sad.
For AA, look at the many professional visual novels, or games like story of seasons. Smaller titles end up being stuff like Pretty Princess Party. These are fantastic professional-quality games, but get overlooked by the huge flood of AAA and indie titles. They’re so overlooked you forgot to even mention them lol.
It’s really sad that I’m basically stuck choosing between impossibly large/long AAA game with shallow gameplay vs very tiny low budget indie that has interesting gameplay design. Why can’t we get some mid-sized games? Why can’t we get more games like DDR, katamari, or okami? those games are great!
Those “big open worlds” in newer AAA games often feel make me feel lonely. I’m curious though, what AA games have you enjoyed in the past?
I listed a few in my comment already: ddr, katamari, okami, other stuff like the world ends with you, tony hawk pro skater, story of seasons (previously harvest moon), etc.
More recently most of the AA games I pickup are visual novels (often otome games), so stuff like code realize, steins;gate, etc. pretty princess party is good. Back in like the ps2/ps3 era there were a ton of AA games that either were pure AA or bordering AAA. Rockband was another one. Dark Cloud. Not quite the big flagship titles, but not indies either. they end up somewhere in the middle lol.
A lot of the older licensed movie games were AA as well (albeit many weren’t great). DS is flooded with them as well, stuff like 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors, ghost trick, ace attorney, super monkey ball, rhythm heaven, ragnarok ds, golden sun, etc.
granted I haven’t played 999 or ghost trick but you get my point lol.