Do gamers ACTUALLY want smaller budget games?

[IcaroRibeiro]

firebush03 said:

IcaroRibeiro said:

I've always found this argument against big budget games one of the most stupid internet discourses gamers ever created. And gamers are by far the worst at creating the most stupid and dumb narratives among all other entertainment niches, so that's something

The thing is: Some design choices inherently needs bigger budgets to work. If you don't want to expend big money, don't make games that needs money to make. It's like when someone decides to create a movie. If you want a big epic sci-fi movie of course you will need shit tons of money on production to pull it off. A familiar drama? You can create a very high quality one with less than a million dollars

It's really not a "stupid internet discourse." The bigger the budget, the bigger the risk; the bigger the risk, the safer the dev studio will be. Calling on studios to reduce budgets is another way of saying that we want games built on risky, experimental concepts. We want more The Legend of Zelda: Echoes and Wisdom and DKBananza; less SpiderMan 2, Concord, and...whatever the most recent CoD was. Additionally, if you want to curb the growing cost of gaming, then smaller, less ambitious projects is the way forward.

Echoes of Wisdom is pretty mid. It would still be mid even if it had 500 million budget

But in other hand, you cannot pull off a new Flight Simulator or Horizon without proper workforce

I'm not saying every game needs to be a GTA, just like not every movie needs to be a new Avatar. But there isn't anything inherently wrong with neither. If you're confident you can pull a great and ambitious game, then go for it. Avatar itself was special because it had a amazing director who believe 3D could enhance the cinematic experience. Story wise the movie is as basic and shallow as a movie can be, but I still admire James Cameron for his vision. You can say it was a movie made with extreme care instead of just wasting money on mindless CGI 

But regardless, Pokemon is the most uneventful and uncreative gaming IP in this industry even with extremely low budgets for an AAA game. Read: Smaller budgets doesn't mean more creative or risk games