How Close Can Indies Get To AAA Games?

In all honesty, you should. You should understand that there is far more going on there than meets the eye initially. That's not the product of an asset flip or some smoke and mirror bs where things are rigged for a nice screenshot or clip.

What's your background?

Do you have good quality releases under your belt?

 

Where do you see people charging these kind of rates outside of some kind of highly specialized field?

Just curious because although I have met one or two who charge $150 per hour the vast majority of developers I have encountered whether working for a consulting company or doing freelance work themselves charge much less. In fact the majority of the freelance devs charge less that what the consulting companies do. That is how they compete with them and get work.

A pretty common rate around here is $60 to $75 per hour for a skilled developer who also has security clearance. That is the rate charged by the consulting (placement) companies. The developers themselves of course get much less. And the Independent devs might charge $40 to $50 per hour.

I suppose you might live in a city where prices are very high and that is the difference. Or maybe game developers make way above the norm. I always thought they made less than the norm.

If you're talking about very short projects (no more than 3 months) then yes it is pretty common here to charge $125 to $150 per hour. Basically the shorter the duration the higher the hourly cost and vice-versa. But even the short term is very competitive these days. So many companies in it. And to get the contracts each company has to bid a reasonable amount (comparatively speaking). One company quoting $125 per hour when 3 other companies are quoting $90 per hour... the odds of the first getting the project are very tiny if even have any at all. Possibly if they are friends with the decision maker it might work.

 

Most of my cost basis comes from a fairly specialized field in a large and expensive city, so they are likely at the higher end. I've seen billing rates for programmers break $300/hr, although obviously that was under a consulting company.

This thread has spiraled to the point of hyperbole where a game engine with physics should take 2-3 months of work, so I think using any frame of reference is reasonable

 

No, In all honesty I shouldn't. If I'm not seeing it, then I'm not seeing it. I never called it "smoke and mirror asset flip bs", I just do not consider IK to be a complex problem worthy of purchasing an asset for it.

Is that the part where people run out of arguments and start looking for excuses to dismiss someone's opinion? Because this part usually isn't fun.

 

I'm not trying to slander you or make personal attacks, I'm trying to figure out who I'm talking to and what your frame of references are.

Are we comparing apples to oranges? Am I calling something a vegetable you call a fruit?

Are we talking about game systems or prototypes? Proof of concepts or integrated systems?

What level of fault tolerance are we at? How permissive are we of bugs, problems or limitations?

 

(-_-)

To be honest, I dislike those kind of arguments, because it always ends up sounding as if one side is trying to brag and the other side to nitpick. It is better to work with the argument instead of people presenting it.

Anyway. You're talking to a jack of all trades with a heavy programming focus.

Spoiler

I've spent most of the time programming in C++ with focus on graphic related stuff. Mesh export tools for maya, 3dsmax, maya, skeletal animation, old school shadowvolumes, collision, etc.

In my signature there's a wip thread. This is three days of work from scratch:

Pretty slow, in my opinion.

Now tell me which part of IK I overlooked. Does your IK system maintain balance, drive muscles or anything like that?

Because no matter how I look it, for a humanoid in unity it should be quite straightforward.

 

Don't all IK systems deal with maintaining balance? Means of calculating center of mass/gravity are pretty core to compensating properly for any movement. This is absolutely essential for good foot placement obviously.

In terms of more active balance (using arms more freely to compensate for movement in mid body or lower body for example), yes, the system also attempts to do this - although admittedly in a fairly crude and naive manner. Likewise the system also needs to deal with minimizing the amount of (active and passive) balance depending on the severity of impact (partial loss of body control).

I could not achieve active balance compensation in terms of feet (fully procedural stumbling backward to maintain balance for example). This was far too complex for my level of competence.

Back stumble is also complicated because impact animations include stumbles, so any procedural stumble would need to respect the animated stumble or have immensely precise control over the animation itself. In other words, the animation itself and the code would need to be very tightly coupled and very high precision, most of my locomotion code is tightly coupled to animation - but not to that degree and not at such a low level of granularity.

Simple animation coupling like semi procedural "stand up" animations are extremely simple comparatively. There is coupling here, but it does not require a fine level of detail.

Muscle driving is also important. I rewrote this sub system from puppetmaster because I needed very precise amounts of control over how different muscles interacted. Some of this was to improve the quality of simulation, some of it was to have more strict control in being able to stop any simulation (again, feet are complex, and the lower body has a lot of challenges).

That system took me about a week, maybe a week and a half to build out on top of FinalIK and PuppetMaster. I did it right before the camera rework while I was working on the trailer.

The level of outstanding problem is moderate. The biggest problems are not the positive cases, it's culling the negative cases. Getting a character to fall down is certainly not hard - making it so that a character doesn't fall down when he shouldn't, but does fall down when he should is the hard part. The line between the two cases is not perfectly clear.

In terms of total cost? That's harder to calculate, I will need to revisit these systems a number of times through the remainder of development. A day here, a day there, a few hours here, a tweek there. It all adds up. Will I have spent a month+ on this through the end of development? Almost certainly yes.

How much time did FinalIK/PuppetMaster save? It's extremely hard to judge, since my results would have been far poorer quality without using them as a base. I would estimate at least double the time at a minimum. So maybe two months+ total time, and the results would have been poorer.

 

No. They don't. Basic IK is "given desired position, calculate pose", or "given ground height, adjust leg position". IK does not really deal with stumbling, falling down, etc. Or muscles.

What you described is not IK, but a procedural character animation. Basically, you attempted to clone GTA's Euphoria engine. Or this:

I do not think that in this case using 3rd party addon for basic inverse kinematics would make a significant difference at all.

 

That's what puppetmaster/finalik do though, or at least, that's part of the ground work that those assets provide. So I think this is very fair to include in discussing the value of the asset.

I complained a lot about some of the design decisions in puppetmaster especially, but without that foundation there's no way I could have achieved the same level of result in anywhere near the same time.

That's what we're talking about here.
____
Also worth noting, what I'm doing is not anywhere near as complex as what they're doing in the video - but it's also far more complex than other examples.

If you look at even some lower end AAA like XCOM (Firaxis is a AAA developer) - their procedural animation work is pretty naive and buggy, I think I've done better in many cases than they did (XCOM EU even has problems with basic ranged weapon aiming and rotations are laughably wrong in some cases). XCOM is a better game than anything I will ever make, but procedural animation is clearly not Firaxis' strength.

On the other hand, guys working on Madden/FIFA are in a different universe of complexity and polish. I can't imagine what their process looks like, but it's something entirely different.

 

About that video, I hold off last time because I have a tendency of connecting everything with everything and that makes for some bad tangents ...

But you will never see that tech in practice in video games, AT BEST it will be offline rendering, and even that that would be stupid. Most game animation are not (realistic) physic in nature, it's not what you want, physics in game is all about secondary animations. Game want plausible animation blending, doing all of that is overkill to achieve that simple goal and is a programmer way to see animation. In fact Uncharted 4 have a lot of amazing physics system that are in no way physics at all, the programmer came up with a performance heavy solution with unfriendly obscure parameter, the artist played with it then trash it for a simpler blending solution that get so effective it got generalized to all objects AND scenes. What you want is to cheat with IK, stumbling around is just an effect of having off center tilt getting catch up with ik readjustment, technical artist have been imitating euphoria day one, and that was nothing more than an overkill buzzwordy marketing speech solution. Not saying it's simple, but the complexity is more in the eyes of someone doing it and adding the relevant composition.

Which lead us back to the discussion.

It seems there is a clear pattern in these discussion:
- coder oriented person minimize code impact in the scope, saying it's not the part that cost the more but asset.
- Artist driven people minimize asset impact as they can see many way to cut corner to gave the right impression, but recoil absolutly at programming and system involved.

Maybe there is a point where we can meet?

 

3D engine tooling and ready to go features , is what can help a lone indie to make some cool game with some AAA touch ( not a real AAA with big content and big features ).
This game is one year project and only Blueprints by one 3D artists and does not know coding. It has a AAA touch even if it can't compare with AAA.

 

@zenGarden

It's good, but no reason you couldn't achieve that in Unity..

 

Stay on the left hand side of the uncanny valley folks. That's the moral of the story. Forget AAA no indie can get close, a level and a few good animations/sounds/fx. . . perhaps but full scale game, with polish in every conceivable area . . . no.

I've yet to see any examples.

 

Who said you can't make it on Unity ?
I was only pointing a game made without coding that have a AAA touch , but it's not AAA indeed.

I am not sure we will see an entire game like Witcher 3 made by indies, it is too much storyline, specific characters, too much content. And also great tech that is made by teams.

 

You specified AAA tooling which Unity lacks, out the box at this point it has to be the most feature limited engine out of all major engines (which isn't a massive hinderance within itself for various reasons). Anyway you at least implied it that way..

@iamthwee

A lot of AAA games like W3 are too long to play, never mind make.. Doesn't mean you can't go for uncanny valley and pump out a 15 - 20 hour long game. Tons of examples all over the place ranging from the bottom to the top..

 

I think worrying about the uncanny valley is a bit presumptive.

 

I said "3D engine tooling and ready to go features , is what can help a lone indie to make some cool game with some AAA touch"
It can apply to Unity or any other 3D engine like CryEngine (For Unity the difference is that it will cost a lot as the best features and tools are exclusively on the store only).
The best tools and features you have, the best you can create a small game having some AAA touch.
I don't need another Unity Vs UE4 features debate lol

 

Good job it's an open forum made for everyone then, I've had two projects decimated due to engines.. One was CE (no surprises there right?), one was Unity 4.X because it absolutley caved in until 64-bit and after that you somewhat loose the momentum.. Then @frosted is talking about saving thousands of man hours via asset store in an attempt to make adventurous projects. Hence better tools equal productivity..

So you have to be VERY careful..

Anyway, I am actively developing in Unity again as I believe at this point it could be mature enough.. Some tell tale signs are bothersome (like speedtree grass meshes draining 90% of my render budget isn't a good start, yes there is an asset store fix for it (by @Assembler-Maze (thanks for that BTW) and I'd be able find a workaround as well, I just hope it's not a sign of things to come)..

I'm not sure what to think of issues like that, it's obvious as day it is an issue.! Why would you implement a tree / grass system like speedtree fully well knowing it doesn't performantly work out the box? Why not just do it right? Also much prefer systems to be open, if I have to jump through hoops at least it'll get done right in the end.

Again one of the points I was trying to get to with @frosted if you're having to constantly work around missing systems / features and you're constantly adding / manipulating and working around issues that end up stacking up to a years+ worth of work.. You've probably made the wrong choice but if you're too deep down the rabbit whole you make the best of what you've got.

If you're a lone indie and / or a small team you do not have time for this sort of stuff (if aiming for adventurous and / or large projects), it has to be roughly 95% working on the game and maybe 5% building tools and fixing / working around engine issues.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they should write the damn game for you.. Nowhere near, if you want a dialogue system either buy it or make it.. But core systems need to be implemented correctly and this is where I give UE it's kudo's, it's a bit of a maze to navigate but it did what it said on the tin if you used it like they told you to.

So I won't deny it, I'm a bit nervous about undertaking another large project in Unity after the hackathon that was Unity 4.X (not just my personal project, there's MMO's that got released in UE4 that was a failure in Unity etc.).. Even reviews of larger games in Unity get criticised for performance etc. although that could be on the dev, but you'd of thought MS could get it right.

If it wasn't for the following It'd be a no brainer which way I'd go, I need a real-time (or at least semi-realtime) GI solution, for some odd reason making Unity look half decent is easy and with a tight deadline I need extremely rapid iteration in terms of code even in terms of trial and error..

Let's hope this train of thought doesn't come back to bite me in the rear.

 

@ShadowK clearly the solution is for you to create all of the solutions then release them on the asset store. It's a big win all the way around. Shadow's Shaders, Shadows Bloody Fast Trees, etc. Then all of the issues you personally run into are solved plus everyone else also has the solution available and you can pull in some additional money from those sales to help fund development.

Looking forward to seeing where you are in a week or two. Hopefully you are still optimistic at that time. Meanwhile I am doing a 3D game inspired by Space Invaders.

 

It could also be the worst solution ever, I'd have to support assets that takes time away from developing games (already get side tracked enough building frameworks / half baked features etc.). I'd have to do it properly (no shortcuts here and there) whilst making sure it caters to none specific workflows, after support / time I doubt it would be fiscally worth it plus why do I have to be the guinea pig?

Nah, if I make any major breakthrough's towards the end of the project I'll just dump it all on Github for free, then the community can support each other whilst I do other stuff.

Looking forward to 3D space invaders, I'll take mine pickled onion flavour..

 

Which AAA are we talking about, they would not have shown the character it would have been seen as AAA, Facial animation are really bad (there is indie that do way better), they could have done more for the cloth physics (third party asset) and the kind of stylization they have is only AAA when a AAA studio do it because they get a pass through recognition TO me it screams hide the bad signifier of quality.

This is AAA by epic creator of unreal engine ...

Spoiler: more example

Crackdown 3 on xbox one x


agent of mayhem


sea of thieves


Not all AAA are


But I get what you mean

And scope, because scope is always too much. Though If I were to start this, I would start with scope first and asset polish very last once everything else is validated.

Also while all the impressive almost AAA project made by asian ... mmmm

 

Well you know you make great points there. I suppose you would be reading support emails (how do I use it, hey Shadow can you add so and so, etc) and might become a full-time thing with no time left to work on what you actually want to work on. That would suck.

It shouldn't take too long just depending on how often I actually work on it. I put in 65 minutes tonight. That was 3 dev sessions. I am not joking when I say I don't like to spend much time. Decide to do some game dev then start take a minute to figure out what to do that session, do it and then I am off.

Additional time now because I am making videos for a YT playlist showing the game as it is developed.

Maybe I should have sent that in a pm since it isn't Unity. If it is a big deal I can remove it. Anyway, that is where updates will be posted as I work on it. After doing this tonight I have probably had my fill until the weekend. Maybe do another 20 to 30 minutes tomorrow.

I thought about doing a game jam this weekend. There is a 1 Hour Game Jam every Saturday. And I think 1 hour sounds like something I'd be up for. If I am not burnt out by that time. lol Alright enough of this random rambling or people will be yelling at me for derailing... so let me get it back on the rails.

I came across this game tonight on GameJolt... Path of Shadows

I thought it had a very nice overall presentation. Graphically it has a kind of unique look and the atmospherics and voice seems nicely done. While watching the video i wondered if something like this would be considered capturing that essence of AAA by you guys or do the graphics have to be the realistic (although heavily processed) kind of visuals?

To me it seems like just the overall presentation is mainly the difference between AAA and not-AAA and this one looks very good to me. However, I notice a lot of examples posted around here seem to focus on games with kind of realistic graphics (again processed realism... cinematic realism I guess you could call it like movies).

I also thought it was a cool idea for a game. Of course, this is by a 5-person team. Interestingly only 2 artists though. They did a nice job of filling out the areas with content I thought.

 

Well that answers the question I had just asked above. Because these are not like photo realistic. Cinematic. Stylized. They look great though.

 

I think us worrying about AAA is presumptive.

@ShadowK nice start on your blog, but you wanna purge yourself from general forums if you're gonna have a few hours of playable content before xmas.

 

Stylized looked have been on since TF2 open the flood, WOW did first but for MMO, and overwatch is the descendant.

IF i were to target AAA I would try to emulate ps360 era.

IMHO nintendo reach a good compromise too



And it's not an issue of hardware power, I'm still crying in front of sonic colors on WII! That's ps2 levl of power.


Still better visually than some ps4 game IMHO

 

Exactly, solo and very small indie teams won't have time for making tools or try fixing big issues.
And it's always better to have official supported tools and features instead of ones dependend on exteriror guys.

I didn't say AAA, only a AAA touch, globally i find it great.
About facial animations there is even worst than this solo developper like Mass Effect Andromeda lol

There is very different levels of AAA games, cartoony ones like Overwatch or Nintendo games are very polished but they are more easy to do, they can be made with minimal teams and they don't have the same budget and content like Witcher 3 for example. They are smaller scope games and less complex about many things.

 

This guy understands marketing. Ending on a shot of a girls bum like that while switching into vr as she starts to bend over. Wow.

Thats some AAA marketing right there.

Obviously game itself looks impressive, but that video is sick.

 

I didn't noticed it at first, you are right it has some skill to sell it's game lol
Yep the game overall looks great about lighting, graphics, effects, it lacks content but it's a wip made by one guy only.

 

One guy and without programming (on unreal)

 

Don't say too loud it's possible , you'll make angry many people lol

 

Technically Blueprints are still programming.

Is that an issue?

Even Nintendo realized that sex sells

 

I'm not being sarcastic, I really mean that it's excellent marketing

 

It also turn off some people, know your demographics beware to who your demographic become too!

 

I think it's more a matter of team size and direction to be honest. You CAN get the same 'asset quality' as AAA teams, but the output volume will be different. I've highlighted an example below from Naughty Dog, and my own experience at the studio I currently work at.

'AAA'
Take Naughty Dog, and how they work on their levels for an example. (I'm taking examples from the Gnomon talk from last year, I'll try and find the link later.) They have teams of texture artists and level designers that work on ONE particular level for the game at a time. The design of mechanics is usually decided by the gameplay designers, and the environment artists work closely with the conceptual artists for visual direction and iteration.

If you look at the roles and responsibilities of each of those people, they interlink and are very closely working together to achieve a direction that has been decided either for them or alongside each other.

'Indie'
For our current game, I am the sole level designer, environment modeler, texture artist. I set up the lighting, I build the world and I optimise everything so the game runs. The volume of work I have to output to get a level playable with an initial art pass is probably not dissimilar to a big studio, but we don't have the man power for those tasks to be spread out across multiple people...so the time it takes increases. As said on the very first page of this thread, it's impossible for a team of 5 to do the exact same volume and quality of work as a team of 100 (especially if they're spending time posting on forums ), so you're going to be forever having the time/quality debate.



I think there's also opportunities within a larger studio to gain a little bit more feedback on certain aspects of the game design, playability and art direction whilst iterations are constantly flowing. With more people around you that are technically proficient in your particular field you will also learn more and (theoretically) be more pro-active in being able to solve problems as they arise. In a smaller team, you may be the only person that specialises in a particular area...so you don't always have access to that technical feedback that would accelerate the production process or help you grow professionally.

I don't think either are easier or more difficult, they just come with their own challenges and rewards. Working at a big studio gets you the prestige of having worked on huge blockbuster games, whereas working on smaller projects in smaller teams gets you more direct involvement with the direction and creative aspects of the game.

 

I think this is a much bigger factor than most people give credit.

 

That's also why we post on forums

 

I agree to a point. You can critique and receive feedback online for sure but there's nothing quite like having someone sit with you and discuss what you're doing, and maybe show you a couple of tricks you've never seen before.

It's great that both types of development exist though, and I'm glad that online spaces exist for that sort of thing.

@frosted I think that's been the most difficult aspect of indie development for me so far. Having the responsibility for a lot of the game is fantastic and it gives you a huge buzz when people like what they see, but at the same time it can also be crippling to the point of counter-productivity.

 

Yeah I don't know if I had the opportunity to said it before, but decision has a hidden cost people underestimate (I certainly did), my current project takes time not because of execution or complexity, but the perfect storm of specific small and interconnected problems where I must arbitrate carefully, the less generic you go the more you have to make these decision.

In arguing that indie can get close to AAA it's always with the idea that they must clone something (ie where all the decision has been made already and the pitfall documented) while adding stylish differentiation and avoid actual complex domain (digital characters with nuanced acting). Basically rolling on the path of least resistance is the best strategy, contrary to AAA studio who brute force everything, as the ROI will be bigger due to the relative scale.

Tangentially let's talk about the ROI, if you have a small team (say 14 people) and do something that attract attention on an AAA level, and do number that would be mediocre for an AAA (say 1 millions sales at 60€) because of the cost they have with big team, well given your size that's almost jackpot.

The thing is that AAA are generally ambitious generic games, they are generic per marketing to reduce the risk, but people doing the game still try to do the best they can inside that framework and push boundary. That is they brute force quality and details even where the typical audience wouldn't notice them. The thing is by focusing on key salient elements you can turn other thing into safer bet with known formula and process (ie boring).

The fun part is that naughty dogs is kinda doing that at a AAA level, they are relatively small by AAA standard (hence easy communication), they also have system of shared responsibility with a flat hierarchy it seems, ie if you see a problem you can fixed it. I can point of many part in uncharted 4 that are masterfully super rough, and many talk they gave insist on taking inspiration from minimalist art. They also have chosen very generic and very well applied formula (indiana jones, tomb raider with a generic wisecracking hero, stop and go linear structure with passable shooting sequence). This choice lock ahead a lot of decisions, then they can focus solely on bringing these elements to the next level of quality, instead of fumbling around understanding what makes things tick, how to tell the story, etc ...

The counter example of that is Mass effect andromeda, they spend 3 years trying to create something new, ie seamless open world space exploration with a very strong narrative component, something that has never been done at the AAA level, so there is no formula, no safety. After those 3 years, they reverted back to the known formula, but then internal politics started to get in the way, you couldn't fix problem you could see because management, the engine was imposed and wasn't the perfect fit they needed, etc ... The end result is rather decent for all these problem, but the cost get in the way of the ROI.

Another example is Deus EX HR, outside of tone deafness with the subject matter who turned away many people, they had an insane base quality level going in the game, they push the craft on some key aspect of branching level design based on narrative, and perfected the level design of narrative hub, their problem is that they had literally nothing salient to attract, so it compounded with the tone deafness and the series has slip into hiatus, due to barely breaking ROI.

I have too worked on a AAA games some time ago, it was insanely ambitious and promising and were doing a lot of thing games back then didn't do but are now common. But 3 years in they still haven't locked anything down, not the main gameplay, not the main progression, not the story, not the main character design, and everyone had its own vision because there was no unifying model to look at, you couldn't tell if something was good or not because it was new.

For example the control were temporary, for debugging purpose, they have a one button pressed to navigate complex geometry, some people like it a lot, but other were not sure and wanted a traditional "input pressed" like old platformer, the problem is that way more complex geometry to navigate and jumping seamlessly from small platform to small platform with insane verticality was a no go. During development, an unknown game was demoed, assassin's creed, who basically had the same inspiration as us (parkour) with the pressed button system to navigate, that put the discussion to rest. Also our system was way more engaging and deep than assassin's creed. But the game never got out because the company fold out, gameplay were still unresolved.

The thing is that my argument is, in order to punch up toward AAA, you must avoid decision pitfall and all sort of complexity and also tone down ambition, many indie who want to attempt AAA (even if they are AAA veteran) also do so with incredibly attachment to their idea, which introduce complexity of decision and prevent them from cutting the fat to get S*** done (hello it's me!), everyone want to make a good game, so why bother doing with a boring one? (though that doesn't stop AAA to create hand made brute force padding like grindy fetch quest, but that's management forcing hands)That attachment and ambition get in the way, you can do almost AAA if you think craft and business first, artistry will kill you.

People who understood this was the dev of the witcher, they didn't start with their idea, they started by adapting a books, that already a lot of decisions cut down. They come from a place known for insanely beloved and ambitious RPG known as euro janks, these rpg always set out to push ideas beyond. The dev of the first witcher, to contrast, were all beginner that didn't knew how to make a game, they basically had to improvise on the go, but the one thing they did do is to take a very safe formula that minimize decision, so they could focus on doing quality. Witcher 3 is now the most ambitious big scale AAA rpg, yet the formula remain pretty safe, they only increase quality (those side quest) and rip lesson from other rpg (those half pcg cinematics), they don't have the complexity of other eurojanks like the GOTHIC series, but also none of the failure.

I'm not saying an indie can make something on the scope and scale of unchartred 4 or witcher 3, but those are already the high end of AAA, there is also a low end of AAA that's reachable. So in the end it's rather a problem of business planning, can you kill your darling to make something safe with just enough salient point, and make something that will have enough ROI to invest in actual ambition. Or cling to your magnus opus?

The biggest question is who here really want to make an AAA game and the sacrifice it demand anyway? This will remain theoretical because no people here seems to match the profile of someone who want to tackle this problem seriously and is content making game his own way.



note:
Holyshit I was there to make only one line remark and it became a full essay
What I'm doing with my life?
Bye I was in the middle of researching business model lol, it may have infected my argument

 

Human Revolution or Mankind Divided? Human Revolution was pretty successful, Mankind Divided was less so, partially (only a small part) because of offended people, partially because they didn't really advance that much in terms of gameplay from Human Revolution, and partially because Square Enix made them cut a bunch of the plot for a sequel.

 

Yeah I meant MD instead of HR, but offended people is actually a bit broader that just mismanaged social commentary ... the original deus ex was a highbrow game in pulpy clothes, a lot of people were disappointed about how the game handled its subjects, when the debacle around the social commentary happen it was a clear signal they hadn't the chop. Then there was complaints about choice and mostly consequences too despite the diversity of approach.

And of course management screw up hard. And surely the game did look like an expansion pack rather than a sequel with no clear salient identity. Despite being an overall step up from the early game in many aspects, it did lack some key message, and trying to stay absolutely neutral meant they had no hook either.

The industry reacted to that with bringing "agenda" front and clear this E3 lol you are about to kill a lot of nazi (literal or stand in) with your close friend the angry black girl, I have never see so many black women in games than this E3.

Spoiler: social commentary RANT

Even though it feel underhanded, most of them threaten a white guy or the hero at some point, except ubi soft but they pair her with a monkey, that's not better. They are just afraid to be seen as "trump company" in a multicultural world, data do show that multicultural works sell better, they are following the money essentially, but instead of doing something pleasing with their "multicultural" insert they just reuse really bad stereotype that have hurt peoples since 400 years by now.

Its' truly just posing and condescending everyone, aka trump supporter and minority, to have moral righteousness high ground (we are not racist, see we put the so demanded token black insert, you should be please for our great benevolence, we are not like those lowly racist who elected trump, bow yourself in front of us). There is horror story inside the trench too. The irony is that this is that attitude that get trump elected, ie punishing condescending "elite", as racist are a minority (but vocal) support of him, according to data.

But to be frank players (at large) don't care, they just care that whatever you said is in a pleasing and entertaining package, Mafia 3 (head on racism commentary) or Horizon Zero down (matriarchal fantasy) were not bog down by in your face agenda, when player were upset it was about gameplay or technical aspects. Get out popularity also showed it was a non starter too for the general audience at large, it simply don't upset them because that's not news.

Well at least Nintendo was 90% on point with twintelle (10% miss for the hair), which instantly won over the internet even in japan. Guess that good works reward itself organically?

 

Spoiler

I think that's an incredibly myopic view of Trump and the people who voted for him, but politics get threads closed here.

And I definitely agree about all of the progressivism being the result of companies following trends, rather than any real desire for the progressivism (with the exception of companies like Bioware where it's become a company identity).

I'll point out though that Ubisoft has been rather progressive in some ways for a while now. The first AC game featured an Arab man after all. The next three featured a white Italian, sure, but the next 4 after that (including Liberation, which was released to PC, and Freedom's Cry, released as a standalone game) featured 2 mixed characters (white/native american and black/french), one white character, and one black character. So they're no stranger to progressivism.

 

All great points (I haven't completed Deus Ex so can't comment on that). My experience in the industry isn't that extensive, so it's nice to see some insight from people who have been there in the past (and maybe in some cases still are there.)

The Witcher was also a great example of decision making on story and gameplay fronts being pretty safe, which ultimately allowed more focus on quality. Witcher 3 is an excellent example of a game with tried and tested mechanics/narrative paths/aesthetics done really really well.

 

what about like indie nowadays making a game that like beats SNES AAA ?? is that called AAA? idk what AAA is maybe?

anyway Stardew Valley is pretty awesome, isnt it made by one guy??
id honestly say Stardew Valley is even better than most AAA games nowadays, cause AAA nowadays mostly suuuuck haaaaarrrrrddd imo .. they follow too much marketing analysis and BS and they have NO creative genius or like SOUL at all... and theyre all the same crap most the time, like FPS games

 

Not sure if serious...

There seems to be this corporate mask over everything anyone does over 2 people working out of a tiny bedroom in San Francisco or something, and I don't think that's healthy for the industry. I don't believe for one second that anyone who works on a project considered 'AAA' is instantly just a work monkey and doesn't care about the end product. Sure, there are people that couldn't care less but that happens in every industry at every level.

One game being 'better' than another is so subjective it can't really even be a thing. I think Stardew Valley affected my mood in a more positive way than playing Assassin's Creed Unity, but what does 'better' even mean? Better mechanics? Better Narrative structure and execution? Better and more intuitive accessibility? Impressive tech that pushes the boundaries for exploration and provides an immersive experience?

What do you consider 'soul' within a game? If by intended experience by the developer, surely that's not as good a game as one that allows you the freedom to discover yourself? Firewatch is a great example of an experience...but it doesn't come close to the immersive world effect that the Dark Souls series has. Is that a case of AAA being better than indie?

If you could give some examples of the AAA games you are talking about then it gives us something to discuss as opposed to whitewashing AAA development as a soulless money making machine.

 

Soul is very hard to define, but I tend to agree. Some games have "soul" others don't. Games in general are a very subjective matter, what is "fun"? What is "immersion"?

I think that the problem with many AAA games (or large budget games) is that they tend to pander too much to the player. The more that a game panders, the less "soul" it has.

I do not think it is coincidence that you mention Dark Souls here, as Dark Souls is famous for not pandering to the player. Instead Dark Souls is demanding of the player, which was very rare, especially at a time when people were arguing that difficulty had no place in games; that games should demand little to nothing of the player.

"Soul" may be very subjective, but I do tend to think that games that have a clear vision for what they want to be, and are brave enough to take some risk in order to achieve those goals feel very different from cookie cutter blockbusters.

 

I think the question should be "how close can indies and other AAA's get to the level of the METRO series?"
Because they seem to blow everyone out of the water and push technical and immersive boundaries that everyone else struggles to even match years later, every time they release a game.

 

Excellent point. One game that immediately comes to mind is Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag, where they changed up the formula they'd been using for 5 games and made basically a pirate game in the AC universe. And it's one of the most acclaimed games in the series.

 

For disclaimer, I don't care about "quality" when discussing AAA, I'm only discussing it from the point of view of production values or perception of, quality is subjective to the market you are aiming for, Call of duty isn't quality to anyone who like deep thoughtful puzzle or story with an nuanced overlook on the world lol. But production value as a degree of objectivity we can agree on, anything else will just be semantic that muddy the discussion and derail. Production value makes it an intellectual challenge, a puzzle to solve, it has clear goals, you can measure clearly how close to it you are and what every action contribute to achieve that.

That said a counter argument I have been keeping to myself until now, is that the perception of AAA is largely now about well realized facial animation in a cinematic concept. Something that will be really hard to achieve by indie, even though there is many tiers of facial animation in game now. Ie if you can achieve the AAA looks but don't have character with nuanced facial animation, it's a dead give away you are indie, no matter how great your rendering too.

In general I would say that going scifi is a safer bet to try the indie AAA prestidigitation, you can minimize the human character to get more alien looking locals and creatures, which minimize comparison to reality, especially when you have houses.

My 2 cents!

 

I agree that the Souls games are always perceived as challenging, and are unapologetic with it...but I think that comes at an entry point cost to players that can't/won't put in the time required to 'figure it out'. That's another discussion I guess, but I can see why large corporate entities aren't willing to take a chance on new IPs or risky accessibility from a business perspective.

Regardless, it would be nice to start seeing a change; games like The Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn that are traditionally more niche products have made it well into the mainstream gaming spotlight, so hopefully the larger Publishers start seeing big budget games pitches other than the yearly releases as investments rather than risks.

Depends. There are a lot of games that go for the non-human thing, but I find that Indie companies just tend to work to the strengths they have in the core team. Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to The Rapture are examples of really polished content with almost zero 'human' elements to character creation. Maybe they didn't have access to a character modeler or full-time rigger? The houses and surrounding areas of Yaughton looked amazingly accurate in EGtTR, so it depends entirely on what you have at your disposal.

It's interesting to see how the smaller companies get around these issues...I think that often leads to more exploration of mechanics and trimming down the fat on a project that larger companies just couldn't justify. Got to find work for everyone at a studio!

The dynamics of that are actually really interesting come to think of it. Any team, regardless of size, will always be limited by their specialties. That could be being locked into a team of 6 in which no one can rig a character or in a team of 300 where everybody has to be fully utilised on a project for it to be financially viable.

 

Agreed. The result though is that many AAA games are some of the simplest of games in terms of actual game play mechanics. That's not a knock on AAA, they need to appeal to a broad audience in order to cover their AAA costs.

The result though is that many high budget games offer some of the most simplistic gameplay and instead focus more and more on the reliable return from better visuals and higher levels of polish.

Look at quest design, we still rely on stuff like fetch quests or chase quests. Instead of figuring out how to take quests to the next level, we've focused on how to add so much cinematic awesomeness to set piece sequences that the player doesn't realize they're just doing the 1000th fetch quest.

I'm not knocking AAA though, truly innovative game play is really hard, when you have that much money riding on a project, taking those kinds of risks can flat out sink studios.