Triple A vs Indie Games

[Lotus Victoria]

Hello champions, good to see you all.

So, I've been thinking: As much as I love the triple-A stuff, they're slowly becoming expensive repetitive uninspired messes. They hype too much, show too little, and when we get our hands on the final product, it's nothing like the trailers.

On the other hands, I love indie games as well, but for each Transistor or Dust: An Elysian Tail, we have 3211 zombie shooters or "old school 8bit platformers" that aren't old school, just outdated.

This leads me to the question:

Do you prefer Triple-A games, or Indie Games? And why?

Lately, I've been playing a lot more indie games, and the last triple-A title that gave me chills was Doom 2016.

And you?

[endersblade]

I'm getting tired of Steam getting buried in garbage 8-bit 'retro' Indie games. It's getting old. I much prefer huge AAA games over the dime-a-dozen Indies we keep getting buried with.

[Blueobelisk]

I judge a game by itself, not it's developer. I have no preference.

[Chinese Bootlickers]

Neither. I miss mid-sized studios.

[potis]

There is a problem in both ways.

Triple-A titles know that can they sell a lot for minimal cost of production so you get deteriorating games over a period since they know they will eventually make triple that despite barely changing anything, AC/CoD examples.

Or they take too long to release and get something amazing, Witcher examples.

Indie games are usually just an attempt from a low-end developer to make some extra cash along with his daily job, so its either complete shit scam quality, or something good that should have bad more money to become something amazing.

[I Push Buttons]

Kind of both, but I lean towards AAA.

One of my most played games on Steam is an Indie title, Terraria, and I love that game... But usually Indie game's aren't on my radar at all and I am entirely hesitant to buy early access games.

I am usually fine with buying AAA games if they are genres I like and look interesting. It is a safe bet I will get my money's worth, in my opinion... Even from games I am not entirely fond of...

ME: Andromeda as a recent example... I hated the story and was disappointed in almost everything about the game... But I still played it for upwards of 100 hours and still enjoyed myself a good portion of the time (with regard to gameplay and such), just not overall; so I don't regret dropping $47 on it. A game would have to be extremely unplayable, broken, AND bad for me for me to feel ripped off... And I just don't expect that from a AAA.

The worst offenders in recent memory were like AC Unity or the Sim City reboot and the like, and even those were still playable, just filled with bugs/instability; which were later fixed.

[Aoyi]

I just like a good game. I wouldn't say that all indie games are better than the triple A titles. There are some awesome triple A titles (Zelda: Breath of the Wild) out among the dozen Call of Duties out there. Indie games tend to be easier on my wallet, but I'll judge the individual game rather than just say all indies are better or all triple A's are better.

[Pull My Finger]

"Indie" isn't a valid classification IMO, because it could mean anything, and is not indicative of a game's quality in any way. An "indie" developer could be anything from solo-flying hacks and wannabes over small-sized teams of dedicated, talented young people to independently backed ex-"AAA" devs. As such, an indie game could be a total gem, or an amateurish piece of garbage.

However, I tend to be more interested in true quality indie games than assembly line products from AAA studios. Mainstream gaming to me is horrid for the most part - I don't have the slightest interest in it. Most of what I see is incredibly soulless, uncreative, contrived, mundane and a bunch of fluff. I've totally grown out of it.

[Shinzai]

I like a lot of AAA games, Horizon, Prey and The Surge come to mind instantly of late, for example. However, I would say I easily put vastly more time and have more interest in indie games, recent examples being Everspace, Diluvion and Flinthook.

The faux-retro style of a lot of 2D indie games really has me hooked too. There's something about the modern day 16-bit renaissance that I truly love. To add to this, the game I'm next looking forwards to the most is actually the Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap remake. I /loved/ the original and can't wait to experience it again, though with updated graphics and preferably on PC.

[Spiral Mage]

I lost faith in "Triple-A" companies a long time ago for the most part.
I only buy indie games nowadays.

Those creators are still making games for the fun and passion of it,
and as a result, they churn out some pretty good stuff.

Sure, alot of it is 8/16-bit style but going into myself, the problem is making complex stuff is very hard, especially if you're working alone. But the 8/16-bit style is something you can realistically do, and can be used to bring just about any vision to life, so it's little surprise it's being used as heavily as it is.

It helps that my first game console was the NES and my fondest memories of gaming were the SNES.
So this style is also just nostalgia for me and doesn't bother me in the least bit.

There's an early access indie game right now that is a giant mess of everything and it's so much fun to play with. It's built to let you do pretty much anything you can think of to complete missions.
Characters all have unique tools, special abilities, etc. So you can come up with alot of ways to approach a situation and just about idea you have, should realistically work. Poison people, bribe them, recruit help, shoot people, blow stuff up, sneak in without being seen. You can pretty much try just about anything.

Bypassed an entire heavily guarded building by punching out a window and throwing a grenade into the room where the explosives were. Blast took out half the building and my objective in the ensuing mayhem. Mission complete!

I've spent hours and hours playing an indie shooter because while the graphics were .. a little plain, even by most retro game standards, it was on sale so I couldn't pass it up. I quickly realized appearances were not everything here and that I didn't have to wait this long out of uncertainty. The creator has alot of clever ideas on how to make a shooter chaotically fun.

Some indie devs even revived several of my favorite games from when I was a kid.

The fact many of them are 1/3rd the cost of Triple-A repeated trash makes throwing those games aside even easier.
However, you still have games like Diablo III, so sometimes there's a truly quality game worth it from a big company.

But mostly, not really. I got tired of being suckered by "Triple-A" companies.
They just want to make money.
Indie devs make games out of passion and the desire to make truly fun games.
(Most of the time, anyway, there's some bad eggs in there for sure.)
Some of them worked for major companies and committed suicide money-wise to strike out on their own,
to create their own vision and make something meaningful, rather than being a tiny part in a machine that
was just making (insert name here) #6 or something.

[Jtbrig7390]

I Prefer games, doesn't matter if they are indie or AAA.

[Tech614]

There is good and bad in both.

Albeit probably more on the bad side in the "indy" category as of late.

- - - Updated - - -

I like a lot of AAA games, Horizon, Prey and The Surge come to mind instantly of late, for example. However, I would say I easily put vastly more time and have more interest in indie games, recent examples being Everspace, Diluvion and Flinthook.

The Surge is definitely NOT AAA.

It's almost like people forgot AA is a thing.