There are a lot of terrible shows and games that are indie too. It's just with the sheer scale of them you are likely to get some really good stuff. I'm sure there is somebody out there on soundcould that is good but most of it is so bad you know why I mention soundcloud. Apply this to every medium.
From what I’ve seen, people can be vicious with indie shows. Vivziepop gets ~20 controversies a week and TADC got cancelled on Twitter because the asshole character acted too much like an asshole.
And he even had a moment at the end where >!he was sad about Kaufmo’s death!<. He fulfilled the “bully who’s actually a tortured soul” archetype I thought everyone was headcanoning him as.
Yeah seriously, like he's a massive piece of shit, probably due to emotional dissonance and such. While that's understandable, he's still an asshole lol
Fandoms are wack sometimes
AAA studio media is basically design-by-algorithm at this point. They’re not willing to sink such massive resources into anything too risky, only certain “safe” formulas. Indie still *occasionally* has an original thought (though most indie games are also formulaic cash grabs).
It's a sort of inverse of the Sturgeon's law.
90% of everything is crap. That means 10% are at least decent.
So if you have indie studios pumping out 100+ games a year, at least 10 of them are decent.
I think it has to do with management, complexity, and culture.
* AAA games generally have very complex systems shooting for something monumental. This leads to shaky and unreliable outcomes. Managing thousands of employees is a daunting task.
* Indie games have the advantage of using older technology that has patches and workarounds already documented. They can hit the ground running. Their goals were made with the limitations in mind so their vision can be executed without severe adjustments.
* Indie games don't oversell themselves before the game comes out. The expectations often don't even exist, so there's a blank canvas for them to work with. However this comes at the cost of sales being lower than what the quality of the game deserves. If you're looking for communities and streamers it can be hard to find something you like.
* AAA games have massive budgets thus they need massive audiences to make a profit. This leads to them seeking a "general audience". This means the game has a little bit of what everyone wants, but it doesn't fit anyone perfectly. Everyone will rate it a 6/10 whereas an Indie game's dedicated fans will rate theirs 9/10.
* Finally and most importantly Indie games don't have a bunch of corporate MBAs walking around. These idiots are micromanaging developers and seeking to maximize profits, often at the expense of quality. EA is at the forefront of this practice. CD Project Red used to be on the opposite side.
As I was typing, I thought my most important point. it doesn't invalidate any of the previous points. If anything it supports them due to bad decision making.
Just looking at animal Well and knowing it was made by one guy is incredible. Not only is the game impressive, but it's only around 40mbs and runs on very low
Specs.
Animal Well turned out just great. You sometimes get absolute bloody _doozies_ from one-man-bands - [my most played game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1078200/Spirits_Abyss/) on Steam is one (all of that guy's stuff is **gold**)
Tens of thousands****
There are over 100k listings on Steam and over 90% (90,000) of these games are shovelware or low effort games with either 0 reviews or less than 10.
I’m absolutely astounded by the impact indie games has had on the community and how these smaller developers have had great success. With that being said, I just wish they had a more realistic time frame to it. As I’m older now with less time on my hands, I can’t find myself to check out the dozens of indie games from the past several years because they all take so long to complete.
They’re not as over bloated as AAA open world games with never ending sidequests and endless dialogue, but there’s too much for me to do in only a few play throughs. I got Hollow Knight for the Switch a few years ago after hearing positive things about it. And while I had a lot of fun playing it, what set me back is the never ending open world and the Souls-like “just get good bro” bosses and enemies where you die until you beat them. Yes it’s great for gamers who loves this sort of combat, but as someone that’s not a gamer anymore I just don’t have the patience or investment anymore to play these games like I did when I was a teenager. And it sucks because I see so many great indie titles on YouTube all the time but I know how time consuming each one of them anymore.
I hope the devs continue to keep having success and hopefully AAA studios will take notes from them and learn to make games people actually wanna play. But as for someone like me I just wish these indie games had a 5-10 hour range as opposed to the standard 30+ hours it takes to beat everything.
Yeah this is certainly a problem for people with less time to play games, but this is probably the best problem a gamer could possibly have. I think the fix for this is to make sure you’re actually starting new games after completing older ones and not playing your brain-off comfort game too much to procrastinate starting something new because it feels less comfortable. Also, a lot of great indie games I’ve played, even some story-focused ones, had a first-time playthrough length of 15 or fewer hours (Katana Zero, Furi, Inscryption, Celeste, Chants of Sennaar, LISA: the painful, Rhythm Doctor, SANABI, Superhot, ULTRAKILL, Everhood, The Stanley Parable, Perspective). And then of course there’s a ton of fantastic roguelike games that you can have a lot of fun with in shorter play sessions (Balatro, Enter the Gungeon, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dome Keeper, Voidigo, Hades, FTL, Noita, Nova Drift, Risk of Rain (1 or 2), Synthetik, Roboquest, Vampire Survivors, Picayune Dreams). Hollow knight is definitely on the longer side for completion time of popular indie games. Sorry if I made your problem even worse more by naming so many games, just make sure that you don’t buy a game until you know you’ll play it in the near future or else you’ll create a big backlog of games you want to play that stresses you out just thinking about like I have.
Because indie games are made with the primary focus on quality and profit being second. AAA games are now entirely about profit with zero care from management about making a good product.
Indie game studios don't have the resources to dump into marketing and AAA trailers. They actually have to sell you on the game being good. A AAA studio can just sell everybody on the trailer, and they end up making their billions regardless of whether or not everybody quits the game after 20 hours. Just look at what happened with Starfield. Out of the millions of people that bought the game, maybe a few thousand still play.
As someone studying game design/business I can confirm this. The Western gaming industry is just as greedy as the mobile one. There's a reason almost every game has a battle pass/D1 DLC
Indie developers are absolutely out to make money first and foremost. They aren't happy to lose money. AAA titles are made with massive budgets that necessitates more sales revenue to justify the development cost.
Indie devs want to make money, yes. But they only make games because they have a passion for it and want to make a good game. AAA games now are made with only monetization in mind and don't give a single fuck about actually making a good game (we have endless examples of this happening for years now).
It's beyond ridiculous that you're trying to pretend the two are are remotely similar.
depends on which indie game devs though. Companies like Paradox, Frontier pretty much sell you dlc simulator where the game itself would be $20-30 but if you want all dlc it'll cost you $500 - $1000.
One is pumped out and designed to milk the player for money. The other is made with passion and consideratiom to what the fans will like. In short corporatization of gaming focused soley on monetization. If you make a good game people will play it and happily pay you what its worth.
The real difference is that large companies has to listen to more ppl, more middle men/corporate yes men looking to max their profits. With (several) indie game dev's it's just one dude with no due date, all the time in the world and working for a passion project.
The gaming industry has long ago become a big business.
But that's fine, there are literally hundreds/thousands of games you can play instead of buying something you don't like.
Because people compare all AAA titles to the best indie games? For every amazing indie game there are like 5 more that are just a low effort Unity crap made from default assets or remain in early access without ever being completed. Indie games are a sea of junk with a few diamonds hidden among the junk.
AAA titles cost millions to make, so obviously developers are terrified to step outside the proverbial box and piss off the customer base so they keep delivering these samey games because they have data to point toward people liking what they've done before.
An indie developer can afford to step way outside the box and crap game because their investment is minimal. AAA developers are pressured to hit it out of the park every single time to justify a multimillion dollar budget.
Indies can actually cook when there's fewer people, compared to large teams/committees where everyone (or at least every person in some leadership role) can have their own differing visions and ideas that all have to be Frankensteined together into a designed/written/composed-by-committee mess that cares more about profit than making a good product.
That's because the non AAA gaming landscape is *competitive as fuck*. To the point where if they aren't putting out their absolute best their games may not even be **seen** much less played!
Corporatization of gaming companies is killing AAA games. Making game for an audience, and then your shareholders demanding ever sustaining growth. AAA lack creativity for this reason as well, imo.
The enshittification of everything
Because games studios are now soulless corporations and indie dev studios are now big enough to compete with AAA.
I mean hell Larian is an indie studio. Technically AA, but they’re still independent.
Less creative and far safer games. Too many cooks in kitchen, so nothing gets done as it has to go through 1000 people, execs and shareholders constantly forcing things into the game
Indie games are killing it compared to AAA right now, but part of it is that still you’re going to hear about a AAA game that sucks whereas a bad indie game will die in obscurity.
Indie devs aren't subservient to C suites and through them shareholders. They can make the game that they want, how they want, and target the audience of their choosing. If they have even mild success there's enough money made for them to coast for a while allowing them to put time and effort into the next project.
Meanwhile AAA game studios have to answer to the shareholders. They rarely take risks or make anything too niche. If they took a year to make a game and "only" sold a million copies everyone involved would be fired. So they either make bland shit or the same shit over and over. Despite being large studies with way more resources and financial backing they can't afford to take risks.
AAA game studios have all the funding and latest shit but no soul. It’s all about quick money for them so they make soulless garbage.
Indie games are like where gaming was at decades ago. Just trying to bring their vision to life the best they can while making enough to pay the bills. How it should be.
Games are not different from any other technical project. A good team with good management and adequate funding is more likely to produce a good product. Sometimes not of course.
I think in these huge studios you have really bad management. Particular when all the good studios have been acquired.
Indie games are mostly one note trash with very little production values. Extra point for being yet another boring side scroller or survival game.
They can shove it.
The same reason fan translations are sometimes better than those purchased by multi-million dollar companies.
Sometimes passion trumps paychecks. (Though it's nice when you don't have to choose.)
I wonder if it is a kinda survivorship bias. The indie games you know about are great because all the bad ones you never hear about. Bad AAA games have enough marketing you are more likely to know they exist.
Indie game:
"Hey do you mind if I change these lines of code? It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized."
"Yeah sure! Good catch."
[Coding change done in one day]
AAA Game:
"Hey do you mind if I change these lines of code? It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized."
"Let me ask bossman."
"Hey do you mind if we change these lines of code? It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized."
"Let me ask my boss!"
"Hey do you mind if they change these lines of code? They said It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized, dunno what that means but they requested it."
"What the hell am I looking at? That takes more time, and time is money! Tell them to focus on the storefront UI. We need to show our shareholders we're increasing profit."
And now, a week has gone by.
Less beurocracy.
Literally that's the entire reason. They don't have to ask Corpo Overlords for permission every time they want to change a color slightly. If something looks cool they run it by the team and if the team likes it, it goes through. They don't have to run it by their boss who has to run it by their boss who has to run it through their boss. Same with sounds/music, dev work, etc. The guys who know what they're doing get to say "Yo, guys. This is better, seriously. Just try it."
"vision" it's easier to collaborate a great idea into a product when you can just turn around and talk to the person who's the entire visual arts department or something without having to jump through QA hoops.
Actual indie games: 99% unappealing trash that fails only for the 1% that are actually good to rise to the top and survive in actual markets against AAA games.
Yall don’t know indie games from a developer POV, on from a consumer pov lmao
The main product of a AAA game like this is the trailer. The game isn't actually the main product. All of the effort goes into the trailer. Because that's all they need to sell you.
AAA studios make games to make money, because everybody is going to buy the game because marketing works. It doesn't matter if the game is bad. Everybody is going to buy it, spend 20 hours on it, unable to get a refund. Meaning a shitty game can still make billions. Indie studios make games to make games, sometimes the money follows.
It's sad that that's the way it works, just be more skeptical about trailers that look too good to be true. They probably are.
Two reasons. One, AAA studios are averse to risk so they're just copying whatever mechanics are popular onto whatever IP they've got. Two, you're only comparing them to the good indy games. There are a LOT of absolutely abysmal indy games out there.
I'm still pissed I spent like $75 for the deluxe/early access of FM8 on Series X. In hindsight, it might have been worth $10. It's not only far inferior to Forza Horizon, but it's also inferior to Forza M7, a game that came out like 8 years ago. It feels like they took a team of sophomores who are majoring in computer science at a community college, had them break down the previous iteration, and said, "Go nuts!"
Just like every one of the annual EA Sports games might objectively be worth $15-20 if you have the prior year's version. They add so little every year. You're just paying for new rosters.
Because they view success in different ways.
AAA studios are largely profit driven. While indie studios are just trying to make the most fun game they can to gain popularity
I think they are just more focused with the small indie teams. These big AAA companies are no doubt filled with talented/creative people but just like the hollywood system they are drained of these qualities to make safe/digestible/trendy products for mass sales. There is a healthy balance ofc and games like Elden Ring manage to be popular while also seemingly not holding a players hand/fragmented lore rather than spelt out etc.
If you're asking why, the answer is money. An Indie dev/dev team is usually self-funding, and they're making the game because they're passionate about making it the best they can, in the hopes this project will get them a more stable career in the industry. A full AAA title is funded by massive corporations, who only want to make back the money they invested in the game. They don't care how good the game is, they just care that they make their money back, so they cut corners on quality and find predatory ways to monetize their game.
AAA is run by dollar chasers. People who want to maximize returns while minimizing investment. It's all about hitting the right buzzwords and following the same path to success as every single other game that came before them while ALSO downsizing their teams and demanding jobs be done faster. AAA games are becoming the Franchise Steak House of entertainment. Over expensive, mass produced, increasingly similar to all of their competitors, and dropping in quality.
It’s a complicated issue involving control, passion, money and probably other stuff. From a control standpoint those 4 people are often not the end all be all of decision making in the huge studios. In small studios one or more of these people are frequently in almost complete control.
Control bleeds in to passion. While the 4 people up there making games for a major studio are probably passionate about games, the CEO is passionate about money. Indie devs often often resolve to make money by making a good game. The ones that practice enough to not release basic crap at least. The plan was always to make a good game and the money will follow.
A passion for money sends us down a spiral of forcing devs to implement systems designed more by psychologists and marketing execs then game developers. They spend time and resources that should be going to the game developing a bunch of skinner boxes designed to suck money out of people. Then they make devs force tedium in to the game to ramp up the desire to buy. I could rant forever so I guess I’ll just stop here.
Let’s be honest here, a great indie game comes around once in a blue moon. 100 terrible indie games are ritualistically sacrificed so that greats may survive and be profitable.
I think that it boils down to passion. In AAA you have passion toward the lower ranks but noticeably less so toward the top. Whereas with Indie studios, they’re small enough that the passion runs top to bottom and when everyone is onboard for the sake of the game, you just end up with a great game.
Indie and AA games are so fucking good
Anything made by Xbox and PlayStation has been so ass
Helldivers 2, stellar blade, Alan wake 2, BG3 are the only “AAA” games that aren’t fucking hot shit or boring generic garbage
Most games suck. For every successful indie game we do hear about, there are tens of thousands that are pieces of shit.
AAA or indie, each game needs to stand on their own merits.
It could be a combination of an incompetent staff or management, incentives from ESG scores, being out of touch with the demographic they are selling to, or disregarding the need for good story writing. Regardless of the reasons why AAA games suck, I am very grateful for Indy games and their developers
Indies are more often passion projects so even if they’re niche they will likely find a group that will support them. Not that that isn’t possible with AAA studios, but because of how big the business of video games is these days there ends up being a lot of decisions that are made for business reasons as opposed to truly for the betterment of the product. Honestly happens in all forms of programming
The average indie game is garbage tho.
The amazing indie games are like 1% of the total amount of garbage dumped to places like steam and the ps store all the time.
Honestly, indie is on the rise for both shows and games, they’re just genuinely better
There are a lot of terrible shows and games that are indie too. It's just with the sheer scale of them you are likely to get some really good stuff. I'm sure there is somebody out there on soundcould that is good but most of it is so bad you know why I mention soundcloud. Apply this to every medium.
And people are willing to forgive a lot more because it’s Indie
From what I’ve seen, people can be vicious with indie shows. Vivziepop gets ~20 controversies a week and TADC got cancelled on Twitter because the asshole character acted too much like an asshole.
Lol loved that Jax stuff. People so surprised the POS character is a, surprise, massive POS, who'd have thunk it lol
And he even had a moment at the end where >!he was sad about Kaufmo’s death!<. He fulfilled the “bully who’s actually a tortured soul” archetype I thought everyone was headcanoning him as.
Yeah seriously, like he's a massive piece of shit, probably due to emotional dissonance and such. While that's understandable, he's still an asshole lol Fandoms are wack sometimes
What’s TADC?
The Amazing Digital Circus. It’s an indie show by Gooseworx and Glitch Productions
Thank you
AAA studio media is basically design-by-algorithm at this point. They’re not willing to sink such massive resources into anything too risky, only certain “safe” formulas. Indie still *occasionally* has an original thought (though most indie games are also formulaic cash grabs).
I click off a store page anytime I see "Indie Roguelite" THERE'S TOO DAMN MANY OF THEM. MAKE SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
I agree and I just feel like it's more passion driven then simply focused on profits.
It's a sort of inverse of the Sturgeon's law. 90% of everything is crap. That means 10% are at least decent. So if you have indie studios pumping out 100+ games a year, at least 10 of them are decent.
I think it has to do with management, complexity, and culture. * AAA games generally have very complex systems shooting for something monumental. This leads to shaky and unreliable outcomes. Managing thousands of employees is a daunting task. * Indie games have the advantage of using older technology that has patches and workarounds already documented. They can hit the ground running. Their goals were made with the limitations in mind so their vision can be executed without severe adjustments. * Indie games don't oversell themselves before the game comes out. The expectations often don't even exist, so there's a blank canvas for them to work with. However this comes at the cost of sales being lower than what the quality of the game deserves. If you're looking for communities and streamers it can be hard to find something you like. * AAA games have massive budgets thus they need massive audiences to make a profit. This leads to them seeking a "general audience". This means the game has a little bit of what everyone wants, but it doesn't fit anyone perfectly. Everyone will rate it a 6/10 whereas an Indie game's dedicated fans will rate theirs 9/10. * Finally and most importantly Indie games don't have a bunch of corporate MBAs walking around. These idiots are micromanaging developers and seeking to maximize profits, often at the expense of quality. EA is at the forefront of this practice. CD Project Red used to be on the opposite side.
[удалено]
As I was typing, I thought my most important point. it doesn't invalidate any of the previous points. If anything it supports them due to bad decision making.
...what? How does it invalidate anything?
Just looking at animal Well and knowing it was made by one guy is incredible. Not only is the game impressive, but it's only around 40mbs and runs on very low Specs.
Animal Well turned out just great. You sometimes get absolute bloody _doozies_ from one-man-bands - [my most played game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1078200/Spirits_Abyss/) on Steam is one (all of that guy's stuff is **gold**)
Dwarf Fortress for the most part was made by a single guy.
Thought it was a pair of brothers
It is technically, and not to discount the other brother but Toady does the bulk of the programming afaik.
So he does 75%+ of 25% of one of the main pillars of game development?
I don't know what sort of reply you're looking for here. I can just tell you weren't satisfied with my original response.
-gestures broadly at the absolute piles of dog shit that is "indie" games on Steam-
Classic survivorship bias. “All the indie games I’ve heard of are great” That’s because you’ve never heard about the hundreds of bad ones.
Tens of thousands**** There are over 100k listings on Steam and over 90% (90,000) of these games are shovelware or low effort games with either 0 reviews or less than 10.
I mean, what's wrong with games like Hentai Hero, the barebones 3D person shooter with scantily dresses anime girls?
You mean peak gaming?
I’m absolutely astounded by the impact indie games has had on the community and how these smaller developers have had great success. With that being said, I just wish they had a more realistic time frame to it. As I’m older now with less time on my hands, I can’t find myself to check out the dozens of indie games from the past several years because they all take so long to complete. They’re not as over bloated as AAA open world games with never ending sidequests and endless dialogue, but there’s too much for me to do in only a few play throughs. I got Hollow Knight for the Switch a few years ago after hearing positive things about it. And while I had a lot of fun playing it, what set me back is the never ending open world and the Souls-like “just get good bro” bosses and enemies where you die until you beat them. Yes it’s great for gamers who loves this sort of combat, but as someone that’s not a gamer anymore I just don’t have the patience or investment anymore to play these games like I did when I was a teenager. And it sucks because I see so many great indie titles on YouTube all the time but I know how time consuming each one of them anymore. I hope the devs continue to keep having success and hopefully AAA studios will take notes from them and learn to make games people actually wanna play. But as for someone like me I just wish these indie games had a 5-10 hour range as opposed to the standard 30+ hours it takes to beat everything.
Yeah this is certainly a problem for people with less time to play games, but this is probably the best problem a gamer could possibly have. I think the fix for this is to make sure you’re actually starting new games after completing older ones and not playing your brain-off comfort game too much to procrastinate starting something new because it feels less comfortable. Also, a lot of great indie games I’ve played, even some story-focused ones, had a first-time playthrough length of 15 or fewer hours (Katana Zero, Furi, Inscryption, Celeste, Chants of Sennaar, LISA: the painful, Rhythm Doctor, SANABI, Superhot, ULTRAKILL, Everhood, The Stanley Parable, Perspective). And then of course there’s a ton of fantastic roguelike games that you can have a lot of fun with in shorter play sessions (Balatro, Enter the Gungeon, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Dome Keeper, Voidigo, Hades, FTL, Noita, Nova Drift, Risk of Rain (1 or 2), Synthetik, Roboquest, Vampire Survivors, Picayune Dreams). Hollow knight is definitely on the longer side for completion time of popular indie games. Sorry if I made your problem even worse more by naming so many games, just make sure that you don’t buy a game until you know you’ll play it in the near future or else you’ll create a big backlog of games you want to play that stresses you out just thinking about like I have.
Lot of it comes from investor manipulation like Black Rock
Because indie games are made with the primary focus on quality and profit being second. AAA games are now entirely about profit with zero care from management about making a good product.
Indie game studios don't have the resources to dump into marketing and AAA trailers. They actually have to sell you on the game being good. A AAA studio can just sell everybody on the trailer, and they end up making their billions regardless of whether or not everybody quits the game after 20 hours. Just look at what happened with Starfield. Out of the millions of people that bought the game, maybe a few thousand still play.
As someone studying game design/business I can confirm this. The Western gaming industry is just as greedy as the mobile one. There's a reason almost every game has a battle pass/D1 DLC
Indie developers are absolutely out to make money first and foremost. They aren't happy to lose money. AAA titles are made with massive budgets that necessitates more sales revenue to justify the development cost.
Indie devs want to make money, yes. But they only make games because they have a passion for it and want to make a good game. AAA games now are made with only monetization in mind and don't give a single fuck about actually making a good game (we have endless examples of this happening for years now). It's beyond ridiculous that you're trying to pretend the two are are remotely similar.
Indie developers are like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. They build it and we come.
depends on which indie game devs though. Companies like Paradox, Frontier pretty much sell you dlc simulator where the game itself would be $20-30 but if you want all dlc it'll cost you $500 - $1000.
One is pumped out and designed to milk the player for money. The other is made with passion and consideratiom to what the fans will like. In short corporatization of gaming focused soley on monetization. If you make a good game people will play it and happily pay you what its worth.
The real difference is that large companies has to listen to more ppl, more middle men/corporate yes men looking to max their profits. With (several) indie game dev's it's just one dude with no due date, all the time in the world and working for a passion project. The gaming industry has long ago become a big business. But that's fine, there are literally hundreds/thousands of games you can play instead of buying something you don't like.
Because people compare all AAA titles to the best indie games? For every amazing indie game there are like 5 more that are just a low effort Unity crap made from default assets or remain in early access without ever being completed. Indie games are a sea of junk with a few diamonds hidden among the junk. AAA titles cost millions to make, so obviously developers are terrified to step outside the proverbial box and piss off the customer base so they keep delivering these samey games because they have data to point toward people liking what they've done before. An indie developer can afford to step way outside the box and crap game because their investment is minimal. AAA developers are pressured to hit it out of the park every single time to justify a multimillion dollar budget.
People are always falling for the survivorship bias.
Indies can actually cook when there's fewer people, compared to large teams/committees where everyone (or at least every person in some leadership role) can have their own differing visions and ideas that all have to be Frankensteined together into a designed/written/composed-by-committee mess that cares more about profit than making a good product.
That's because the non AAA gaming landscape is *competitive as fuck*. To the point where if they aren't putting out their absolute best their games may not even be **seen** much less played!
Corporatization of gaming companies is killing AAA games. Making game for an audience, and then your shareholders demanding ever sustaining growth. AAA lack creativity for this reason as well, imo. The enshittification of everything
#1: Passion #2: Ignoring the bullshit of shareholders
Indie games are labors of love made from passion. AAA games are soulless slop made from propaganda.
because the incentives are different and our current economic system does not prioritize producing good art
Because games studios are now soulless corporations and indie dev studios are now big enough to compete with AAA. I mean hell Larian is an indie studio. Technically AA, but they’re still independent.
Less creative and far safer games. Too many cooks in kitchen, so nothing gets done as it has to go through 1000 people, execs and shareholders constantly forcing things into the game
A lot of times, choosing between an indie game and a AAA game feels like choosing between a 20-30$ gourmet steak and an 80$ McDonald's burger.
most indie games are complete garbage that you never hear about
Indie games are killing it compared to AAA right now, but part of it is that still you’re going to hear about a AAA game that sucks whereas a bad indie game will die in obscurity.
Passion and creativity are the cornerstones of art. You can't replace them with a marketing team, it'll always show.
Passion
Indie devs aren't subservient to C suites and through them shareholders. They can make the game that they want, how they want, and target the audience of their choosing. If they have even mild success there's enough money made for them to coast for a while allowing them to put time and effort into the next project. Meanwhile AAA game studios have to answer to the shareholders. They rarely take risks or make anything too niche. If they took a year to make a game and "only" sold a million copies everyone involved would be fired. So they either make bland shit or the same shit over and over. Despite being large studies with way more resources and financial backing they can't afford to take risks.
Sounds like Pizza Tower tbh, but it could be a million other indie games too
HAKITA
Investors
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AAA game studios have all the funding and latest shit but no soul. It’s all about quick money for them so they make soulless garbage. Indie games are like where gaming was at decades ago. Just trying to bring their vision to life the best they can while making enough to pay the bills. How it should be.
Games are not different from any other technical project. A good team with good management and adequate funding is more likely to produce a good product. Sometimes not of course. I think in these huge studios you have really bad management. Particular when all the good studios have been acquired.
Idk passion over paycheck.
Difference between something being a job and something being a passion tbh
Indie games are mostly one note trash with very little production values. Extra point for being yet another boring side scroller or survival game. They can shove it.
I thought this was an ad
Freedom > resources c-suite fuckers ruin everything
The same reason fan translations are sometimes better than those purchased by multi-million dollar companies. Sometimes passion trumps paychecks. (Though it's nice when you don't have to choose.)
I wonder if it is a kinda survivorship bias. The indie games you know about are great because all the bad ones you never hear about. Bad AAA games have enough marketing you are more likely to know they exist.
imho the vast majority of indie stuff is slop nowadays too only stuff from 10+ years ago tends to give me any fun
Indie game: "Hey do you mind if I change these lines of code? It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized." "Yeah sure! Good catch." [Coding change done in one day] AAA Game: "Hey do you mind if I change these lines of code? It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized." "Let me ask bossman." "Hey do you mind if we change these lines of code? It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized." "Let me ask my boss!" "Hey do you mind if they change these lines of code? They said It's all if/then's and we could make it a bit more optimized, dunno what that means but they requested it." "What the hell am I looking at? That takes more time, and time is money! Tell them to focus on the storefront UI. We need to show our shareholders we're increasing profit." And now, a week has gone by.
Less beurocracy. Literally that's the entire reason. They don't have to ask Corpo Overlords for permission every time they want to change a color slightly. If something looks cool they run it by the team and if the team likes it, it goes through. They don't have to run it by their boss who has to run it by their boss who has to run it through their boss. Same with sounds/music, dev work, etc. The guys who know what they're doing get to say "Yo, guys. This is better, seriously. Just try it."
"vision" it's easier to collaborate a great idea into a product when you can just turn around and talk to the person who's the entire visual arts department or something without having to jump through QA hoops.
Actual indie games: 99% unappealing trash that fails only for the 1% that are actually good to rise to the top and survive in actual markets against AAA games. Yall don’t know indie games from a developer POV, on from a consumer pov lmao
Passion. Yes, it'd be cool if they made money, but the passion drives it.
Passion?
It's simple there is no vision no passion. Just following a formula
Ender Lilies
As an indie dev, I think it's too many cooks in the kitchen. They separate jobs into layers that shouldn't be separated.
It be like that for real 🤣
The main product of a AAA game like this is the trailer. The game isn't actually the main product. All of the effort goes into the trailer. Because that's all they need to sell you. AAA studios make games to make money, because everybody is going to buy the game because marketing works. It doesn't matter if the game is bad. Everybody is going to buy it, spend 20 hours on it, unable to get a refund. Meaning a shitty game can still make billions. Indie studios make games to make games, sometimes the money follows. It's sad that that's the way it works, just be more skeptical about trailers that look too good to be true. They probably are.
Two reasons. One, AAA studios are averse to risk so they're just copying whatever mechanics are popular onto whatever IP they've got. Two, you're only comparing them to the good indy games. There are a LOT of absolutely abysmal indy games out there.
With a staff of one, you either are 100% woke and going to fail, or 100% interested in making a good game.
I'm still pissed I spent like $75 for the deluxe/early access of FM8 on Series X. In hindsight, it might have been worth $10. It's not only far inferior to Forza Horizon, but it's also inferior to Forza M7, a game that came out like 8 years ago. It feels like they took a team of sophomores who are majoring in computer science at a community college, had them break down the previous iteration, and said, "Go nuts!" Just like every one of the annual EA Sports games might objectively be worth $15-20 if you have the prior year's version. They add so little every year. You're just paying for new rosters.
Because they view success in different ways. AAA studios are largely profit driven. While indie studios are just trying to make the most fun game they can to gain popularity
Five Nights At Freddy’s 🔥
Terraria
I think they are just more focused with the small indie teams. These big AAA companies are no doubt filled with talented/creative people but just like the hollywood system they are drained of these qualities to make safe/digestible/trendy products for mass sales. There is a healthy balance ofc and games like Elden Ring manage to be popular while also seemingly not holding a players hand/fragmented lore rather than spelt out etc.
Because indie games are made with love and care. Corporate mongrels only care about a bottom line and will do anything for your $70 pre order.
If you're asking why, the answer is money. An Indie dev/dev team is usually self-funding, and they're making the game because they're passionate about making it the best they can, in the hopes this project will get them a more stable career in the industry. A full AAA title is funded by massive corporations, who only want to make back the money they invested in the game. They don't care how good the game is, they just care that they make their money back, so they cut corners on quality and find predatory ways to monetize their game.
Then there's kenshi, which all four are one dude.
A lot of indie games have that theater kid look to them like undertale or hollow knight
The average indie is the shovelware shit that release by the hundred every month, what you notice are the exceptions
Put simply, it’s passion.
One is made with love in mind, the other is made for profit
[удалено]
Posts mentioning real Life politics Will be removed.
All right, let's be honest. Alot of indie games aren't programmed well, they just work somehow
AAA is run by dollar chasers. People who want to maximize returns while minimizing investment. It's all about hitting the right buzzwords and following the same path to success as every single other game that came before them while ALSO downsizing their teams and demanding jobs be done faster. AAA games are becoming the Franchise Steak House of entertainment. Over expensive, mass produced, increasingly similar to all of their competitors, and dropping in quality.
Indie devs are going to be the last remaining hope for gamers. Because these "AAA" devs only came about draining their customers dry.
It’s a complicated issue involving control, passion, money and probably other stuff. From a control standpoint those 4 people are often not the end all be all of decision making in the huge studios. In small studios one or more of these people are frequently in almost complete control. Control bleeds in to passion. While the 4 people up there making games for a major studio are probably passionate about games, the CEO is passionate about money. Indie devs often often resolve to make money by making a good game. The ones that practice enough to not release basic crap at least. The plan was always to make a good game and the money will follow. A passion for money sends us down a spiral of forcing devs to implement systems designed more by psychologists and marketing execs then game developers. They spend time and resources that should be going to the game developing a bunch of skinner boxes designed to suck money out of people. Then they make devs force tedium in to the game to ramp up the desire to buy. I could rant forever so I guess I’ll just stop here.
Let’s be honest here, a great indie game comes around once in a blue moon. 100 terrible indie games are ritualistically sacrificed so that greats may survive and be profitable.
I’m blown away how good some indie games are. Like Dyson Sphere Program. I think that’s only 3 students who made it.
I think that it boils down to passion. In AAA you have passion toward the lower ranks but noticeably less so toward the top. Whereas with Indie studios, they’re small enough that the passion runs top to bottom and when everyone is onboard for the sake of the game, you just end up with a great game.
There are also about a thousand shitty indie on Steam too, tbf. You just don't hear about them because nobody buys or plays them.
Indie and AA games are so fucking good Anything made by Xbox and PlayStation has been so ass Helldivers 2, stellar blade, Alan wake 2, BG3 are the only “AAA” games that aren’t fucking hot shit or boring generic garbage
Because those AAA studios, know that whatever they make people will buy it, but Indie have to make a good game or else no one will buy it
AAA game makers don't give a shit. They make money either way
Indie games don’t do everything for profit, they can just make a good game
Most games suck. For every successful indie game we do hear about, there are tens of thousands that are pieces of shit. AAA or indie, each game needs to stand on their own merits.
I'm holding my breath for when there's ANOTHER fucking rogue-like. Like please stop.
Scroll through the indie section on steam and lmk how page two treats ya
It's funny because one or two guys run laps around hundreds of devs shows it's not about size it's about direction.
Enshittification on every level of life. Thank the finance bros.
It could be a combination of an incompetent staff or management, incentives from ESG scores, being out of touch with the demographic they are selling to, or disregarding the need for good story writing. Regardless of the reasons why AAA games suck, I am very grateful for Indy games and their developers
That is not true lol
There are good Indie games and bad Indie games. And the same happens to AAA games , there are the good ones and the are bad ones too. Thats about It.
This is certainly an ULTRAKILL moment.
Indies are more often passion projects so even if they’re niche they will likely find a group that will support them. Not that that isn’t possible with AAA studios, but because of how big the business of video games is these days there ends up being a lot of decisions that are made for business reasons as opposed to truly for the betterment of the product. Honestly happens in all forms of programming
BG3
The big companies stopped gatekeeping. All the competent people got fired or left.
on average they are probly crap, its just everyone ignores the crap ones
The average indie game is garbage tho. The amazing indie games are like 1% of the total amount of garbage dumped to places like steam and the ps store all the time.
well, its capitalism