Are AAA Titles Killing The Gaming Industry?

[DevilRising]

I'm not sure I'd say "killing", no.

But there is an inarguable fact that it's absolutely HURTING the games industry. Look at companies like THQ, Midway, Factor 5, Free Radical, etc. that have all gone out of business because overly expensive games they've made didn't make enough money in sales. Back in the SNES era, I'm quite sure that there were games that could sell 20k or even less, and still be considered a "success", because games back then didn't cost nearly as much to make. Now you have shit losing money even after selling a couple million copies. That's fucking ridiculous.

And even if sales and company financials weren't a factor, the more important issue is, this whole "AAA" blockbuster game phenomenon, has homogenized gaming. The "try to make games as much like a Hollywood film as we can" deal has been going on since the PS2 generation, but they've only gotten worse about it more recently. Now it seems every game has to have Hollywood quality special effects (or as close as they can get to that), actual Hollywood name actors doing the voice acting (which, quite frankly, is completely unnecessary), big sweeping Hollywood style orchestrated soundtracks, etc. etc. etc.

And while there is nothing at all INHERENTLY wrong with trying to make a cinematic, story-driven game, I have always personally felt that trying to make what basically amounts to "playable movies" is and has been the wrong direction for gaming to go in, for years. I personally do not want, and have very little interest in shiny, "cinematic" games with a glut of QTE sequences. I don't want my gaming reduced to pressing a couple buttons while I watch cut-scenes. And while no, that isn't ALL some of these games are, there is also an awful lot of that going on, and it gets rather tiresome.

To me, the most valueable and important element to a video game, has never changed, not once, since Pong back in the early 70s. Gameplay. If a game plays great, everything else is secondary. Great graphics, a good story, a great soundtrack, online modes, all that stuff can certainly be nice. But they are all FAR less important than whether or not the game is actually enjoyable to PLAY. If a game plays like shit, I don't care how HHD the graphics are, or that Brad Pitt is voicing the main character, or that the game has a really "deep, compelling story". It still plays like shit, and nothing can change that. And yes, minus the Pitt part, I've seen/played far too many games like that, and it is an ever growing trend, where gameplay and game mechanics quality are a secondary afterthought to those other things.

To me that's just wrong. And to me, a an awful lot of those "AAA" games seem to embody that. Some of them play great, yes. But not enough of them. And regardless, so many of them are just turning gaming into what Hollywood is: a hit factory. They try to make sequels to games that have sold a lot, or make games LIKE other games that have sold a lot, and in the process have bled quite a lot of the fun and creativity out of game development. They are just creating products to sell now, instead of actually trying to make good, inventive and fun video games. That isn't to say that gaming hasn't always needed to sell well to continue onward. Of course, it's a business. But just because it's a business, doesn't mean that you can't still actually put some effort into making something that breaks with convention, that was meant to be fun, not just to sell the most millions possible. And gamers are every bit as much to blame in this as the big studios, because they are the ones that rush out to Gamestop and pre-order the next CoD, the next Uncharted, the next Tomb Raider, the next Final Fantasy (if you even want to call them that anymore), the next Grand Theft Auto, the next Battlefield, the next Halo, the next Assassin's Creed (or now Watch_Dogs), etc. etc. etc.

If you ask me, while I do still like and appreciate companies like Nintendo, Atlus, Way Forward, Vanillaware, etc., I will also say that "thank God for indie developers" isn't too far off either.