Dont care for how long or short, how big or small the budget of a game is.

Can only speak for myself, but many of my favourite games in recent year were small to medium sized; Turbo Overkill, Vampire Survivors, Sniper Elite, Dusk, Prodeus, Nikoderiko, Astral Chain, Lunistice...

I'm more than fine with AA/indie production values so long as the game is well made and enjoyable.

Do I want games with smaller budgets?
I do not care. The budget of a video game or any piece of media is none of my concern. My only concern is if the product is good and if it's worth the asking price.

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. I know for a fact that Sony is envious of Nintendo's ability to have gotten away with $40-60 NSW games on a $200-350USD system up until 2025.

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 

I kinda miss the static background art isometric 3D games....
Like the old FF games.

I think everything being open world, has hurt the games industry at large.

Also budget and dev time doesn't always indicate quality.
Look at something like Expedition 33.
Alot of AAA game studios are just extremely wasteful of resources.

GaaS and those games full of 'dlc' are the problem, not the budget.

I don't play AAA games anymore because they either feel samey or totally lack vision apart of one from the marketing department, and are just trend-chasing without any imagination of their own. That's simply not for me who grew up in the 90's with so many different games that simply didn't feel as ripping each other off and all wanted to be unique in their mechanics or gameplay instead of just changing the coat of paint.

Hence why for the last 15 years I only play retro/indie/Nintendo because those are still different and actually have some imagination and vision.

Some indies sell millions,soo yea