Why is there such a lack of AAA games?

[Arlon]

Voice-actors, set pieces, asset creation and mocap. It also does not help when you make teams of 100+ people that all live in California. Anyway, AAA can die for all i care.

[Vargur]

I'm just waiting for Far Cry 4, GTA 5 and Civilization in space.
Because reasons.

Why possibly hurt a sale they could get from someone who buys and hates the game, as opposed to someone who plays a Demo, hates it and never buys it.

pretty much all it comes down too.

And they'll get a lot more bad PR from someone who actuallly bought that game than from someone who downloaded it for free..

[Puupi]

"AAA Game" used to mean something. Doesn't mean shit anymore.

See what you did there?

[Hraklea]

I have no idea what you're talking about. The PS3-Xbox360 generation has a huge amount of good games.

[Stir]

also tke into account graphics. I mean: Higher demands mean more work hours. Obviously. A 40 poly asset takes a lot less time to make than a 4000 poly asset.

[Shemsu Hov]

"AAA Game" used to mean something. Doesn't mean shit anymore.

$$$ games makes more sense now a days. $10,000,000 for the game, and $500,000,000 for the advertising. At least the indie dev movment is doing good. A lot of people seem very content with non-greedy devs who don't just set their eyes on the pay cheque

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I'm just waiting for Far Cry 4, GTA 5 and Civilization in space.
Because reasons.

http://g2g.amplitude-studios.com/Games/Endless-Space

One of the best games I've played in a while. I think they improved the AI in the latest expansion as well.

[Puupi]

http://g2g.amplitude-studios.com/Games/Endless-Space

One of the best games I've played in a while. I think they improved the AI in the latest expansion as well.

Endless Space was fun. Didn't last for long for me though. Played it a week, was a blast. Maybe I should pick it up again

[Vargur]

Endless Space was fun. Didn't last for long for me though. Played it a week, was a blast. Maybe I should pick it up again

Then you should give Distant Worlds a try....

[Deleted]

$$$ games makes more sense now a days. $10,000,000 for the game, and $500,000,000 for the advertising. At least the indie dev movment is doing good. A lot of people seem very content with non-greedy devs who don't just set their eyes on the pay cheque.

Sorry what? The indie devs is a very wide definition, and the last couple of years several indie devs have throw the garbage of all garbage out there just to make a few bucks.

[Stir]

$$$ games makes more sense now a days. $10,000,000 for the game, and $500,000,000 for the advertising. At least the indie dev movment is doing good. A lot of people seem very content with non-greedy devs who don't just set their eyes on the pay cheque

Developers do not make the call on marketing or investment. Seriously. They just do the developing.
The direction, marketing, business model and release times/deadlines are all determined by the publishers. Take your ire to who deserves it.

[Deleted]

What does triple A stand for?

[Vargur]

What does triple A stand for?

Alcoholics' Anonymous Activities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_Gaming_industry

[Bullettime]

As an addendum to this:

Big companies don't want to spend the money or take the time to develop a long-lasting AAA game.
Small companies don't have the time or the money to develop a long-lasting AAA game.

So we're kinda screwed. Big companies shit out crappy games which compete in the same market as a small company's heart and soul project, which kills the small-producer market and makes us dependent on big companies who don't give a shit about what we want.

Basically this. For the big companies, it's more profitable for someone like Activision to launch this year's crappy Call of Duty than it is to develop a masterpiece of a game that may or may not be a sales hit. They can just reuse the same engine for another year, slap together a 4 hour single play, and just create some new maps but sell 10 million copies.

Meanwhile, small companies compete directly with these games and simply don't have the budgets to be able to deliver on some new groundbreaking game that they may be envisioning.

We're at a point where it largely feels like the game market is split between smaller scale indie level games and the yearly rehashes from the big guys. There's little middleground. There's obviously a few that don't fall into this category, such as releases last year of The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite but mostly they seem to be the exception.

[Reeve]

According to the piracy thread (poll)we had recently. More people pirate their games then don't. (At least of the mmo c community)

Seriously tho. Who dosnt pirate games? Lol
How do you know if it's gonna suck before losing 60$

I don't. I buy the games, sometimes they suck, just like I buy lots of stuff and sometimes it sucks. I don't go to a restaurant, steal my dinner, and then consider afterwards whether or not it was worth paying for. I don't go to see a musical at a theatre, sneak in the back door, and consider dropping by the box office to pay for a ticket if I liked it.

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$$$ games makes more sense now a days. $10,000,000 for the game, and $500,000,000 for the advertising. At least the indie dev movment is doing good. A lot of people seem very content with non-greedy devs who don't just set their eyes on the pay cheque

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http://g2g.amplitude-studios.com/Games/Endless-Space

One of the best games I've played in a while. I think they improved the AI in the latest expansion as well.

Europa Universalis is great for a strategy game too, if you have the patience to learn the totally non-intuitive mechanics.

[Krolikn]

Games cost more and take longer to make now than they did back then.

[-aiko-]

The mods asleep?

[OneSent]

Because nowadays, it's all about quantity, not quality. And that doesn't just apply to the video game market - it's in everything!

If a game developer company knows people are going to buy it's product regardless (due to the name or whatever), then why would that developer expend the extra time and effort to make it the best product it can be? It's an opportunistic mindset, and we fall for it every time.

If they can get away with it, they'll do it. And we encourage them to keep doing it every time we buy their products.

So long as we continue to spend our money, they'll continue to release half-assed games. Even if it's a reputable developer known for quality in the past, most of these companies are just profiting off of their name or previous successes.

But yet they still churn out new garbage, year after year, while charging you full price for mediocrity. And like the addicts we are, we suck it all up like famished zombies.

[Deleted]

AAA games?

Like... "Thank you for calling triple A." Those types of games?

Oh, right. It's an American expression.

[oxymoronic]

It's been a while since Activision squatted and shat out another Call of Duty.

I guess you could consider CoD AAA cause of it sales mark but the game itself is a really simple fps... hardly triple A to anybody I know...

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This is exactly why people pirate, they pirate to demo the game, if it is good often the real thing is brought. Want to slow piracy? Offer demo's again, people will often prefer to download a quick demo direct from the company website than go to the trouble of downloading a whole torrented game and cracking it (and running the risk that goes with piracy). Not offering people a bite of the pie tells me you know your pie is not that good.

tried telling my weed man that and he wasn't hearing me so i switched up... he sad now cause i dont return his calls

[Darksoldierr]

Do people still pirate games?

I don't believe it's as popular as it was about 10 years ago.

I dont buy Single Player games, the last two (Darksiders 2, ME 3) were both terrible, never again