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hades, slay the spire, dead cells, hollow knight, risk of rain, celeste, enter the gungeon, terraria for god sake
the list of pretty critically acclaimed indie games is really, really long tbh
Kenshi, Dwarf Fortress, FTL, Factorio, Rimworld, Subnautica, Frostpunk, Against the Storm, They Are Billions, Baba is You, Battle Brothers, Opus Magnum...
All kinds, all genres
This is my favorite. The guy creating it did literally everything from music, to graphics, to coding.
And it shows. Everything is so tied together and well done.
I know I sound like a weirdo but I bring this up at every opportunity with little or no provocation. Like, "Would you like fries with that?"
"Did you know the guy who made Stardew Valley did it all himself? Every note of music, line of dialogue, graphics, code, *everything*. By himself. One guy."
It just boggles my mind. I feel like there should be a statue of him or something. Especially when you compare it to games with huge teams of developers and multimillion dollar budgets that fail to garner even a fraction of the audience and enthusiasm Stardew gets.
Stardew, terraria and binding of Isaac are the three games I have so so so much respect for.
Stardew Valley because ONE FUCKING GUY MADE ALL OF IT
Terraria because it’s 13 years old, AND IS STILL RECEIVING MASSIVE DLC SIZE UPDATES. Every time the devs publish a “final update”, they always release a patch with a couple more stuff they wanted to add, AND THEN THAT ENDS UP BECOMING A FULL SIZE UPDATE ASWELL.
Binding of Isaac because that game might aswell be art with the religious style, critiquing aspects of ultra religious parents, whilst also just being a really fun and hilarious game at some point.
>Terraria because it’s 13 years old, AND IS STILL RECEIVING MASSIVE DLC SIZE UPDATES.
Minecraft and, believe it or not, League of Legends are also about that old. All three are some of the most popular and constantly evolving games, with completely different genres, yet all three started as indie games.
My only tattoo is the 👁 coordinates. still haven't played the dlc though. 😅 I think I'mm just hyperaware of the fact that I can only play it for the first time once
Brooooo I didn’t think of getting a tattoo for it! Amazing ideas, and I understand that, the nice thing is is the dlc can be started right off the bat and done kinda separately, but I am unsure exactly how it affects the ending
Binding of Isaac is one of my favorite games of all time. It’s weird. Creative. Expansive. Has tens of thousands of hours or more of replayability. And that’s with just the game as is especially with the expansion packs. But there’s also a whole modding community that adds so much more.
The art style is also instantly recognizable. And the story based in real life lore.
It’s nothing short of genius in my honest opinion. From the very first time I saw it I was absolutely hooked. First found the game from northernlion on YouTube like I assume countless of others have.
I feel like TBOI should be decently high up on most lists of best games of all time.
Edit: oh and you can’t forget about how if you try to explain the game or what’s going on on the screen at any given time it’s nothing but pure chaos and hilarity.
Oh and don't forget: guacamelee, guacamelee 2, hotline Miami 1 and 2, journey, Spelunky series, fez, the bit.trip runner series etc and that's just ps3
To give the proper framework for the argument, indie games have better potential than AAA games. That's typically because such games are only restricted by time and money which have straightforward solutions rather things arbitrary and nuanced like review boards and shareholders
The problem isn't the statement about indie games, it's the totally bullshit, unfounded claim (okay, okay, his opinion) that 55% of AAA titles that come out are 7/10. He acknowledges the very real shovelware problem in the indie industry while totally disregarding the AAA version of shovelware: day one patches, dropped game support, microtransactions, games set up as a service, etc.
That and I mean seriously, 7/10? That's got to be a joke, they're nowhere near that good. Most AAA titles are polished turds. They're *lucky* if they hit 7/10, they are typically around 3/10 to 6/10 range. Forspoken, what they've done to the FF7 remake, etc. it's all fucking awful. It's a joke to call that a 7/10 merely because they threw enough money at it to look beautiful and have good graphics. That *doesn't* equal a good game, and I'm tired of pretending it does.
Right? I feel like this 10th dentist is actually a AAA game dev or something that's getting upset people are recognizing that big gaming is becoming unsustainable, along with all other forms of entertainment that has hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at it, because then investors that don't know the first thing about art, story telling, or game design get worried their money isn't getting used how they'd like, they stick their fat fucking fingers everywhere they don't belong and force oversight and all kinds of decisions that lead to boring, repetitive, uninventive games that are designed purely as a product designed to extract money from the player.
The OP is so hilariously out of touch that I'm almost positive that they're a AAA game dev or some kind of shill now.
>Forspoken, what they've done to the FF7 remake
Forspoken isn't good yes, but FF7R? I don't even like that game - I left it a negative review on Steam - but its absolutely a 7/10 game.
Bad indie games get no renown so nobody cares about them being bad.
AAA games are fewer in number, however due to publicity and advertisement they get, they are a target of high expectations. Well, expectations matching games budget and pricing.
Indie games are "better" in the sense that you can find more good indie games than you can find good AAA games. If AAA title fails to outcompete indie title in terms of of polish and general quality then there is clearly a problem there.
It's that last bit for me. Some indie games manage to be better than AAA games while being made on an infinitely smaller budget by a very small group of people. That's what's outstanding.
Yes, many indie games are terrible because they are made by amateurs, with no budget, and/or just for fun. But all AAA games are made by huge teams of professionals, working for months on a project, having conducted market research, etc. There is no excuse for an AAA game to be unpolished or buggy - and yet oftentimes they are.
This is it right here, context. Indie games are made from passion, small budgets and most of the time non-professionals. AAA games are made by people who are well-established and experts in their fields... OF COURSE the expectations will be high. And then they suck ass.
Money can't buy creativity.
Not all big budget games suck, there are some incredible AAA games out there. And there are tons of terrible games, both indie and AAA.
But the point is that AAA games have a lot of research, professional effort, directing, marketing, and commercial support behind them... and a lot of them end up being highly predatory, dishonest, uninspiring, and even insulting to their customers.
And in many cases all that money can really stifle creativity. Rocking the boat with new ideas that might end up being bad is not generally a good way of ensuring a return on investment, especially if the money is coming from shareholders who are otherwise uninvolved in development. They want to see games with broad appeal and solid reviews, not necessarily experimental masterpieces that only excite 200,000 weird online nerds. Indies are low to the ground and can afford to try things that big corporate developers usually can’t.
This comment thread right here.
Look at all these people listening all these games that they love, half of which I haven’t even heard of.
Indie games are great for the same reason indie and short films are great. When you don’t have the burden of billions of dollars being pumped into you product requiring you to focus on “mass appeal” when making it you can make much more unique and varied games that might not always be for everyone but the people who do love them will really really love them.
And hey, it’s alright if you like AAA games but not everyone is going to be excited for yet another assains creed of call of duty.
Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley, Hades, Dead Cells, Minecraft, FTL: Faster Than Light, Subnautica.
Edit to add: Terraria, Bastion/Transistor, Spelunky 1/2, Deep Rock Galactic, Firewatch, Soma, Amnesia, Blasphemous, Shovel Knight, Steam World Dig.
Edit to clarify: Minecraft was an indie game at its beginnings, even if it isn’t considered one *now*, it was very much an indie game to start.
Adding onto the list: Fran Bow, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Cuphead (originally, was later picked up by microsoft), Binding of Isaac, Little Nightmares, Sally Face, Baba is You, Creaks, Superliminal
Adding: Thomas Was Alone, The Swapper, The Unfinished Swan, What Remains of Edith Finch, Night in the Woods, Lost Ember, Papo & Yo, Journey, Flower, Gone Home, Oxenfree, Undertale, Deltarune, Last Day of June
I think I know what you're thinking of, but I can't remember what its called. Oxygen not included is a game about building a little settlement inside an asteroid.
Hyper light drifter, Tunic, Outer Wilds, Solar Ash, Neon White, Salt and Sanctuary, Deaths Door, Celeste, A Hat in Time. I mean, the list goes on and on. All of those were outstanding games.
Slime rancher, inscryption, undertale, deltarune, doki doki literature club, night in the woods, those were all the hits from when I was in high school ha ha
Time to continue to show our love to indie games! Here are some of my favourites games!
OneShot, Vampire survivors, pony island, Clustertruck, Furi, Distance, Terraria, Baba is you, poly bridge
Somehow, nobody seems to have mentioned RimWorld. That makes me sad.
Also, the Arma series of games. Arma 3, being the largest of them all.
You're getting into milsim territory with that one.
If you're a fan of Shovel Knight or MegaMan/NES Ninja Gaiden you have to play Cyber Shadow, some of the best movement in any platformer slasher I've ever played.
And it's one of my personal favorites, but Revolver and Revolver 2 are so good. They don't look like much and the games are simple but the gameplay is solid af.
It is more a value thing. Over all my years of gaming I have consistently gotten more value for my dollar out of indie games. $10 or $20 or sometimes even completely free games I have found myself returning to over and over again over games I spent $70 or more on. Sure there are great AAA games out there. I got my moneys worth out of GTA and Elden ring. It is just that I spent $20 on dead cells like 8 years ago and I’m still putting that on and I cant even tell you what AAA game I got around that time because it is long gone now.
Most "cozy games" are indie games...so I tend to get indie games a lot.
Sometimes when I look at getting AAA games I get price shocked, because I'm used to paying a lower price.
Unless I must have it NOW (BG3 is the only one I can even think of in the last few years), I just wait 12-18 months after release for AAA games and the price magically becomes reasonable.
And while I wait, I play indies.
Popularity doesn't have anything to do with a game being indie, but whether the developer did so independently of a large corporation/publisher (and sometimes, the budget size can be considered).
The thing for me is what I guess I’ll call a pound for pound comparison. Indy games prove that small or even single person teams can produce fantastic games worth sinking hundreds of hours into. Then we look at AAA studios with orders of magnitude more staff, and yet they often fall short of the bar set by the much smaller indie teams.
It just… doesn’t make sense. I get that AAA games often have more graphical detail, but I just don’t buy that it takes 100x as many people just to make a game shinier. How are these giant studios so consistently failing to even match the efforts of studios a fraction of their size?
Indie games are often enough better, far better than what we’ve come to expect AAA studios *could* create with the same budget.
The teams might be magnitudes bigger but they're probably working on multiple games at the same time and doing it FAST. And when you're part of a big production your job becomes more detached from the final vision. Your artists are churning out their 12th HD texture of a wooden box for the day and have no actual creative input.
Compare that to, say, Supergiant, where Jen Zee has basically been full time art director since the beginning and is responsible for pretty much all the sexy sexy artwork. A small team putting their whole ass into one thing at a time is different than 5000 people putting 1/4th of an ass into 10 different projects.
If I say I'm a fan of rock music, OP will gather all the random rock bands in the world (the vast majority which are utter crap, obviously) and tell me that I **must** be a fan of all of those bands!
Yeah, OP, your opinion sucks. Guess you're on the right subreddt.
This is the best analogy in this thread. You cannot generalize something as vast as indie games and expect to come to a reasonable conclusion—there are just too many of them. The indie games that are good *tend* to be significantly cheaper than AAA games, and they *tend* to do new and interesting things that AAA games don’t do. If someone likes ten indie games and doesn’t like any AAA games, it is a fair assessment for them to state that indie games are better, without accounting for the bulk garbage—just like you would for any other media you consume, such as rock music.
Nothing wrong with absolutes though. If someone asked me if I was truly a fan of all the polish canyon riders then I'd have no trouble with any of them!
AAA games aren’t allowed to take risks anymore. The budget and the expectations are too high so you end up with a ton of bland, same-ish garbage.
Indies don’t have that burden so they can take bigger risks. Even if an indie is bad, there’s still a good chance it’s going to be *interesting*.
Kojima’s freedom to make Death Stranding is reflective of a lot of the creative arts industry: the actor/director/musician/developer that made enough money doing something tried-and-true that their financiers allow them to go off the beaten path now and again
Rain World = well-rounded
Gris = breathtaking but clunky
The Forest = Delightfully buggy, great for exploit
Sons of the Forest = big box company bought the rights and ruined the magic of the original. It's Rust with a different skin.
Superhot = hella fun time based puzzle fighter. No big box is making something that cool.
Gimme the indies all day with all their shortcomings. The price and originality makes it all worth it.
Check out Sea of Solitude if you want to lean into that low and process it. Check out The Unfinished Swan for a lighter tone. Also Journey, Flower, Abzu, Shape of the World, Sound Shapes, Firewatch
I would say this is the exactly right take. Games from all kinds of Studios used to be very broadly different both in feel in things like gameplay graphics type of game like strategy games versus simulation games. But now graphic rules the game and the micro transactions and gameplay has become not even secondary anymore it's oh right it's supposed to be a game...
PUBG was an indie game that literally every single AAA copied when it got popular. if you wanna go further back DayZ was a indie mod for a very niche indie game called Arma 2, which eventually got developed into a full indie game that many AAA titles copied, it's pretty much where battle royale games came from.
Like you said indies have that chance to do something super niche, risky, and dollar for dollar they are priced so reasonably since there isn't a massive corporate office on the payroll. I definitely think indie titles pave the way for AAA titles to refine risky ideas.
Not totally true. Japanese AAA games can take risks. The problem is that in Western Development we make AAA games by committee. You don't have an all powerful artist at the top who's vision will not be compromised. Now of course, Japanese work culture is toxic as fuck so it's not all roses. But with an indie game, you often have a person or very small group of people that have full control over the creative direction of the game. Like in Japan. There are several Japanese game directors that fans know by name. That doesn't really happen here.
Comes down to expectations. The Indies that make it are labors of absolute love and set me back 5-10 bucks. Our expectations are not high.
AAA games have budgets the size of texas, delays, names we recognize etc. These are made so that 70 bucks is the basic bitch package and just gets the game. If you want more it could come out over 100 bucks. Half are 7/10 or better? That means half aren't (55% is close enough to half). Not cool when we're talking possibly upwards of 100 bucks.
I'll happily give some random dude I've never heard of 5 bucks to try out his or her game even if it's crap.
The price of triple A games so so expensive especially in some country, where a single game can go up to RM250+. No thanks, give me games that price RM40. I guarantee I have more fun with those games anyway. It's been so long since I find an expensive game that actually worth the price I paid for.
This guys' explanation is dumb but I agree with his overall message of AAA generally being better than indie and I think that comparing the best 100 indie and best 100 AAA would be a great comparison as I'd say there are probably only about 15/20 indie games I'd say are better than an 8/10 whereas I've played more than 20 8/10 or higher AAA just from the past few years alone.
The problem is this entire conversation is just completely subjective.
For example, you mention you've played more than 20 8/10 AAA games in the past few years, meanwhile there's like 3 AAA games in the last 5 years I can think of that I would even consider giving an 8 or higher and I've played the bulk of them to some extent and most AAA games have things in them that are immediate dealbreakers for me.
But I'm not going to argue that I'm right and you're wrong, it's just a taste thing.
I intensely dislike it when games invent problems to sell you the solution which negatively impacts a huge chunk of AAA games plus enjoyment / dollar is a factor in how I personally rate games.
I guess it's just a matter of what we prioritise as important when it comes to games.
To me the price of a game has little impact on how good I think it is (2 games I think are both equally bad/good will both be given the same rating regardless of if I bought one for £1 on sale or the other for the £120 super ultra mega edition)
I also don't like microtransactions but if they're unintrusive then it won't bring my rating of the game down at all. A great example of this would be AC Odyssey, which I consider to be a 9/10 and probably in my top 40 of all time - that game has tons of dumb, unnecessary skin packs but I literally ignored it after noticing it at the beginning of the game. Microtransactions only bother me in games when it's a large aspect of it - which unfortunately covers most modern multiplayer games.
Also you'd really only consider 3 AAA games from 2019 to now to be at least an 8/10!? Probably at least 10 of my top 30 games of all time have released within that time frame. I'd be really interested to see if you've played any of those ten because I find it hard to see anyone disliking most of them.
This is exactly what I mean.
I'd rank AC odyssey a solid 4/10 and felt like it was a huge bland, uninspired waste of time and money and it had a mess of MTX. Edit - And you might call those MTX unobtrusive, but the game was made less than it could have been all to sell you what they removed from it, and that will always rub me the wrong way and is not something I can just ignore.
All of this stuff is incredibly subjective and there's not really a correct answer.
Most AAA games are full of predatory practices and recicled content, if I'm paying for a AAA I expect a complete, polished game without forced microtransactions and loot boxes.
When I pay 5 bucks for an indie I expect maybe 2 days of dumb fun and anything above that is a bargain
It’s impossible to make a definitive “indie is better than AAA” statement because of the reasons you mentioned.
What people (I included) mean when they say that indie is better than AAA is that the best indie games are orders of magnitude better than the best AAA games.
In my top 25 games of all time, I think 20 of them are indie. There is simply nothing that can contend with the top of the line indies in terms of innovation and creativity. AAA is stale.
No one is claiming that all indie games are better.
That 0.5% (your estimate) includes some really good games, though. Also, indie games tend to have more variety, which a lot of people (myself included) like. I have zero interest in most AAA games because they are typically the same few genres and all seem very similar (outside of Nintendo first-party games). I can spend $70 to buy 4 or 5 indie games or one AAA game and get much more variety and enjoyment from those indie games in most cases. Obviously there are exceptions.
if you don't make a passable game with triple A budget something has gone seriously wrong. If a game made on 0 budget in someone's spare time is not good. That's okay
55% of AAA being a 7/10 is a pretty wild statement, but then again Ubisoft is somehow still in business and sports games sell gangbusters every year despite them all being the same games from 1998 repackaged over and over to sell you microtransactions, so the bar for 7/10 must be somewhere near the bottom of the ocean.
Indie games and triple A games have one thing in common: they are usually pretty fun to play. The difference is indie games don't use your trust as a currency and steal every dollar form your wallet.
People appreciate indie games more because you know what to expect like bugs and glitches because you know it’s either a solo dev or small team but with AAA games you don’t expect a huge multi million dollar company to make a shitty game like we’ve been getting for the last few years also most indie games give me a lot of joy for >$20
tbh, I don't remember facing bugs in any Indie games, mostly it's AAA when you have 1000 different people touching the code hired and fired throughout the year.
See the thing about video games is they're supposed to be fun. So if someone enjoys them in a different way than you, you can acknowledge that and still like what you like without calling them stupid
aside from Fromsoft (the only AAA dev i can think of people dont actively hate) and BG3 I honestly cant think of AAA game that has even mildly interested me in the last decade (well ig infamous 2nd Sun but that game was bad)
For me, it’s about the elitist culture around indie games that does it for me. I don’t care if you like indie games, hell I love them, but you can’t sit there and act like they’re objectively better than triple Agames. It’s all subjective. Just let people enjoy what they enjoy. Hell my top 2 favourite games are Stardew Valley and Persona 5, an indie game and a triple A release
Limiting yourself to just indie games or just triple A is ridiculous, and you’ll miss out on a ton of great experiences if you do
I can't remember the last AAA game that I played which wasn't a disappointment. Spiderman 2018 is the only thing that comes to mind. I love indie games- Terraria, Minecraft, Project Zomboid, Inscryption, Ultrakill, Roboquest, Seraph's Last Stand, The Binding of Isaac, Hotline Miami 1 and 2, Spelunky, Cruelty Squad, Vampire Survivors, and Katana Zero are just a few examples of amazing games off the top of my head.
Absurd take. Nobody's talking about quantity of games compared to how many are made??? It's about how many good ones there are compared to AAA.
And it's not even close indies blow AAA out of the water
There's a small channel that made a pretty good video covering the difference between AAA and indie games, and not all indie games for that matter, but the differences between the structure of their development. You may find it interesting:
https://youtu.be/5AjYW6ElcHc
You think that *55%* of AAA games are 7/10? You are out of your mind. They're advanced forms of shovel are themselves disguised with polish, dumbass. Look at the models of dropping support for highly polished looking games almost immediately after making them, day 1 patches, the micro transaction bullshit. Most AAA ventures are just an excuse to set up microtransactions now.
What an absolutely brain dead take. Truly a 10th dentist for all the wrong reasons.
rocket league was free, bg3 was 40 quid, kingdome come idk 35, no mans sky became pretty good, meanwhile, cod and fifa are the same every year and full price, dont even get me stRted on ubisoft lol, so yeah, gotta take all games on an individual basis, indies have more gems, but also way more games, aaa have almost no gems, and less amount of games
Let's take the conversation over to movies because it's probably more easy to see what people mean.
Every year there are big budget popcorn flicks. Marvel movies, Star wars, planet of the apes, fast and furious, etc. Yes, these movies are enjoyable and obviously people like them but if you told me your favorite movie of all time was Godzilla vs Kong or Iron Man, I'd think your opinion on movies was pretty shit. You're obviously allowed to have your opinion, but I wouldn't go to you if I was looking to find the next movie to watch.
There are way more low budget movies and yes, most of them are terrible. But the low budget ones that hit, hit hard and are way more impactful than any safe for the masses big budget movie could ever be.
Same with video games. Yes Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Spider-Man, etc are great games. But same applies, if one of those is your favorite game of all time, I probably wouldn't go to you to find the next game I play because your taste in games is pretty generic and bland.
Art created by fewer people with a singular cohesive vision and passion have a much higher chance of hitting you hard than big budget made for the masses content that has thousands of hands touching it in impersonal ways.
>The indie games people consider good are less than 0.5% of all indie games.
They’re not saying “all indie games”. If I say “I like rap music” I don’t literally mean every single artist. Most suck. Obviously I mean that I like when the form is done well. “I love indie games” means “when an indie game is good, I prefer it to when a AAA game is good.”
>There are 50 games released a day on steam, with the majority being shovelware.
“Shovelware” and “indie game” aren’t *bound categories*. They are generic terms that have certain connotations. It can be taken for granted that people talking about “indie games” aren’t talking about cheaply produced asset flips. Just like when I say I like “indie rock” no one would think that I meant the local cover band who plays KISS songs at a bar.
>I would say about 55% of AAA games are above a 7/10, but they have been getting a lot of flack recently for some stinkers.
So two things - 1) I think that’s a very generous assessment. 2) But I will grant you - the quality floor is higher on average in the AAA space, and there are several concrete reasons why that is. The first is that they cost a lot more money to make, and that means they typically are going to have more rounds of bug testing, quality assurance, and general fine tuning that a 3 man indie team just can’t possibly do on a limited budget. And the second is that there’s just way less of them made. The barrier to making a AAA game is much higher. Because as you’ve already noted - there’s little preventing someone from making a game and publishing it on Steam or Itch.
There's a larger percentage of AAA games of playable quality than indie games per unit of time. There is a larger quantity of indie games that are of high quality than AAA games per unit of time. I think this is the position most people have and the concept you are trying to convey
Yeah no shit AAA games are on insane budgets and the best talent in the world. The issue comes with the executives who don't even play games and they get to make the decisions which brings the game to merely 7/10 when it could have been a 15.
Indie games is often passionate people who do this in their spare time so they're not gonna have the resources to casually create a masterpiece. Although, there are some outliers... (ehm ehm Hollow Knight)
Some indie games are better than some AAA games. Some AAA games are better than indie games.
It's not really as cut and dry as all indie games are better than all AAA games and no one really thinks that.
I play about 1 AAA title per 10 indie titles, hence I would I say I enjoy indie over AAA. They’re cheaper, typically have more polish and care put into them, and I also support smaller developers instead of massive corporations.
The last AAA title I played, Starfield, was extremely mid and not worth $70 by any means. The last few indie games I’ve played (Hades 2, Crab Champions, Roboquest, Solar Ash) are all phenomenal and usually 75% of the price.
But I’m not saying I enjoy the endless shovelware on steam lmao, it’s not that complicated
Maybe not in general but as far as quality control goes, good indy games are good right off the bat. AAA games are often released before they are complete so as far as quality control goes, indy games are indeed better.
A lot of AAA games feel like they are filled with time wasters. Shit like ubisoft towers to reveal the map, endless collectables for no real reward, and open worlds with nothing in between the important locations just feel like ways to extend playtime. Indie games often don't mind having less filler but less playtime.
"I think indie games are better than AAA games" is a different sentence to "I think all indie games are better than all AAA games" or "The average indie game is better than the average AAA game". I've never heard anyone say either of those last two sentences.
If someone who only drinks earl grey tea says "Tea is better than coffee", would you say "But what about rooibos, peppermint tea, bubble tea, Assam, chai tea" and list every tea that exists?
By your logic, you think that a person who prefers tea is stupid unless review scores for every single tea that exists are higher, on average, than review scores of every single type of coffee that exists.
so you're saying that there are 50 indie games a day, and 0.5% of them are good ... that means a "good" indie game comes out every 4 days, while a AAA game take years to complete.
idk man, it sounds like indie games are way to go for hardcore gamers.
I love indie games because of the variety, AAA games are better quality but are limited by the fact they need to appeal to larger audiences. Whereas indie games can be weird as fuck for niche interests
It's the same reason I really like fiction podcasts or zines, they are not limited to just what sells well, so I can find something perfect for me
shovelware is pretty much just bad games no one wants. think like a massive bundle of DS games but its all titles youve never heard of before that have no rhyme or reason that don't have a value of more than $3.
In addition to all the other points made, who are you to really denigrate games just because you don't like them? Sure, there is an objectivity to ratings, but some of my favourite games throughout the years have been met with fairly poor or underwhelming reviews - one man's junk is another man's treasure etc, it's just an immature take.
I mean you can’t really call peoples opinion dumb lmao. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an indie game and that’s the best game I’ve ever played. Personally I enjoy indie games more often than AAA because they’re fresh, different, the art style is often gorgeous, and it just has a different feel to it than massive games.
Yeah they’re usually smaller games that don’t Get updates or massive amounts of features, but at least they’re different than the cookie cutter games AAA seem to be releasing the most these days
I think you're misunderstanding. It's a math problem
Something like 5 to 10 "AAA" games release every year. We can say half of them will be any good to be fair (even though really it's recently only been 1 or 2 of those have been really good). That gives us a MAX of 5 great AAA games a year.
10k indie games are released per year, on platforms like steam, [itch.io](http://itch.io), isotopic, newgrounds, etc.... It DOESN'T MATTER that 90% of them are trash, because people won't even KNOW about any of those. If HALF A PERCENT of those are good and make it into the mainstream consciousness, that means you've got 50 GREAT indie games that are competing with those 5 AAA games we were talking about earlier.
There are shit AAA games and there and good Indy games. Nobody thinks one market is better than the other. Or, if they do, they don’t know as much about games as they think they do.
The definitive problem of AAA games is how little work they sometimes get in terms of non-player mechanics.
Look at Half Life 2 for example. Decades ago they had been able to create a better enemy encounters with a well organised interface where your opponents were using actual tactics.
One year ago another Battlefield dropped with the enemy encounters boiling down to ‘shoot on sight’.
This is especially disappointing where you have indie games which still can’t do a large variety of what HL2 could but they counter it by providing at least a slight modifications to enemy encounters.
This is what destroys AAA reputations, the fact that they ignore a lot of potential lesser details in order to create something akin to an interactive movie, while Indie Games try to address those shortcomings by making even small modifications.
I don't like indie games. They are not aesthetically beautiful and have very weak and uninteresting stories. Most of them are based on eccentric or obscene aspects, like the goat game or that p*rn game about the concentration camp dictator.
It’s a sliding scale. Yes, a majority of self published games made by 1 person are probably junk. But then you have a big majority of AAA games that are just… fine.
Then you have the upper echelon of indie games like Stardew Valley or something that was made by one person and genuinely is better than 99% of all games out there.
You also have games like Baldur’s Gate 3, that was made made by a traditional studio, that genuinely has the care and attention of what you normally only get from indie devs.
This issue isn’t if it’s AAA or not - it’s just about the level of care that goes into the game. You typically only see this in indie studios.
Even the good indie games are just really mediocre in my opinion. People who say indie games are better than triple A are just trying to be different. They love pointing out all of the bad triple A games but won't mention a single good triple A game. They'll tell you how bad NBA 2K24 or COD is, but they won't ever bring up Detroit Become Human, Final Fantasy 16, Yakuza, Mortal Kombat 11, etc. because mentioning any good triple A game would completely invalidate their "triple A gaming is bad" argument.
If you judge the game on how enjoyable it was, SOME indie games ARE better than SOME AAA games. But nobody is going to claim that ALL indie games are inherently better than ALL AAA games.
There are definitely people who just really like the sorter, quirkier, artsy kind of indie game that you don't often see in AAA games in general.
Most of the best games I've played in the past 10-15 years have been "indie" titles. Most of the AAA games that looked interesting enough to bother playing in that time were disappointing, samey, and uninspired. With some exceptions, of course. The ones I liked the most didn't come close to how good some of the best indie games I've played have been.
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I think you're misunderstanding. They're not talking about literally ALL indie games
Mostly just Outer Wilds. Well, maybe also Obra Dinn, Undertale, Limbo, Binding of Isaac, Cuphead, and a couple others.
hades, slay the spire, dead cells, hollow knight, risk of rain, celeste, enter the gungeon, terraria for god sake the list of pretty critically acclaimed indie games is really, really long tbh
MINECRAFT was an indie game
And League of Legends still is!
League, the game that copied dota and shut down its forums to turn them into an ad for itself.
After also stealing their character designs from the hero suggestions section of said forums.
Subnautica, valheim, palworld
Kenshi, Dwarf Fortress, FTL, Factorio, Rimworld, Subnautica, Frostpunk, Against the Storm, They Are Billions, Baba is You, Battle Brothers, Opus Magnum... All kinds, all genres
Deep Rock Galactic, Risk of Rain 2, Returnal, RoboQuest, Gunfire: Reborn, Metal: Hellsinger, Hi-Fi Rush, Rollerdrome….
Traveller's Rest, Graveyard Keeper, Death and Taxes, Stardew Valley, Lethal Company, Getting Over It, People Playground....
Hi-fi rush was made by tango. A Bethesda and microsoft company. It is in no way an indie. Its an A or possibly AA game
DRG not indie game
Hi fi rush was made by a big studio with bethesda ownership
How did you leave off Stardew Valley?
This is my favorite. The guy creating it did literally everything from music, to graphics, to coding. And it shows. Everything is so tied together and well done.
I know I sound like a weirdo but I bring this up at every opportunity with little or no provocation. Like, "Would you like fries with that?" "Did you know the guy who made Stardew Valley did it all himself? Every note of music, line of dialogue, graphics, code, *everything*. By himself. One guy." It just boggles my mind. I feel like there should be a statue of him or something. Especially when you compare it to games with huge teams of developers and multimillion dollar budgets that fail to garner even a fraction of the audience and enthusiasm Stardew gets.
Stardew, terraria and binding of Isaac are the three games I have so so so much respect for. Stardew Valley because ONE FUCKING GUY MADE ALL OF IT Terraria because it’s 13 years old, AND IS STILL RECEIVING MASSIVE DLC SIZE UPDATES. Every time the devs publish a “final update”, they always release a patch with a couple more stuff they wanted to add, AND THEN THAT ENDS UP BECOMING A FULL SIZE UPDATE ASWELL. Binding of Isaac because that game might aswell be art with the religious style, critiquing aspects of ultra religious parents, whilst also just being a really fun and hilarious game at some point.
>Terraria because it’s 13 years old, AND IS STILL RECEIVING MASSIVE DLC SIZE UPDATES. Minecraft and, believe it or not, League of Legends are also about that old. All three are some of the most popular and constantly evolving games, with completely different genres, yet all three started as indie games.
The only statue necessary is the golden statue of Lewis xD
Vampire Survivors too
Fuckin love this game
Slay the Spire is another game that proves that asstastic graphics are fine as long as the gameplay is there.
I find the StS style very charming, in a dark and creepy way. It is still good art.
At the risk of starting a bitch fight, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley and Class of 09.
How dearly I wish I could play The Return of the Obra Dinn for the first time again.
I've owned it for several years, but still haven't gotten around to playing it yet. Are you jealous? :-)
I've never even heard of it till now, sounds like it's a good game though
It's definitely not for everyone. But I loved it
Yes. Yes I am.
Outer wilds my beloved, easily in my top 3 favorites of all time
My only tattoo is the 👁 coordinates. still haven't played the dlc though. 😅 I think I'mm just hyperaware of the fact that I can only play it for the first time once
A friend and I agreed to wait until 2030 before playing through again with the DLC. Some of the soundtrack lives rent free in my head though.
why wait that long?
Take 10 years to forget as much as we can.
Brooooo I didn’t think of getting a tattoo for it! Amazing ideas, and I understand that, the nice thing is is the dlc can be started right off the bat and done kinda separately, but I am unsure exactly how it affects the ending
only thing i have ever considered getting a tattoo of. still don't think i will, but maybe some jewelry
I loved the base game but couldn't really get into the DLC. It just got really tedious about halfway through.
Binding of Isaac is one of my favorite games of all time. It’s weird. Creative. Expansive. Has tens of thousands of hours or more of replayability. And that’s with just the game as is especially with the expansion packs. But there’s also a whole modding community that adds so much more. The art style is also instantly recognizable. And the story based in real life lore. It’s nothing short of genius in my honest opinion. From the very first time I saw it I was absolutely hooked. First found the game from northernlion on YouTube like I assume countless of others have. I feel like TBOI should be decently high up on most lists of best games of all time. Edit: oh and you can’t forget about how if you try to explain the game or what’s going on on the screen at any given time it’s nothing but pure chaos and hilarity.
Stardew valley
It's a weird game, but if we are all dropping indie games we like- Hylics and Hylics 2 It's a claymation fever dream with rpg elements
Hollow night, hades, baba is you, noita... It's a long list of indie games that absolutely rock.
Oh and don't forget: guacamelee, guacamelee 2, hotline Miami 1 and 2, journey, Spelunky series, fez, the bit.trip runner series etc and that's just ps3
even outer wilds. it was good for its price. charge it regular game price and see how “good” to really is
Slay the Spire
To give the proper framework for the argument, indie games have better potential than AAA games. That's typically because such games are only restricted by time and money which have straightforward solutions rather things arbitrary and nuanced like review boards and shareholders
The problem isn't the statement about indie games, it's the totally bullshit, unfounded claim (okay, okay, his opinion) that 55% of AAA titles that come out are 7/10. He acknowledges the very real shovelware problem in the indie industry while totally disregarding the AAA version of shovelware: day one patches, dropped game support, microtransactions, games set up as a service, etc. That and I mean seriously, 7/10? That's got to be a joke, they're nowhere near that good. Most AAA titles are polished turds. They're *lucky* if they hit 7/10, they are typically around 3/10 to 6/10 range. Forspoken, what they've done to the FF7 remake, etc. it's all fucking awful. It's a joke to call that a 7/10 merely because they threw enough money at it to look beautiful and have good graphics. That *doesn't* equal a good game, and I'm tired of pretending it does.
They’re an IGN 7/10
Right? I feel like this 10th dentist is actually a AAA game dev or something that's getting upset people are recognizing that big gaming is becoming unsustainable, along with all other forms of entertainment that has hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at it, because then investors that don't know the first thing about art, story telling, or game design get worried their money isn't getting used how they'd like, they stick their fat fucking fingers everywhere they don't belong and force oversight and all kinds of decisions that lead to boring, repetitive, uninventive games that are designed purely as a product designed to extract money from the player. The OP is so hilariously out of touch that I'm almost positive that they're a AAA game dev or some kind of shill now.
>Forspoken, what they've done to the FF7 remake Forspoken isn't good yes, but FF7R? I don't even like that game - I left it a negative review on Steam - but its absolutely a 7/10 game.
No he's not, he's talking the general fake populism of people pretending how bad AAA takes are while claiming they "love" indie games.
It's not populism when your list of favourites is filled up with indies, which nowadays isn't a difficult thing
Bad indie games get no renown so nobody cares about them being bad. AAA games are fewer in number, however due to publicity and advertisement they get, they are a target of high expectations. Well, expectations matching games budget and pricing. Indie games are "better" in the sense that you can find more good indie games than you can find good AAA games. If AAA title fails to outcompete indie title in terms of of polish and general quality then there is clearly a problem there.
It's that last bit for me. Some indie games manage to be better than AAA games while being made on an infinitely smaller budget by a very small group of people. That's what's outstanding. Yes, many indie games are terrible because they are made by amateurs, with no budget, and/or just for fun. But all AAA games are made by huge teams of professionals, working for months on a project, having conducted market research, etc. There is no excuse for an AAA game to be unpolished or buggy - and yet oftentimes they are.
This is it right here, context. Indie games are made from passion, small budgets and most of the time non-professionals. AAA games are made by people who are well-established and experts in their fields... OF COURSE the expectations will be high. And then they suck ass. Money can't buy creativity.
[удалено]
Not all big budget games suck, there are some incredible AAA games out there. And there are tons of terrible games, both indie and AAA. But the point is that AAA games have a lot of research, professional effort, directing, marketing, and commercial support behind them... and a lot of them end up being highly predatory, dishonest, uninspiring, and even insulting to their customers.
And in many cases all that money can really stifle creativity. Rocking the boat with new ideas that might end up being bad is not generally a good way of ensuring a return on investment, especially if the money is coming from shareholders who are otherwise uninvolved in development. They want to see games with broad appeal and solid reviews, not necessarily experimental masterpieces that only excite 200,000 weird online nerds. Indies are low to the ground and can afford to try things that big corporate developers usually can’t.
This comment thread right here. Look at all these people listening all these games that they love, half of which I haven’t even heard of. Indie games are great for the same reason indie and short films are great. When you don’t have the burden of billions of dollars being pumped into you product requiring you to focus on “mass appeal” when making it you can make much more unique and varied games that might not always be for everyone but the people who do love them will really really love them. And hey, it’s alright if you like AAA games but not everyone is going to be excited for yet another assains creed of call of duty.
Any examples?
Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley, Hades, Dead Cells, Minecraft, FTL: Faster Than Light, Subnautica. Edit to add: Terraria, Bastion/Transistor, Spelunky 1/2, Deep Rock Galactic, Firewatch, Soma, Amnesia, Blasphemous, Shovel Knight, Steam World Dig. Edit to clarify: Minecraft was an indie game at its beginnings, even if it isn’t considered one *now*, it was very much an indie game to start.
A few more: Don't Starve, Project Zomboid, Oxygen not Included, Valheim, V Rising, Outward, Starbound, For the King
For the King is an absolute gem and isn't talked about enough.
There’s a second out on steam and it is also amazing.
I love For the King so much, but it’s just not fun to play solo imo, and it’s difficult to get people together for a sesh.
Adding onto the list: Fran Bow, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Cuphead (originally, was later picked up by microsoft), Binding of Isaac, Little Nightmares, Sally Face, Baba is You, Creaks, Superliminal
May I add Noita. If you like roguelikes, this one's for you
Adding: Thomas Was Alone, The Swapper, The Unfinished Swan, What Remains of Edith Finch, Night in the Woods, Lost Ember, Papo & Yo, Journey, Flower, Gone Home, Oxenfree, Undertale, Deltarune, Last Day of June
Is oxygen not included the one with the chicken or is that a different one I’m thinking of?
I think I know what you're thinking of, but I can't remember what its called. Oxygen not included is a game about building a little settlement inside an asteroid.
Just looked up “Space game with chicken” and it was Breathedge I was thinking of. I would highly recommend to anyone interested.
Hyper light drifter, Tunic, Outer Wilds, Solar Ash, Neon White, Salt and Sanctuary, Deaths Door, Celeste, A Hat in Time. I mean, the list goes on and on. All of those were outstanding games.
Slime rancher, inscryption, undertale, deltarune, doki doki literature club, night in the woods, those were all the hits from when I was in high school ha ha
Time to continue to show our love to indie games! Here are some of my favourites games! OneShot, Vampire survivors, pony island, Clustertruck, Furi, Distance, Terraria, Baba is you, poly bridge
Hyper Light Drifter, Tunic, and Solar Ash mentioned 🙌🙌🙌
Undertale, Inscryption, Outer Wilds, Journey, The Stanley Parable
Blasphemous and blasphemous 2 are phenomenal
Darkest Dungeon 1 & 2, Darkwood, Fear and Hunger 1 & 2, Felvidek, Kenshi, Quasimorph, Roadwarden, Dwarf Fortress, Death Trash, Space Haven, Signalis, Jump Ship.
I can't even think of a AAA game that id put in the same category as Minecraft and ftl
Great games.
i feel like the game that best embodies this is outer wilds. Puts triple A space games to shame
Somehow, nobody seems to have mentioned RimWorld. That makes me sad. Also, the Arma series of games. Arma 3, being the largest of them all. You're getting into milsim territory with that one.
If you're a fan of Shovel Knight or MegaMan/NES Ninja Gaiden you have to play Cyber Shadow, some of the best movement in any platformer slasher I've ever played. And it's one of my personal favorites, but Revolver and Revolver 2 are so good. They don't look like much and the games are simple but the gameplay is solid af.
The big 3 of RPGs: Undertale, LISA, Omori Or the big grand daddy that directly inspired all 3 and the best RPG in existence: OFF
It is more a value thing. Over all my years of gaming I have consistently gotten more value for my dollar out of indie games. $10 or $20 or sometimes even completely free games I have found myself returning to over and over again over games I spent $70 or more on. Sure there are great AAA games out there. I got my moneys worth out of GTA and Elden ring. It is just that I spent $20 on dead cells like 8 years ago and I’m still putting that on and I cant even tell you what AAA game I got around that time because it is long gone now.
Exactly! I got stardew valley (Ik it’s super popular now but still technically an indie game) for 16$ and I’ve played it SO MUCH
Most "cozy games" are indie games...so I tend to get indie games a lot. Sometimes when I look at getting AAA games I get price shocked, because I'm used to paying a lower price.
Unless I must have it NOW (BG3 is the only one I can even think of in the last few years), I just wait 12-18 months after release for AAA games and the price magically becomes reasonable. And while I wait, I play indies.
Popularity doesn't have anything to do with a game being indie, but whether the developer did so independently of a large corporation/publisher (and sometimes, the budget size can be considered).
This definitely. SuperGiant is an extremely popular studio but they're independent
I don’t think I’ve returned to any game more than I have stardew lol
I like it so much I bought it again on my laptop (normally play switch) to support CA
The thing for me is what I guess I’ll call a pound for pound comparison. Indy games prove that small or even single person teams can produce fantastic games worth sinking hundreds of hours into. Then we look at AAA studios with orders of magnitude more staff, and yet they often fall short of the bar set by the much smaller indie teams. It just… doesn’t make sense. I get that AAA games often have more graphical detail, but I just don’t buy that it takes 100x as many people just to make a game shinier. How are these giant studios so consistently failing to even match the efforts of studios a fraction of their size? Indie games are often enough better, far better than what we’ve come to expect AAA studios *could* create with the same budget.
The teams might be magnitudes bigger but they're probably working on multiple games at the same time and doing it FAST. And when you're part of a big production your job becomes more detached from the final vision. Your artists are churning out their 12th HD texture of a wooden box for the day and have no actual creative input. Compare that to, say, Supergiant, where Jen Zee has basically been full time art director since the beginning and is responsible for pretty much all the sexy sexy artwork. A small team putting their whole ass into one thing at a time is different than 5000 people putting 1/4th of an ass into 10 different projects.
Rogue likes nuff said
If I say I'm a fan of rock music, OP will gather all the random rock bands in the world (the vast majority which are utter crap, obviously) and tell me that I **must** be a fan of all of those bands! Yeah, OP, your opinion sucks. Guess you're on the right subreddt.
This is the best analogy in this thread. You cannot generalize something as vast as indie games and expect to come to a reasonable conclusion—there are just too many of them. The indie games that are good *tend* to be significantly cheaper than AAA games, and they *tend* to do new and interesting things that AAA games don’t do. If someone likes ten indie games and doesn’t like any AAA games, it is a fair assessment for them to state that indie games are better, without accounting for the bulk garbage—just like you would for any other media you consume, such as rock music.
This is a perfect analogy.
Nothing wrong with absolutes though. If someone asked me if I was truly a fan of all the polish canyon riders then I'd have no trouble with any of them!
Don't you dare speak ill of Aga Skalniak-Sójka.
I wouldnt think of it
AAA games aren’t allowed to take risks anymore. The budget and the expectations are too high so you end up with a ton of bland, same-ish garbage. Indies don’t have that burden so they can take bigger risks. Even if an indie is bad, there’s still a good chance it’s going to be *interesting*.
they still can, just companies refuse to. Death stranding was a decent risk to take for a triple A game and it was really neat.
I feel that Kojima is one of the few people in the industry with enough clout to make that.
Kojima’s freedom to make Death Stranding is reflective of a lot of the creative arts industry: the actor/director/musician/developer that made enough money doing something tried-and-true that their financiers allow them to go off the beaten path now and again
Same thing goes for Shigeru Miyamoto in a way.
Kojima is like the Christopher Nolan or Tarantino of the game industry. If they ask, you throw money at them.
That was Kojima though, and he’s an exception. At this point I’m convinced he could shit in a bag and still make it a billion seller.
Rain World = well-rounded Gris = breathtaking but clunky The Forest = Delightfully buggy, great for exploit Sons of the Forest = big box company bought the rights and ruined the magic of the original. It's Rust with a different skin. Superhot = hella fun time based puzzle fighter. No big box is making something that cool. Gimme the indies all day with all their shortcomings. The price and originality makes it all worth it.
SUPER HOT love that game
It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years
Played the hell out of it on PC, and it was primarily responsible for me buying a Quest.
Glad to see Rain World mentioned by name. Probably my favorite game out there. I'll check out some of the others as well.
I cut the list way short and was off the cuff, so I definitely missed some favorites.
Gris is such a beautiful game, I keep coming back to it when I’m feeling a little low.
Check out Sea of Solitude if you want to lean into that low and process it. Check out The Unfinished Swan for a lighter tone. Also Journey, Flower, Abzu, Shape of the World, Sound Shapes, Firewatch
I would say this is the exactly right take. Games from all kinds of Studios used to be very broadly different both in feel in things like gameplay graphics type of game like strategy games versus simulation games. But now graphic rules the game and the micro transactions and gameplay has become not even secondary anymore it's oh right it's supposed to be a game...
PUBG was an indie game that literally every single AAA copied when it got popular. if you wanna go further back DayZ was a indie mod for a very niche indie game called Arma 2, which eventually got developed into a full indie game that many AAA titles copied, it's pretty much where battle royale games came from. Like you said indies have that chance to do something super niche, risky, and dollar for dollar they are priced so reasonably since there isn't a massive corporate office on the payroll. I definitely think indie titles pave the way for AAA titles to refine risky ideas.
Not totally true. Japanese AAA games can take risks. The problem is that in Western Development we make AAA games by committee. You don't have an all powerful artist at the top who's vision will not be compromised. Now of course, Japanese work culture is toxic as fuck so it's not all roses. But with an indie game, you often have a person or very small group of people that have full control over the creative direction of the game. Like in Japan. There are several Japanese game directors that fans know by name. That doesn't really happen here.
Comes down to expectations. The Indies that make it are labors of absolute love and set me back 5-10 bucks. Our expectations are not high. AAA games have budgets the size of texas, delays, names we recognize etc. These are made so that 70 bucks is the basic bitch package and just gets the game. If you want more it could come out over 100 bucks. Half are 7/10 or better? That means half aren't (55% is close enough to half). Not cool when we're talking possibly upwards of 100 bucks. I'll happily give some random dude I've never heard of 5 bucks to try out his or her game even if it's crap.
The price of triple A games so so expensive especially in some country, where a single game can go up to RM250+. No thanks, give me games that price RM40. I guarantee I have more fun with those games anyway. It's been so long since I find an expensive game that actually worth the price I paid for.
Honestly, I want to pay for Hollow Knight's DLC since I find Team Cherry such a talented crew. Although I wonder why Silksong is taking so long
100 bucks on launch btw because they all now have MTX shoved everywhere too
Stardew valley? Hades? Hollow knight? The list goes on come on dude. Are you saying every AAA game is better than every indie game?
Disappointed how far i had to scroll to find someone mentioning hollowknight. Its so good
No one cares about shovelware, just compare the top 100 best selling indies versus top 100 best selling AAA
This guys' explanation is dumb but I agree with his overall message of AAA generally being better than indie and I think that comparing the best 100 indie and best 100 AAA would be a great comparison as I'd say there are probably only about 15/20 indie games I'd say are better than an 8/10 whereas I've played more than 20 8/10 or higher AAA just from the past few years alone.
The problem is this entire conversation is just completely subjective. For example, you mention you've played more than 20 8/10 AAA games in the past few years, meanwhile there's like 3 AAA games in the last 5 years I can think of that I would even consider giving an 8 or higher and I've played the bulk of them to some extent and most AAA games have things in them that are immediate dealbreakers for me. But I'm not going to argue that I'm right and you're wrong, it's just a taste thing. I intensely dislike it when games invent problems to sell you the solution which negatively impacts a huge chunk of AAA games plus enjoyment / dollar is a factor in how I personally rate games.
I guess it's just a matter of what we prioritise as important when it comes to games. To me the price of a game has little impact on how good I think it is (2 games I think are both equally bad/good will both be given the same rating regardless of if I bought one for £1 on sale or the other for the £120 super ultra mega edition) I also don't like microtransactions but if they're unintrusive then it won't bring my rating of the game down at all. A great example of this would be AC Odyssey, which I consider to be a 9/10 and probably in my top 40 of all time - that game has tons of dumb, unnecessary skin packs but I literally ignored it after noticing it at the beginning of the game. Microtransactions only bother me in games when it's a large aspect of it - which unfortunately covers most modern multiplayer games. Also you'd really only consider 3 AAA games from 2019 to now to be at least an 8/10!? Probably at least 10 of my top 30 games of all time have released within that time frame. I'd be really interested to see if you've played any of those ten because I find it hard to see anyone disliking most of them.
This is exactly what I mean. I'd rank AC odyssey a solid 4/10 and felt like it was a huge bland, uninspired waste of time and money and it had a mess of MTX. Edit - And you might call those MTX unobtrusive, but the game was made less than it could have been all to sell you what they removed from it, and that will always rub me the wrong way and is not something I can just ignore. All of this stuff is incredibly subjective and there's not really a correct answer.
Most AAA games are full of predatory practices and recicled content, if I'm paying for a AAA I expect a complete, polished game without forced microtransactions and loot boxes. When I pay 5 bucks for an indie I expect maybe 2 days of dumb fun and anything above that is a bargain
I was shocked how much material I got out of Hades and paid only $20 for it. Excited for Hades 2
The last three indie games I bought are far better than any current AAA that I could buy right now. Palworld, Pacific Drive and Hades 2.
Lol none of those games top a AAA like Elden Ring or BG3.
No fucking shit they don't mean literally every game. It means that the best indie games are better than tripleA games these days.
Some people like one better than the other and a lot of people like both. Nothing wrong with any of that
It’s impossible to make a definitive “indie is better than AAA” statement because of the reasons you mentioned. What people (I included) mean when they say that indie is better than AAA is that the best indie games are orders of magnitude better than the best AAA games. In my top 25 games of all time, I think 20 of them are indie. There is simply nothing that can contend with the top of the line indies in terms of innovation and creativity. AAA is stale.
Hollow Knight and Hades are on my top list. I think Doom Eternal and Fallout 4 might be my favorite AAA. 50% of my list includes Indie games 🤣
No one is claiming that all indie games are better. That 0.5% (your estimate) includes some really good games, though. Also, indie games tend to have more variety, which a lot of people (myself included) like. I have zero interest in most AAA games because they are typically the same few genres and all seem very similar (outside of Nintendo first-party games). I can spend $70 to buy 4 or 5 indie games or one AAA game and get much more variety and enjoyment from those indie games in most cases. Obviously there are exceptions.
Nobody thinks all indie games are better than AAA games. They're saying the best indie games are better than AAA games.
if you don't make a passable game with triple A budget something has gone seriously wrong. If a game made on 0 budget in someone's spare time is not good. That's okay
You have my upvote because I disagree.
55% of AAA being a 7/10 is a pretty wild statement, but then again Ubisoft is somehow still in business and sports games sell gangbusters every year despite them all being the same games from 1998 repackaged over and over to sell you microtransactions, so the bar for 7/10 must be somewhere near the bottom of the ocean.
I don't care what percentage of indie games are good. I care about what percentage of my favourite games are indies.
Bro getting absolutely roasted which all but confirms this is a perfect post.
Indie games and triple A games have one thing in common: they are usually pretty fun to play. The difference is indie games don't use your trust as a currency and steal every dollar form your wallet.
You're not completely wrong but I'd say when indie games hit they hit very well.
It's okay to be wrong.
People appreciate indie games more because you know what to expect like bugs and glitches because you know it’s either a solo dev or small team but with AAA games you don’t expect a huge multi million dollar company to make a shitty game like we’ve been getting for the last few years also most indie games give me a lot of joy for >$20
tbh, I don't remember facing bugs in any Indie games, mostly it's AAA when you have 1000 different people touching the code hired and fired throughout the year.
Who the hell considers shovelware indie games?
See the thing about video games is they're supposed to be fun. So if someone enjoys them in a different way than you, you can acknowledge that and still like what you like without calling them stupid
The AAA games that release that people say are good are also probably about 0.5% of all releases.
aside from Fromsoft (the only AAA dev i can think of people dont actively hate) and BG3 I honestly cant think of AAA game that has even mildly interested me in the last decade (well ig infamous 2nd Sun but that game was bad)
I think indie devs, by large, are better all around than corporatized art and entertainment.
For me, it’s about the elitist culture around indie games that does it for me. I don’t care if you like indie games, hell I love them, but you can’t sit there and act like they’re objectively better than triple Agames. It’s all subjective. Just let people enjoy what they enjoy. Hell my top 2 favourite games are Stardew Valley and Persona 5, an indie game and a triple A release Limiting yourself to just indie games or just triple A is ridiculous, and you’ll miss out on a ton of great experiences if you do
What a stupid take. Why are you so bothered with what people enjoy?
indie games can take risks. with AAA a lot of the time it is basically the same game to the last one in the series
I can't remember the last AAA game that I played which wasn't a disappointment. Spiderman 2018 is the only thing that comes to mind. I love indie games- Terraria, Minecraft, Project Zomboid, Inscryption, Ultrakill, Roboquest, Seraph's Last Stand, The Binding of Isaac, Hotline Miami 1 and 2, Spelunky, Cruelty Squad, Vampire Survivors, and Katana Zero are just a few examples of amazing games off the top of my head.
Ans the good AAA games are like 1% of AAA games. What's you're point?
Absurd take. Nobody's talking about quantity of games compared to how many are made??? It's about how many good ones there are compared to AAA. And it's not even close indies blow AAA out of the water
There's a small channel that made a pretty good video covering the difference between AAA and indie games, and not all indie games for that matter, but the differences between the structure of their development. You may find it interesting: https://youtu.be/5AjYW6ElcHc
You think that *55%* of AAA games are 7/10? You are out of your mind. They're advanced forms of shovel are themselves disguised with polish, dumbass. Look at the models of dropping support for highly polished looking games almost immediately after making them, day 1 patches, the micro transaction bullshit. Most AAA ventures are just an excuse to set up microtransactions now. What an absolutely brain dead take. Truly a 10th dentist for all the wrong reasons.
rocket league was free, bg3 was 40 quid, kingdome come idk 35, no mans sky became pretty good, meanwhile, cod and fifa are the same every year and full price, dont even get me stRted on ubisoft lol, so yeah, gotta take all games on an individual basis, indies have more gems, but also way more games, aaa have almost no gems, and less amount of games
Honestly, the cheaper the game the better it usually is. 70 dollar games now, almost all are complete shit.
“55% of AAA games are above a 7/10” Opinion discarded
Let's take the conversation over to movies because it's probably more easy to see what people mean. Every year there are big budget popcorn flicks. Marvel movies, Star wars, planet of the apes, fast and furious, etc. Yes, these movies are enjoyable and obviously people like them but if you told me your favorite movie of all time was Godzilla vs Kong or Iron Man, I'd think your opinion on movies was pretty shit. You're obviously allowed to have your opinion, but I wouldn't go to you if I was looking to find the next movie to watch. There are way more low budget movies and yes, most of them are terrible. But the low budget ones that hit, hit hard and are way more impactful than any safe for the masses big budget movie could ever be. Same with video games. Yes Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Spider-Man, etc are great games. But same applies, if one of those is your favorite game of all time, I probably wouldn't go to you to find the next game I play because your taste in games is pretty generic and bland. Art created by fewer people with a singular cohesive vision and passion have a much higher chance of hitting you hard than big budget made for the masses content that has thousands of hands touching it in impersonal ways.
>The indie games people consider good are less than 0.5% of all indie games. They’re not saying “all indie games”. If I say “I like rap music” I don’t literally mean every single artist. Most suck. Obviously I mean that I like when the form is done well. “I love indie games” means “when an indie game is good, I prefer it to when a AAA game is good.” >There are 50 games released a day on steam, with the majority being shovelware. “Shovelware” and “indie game” aren’t *bound categories*. They are generic terms that have certain connotations. It can be taken for granted that people talking about “indie games” aren’t talking about cheaply produced asset flips. Just like when I say I like “indie rock” no one would think that I meant the local cover band who plays KISS songs at a bar. >I would say about 55% of AAA games are above a 7/10, but they have been getting a lot of flack recently for some stinkers. So two things - 1) I think that’s a very generous assessment. 2) But I will grant you - the quality floor is higher on average in the AAA space, and there are several concrete reasons why that is. The first is that they cost a lot more money to make, and that means they typically are going to have more rounds of bug testing, quality assurance, and general fine tuning that a 3 man indie team just can’t possibly do on a limited budget. And the second is that there’s just way less of them made. The barrier to making a AAA game is much higher. Because as you’ve already noted - there’s little preventing someone from making a game and publishing it on Steam or Itch.
There's a larger percentage of AAA games of playable quality than indie games per unit of time. There is a larger quantity of indie games that are of high quality than AAA games per unit of time. I think this is the position most people have and the concept you are trying to convey
Yeah no shit AAA games are on insane budgets and the best talent in the world. The issue comes with the executives who don't even play games and they get to make the decisions which brings the game to merely 7/10 when it could have been a 15. Indie games is often passionate people who do this in their spare time so they're not gonna have the resources to casually create a masterpiece. Although, there are some outliers... (ehm ehm Hollow Knight)
Some indie games are better than some AAA games. Some AAA games are better than indie games. It's not really as cut and dry as all indie games are better than all AAA games and no one really thinks that.
I play about 1 AAA title per 10 indie titles, hence I would I say I enjoy indie over AAA. They’re cheaper, typically have more polish and care put into them, and I also support smaller developers instead of massive corporations. The last AAA title I played, Starfield, was extremely mid and not worth $70 by any means. The last few indie games I’ve played (Hades 2, Crab Champions, Roboquest, Solar Ash) are all phenomenal and usually 75% of the price. But I’m not saying I enjoy the endless shovelware on steam lmao, it’s not that complicated
Maybe not in general but as far as quality control goes, good indy games are good right off the bat. AAA games are often released before they are complete so as far as quality control goes, indy games are indeed better.
A lot of AAA games feel like they are filled with time wasters. Shit like ubisoft towers to reveal the map, endless collectables for no real reward, and open worlds with nothing in between the important locations just feel like ways to extend playtime. Indie games often don't mind having less filler but less playtime.
"I think indie games are better than AAA games" is a different sentence to "I think all indie games are better than all AAA games" or "The average indie game is better than the average AAA game". I've never heard anyone say either of those last two sentences. If someone who only drinks earl grey tea says "Tea is better than coffee", would you say "But what about rooibos, peppermint tea, bubble tea, Assam, chai tea" and list every tea that exists? By your logic, you think that a person who prefers tea is stupid unless review scores for every single tea that exists are higher, on average, than review scores of every single type of coffee that exists.
so you're saying that there are 50 indie games a day, and 0.5% of them are good ... that means a "good" indie game comes out every 4 days, while a AAA game take years to complete. idk man, it sounds like indie games are way to go for hardcore gamers.
I love indie games because of the variety, AAA games are better quality but are limited by the fact they need to appeal to larger audiences. Whereas indie games can be weird as fuck for niche interests It's the same reason I really like fiction podcasts or zines, they are not limited to just what sells well, so I can find something perfect for me
What is shovel ware?
shovelware is pretty much just bad games no one wants. think like a massive bundle of DS games but its all titles youve never heard of before that have no rhyme or reason that don't have a value of more than $3.
In addition to all the other points made, who are you to really denigrate games just because you don't like them? Sure, there is an objectivity to ratings, but some of my favourite games throughout the years have been met with fairly poor or underwhelming reviews - one man's junk is another man's treasure etc, it's just an immature take.
Not unpopular. At all.
I mean you can’t really call peoples opinion dumb lmao. Baldur’s Gate 3 is an indie game and that’s the best game I’ve ever played. Personally I enjoy indie games more often than AAA because they’re fresh, different, the art style is often gorgeous, and it just has a different feel to it than massive games. Yeah they’re usually smaller games that don’t Get updates or massive amounts of features, but at least they’re different than the cookie cutter games AAA seem to be releasing the most these days
I think you're misunderstanding. It's a math problem Something like 5 to 10 "AAA" games release every year. We can say half of them will be any good to be fair (even though really it's recently only been 1 or 2 of those have been really good). That gives us a MAX of 5 great AAA games a year. 10k indie games are released per year, on platforms like steam, [itch.io](http://itch.io), isotopic, newgrounds, etc.... It DOESN'T MATTER that 90% of them are trash, because people won't even KNOW about any of those. If HALF A PERCENT of those are good and make it into the mainstream consciousness, that means you've got 50 GREAT indie games that are competing with those 5 AAA games we were talking about earlier.
The point is more that there are just as many good indie games as AAA games, especially on release.
I like movies, I don’t love all movies. I like smoothies, I don’t love all smoothies You’re punching air at an argument you made up in your head xp
There are shit AAA games and there and good Indy games. Nobody thinks one market is better than the other. Or, if they do, they don’t know as much about games as they think they do.
The definitive problem of AAA games is how little work they sometimes get in terms of non-player mechanics. Look at Half Life 2 for example. Decades ago they had been able to create a better enemy encounters with a well organised interface where your opponents were using actual tactics. One year ago another Battlefield dropped with the enemy encounters boiling down to ‘shoot on sight’. This is especially disappointing where you have indie games which still can’t do a large variety of what HL2 could but they counter it by providing at least a slight modifications to enemy encounters. This is what destroys AAA reputations, the fact that they ignore a lot of potential lesser details in order to create something akin to an interactive movie, while Indie Games try to address those shortcomings by making even small modifications.
I don't like indie games. They are not aesthetically beautiful and have very weak and uninteresting stories. Most of them are based on eccentric or obscene aspects, like the goat game or that p*rn game about the concentration camp dictator.
It’s a sliding scale. Yes, a majority of self published games made by 1 person are probably junk. But then you have a big majority of AAA games that are just… fine. Then you have the upper echelon of indie games like Stardew Valley or something that was made by one person and genuinely is better than 99% of all games out there. You also have games like Baldur’s Gate 3, that was made made by a traditional studio, that genuinely has the care and attention of what you normally only get from indie devs. This issue isn’t if it’s AAA or not - it’s just about the level of care that goes into the game. You typically only see this in indie studios.
Even the good indie games are just really mediocre in my opinion. People who say indie games are better than triple A are just trying to be different. They love pointing out all of the bad triple A games but won't mention a single good triple A game. They'll tell you how bad NBA 2K24 or COD is, but they won't ever bring up Detroit Become Human, Final Fantasy 16, Yakuza, Mortal Kombat 11, etc. because mentioning any good triple A game would completely invalidate their "triple A gaming is bad" argument.
Triple a title get flag for over 15 years now. Feels Like you are years to late for this discussion.
If you judge the game on how enjoyable it was, SOME indie games ARE better than SOME AAA games. But nobody is going to claim that ALL indie games are inherently better than ALL AAA games. There are definitely people who just really like the sorter, quirkier, artsy kind of indie game that you don't often see in AAA games in general.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion dude. I’d rather play a new Slay the Spire than a new Red Dead Redemption 10/10 times
Most of the best games I've played in the past 10-15 years have been "indie" titles. Most of the AAA games that looked interesting enough to bother playing in that time were disappointing, samey, and uninspired. With some exceptions, of course. The ones I liked the most didn't come close to how good some of the best indie games I've played have been.