Scoobes said:
If your thinking short-term, then they're not hugely important. They're a nice additions to your PC or console.
Mid to long-term however, they're essential to the survival of the industry.
AAA budget games are becoming too risky to innovate. We have publishers like Ubisoft re-using mechanical formulas in all their games and development of AAA games has become an exercise in ticking all the right boxes to fulfil current mainstream desires.
The industry needs indie developers to innovate, for some to grow and become mid-level, mid-budget developers and some of them to further develop into the AAA studios of tomorrow. We're already beginning to see some indie titles hyped as much as AAA titles e.g. Project CARS, Minecraft (OK, it's already huge) and No Man's Sky.
Without indie games and devs this industry would die. |
Pretty much this. There's really a growing void that indies need to fill unless you just want to continue down the path that results in a constant stream of HD remasters between your new AAA titles that come out every 2-3 years.
There's also the imminent collapse of AAA studios. They keep becoming bigger and grander to the point that one misfire can gut a company. The situation is becoming obscene. For instance, Dark Souls vs Tomb Raider. From Software heralded Dark Souls a success with 3 million sold whereas Tomb Raider was called a massive flop after selling more. It's because these games are made with unrealistic expectations and budgets and they must sell like CoD or Pokemon to break even. It's only a matter of time until someone like Ubisoft goes Shenmue and breaks themselves.
Hell Ubisoft and EA are probably going to fall the hardest. Ubi uses the same tropes for every AAA game they release and when the drooling masses finally get tired of it, the fall will be fast and hard. At least FPS games add to their enjoyment by having a primary focus on multiplayer instead of the same stale story as its main focus. A main character who was wronged must use his superior _____ abilities to get revenge and fight the man in a very plastic open world setting with unbalanced combat, wrote Ubisoft every time ever.
