You can't blame rockstar for being succesfull. It's the crowd that doesn't ask for other experiences and keeps on buying what they know.

It's like all these tv-talent shows, it's mindnumbingly stupid and people keep on watching them.

Hell, 30 years ago the news wouldn't report anything about a tv show and now they are headlining news about xfactor and shit... It's the public that eats that shit, blame the public.

I´ll make this short: I agree with your point-of-view.

Unfortunately, the western videogame industry today is just about it: big AAA titles focused on stories full of crime and war.

We can expect from now on lots of games similar to GTA.... as we saw in past years lots of games similar to CoD. Maybe that´s all we will find on next-gen consoles.

And that won´t help videogame journalism to be finally taken seriously by the media and society. Videogame players will continue to be seen like a bunch of teenagers trying to find some adulthood through those type of games.

No wonder the industry is sinking slowly year after year.

So it's bad for the industry because it's so good? I'm way more optimistic. Gta V is another game which drives the industry forward.

cause they're fantastic games so I'm glad they do fund it.  I mean I'm still buying Puppeteer just like I bought Sly.  Also I think this is why Sony games have legs because a lot of times they're great with no advertisement.  Hardcore fans buy them then people play them and are impressed and maybe buy them or get them for someone.  I know that I've been personally responsible for selling 5 copies of Sly 4 because I simply told people it existed and showed them a trailer.  They didn't know it was coming out but loved the PS2 ones.  I got 3 of my friends to try Heavy Rain as well and they all loved it just like me (admittedly I didn't give it a chance till it was $30 because I was skeptical of QTE based gameplay).

I'm not sure why people think this. AAA games have higher production value and can distract from their flaws with bells and whistles and sheer bombast. Indie games can't hide their flaws with sheer sensory overload, so they tend to be more mechanically sound.

Disagree with basically everything.
GTA V is almost single handedly saving the industry this year (slightly exaggerated of course).

that's pretty much a narrow minded view you have there. I don't think you give people enough credit. I for one love GTA and I also love smaller games,like ducktales and other various smaller games. How about making a game that doesn't suck,then people will buy it. Do some games get overlooked,sure they do,but you can say the same thing about movies and any other kind of art/cinema. That's just the competitive world that we live in. Smaller and mid level games can be successful,if the game is good and you market it right.

In my opinion, I think annual AAA releases are the ones that are making it difficult for new intellectual properties and AA/mid-level development. The average consumer can only buy so many games in a year, and when a few of their purchases are taken up by games like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, or their preferred sports game, it leaves less room for the consumer to risk his or her purchases with new intellectual properties and smaller games.

In contrast, it has been several years since Grand Theft Auto IV, so the fans of their games have had time in between entries to spend their money on other games. Obviously each GTA still leaves a massive impact on the industry, where other releases get swallowed up around the same time frame (persevere Puppeteer!), but certain franchises have been doing that every single year.

Ultimately, the consumers are the ones deciding the success of these annual titles, so it's not like we can really blame the companies for banking off of it. At the same time, who am I to judge what people like, especially when many of my friends enjoy games like Call of Duty or Madden. Even I have a guilty pleasure for NBA 2K, although I've managed to restrict myself to buying only two entries during the past generation.

I like this post very much. Seems like a nice perspective.

Nowadays, developers make a game about a butterfly and call it indie art. Rockstar took much bigger risks than that and it paid off.

Why single out GTAV? The whole AAA game industry could be implicated here.