Why AAA games are uninteresting
I was discussing games and the games industry with a friend of mine - he started making his own game after The Secret World launched and half of Funcom got laid off. ( Astrobase Command, check it out. )
The games industry is stratifying into a couple of major categories: indie, mobile, social, and AAA. (am I missing any here?) The only category I have any interest in is the indie category. Mobile and social are easy to dismiss. Each of these dismissals warrant their own blog post, but briefly summarized:
MOBILE
The interface is too crude to support the types of games I enjoy playing.
SOCIAL
Just as Blizzard's success with World of Warcraft cast a decade-long shadow over MMOs, Zynga's success has turned any 'social gaming' experience into an operant conditioning machine to transition you from a skill-game into a cash-game.
AAA
This is a tough one, and this was what my discussion was about. AAA games are the massively hyped games that even non-gamers hear about, and are in many ways comparable to summer movie blockbusters (with correspondingly large budgets and hype machines). Grand Theft Auto 5 is the latest and greatest AAA game released as of me writing this, with a disclosed budget of $265 million. They made $800 million in the first 24 hours.
These games no longer interest me as games. They are of course interesting as a phenomenon, but I have no desire to play them. Why? Am I getting old? Have I evolved into some sort of Henry Rollins-esque gaming curmudgeon? I'm just gonna copypaste Dave's reply:
---
but its not about getting old
its about games not being games
what games have become are increasingly thin wrappers for well-known psychological reward mechanisms plus visual over-stimulation.
AAA studios no longer make games. They make software entertainment.
the difference is, part of being a "game" means there's a challenge that requires strategy on behalf of the player. If you fail to employ the appropriate strategy you lose.
this isn't what AAA studios do
when was the last time you played a AAA game where it was even possible to lose
where the game even had a CONCEPT of losing
the sad part is, most people who self-identify as gamers aren't. They are consumers of digital entertainment. But they aren't playing games.
the divide exists because there is a market for actual games, and the indie developers are filling that niche.
---
This is overly dismissive, but there is a very interesting idea at the core of this. The concept of how you lose in a game. You can have a direct loss - eg. you're shot and die from your wounds. Modern games will usually have you return to last save point, or auto-resurrect with the loss of some cash. An older game would usually have you actually die. The game would be over. Hopefully you'd have saved at some point so you could reload.
But there are also more interesting indirect losses. This is where you end up in a hopeless situation. Maybe, in the same game, you run out of ammunition, and the game has no stealth mechanics. You no longer have any tools available to perform the core game mechanic (kill bad guys). The game is effectively over. Or if you're playing a 4X game and you've lost territory and you know you have two rival factions attacking your cities and destroying them.
Both of these situations require a certain amount of player skill to even identify that you've effectively lost. That is where you learn about how the game works, when you realize why you've lost - beyond "there is a bad guy on that gantry that will headshot me if I go left".
Also I am actually looking forward to Dark Souls 2, which is technically a AAA game.
The games industry is stratifying into a couple of major categories: indie, mobile, social, and AAA. (am I missing any here?) The only category I have any interest in is the indie category. Mobile and social are easy to dismiss. Each of these dismissals warrant their own blog post, but briefly summarized:
MOBILE
The interface is too crude to support the types of games I enjoy playing.
SOCIAL
Just as Blizzard's success with World of Warcraft cast a decade-long shadow over MMOs, Zynga's success has turned any 'social gaming' experience into an operant conditioning machine to transition you from a skill-game into a cash-game.
AAA
This is a tough one, and this was what my discussion was about. AAA games are the massively hyped games that even non-gamers hear about, and are in many ways comparable to summer movie blockbusters (with correspondingly large budgets and hype machines). Grand Theft Auto 5 is the latest and greatest AAA game released as of me writing this, with a disclosed budget of $265 million. They made $800 million in the first 24 hours.
These games no longer interest me as games. They are of course interesting as a phenomenon, but I have no desire to play them. Why? Am I getting old? Have I evolved into some sort of Henry Rollins-esque gaming curmudgeon? I'm just gonna copypaste Dave's reply:
---
but its not about getting old
its about games not being games
what games have become are increasingly thin wrappers for well-known psychological reward mechanisms plus visual over-stimulation.
AAA studios no longer make games. They make software entertainment.
the difference is, part of being a "game" means there's a challenge that requires strategy on behalf of the player. If you fail to employ the appropriate strategy you lose.
this isn't what AAA studios do
when was the last time you played a AAA game where it was even possible to lose
where the game even had a CONCEPT of losing
the sad part is, most people who self-identify as gamers aren't. They are consumers of digital entertainment. But they aren't playing games.
the divide exists because there is a market for actual games, and the indie developers are filling that niche.
---
This is overly dismissive, but there is a very interesting idea at the core of this. The concept of how you lose in a game. You can have a direct loss - eg. you're shot and die from your wounds. Modern games will usually have you return to last save point, or auto-resurrect with the loss of some cash. An older game would usually have you actually die. The game would be over. Hopefully you'd have saved at some point so you could reload.
But there are also more interesting indirect losses. This is where you end up in a hopeless situation. Maybe, in the same game, you run out of ammunition, and the game has no stealth mechanics. You no longer have any tools available to perform the core game mechanic (kill bad guys). The game is effectively over. Or if you're playing a 4X game and you've lost territory and you know you have two rival factions attacking your cities and destroying them.
Both of these situations require a certain amount of player skill to even identify that you've effectively lost. That is where you learn about how the game works, when you realize why you've lost - beyond "there is a bad guy on that gantry that will headshot me if I go left".
Also I am actually looking forward to Dark Souls 2, which is technically a AAA game.