A small games manifesto

megopie , 6 hours ago

That’s actually kind of shocking to see that indie games have surpassed AAA in revenue. I expected that was kind of inevitable given how uninspired and criticized modern AAA stuff is. But to actually see it already happened is cool.

It’s been shocking to see the amount of financial industry money and control at some of the bigger studio, and the way they talk about the future of the industry is disturbing. Although, if the money isn’t rolling in, or there are other parts of the market making more money, it makes me hopeful that finance will loosen it’s grip on these companies and let them make good projects rather than chasing arbitrary metrics.

onlinepersona , 1 hour ago

AAA really should mean game quality, not production costs. I don’t care how much money is spent on a game, if it’s bad, it’s bad.

Anti Commercial-AI license

ConstableJelly OP , 19 minutes ago

I have started to notice that a lot, if not the majority, of games that make the biggest social splashes in the past couple years are smaller games - with exceptions for titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2 which are their own labors of love on a AAA scale. Animal Well, Balatro, Dredge, Vampire Survivors, Talos Principle 2, Hi-Fi Rush…these are the games I tend to hear about the most.

The attention that a lot of AAA games get seems shallow and short-lived lately.

One of the things that’s excited me most recently is seeing new and inventive ways to use graphics and fidelity besides photorealism. Games like Gris and The Artful Escape are probably the most stunningly beautiful games I’ve ever played.

frank , 5 hours ago

That’s a cool read. I would much rather play a smaller passion-project of a game than a AAA one anyway, but it’s cool to see markets shifting that way on the large