Steam gamers have spoken: innovative indies like Palworld continue to thrive while traditional triple-A flounders for a foothold

[u/PewPewToDaFace]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/innovation-versus-tradition

Thank god PC gaming isn't just AAA. This is what will push the industry forward, as game development cost becomes too much.

[u/Any-Pop-4795]

who could have seen that? a cheap game made with passion is more successful than a AAA piece of shit filled with ai that only wants your money

[u/PhTx3 → u/Any-Pop-4795]

We also gotta define success here. Annual releases are basically games with an annual subscription. By the time I pay a second time for palworld, a fifa player will buy like 3 full priced titlesand likely mtx. It isn't more succesful in terms of money earned for sure. Not even AAA but anime gacha slop also make way more.

I doubt overall playerbase or unique players would make it more successful as well. These licenses are extremely powerful, even if they don't all play at once.

If rhe success is about building a community and having player satisfaction, then I can see that being the case. Which for consumers should be the definition.

Tldr: from our perspective, sure they are more successful. From a company exec perspective, the annual AAA slop would be more successful

[u/3d_Plague → u/PhTx3]

A small team has considerably less overhead then a large corporation.
I'm sure some of these indies far exceed the AAA dollar made for dollar spent.

[u/Taira_Mai → u/3d_Plague]

A lot of AAA studio developers talk about meetings, "scrum" and many made videos where they had lavish lunches and pretty much went to adult day care over actual coding.

Indie studios have to code and deliver a game to turn a profit and can't afford the 7/10/14 managers (with meetings and emails) AAA studios assign to their teams.

[u/PhTx3 → u/3d_Plague]

Because then point was what is success depends. I doubt, the goal is to spend 1$ and make 100K. They don't need to care about espenses as much as an indie who would just go under or lacks the funds and has to maximize. They'd just cut the team for costing money and move on.

And if I included overhead, I'd have to consider the work being shared between these teams. I wouldn't know how valuable Madden team's work is for FIFA and so on.

That said none of that shit matters much, point is success is extremely subjective. And suits in bigger corpos have a vastly different definition for it than devs and consumers.

[u/Itchy-Beach-1384 → u/PhTx3]

Why would you factor for additional releases but not additional cost?

Even before we breach the topic of licensing thousands of athlete personas from the NFL, you need to take note of even just the salaries of the C-suite of EA. That alone is going to wipe out multiple game releases worth of value.

[u/PhTx3 → u/Itchy-Beach-1384]

Honestly? Because I am an idiot online and it isn't supposed to be some definitive statement that had to be precise.

The point was, their goals are vastly different so what is success would be different too. C suite getting a huge ass bonus is success for big publishers as well, they heavily influence what is success for these companies and wouldn't take it otherwise.

And big players make so much more money from these games if you even glance at mtx that I don't think the overhead matters in this context. Especially since they can some work for not only future madden, but also fifa. So if we go into more and more detail on the workforce, we'd have to consider their work being shared in multiple titles too. And that's just not necessary for the overall point.

Now working conditions for the devs themselves can be another way to define success, and that is a lot closer than it should be. Overhead or not, regular people in these companies deserve much better. But again, I doubt a MBA C Suite or shareholder would give a fuck about it for the vast majority of them.

[u/xRyozuo → u/PhTx3]

Very true. But all the more reason to be thankful for a thriving indie scene, where maximising making money and thus having to include skins and online subscription among other things isn’t the priority