We recently shot a video at TwitchCon where we interviewed someone who's "Hot gaming take" was that AAA games are dying out and indie studios are taking over. ~
This got me thinkin'.
It feels like every few weeks another big game arrives after six years of development, a budget roughly equivalent to a small country's GDP, and enough marketing to convince us it's "the future of gaming." Then two weeks later everyone's back playing a game made by three people in a garage, fuelled almost entirely by cans of monster and sheer will.
Maybe that's not a coincidence.
AAA studios seem trapped in an endless cycle of playing it safe. Sequels. Remakes. Reboots. Deluxe Ultimate Gold Platinum Editions. Every game somehow needs an open world, a crafting system, RPG mechanics, live service elements, battle passes, and approximately 400 map icons reminding you that fun is infact, nearby.
Meanwhile, indie developers are just out here like "what if we let you smoke cigs and get drunk whilst driving an RV?"
That's not to say every AAA release misses the mark. Some are incredible, polished experiences that genuinely push the industry forward. But they also carry enormous financial risk, which naturally makes publishers more cautious. Safe bets become safer. Innovation becomes... a meeting.
Indie games don't have that luxury. They succeed because they're weird. They take the piss whilst delivering something pretty solid. They experiment. Sometimes they're ugly. Sometimes they're broken. Most of the time they're both. But when they hit, they remind us why we started playing games in the first place.
The funny thing is, players constantly say they want something fresh, then collectively buy the fifteenth entry in a franchise they've been complaining about since 2017. We're all part of the problem. It's like ordering the same takeaway every Friday and then wondering why it tastes kinda boring.
So to bring my yap to a close (I'm Irish ok? We arent known for our brevity)
Are AAA games genuinely losing their grip, or are we just living through a period where the most exciting ideas happen to be coming from smaller teams?
Is this the beginning of a shift in the industry, or is it just another cycle before the next HUGE game changes everyone's mind?
Is the future indie, or is AAA simply due its next masterpiece?
-Dan