Same thing happened with music.
It doesn’t mean AAA will go away, just like big stadium packing artists like Taylor Swift never went away. They just accounted for less of the industry’s total profits than they used to.
More of people’s disposable money is spent on a wider variety of music and games, often opting for more “indie” and cheaper versions of both. It’s a good thing, honestly, for people’s tastes to be more diversified and unique.
Except almost no one can live with music now, with the spotify model.
Live shows and merch have been the way artists make money since before streaming was a thing
Yeah, except now we would have the capacity to give money directly to artists. Platforms like shittyfy have shown people are willing to pay a couple of bucks a months to get access to music, we need to redirect the money to the artists and not some greedy ceo. Bandcamp is a start, we can do better.
What I’m saying is that record sales have been unprofitable for artists for a long time, so Spotify hasn’t really moved the needle on that point
I find this a bit entertaining especially hearing advertisers and executives occasionally vent on stuff like this. A huge portion of modern people especially the younger they are:
- Don’t go outside
- Don’t read billboards, bus wrap advertisements, bus stop advertisements, ignore advertisements in sporting arenas and uniforms, etc
- Use adblockers online/ignore online advertisements
- Mute the television when ads are on
- Don’t have television subscriptions
- Pay for streaming services at a level that removes ads
- Watch like no advertising shows like award shows or late night/daytime talking head interview shows
- only watches TV for the finals of a sporting league championship and when advertisements comes on mutes the TV or focuses on their friends or phones
- Don’t discuss advertisements with friends like people did in the past
- Show up to the movies late to avoid advertisements
- Generally have an anti-consumption/anti-advertisement attitude even if they are consumerist. Being advertised to is an annoyance enough to buy something else
- Throw away mailers immediately without reading
- Ignore people trying to advertise on the street/passing out flyers
- Don’t answer the door
- Don’t answer the phone
- Generally has no idea when anything new is coming out and mostly exists in a social bubble
- Practically no monoculture
- Doesn’t read emails unless they specifically searched/expected it
- Etc
Besides the not going outside and problems that can arise from being in a social bubble, it’s all good stuff to me. For decades advertisers and businesses have optimized everything for selling products and now people are so desensitized to it to not care. Like no one actually cares about times square takeover advertisements anymore. It’s not a big deal.
“OMG it was advertised all over time square.” Responded with: “I live in Wichita.” “I live in India.” “I’m from NYC and tourist just look at them, they don’t read them. Fuck no I don’t read them. I don’t fuck with times square.”
It’s actually incredibly hard to advertise media now. Advertisements have to manage to seem organic or come off as predatory. So in comes the influencers but no influencer is as influential and trusted as a prime time advertisement before social media/YouTube went mainstream with people children to elderly. The vein to sell souless AAA/blockbuster media is busted
You forgot
- pirates a lot of media
When you’re not allowed to own anything, piracy isn’t theft.
Piracy in general shouldn’t be equated to theft.
You wouldnt download a car.
I already have, and printed several for my nephews.
Yould think the ad companies would get the message…
Google made record profits last quarter, so it can’t be that bad.
Some of the most wildly out of touch professors and students I’ve shared space with were business peeps.
They do, just interpretation is different with their smooth brains.
Still feels crazy though how aware you’re forced to be about ads lurking in every corner. I check many of these boxes plus some others, use independent OSs, 3rd party apps etc. And still, although I hardly see any ads, they are so present just lurking under the surface.
Good example are sponsor comments in yt videos/podcasts. Some I can filter out with Sponsorblock, but the little video glitch reminds you every time that you have to stay safe. Podcast ads can easily be slipped with the fast forward button, but if you’re washing the dishes etc., sometimes you can’t react directly.
It’s really insane how ads are just everywhere these days.
I’d pay the $70 or even $100 for a AAA title…if it released complete, relatively bug-free, and didn’t try to soak me with microtransactions and subscriptions.
But that’s not what’s they’re selling.
Exactly. AAA is supposed to be pushing the standard forward and compete for my attention by making a better product.
If i can get an equally good or better game for less money i will obviously go for that.
All those stakeholders be like
This is whats wrong with gaming.
idiots being too eager to throw ever increasing amounts of money at companies, to get what they used to get for 50, with zero self awareness that they are the cancer thats killing everything.
Counterpoint: games were more expensive in the past, sometimes even before adjusting for inflation. Goldeneye was $70 new.
The problem is that back then you bought a complete game to play forever. Now you buy an unfinished mess that despite costing as much, makes it abundantly clear that the game isn’t yours through DRM and in your face micro transactions.
To provide a relatively decent source: https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalog/1997-Sears-Christmas-Book
Around page 286. So 1997 christmas season, Starfox and Goldeneye going for $80… FFVII for $60…
N64 had the challenge that every single game was a circuitboard, so that inflated costs. Nowadays the price is for just the right to download a copy.
i mean, its also sears, premium store premium pricing.
I bought FFVII on launch day from Best Buy for 49.99.
True, but it’s at least a rough indicator, and having intact concrete pricing from back then was a bit challenging, and sears catalog came to me as a very well preserved source of vaguely appropriate pricing.
Good! Fuck that generic sludge being pushed out by shit companies ran by sociopaths.
Lol, I know what you mean but take a look at that top 20 list and notice there’s only like 2-3 games that aren’t generic sludge pushed by shit companies ran by sociopaths.
Like when BG3 came out and other devs whined about being unable to deliver such a game? Maybe they shouldn’t be considered AAA studios if all they do is waste their budget.
I bought like 4 games last week for under $20.
AAA Gaming needs to get with the socioeconomic times.
What’s driving this trend? The enshitification of triple AAA titles fucking slapping surcharges on EVERYTHING; day one dlc, microtransactions, always online DRM, the ability to revoke access to the shit we pay for, it’s death by 1000 cuts. EVERY anti-consumer action, every attempt to squeeze more of us while delivering the same rehashed shit over and over just drives me further into the arms of indie developers. The intent of us withholding our money and refusing to purchase your shit is to provide publishers with a sense of pride and accomplishment for retaining their customer base.
I havent taken a stance but games requiring subscriotion have moved me away. Seasons pass, dlc etc.
You know what this is called? A healthy and competitive market.
Yeah, I get there’s layoffs, but that’s mainly at AAA studios and is a symptom of a previously unhealthy, highly consolidated market. The job losses suck, but now diversity and competition is coming back, and that’s generally a good thing for consumers.
Whenever investors get involved things go downhill. If the only two parties are a buyer and a seller, the only way the seller can make money is by making a product the buyer wants to buy. But investors don’t care about the product. They may not even understand the product. They only care that the product makes money.
AAA studios are failing because they want to please investors, not buyers.
It’s this.
and it’s always worth distinguishing between executives and investors.
Executives are going to push the problem, but the core issue is shareholders. In the US, where most of these companies are based, a publicly traded company is expected to make money for its shareholders. Shareholders have subplanted customers in the companies ethical obligagions. The law has been used to make this national policy. Controlling shareholders can (and do) vote to remove company leadership that won’t act how they want. It is not just that they have to generate revenue, they have to generate as much revenue as possible as determined by shareholders. It’s corporate cartel tatics. Fail us and die. Do well and you’ll get rewarded with some of the take.
If a company goes public, It’s only a matter of time until it’s product goes to shit.
I want to upvote this one million times
It was my understanding that it was a misconception that companies are legally bound to have an ROI or whatever. Not an economist so IDK. I just remember hearing that from several places. Regardless, the buyer-seller relationship is “I give you money, and you give me a product or service”. The investor-seller relationship is “We give you money, and you give us more money, and we don’t care how you do it.”
It was my understanding that it was a misconception that companies are legally bound to have an ROI or whatever. Not an economist so IDK. I just remember hearing that from several places. Regardless, the buyer-seller relationship is “I give you money, and you give me a product or service”. The investor-seller relationship is “We give you money, and you give us more money, and we don’t care how you do it.”
Only very technically. Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. still made the shareholder a priority over the product or the customer (technically it only set the precedent). It’s a misconception that actual profit is the legal requirement. I suppose I’m guilty of furthering it, but it’s easier to keep the oversimplification than to explain the nuances when the outcome is the same. The controlling shareholders are the ones that create this issue because their votes affect company policy, and if they don’t like the way the company operates, they have more direct legal avenues to change and challenge it than you or I would.
PC players are always going to lead the trend because we have the most options. Microsoft and Sony are in a race to enshitify their ecosystems, while Nintendo is actively hostile towards it’s customers and fans.
Meanwhile I’m playing through what was originally a Playstation exclusive title that I got on sale on Steam, and run on Linux.
And then there’s the F2P-P2W/ad-riddled-and-sustained hellhole that is most of mobile gaming.
to me, aaa = mark of inferior quality, barring some exceptions
For me it’s a lack of creativity and innovation when it comes to gameplay. Indies or just smaller studio productions take more risks and that’s a lot more exciting.
Yeah, AAA productions:
- Must be multiplayer, ostensibly because people ‘demand’ it, but a narrative easy to believe when you know players are stuck with your servers and you can effectively shut down the game when it no longer makes money for you.
- Relatively fewer games to be made, no chances may be taken. Conventional wisdom tells them that people got over turn-based in the 90s, so even the FFVII remake refused to do real turn-based, while Clair Obscur showed that it was still absolutely welcome gameplay.
I admit I was thinking about E33 as well, but my niche is narratively strong games or puzzle games. Too many AAA games are narratively disjointed open world messes and when it comes to puzzles indies are just king. Animal Well, Blue Prince, The Witness etc.
I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for the first time right now. I’m not particularly a fan of turn-based games, but I’m digging there interpretation of the genre. I like how each character has a limited amount of movement per turn and the ability to navigate through the entire environment. I’m surprised more developers don’t use a similar model.
Zero creativity, zero innovation, zero passion. Too many AAA games feel like all of the design and decision making happened in a boardroom full of executives and market researchers, then the actual designers and developers just churn out whatever the higher-ups have decided the product will be.
that is my point exactly. doesnt matter how nice the game looks, if its uncreative crap nothing will save that.
To me, AAA means but it in 6-12 months for $10-20
Well duh. Most of those AAA’s launch in broken states with lots of bugs and performance issues. And a lot of titles don’t even run well on the best hardware you can buy. Borderlands 4 ran atrocious on even the absolute best GPU you could buy.
And with the whole season pass, day one DLC, preorder bullshit, shit is more expensive than ever.
The industry only has themselves to blame for this.
The $70 is the introductory price, like the first dose of a drug that you get for cheaper to get you hooked. The actual price has been tabulated by a department with psychologist support to ensure it’s into the four digit range.
I feel like this doesn’t account for people who play older games. Like I’m currently playing the God of War reboot. That would count as playing something that’s outside the current top 20, but still very-much AAA.
This is revenue. How many people are buying those games now? Older games are also usually heavily discounted so that’s even less money. And if the game was bought second hand then it’s entirely irrelevant.
Hey, so am I! I was never a big fan of the hack and slash of the original trilogy, but have been loving the axe combat and the Norse mythos.
I have been playing it on Steam Deck and am quite impressed with it.
I’m too lazy to find my 3 year old comment but it went something like “AAA games are about as AAA as the mortgage bonds were in 2007”.
The era of the AAA gold standard is long gone. You no longer need a million dollar studio bankrolled by a big name publisher/console to make a groundbreaking AAA game.
Most if not all of those studios have been cost cutting for the past decade to maximize profit which is how we reached the current market of UE5 slop and DoA live service games.
There’s even an entire YouTube channel dedicated to showing how many current “AAA” titles have regressed in graphical optimization and quality from older game engines due to the lack of proper development, despite the advancement in consumer hardware.
Care to link the channel for the curious friend?
I fear for the new Mass Effect game.
Who can afford £70? Especially given the price increase consoles and PC components are seeing. Like many people, I wait a few years until it’s on sale.
Not only that, buying £70 of a broken game on initial release.
