The Negative Impact Current AAA Video Game Development Has On The Industry

Daniel Dunham writes "The needless expense of AAA video game development is stifling creativity and originality in mainstream console gaming space. Need proof? Well, you needn’t look much further than popular AAA video game franchises such as Dead Space, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy, to see what I’m talking about."

[Tales RPG addict]

The answer is more than simple. So many game companies spend 10's of millions of dollars on developing a Game that they hope will make Call of Duty(Overrated) sales. The fact that the industry is TOO focused on graphics imposes a serious problem to innovating gameplay mechanics in a AAA title.

[kewlkat007]

Let's go back to the days when risk was taken without the expense of multimillion dollars projects at the hope of selling a million...

There were more garbage games but also more gems..

[Edsword]

This is true. AAA games play it safe because they have to sell 3 mil copies to even be considered a success. High production value, low creativity, endless sequels.

[zerocrossing]

Exactly, and all that leads to stagnation in the industry.

If they could only just scale back the budget required for developing AAA games, it would allow for more risk taking and diversity.

[kewlkat007]

Tru dat..

[3-4-5]

instead of spending $80 million on a game, make 4 $20 million dollar games.

* expands possible genres

* allows more experimentation

* allows more IP's to be liked by gamers and potential for them to catch on.

[HighResHero]

An important article because people need to be familiar with some of these concepts.

[goldwyncq]

I don't see the need to discriminate AAA from indie games and vice versa. A game's quality doesn't have to be determined by it's budget. What happened to the time when there were no such labels and games were simply games?

[MysticStrummer]

That's what I've been saying. As an old school gamer, these smaller games are reminiscent of the ones I grew up with. I don't know anyone who would argue that Asteroids, Defender, Pitfall, etc weren't games, but today's similar titles are suddenly being downplayed. It's the same goalpost moving mentality that said exclusives were most important, then multiplats became most important, and now back again to exclusives. I remember for awhile last gen the downloadable games on XBL were a legit bragging point, but now PS4's indies are a joke to those same people. It would be bizarre behavior if the agenda behind it wasn't so obvious.

[olliec9493]

There may be a middle ground somewhere, but generally as long as a game doesnt look horrible I'm not fussed. What is interesting i find is that some of the games with the the highest quality graphics can still suffer from piss poor art direction (another COD thing). Some of the most visually iconic games haven't just been so because of a high pixel count. I'm thinking Prince of Persia 2008 and HALO CE. Halo is interesting aswell in terms of mechanics - It is undeniably clunky compared to its successors but I kind of like it. It feels visceral and grungy. These examples were developed on much smaller budgets than 'ryse' will have been but they're so much more definitive of themselves

[DanielGearSolid]

If theres one thing I loved about ps2, the endless supply of cheap games I never heard of but had to try. I miss walking in to gamestop, strolling to the ps2 section and noticing $20 jrpg, and thinking. Might as well try it

[zerocrossing]

That's exactly how I found the PS2 game Odin Sphere, never heard of it before but saw it while I was out and picked it up, it's now one of my all time favourite video games.