It was the best of times, it was the worst of times at this year's Game Developers Conference, held March 23-27 at San Francisco's Moscone Center. The annual confab, which brought together the electronic entertainment industry's most celebrated minds, pointed clearly to interactive entertainment's increasingly divergent future. Grab your controller and hang on tight. Even we were surprised at how rapidly the industry is undergoing an extreme makeover.
Faced with rising costs and growing public indifference to set-top consoles like the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360, one thing is obvious. Traditional game publishers, who generally stayed under the radar at the conference, have a tough battle ahead. But to judge from the exuberant attendees, who jockeyed to watch leading designers tackle controversial topics including human sexuality and games' role in personal and social change, good news was plentiful as well. For all intents and purposes, this is a medium that's undergoing a renaissance on virtually every other front.
Elden Ring's manga has been put on hiatus so that the artist can play the DLC.
While AAA games make headlines all over the internet, AA games are quietly and profoundly impacting the gaming industry with their creativity.
No sh!t, like that's one thing that I will give the modern game industry is the re-uprising of the mid-tier. It's not as big as it was during the PS2 like Golden era of the mid-tier, but it's pretty damn good at the moment.
Can we even call half of these games mid-tier when they're just 10 dollars short of full price? And if we're talking about indies that charge around 30 bucks, do many of these games honestly deserve the praise when so many chose the E.A. approach? They mention Hellblade 2 in the article, how can a game that took 5 years to make be considered "mid-tier"? Who knows what that budget was with how much work went into the visuals and sound design and mo-cap.
what's wrong with the early access approach? Supergiant games got so much help from the community and took the feedback to heart and created one of the best roguelikes. The early access that you pay 40 bucks to play the game earlier is awful, but this is actually super beneficial for the devs and also the gamers. Same with DoS2 and Baldur's gate 3.
@Michiel
There are few exceptions in E.A. but let's look at The Rogue Prince of Persian. Why in the factual is an Ubi funded game in E.A.? There are games that are in early access for years, I'm talking 7-8 years. Look at 7 Days to Die, apparently it's coming out of E.A. and they're charging 54 bucks for the 1.0 version on consoles. Crowd funding also brought in a lot of problems, with many games funded turning out crap or then later signing a deal with a publisher regardless. The "mid-tier" market has a lot of shady business practices.
Well im not talking these games but the mid-tier in general, games like the sniper elite series, RoboCop, Alan Wake 2, Lies of P, Stellar Blade, Alone in the Dark, etc it's far better than it was a gew years ago where everything was either a huge AAA game or a simple lo-fi indie game, and there was very little in between.
I have enjoyed some amazing AA gaming this gen, and the Portal has been a surprising catylist for me getting into these.
This. Why does everything have to be this vs that? Good game is good and deserves attention.
War, war never ends.
War! Huh yea good gosh y’all,
what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
I suppose the general point is that *overall* AA games deserve more attention right now because of how much good stuff they're putting out. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't give good AAA games attention. The point about attention stands even if you remove the whole AAA vs AA angle.
Indie and AA games just don't count for a huge swathe of the audience. They ignore them or the lack of marketing never drags them in. And many who praise the PS1 and PS2 for smaller, original games and proclaim games to be bad now also don't play these games. The hypocrisy of that is starting to really irritate me, tbh, especially as quality 3D indie games have become common.
Supporting AA games can also slowly give those studios a higher budget to work with while still being creative, and you eventually end up with things like Larian becoming AAA.
@ abnor
Everytime I hear that song I can't help but picture rush hour lol
On topic - there will always be this v that because ppl on both sides of that argument are blinded by their own bias
Hades sold 7 mil on steam alone. Disco Alysium 2.7 just on steam. Plague tale Requiem(is this even AA?) is at 3 mill. How did they not get attention?
And Forespoken is on the attention getting side? It bombed! What a idiotic thumbnail.
SMTVengence is a game that is getting overlooked. Put that on the thumbnail.
Here are some examples of some smaller games that I'd recommend people give a go:
- Metal Hellsinger
- Katana Zero
- The Talos Principle 2
- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
- Rollerdrome
- Trepang2
- Tinykin
- Another Crab's Treasure
- Sifu
- Ghostrunner
- Penny's Big Breakaway
- The Pathless
- Kena: Bridge Of Spirits
- Midnight Fight Express
- Jusant
- Solar Ash
- Outer Wilds
- Furi
- Superhot
- The Forgotten City
- Crow Country
- Signalis
And obviously stuff like Hotline Miami but that's an obvious choice. Great game
When the first footage of Over Jump Rally appeared online, it rightly caused quite a stir. Created using Unreal Engine 5, it offered a tantalizing glimpse of what a modern-day Sega Rally could look like, complete with super-realistic car models, breathtaking environments and – of course – the trademark Sega Blue Sky.
someone put a lot of effort into making this feel or look just like the good ol'days
thanks for finding this.!
Well done and great potential for a tribute.
Hey Dev, would you happen to be a fan of Skies of Arcadia? Lol
