Yoshida: I don't understand people who only want AAA

[Dr.Henry_Killinger]

Skidonti said:

vivster said:

Skidonti said:

vivster said:
Indies are only successful because there are not enough AAA games.

No, they are successful becuase they are fun, innovative, cheap, and can stand to serve a much smaller market than a hundred million dollar AAA game requires just to turn a profit. I saw you mention it would be cool if 5 AAA games released a month... which just can't happen. The industry can't sustain that. The development would be too intensive and the customers would not be there for that many games, flops would be all over the place and almost no one would turn a profit.

It's hypothetical of course. Just like "Consoles would be less popular if everyone could afford a monster PC and be savvy enough to use it on a tv."

Indies are a compromise just like consoles are. There is nothing you can't do in a AAA game that you could do in an indie game and I'm pretty sure that all indie developers would love to have more funds to boost their game.

If we had  the opportunity to choose from as many AAA games as we wanted, there would be no need for indies as all the variety would be there.

I just think this separation is silly. Indie games are not inherently more fun or innovative. The only difference between them and AAA is the budget which shifts the constraints. While indies have presentation and content constraints, they do have absolute creative freedom. It's the other way around with AAA. With enough money in the market there would be no difference. Indie games would have bigger budgets and no constraints and AAA would have more creative freedom as a failure of a game wouldn't end a company.

Okay, in the hypothetical land where we can spend infinite money on our work and still live comfortably maybe AAA games would rule, but I still think there are other flaws in this completely impossible scenario.

I like playing Tetris. I like playing Tetris a lot. What value is added to my game of Tetris when the development budget rises from a few thousand dollars to $50 million dollars? Now my games of Tetris can be interrupted by Hollywood cutscenes and be officially scored by John WIlliams with narration by Morgan Freeman? That money adds no value to my game. For a more indie example, replace "Tetris" with "Super Hexagon".

Spending more money on something doesn't make it better. Bloated budgets often create bloated games. Some types of games are inherently low budget and cannot be improved by massive budgets.

Additionally, a game can have an intentionally low budget by artistic intent. For an example from another medium, do you think people that really enjoy creating chiptune music would, if suddenly provided with infinite money, take their chiptune melodies and get the London Symphony Orchestra to record them instead?

If I like playing the cheap and simple to produce game of chess, is my game improved if I spend millions coating the board in jewels and ivory?

Oh my god I love Super Hexagon. its basically pure gameplay, even the audio and video are there to simply complement the gameplay.