Yoshida Doesn't Understand Gamers Who Only Want AAA Games

[Esmeralda Portillo]

Yoshida Doesn't Understand Gamers Who Only Want AAA Games

Yoshida doesn't understand the mindset some gamers have about only playing big-budget titles.

President of Sony's Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida is a big advocate for indie games [http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/more-dev-tools-made-available-because-sony-hearts-indie-games-1235407], so he's bewildered why certain gamers would only want to play triple A games.

In an interview with GamesIndustry, Yoshida described how Sony was initially hesitant about the reception Media Molecule's newest game would receive, "I was very happy to get a very positive reaction when we announced LittleBigPlanet 3. We are concerned a little bit when we work on a game like LittleBigPlanet 3, about how people will react, because people want those big-budget, realistic, military shooters. But there were lots of cheers, a lot of affection." He was also happy to see the positive reaction to Nintendo's games, like Splatoon, and what that says about the industry's interests.

Granted, Little Big Planet 3 is anything but indie, but it relates to his sentiment about gamers only wanting to play big-budget military shooters. When Yoshida was asked if the focus on indie games is actually to take up slots AAA games are currently not filling on Sony's end, Yoshida states that's just a welcomed benefit, "That's not why, but that's the end result of having great indie games as well. Almost every week you see an indie game coming out digitally on PS4."

He takes the debate further, "I hear complaints [about the lack of AAA games]. I do realize that some people are only interested in big-budget AAA games. I don't really understand those people." He has some theories as to why these type of gamers don't like playing indie games, "I don't know if they've tried some of the indie games and decided they're not interested. Maybe they haven't even tried. That's a key question. With Resogun, which we offered for free for a long time on PS Plus, not every PS Plus member downloaded it, and that's a great, great game. That's a key question for us."

Sony will continue to push its PlayStation loves indie devs initiative, the latest of which was their release of Entwined during their E3 press conference. You can read our review here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/11679-Entwined-Review-Its-For-The-Birds].

Source: GamesIndustry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-07-02-yoshida-i-dont-understand-people-who-only-want-aaa]

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[RicoADF]

I don't get it either, some of my favoriate games are either indie or atleast AA, some examples include Minecraft, ArmA series, Cities in Motion, Tropica series etc. I love my Watch Dogs, Assasin Creeds and Battlefields, but I also enjoy variety to scratch the other itches from time to time.

 

[Kingjackl]

This is an attitude we need more of from the people who make and publish games. It's one thing for critics to lament the popularity of big budget AAA games, it's another thing entirely for one of the president of a major console distributor to come out and say "we're supporting indie games, please take a bit of time to play them as well as the military shooters".

 

[Vault101]

I don't want ONLY AAA games...but I do want certain types of games and more often that not that might align with AAA

that said XCOM is probably my favorite game ever...and while it generally looks good (and is in the same AAA distribution bracket) its not super duper AAA millions dollar budget, also Gone Home and Stanly parable are favorites of mine....

then youve got games like Routine or Wasteland 2 which I MIGHT like if they ever decided to come out...thats what annoys me about indie games

 

[StriderShinryu]

I wonder as well. There's nothing wrong with having a preference for certain genres, I'd say that we all do, but to lock yourself into only playing games of a certain genre or budget level seems so limiting to me.

 

[JayRPG]

The answer is simple. It's the term "Indie".

It's both a good and bad thing, because to some people it means creativity, cheaper, interesting mechanics and unique gameplay but to a larger set of others (AAA gamers) it just means cheap, bad quality, no resources.

I'd be willing to bet $1000 that if you took the indie tag and genre off the indie games on steam you would see an increase in sale for said games; I witnessed a friend during the steam sale look at a game, say that it looks awesome (and it was only $2.49 or something like on sale) then, after seeing the indie tag, say "Oh don't worry about it, I'm not buying that shit".

I think the term Indie is actually a negative to more people than it is a positive to.

 

[Pogilrup]

Perhaps those are the only games that can offer to do high quality graphics, high quality environment design, and professional voice acting in the same game?

Other games with less budget would usually have to settle for less in one or more areas.

 

[Kyogissun]

Because they've been conditioned by marketing and other mass media to only want the best and pay the most for the best.

Look at advertising for the Xbone, Beats, any blockbuster film, NY Times Bestseller...

With MAYBE the exception of novels, a lot of people are conditioned in their tastes and don't know how to branch out and try something new. So they want their Uncharteds and Gears of War and Halos and Killzones and so on... Because they don't know how to want anything else.

Apologies for the jaded attitude but it's quite clear that if people are going to continue buying Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Madden and such annually, they're clearly content with having the same experience over and over and over again with SLIGHT alterations for each release. I mean fuck, Advanced Warfighter is the first game in the series that looks relatively 'different' enough since the past 3 CoD releases to make me interested... But I won't lie, I'm not confident it won't feel just like BlOps 2 or Ghosts.

I'm seriously hoping though that Sledgehammer will prove me wrong, especially with it being composed of a healthy amount of staffers who used to belong to Visceral AND the footage so far indicates that maybe there will be enough mechanic changes and content additions to make it feel relatively fresh.

 

[Pyrian]

If there weren't an audience for high-budget games that didn't also want low-budget games, then creating high-budget games would make no financial sense, and such games would quickly cease to get made at all. Which would be sad.

Look, different people have different tastes, and that supports variety. This is good.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I'd imagine it's the depth of the game that matters. I find a lot of "AAA" games are richer in a lot of things while Indie games are shallower.

I'm not saying I don't like indie games, mind you, but there's a difference between the experiences, and ignoring that, IMO, is folly.

Frankly, I'll play any game that nabs my interest. I'll even go out of my way to get it, literally, and figuratively. I've added an hour of time to my drive home just to pick up one game. I've driven 2 hours just to get a game, even, but it's a bit rare.

 

[Razorback0z]

Best topic he could think of to promote LBP3 I guess and perhaps an apology for how ordinary it will be.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Wouldn't a tried & true exclusive Sony IP be considered an AAA game?

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

The answer is simple. It's the term "Indie".

It's both a good and bad thing, because to some people it means creativity, cheaper, interesting mechanics and unique gameplay but to a larger set of others (AAA gamers) it just means cheap, bad quality, no resources.

I'd be willing to bet $1000 that if you took the indie tag and genre off the indie games on steam you would see an increase in sale for said games; I witnessed a friend during the steam sale look at a game, say that it looks awesome (and it was only $2.49 or something like on sale) then, after seeing the indie tag, say "Oh don't worry about it, I'm not buying that shit".

I think the term Indie is actually a negative to more people than it is a positive to.

I can agree with that, I'm more of a half and half guy on the term though, I love games like Minecraft that can be completed and add extra content for free as time goes on, that's a great incentive and always has something new to check out.

Games like Starbound add onto the idea of Minecraft but with more of a twist and I can also dig that, it's one of my favourite games still even though it's nowhere near completion, Planetary Annihilation is still in it's Gamma phase but it's more or less Indie but it's brining the RTS genre something new to the table such as being able to fight on spherical planets for maps and being able to get off them and travel space along with smashing asteroids into said planets, all well and good.

But then we have Indie games like Day Z and Castle Story, Day Z has been extremely slow and sluggish with the pacing of their game and the guys behind Castle Story are just fucking up whatever they keep trying to fix and they haven't really begun to even add content to keep us going and that's been going on for two years straight, that's two years of patience and good will going down the drain so far when you look at PA and Starbound along with others doing better.

I do look at indies as good games but at the same time I can't help but see most as being cheap/bad quality, especially when we get complete copy cat games with little effort put in or really super safe ones that don't want to get their toes wet with risk involved and then we have ones like War Z or other devs that can just run away or let it die, that does set bad examples over time and the guys behind Day Z, Castle story and others are just piling up, Castle Story has a really unique concept of mixing an RTS type game with a Minecraft feel to it, brilliant idea but getting poorly executed.

Other thing is when I'm gaming I want AAA games because I've loved them for as long as I can remember, they've normally sold me and haven't always disappointed me or allowed me to put them down for long periods of time, only recently have some done that with games like Watch Dogs and a little of Ground Zeroes but Indie games I don't always see as an always slice of cake I'd like, I have to look really hard into that market and I mean real deep to find maybe a gem or two that could turn out to be my total jam, but that itself I find to be problematic because here I am looking at most of Wii U's upcoming games and XB1's and finding most of them to be my sorta jam and they're all different genre's, only they are mostly polished and executed well enough to completely click with me.


I like Indie's don't get me wrong but I tend to think of them as not completely something I could just simply dive into easily to love than I can with AAA games of the past and present, maybe if they dropped the term Indie but even then I'd still be able to tell apart the quality and work put into a game to notice it's not grabbing me but it might do differently for others than it does me.

Last thing I will say that I have a gripe with Indie's is price point, if you're asking for more than £25 then you will lose me straight off the bat, I might consider looking back if it;s priced quite low in a sale but you'd be lucky because once I see £25+ chances are you've lost for for either a long time or completely, PA was an exception because my guy bought me it for an early Xmas present and it was so far the only new RTS game around anywhere seeing as how RTS as a genre seems to have died down a lot compared to it;s sub genre RTT which is still booming and I''m not really a fan of that genre so I feel there's not much hope for AAA RTS games let alone much with indie.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Sadly people are sheep and people are cheap. Most people buy what the marketing tells them to" What's big. What's popular. What "all the cool people will be playing." And in full truth, in video games this usually leads to a good gaming experience (or at least on average, the hype factor is a bit more deserving than other mediums.) still, most people then don't have an interest in following up into side areas to find personal experiences and enjoyment. People that will try and follow Final Fantasy into Persona, or Etrian Odyssey are few and far between. And of those, we find so many afraid to not have the ideal experience that they have no interest in things that don't have the high gloss finish. A poor frame rate or minor bug will kill interest for a lot of people that might otherwise have fun, but when their money is on the line, less than perfect isn't good enough.

Admittedly, I get this for console games (even though some of my favorite games were ones I saw at Gamestop and said "fuck it, why not"), but indy one? Take out fast food is more expensive that a lot of small online games go for so I get amazed at the number of people that are afraid that their 5 bucks won't be fully re numerated in fun.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wouldn't a tried & true exclusive Sony IP be considered an AAA game?

This was never about AAA v Indie. It was about Big-Budget MMS games v everything else.

 

[Little Gray]

The problem with indie games is that they are mostly crap. Its not worth if for me to dig through the piles of shit for the one that does not suck.

 

[Haru17]

Some games, like Elder Scrolls or Zelda, can only really be AAA due to the sheer scope involved. That said, I have plenty of time for experimental indie games like Minecraft (which was at one time both experimental and indie), Little Inferno, and Dust: An Elysian Tale.

I won't lie, though, all the pixelated indie games do blend together for me sometimes.