Triple-A Ain't What it Used to Be

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Triple-A Ain't What it Used to Be

The decline in quality of AAA games has been a gradual process, and it is everybody's fault for letting it happen.

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[xEightBitPlayerx]

This has been one of the better articles that I have read in awhile, and while I do enjoy playing Titanfall, I do see the hype around it quickly evaporating among my friends.

 

[Sabin Felea]

"ut I think the larger problem is that the internet has ensured that we receive a constant stream of news about companies being terrible, and then it just becomes white noise. We can't get angry about all of it, so we just accept that this is what they do"

Fucking nailed it!!

I think the future will have different categories of games: those sold entirely on the basis of (empty-)spectacle and then the more layers you add to it like playtime, story, sandbox size, the more categories you will have and therefore different audiences. And I think this will happen regardless of whether the industry heads that way or not; these games will be categorised like that informaly, via web, or other non-standard channels.

There will be games that are set-driven and then there will be better games :>

 

[themilo504]

I?m not guilty of anything since I never buy games at launch, if I think it?s good I will wait a few weeks until I know the general opinion.

 

[sageoftruth]

"ut I think the larger problem is that the internet has ensured that we receive a constant stream of news about companies being terrible, and then it just becomes white noise. We can't get angry about all of it, so we just accept that this is what they do"

Wouldn't that kind of translate to "The problem is the Escapist"?

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

"AAA" to me means the same thing as "blockbuster": it's massive production costs that may or may not lead to a good game. It's just slang for "we spent so much money on this, and on hyping it, that we can dominate the conversation for a brief period".

"But I think the larger problem is that the internet has ensured that we receive a constant stream of news about companies being terrible, and then it just becomes white noise. We can't get angry about all of it, so we just accept that this is what they do"

Wouldn't that kind of translate to "The problem is the Escapist"?

Not necessarily; the Escapist is part of the visible problem, but the issue is rooted in the companies. We expect the Escapist to give us news, even if it isn't actually 'new'; we also expect that companies will change their behaviour when they get bad press that leads to losses. As it is, only the first part of that equation works. Companies often lose money on all but the best-selling AAA games because of the funds they pour into advertising and take away from actually making a good game, but they keep trying the same thing and expecting a different result. Hearing that companies are being terrible has become white noise not just to us, but to the companies themselves.

 

[Terminate421]

Yahtzee I don't mean to be rude but there is a "Classic" tab underneath Campaign which gives you MORE things to do. Right?

Honestly it's not the "do each mission and mode" that makes it fun. It's the possibilities of approaching each objective/obstacle as to where I get my 60$ worth out of it.

Nothing has felt more rewarding than single handedly taking down a human-controlled Titan as a human myself with nothing but a Side Winder and a few Arc Grenades and the jet pack that allows me to parkour.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

This article applies not just to games, but to films, books, TV. Pretty much everything in the arts that is subject to marketing. But business interests are, and have always been, separate from artistic interests. Why should that bother anyone? When you're experienced enough to see through the whole marketing facade, you're probably also mature enough to realise it's a necessary evil. Take that evil away and you've still got your good games being produced, so what difference does it make?

One thing's for sure, I'd say without the modern AAA market Yahtzee wouldn't have a career.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Strange how Yahtzee doesn't mention any specifics when AAA games used to be good, probably because then it'd be easy to debunk his argument.

That's what I was thinking.

Triple-A games have been getting ridiculous amounts of hype since the start of the 6th generation (and probably even before that, but at that time I wasn't aware of it). Anyone remember Metal Gear Solid 2? Remember how fucking crazy that shit got (before anyone got exposed to Raiden)?

 

[remnant_phoenix]

"ut I think the larger problem is that the internet has ensured that we receive a constant stream of news about companies being terrible, and then it just becomes white noise. We can't get angry about all of it, so we just accept that this is what they do"

Fucking nailed it!!

I think the future will have different categories of games: those sold entirely on the basis of (empty-)spectacle and then the more layers you add to it like playtime, story, sandbox size, the more categories you will have and therefore different audiences. And I think this will happen regardless of whether the industry heads that way or not; these games will be categorised like that informaly, via web, or other non-standard channels.

There will be games that are set-driven and then there will be better games :>

It's like that in every other medium. It makes sense that video games will go there eventually.

In movies, you have Michael Bay films, and then you have big summer blockbusters that have substance to go with the style.

In magazines, you have any number of shallow gossip magazines, and then you have Popular Science.

In TV, there's reality TV junk and then there's stuff like Game of Thrones; both shows appeal to the masses taste for backstabbing and sex, but GoT delivers deeper exploration of human motivations and politics to go along with it.

 

[GAunderrated]

"But I think the larger problem is that the internet has ensured that we receive a constant stream of news about companies being terrible, and then it just becomes white noise. We can't get angry about all of it, so we just accept that this is what they do"

This was my favorite part of the article. Maybe I have nostalgia blinders on but before the Ps3 and 360 era whenever there was news about games it was usually new mechanics, something positive, or interesting. Now 95% of the news I see about anything gaming industry related is saying how they were wrong to screw their customers over before they go and do it again, EA doing something stupid again, and the occasional sexism debate.

Gaming news in my opinion has finally caught up to other news outlets where it is all negativity all the time. What this does to gamers is exactly what Yahtzee says. 24/7 negativity has now become white noise to gamers so now no matter how fucked up the game industry treats us, people cant get mad for longer than a day because another company will be fucking them over.

It is utterly disgusting to see those who accepted a big dick in their ass just because someone is lubing up every day to have a go at them.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

Strange how Yahtzee doesn't mention any specifics when AAA games used to be good, probably because then it'd be easy to debunk his argument.

The mainstream blockbuster-like games have always been pretty generic, the great games have for the most parts either had some kind of figurehead looming over it (like Ken Levine, or Tim Schafer), be indie, and therefor extremely cherrypicked, or a company has atleast gone a little outside the extremely standard way of making games.

I don't know, I've always associated AAA with really high budget and marketed games, sort of like blockbuster movies or bestseller books, the most popular generic parts will always be a bit shite, and nothing has changed there since forever, so this complaint just seems a bit silly and I do think Yahtzee might wear a tiny Noastalgia-lens here.

That being said, I'm very happy that Yahtzee is what he is, it's very nice having a good way to filter out most of the crap, even though I do disagree with him among which the top games are, it's nice to have someone to just wipe away all the really ediocre and bad games.

That time when "AAA" Games were good was known as everything from the NES to the PS2. Sure, titles like Max Payne only innovated one thing (bullet time) but was an enjoyable, solid experience. Vs say, Ass Creed 3

And you can keep your titanfall, I'll be playing Virtual On MARS. Faster mechs, laser swords, the harrowing 3D mega man craziness of the last 2 levels, then the boss fight where you can also mag-lock to the ceiling.

 

[hawk533]

Strange how Yahtzee doesn't mention any specifics when AAA games used to be good, probably because then it'd be easy to debunk his argument.

That's what I was thinking.

Triple-A games have been getting ridiculous amounts of hype since the start of the 6th generation (and probably even before that, but at that time I wasn't aware of it). Anyone remember Metal Gear Solid 2? Remember how fucking crazy that shit got (before anyone got exposed to Raiden)?

Games were getting large amounts of hype in the PS1/N64 era and they sometimes actually delivered on it: FF7, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. All games from AAA studios, made with AAA budgets and AAA marketing, but the games were actually good. So if you want a time when AAA games were actually good, that's it.

 

[Thanatos2k]

I'm surprised we don't have a "J.D. Powers and Associates" for video games yet, a company whose only purpose is to give out hundreds of pointless bought awards so that companies can brag about them in their marketing.

 

[shrekfan246]

I would agree and disagree.

On the one hand, it's hard to deny that games like Banjo-Tooie have for all intents and purposes disappeared. These days it's very rare to find a game which intertwines its world and various areas to that sort of degree in the effort of making what appears to be a living, breathing world.

But on the other hand, most games of the 80's and 90's were criminally short. Yahtzee should know better than most of us, given his track record of adventure games which he replays for the internet's amusement. Most of those games can clock in under 2 hours, and the only qualifier for it is "if you know what you're doing". Because that's how older games tended to seem like they had more content; They had such a prohibitively high difficulty curve that you could spend days, weeks, even months and never actually complete them. But once you know what to do, you can breeze through most of them in a single session.

The very late 90's/early 00's are a better comparison, because that's when you have the Deus Exes, the Baldur's Gates, the Banjo-Kazooies, but even still it's not as if there were no games made during that time which clocked in with really low average play-times. I don't feel it's a particularly new thing for games to be released with a "smaller" amount of gameplay, and I'm not sure that having less content is inherently a bad thing.

Arguably when the title is still being sold at $60+, it is, and admittedly AAA publishers are too afraid of collapsing to even dare attempting other price models that aren't somehow even more exploitative, but I often find that games which try cramming in tons of extra content to justify their price end up feeling too poorly paced or stuffed with useless filler. Arkham City's sandbox may have been relatively small, but I liked it for that because it felt like I was always making progress in one way or another, whereas in something like Grand Theft Auto or Assassin's Creed or Saints Row: The Third or even Sleeping Dogs, most of the side stuff just feels like they tossed it in because that's what sandbox games are supposed to do.

 

[Ratty]

Yeah I haven't associated "AAA" with quality in a long long time. It's just a description of budget size. Too bad mid-level development is basically dead so all we have now are tiny Indies and AAA.

And that's why I never buy AAA games until they're >$10 on a steam/gog sale, if I get them at all.

 

[TheMemoman]

We've basically come to associate AAA to budget. It's either AAA or indie. And now I'm beginning to see a trend to also associate AAA with mechanical stagnation and "indie" with mechanical experimentation. This keeps evolving as time goes by, inevitably.

When companies were able to squeeze decently rendered cut-scenes out of their technology, a big trend (that I can see just now we're beginning to overcome) was to derail games towards the cinematic. This was show-off-y and expensive, which suited big companies because they were the only ones capable of employing this gimmick as a carrot on a stick, marveling gamers with essentially, micro blockbusters peppered through out their video games. Suddenly a game needed a plot and a storyline. And in the most ham-fisted ways, a protagonist and antagonist.

Eventually it got ridiculous and games became a vehicle consisting of unimaginative gameplay and stagnating mechanics with the sole purpose to get us onto the next little vignette. QTE's being a twitchy half-assed compromise to mash gameplay and cinema together.

On the other side, the emerging indie scene, initially, had no such budget, it could not compete in terms of dazzling its audience with cinematic visuals and set pieces that would render limp the most powerful videocards. So they started focusing on gameplay mechanics and cheap aesthetics. We got our first wave of indie games on nostalgia cash-in, pseudo 8-bit, 16-bit graphics and usually based around one single gimmicky mechanic.

This is all evolving right now, as AAA seems to leverage it's economic bicep more towards the multiplayer component and its inherently costly infrastructure. And indie gaming, while struggling to overcome on its retro-aesthetics cliché, is getting a substantial boost from newer more affordable and flexible development technologies, and also its own community of developers.

The line between AAA and indie will continue to blur and both terms, opposing sides of a war, will become meaningless as more and more people are able to access development without the patronage of multi-million dollar corporations. Hopefully it all ends with corporate mandate and "Moneyball" style of development gone forever. Utopia? Pipe dream? A man can only dream. And my dream is that games are made by those who want to make games and want them to be played. Not those interested in streamlining the money milking udder mechanisms.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Guys, this article describes the universe in microcosm. The video game industry is just one more bit of our world that is falling prey to the overriding pattern. The problem Yahtzee points out is not unique; it's a symptom of the gradual entropy of human existence.

We've reached a point, I think, a kind of singularity, where things have become so self-aware and so automatic that people can't keep up anymore. We ALL know that things are not the way they should be. We all KNOW that the world could be a better place if we were just willing to change it. But since the world has become so unimaginably big in our perception, we think there is nothing we can do. And I think we're right.

It's going to be a long, slow, painstaking decline from here. Companies will become more corrupt and lazy. Governments will become more oppressive and obscure, trying to hold ever tighter on events that cannot be controlled. Morals will become more token and hollow. People will become more disinterested, disheartened, and disenfranchised.

This is a very dark thing I'm saying, but I've thought about it a lot. The future I see for our species is not a bright one. I'm not a doomsayer, I don't think the human race is going to destroy itself in some sudden nuclear war or by ruining the planet with climate change. We'll change and adapt to such physical pressures. It's the intangible pressure on our psyches that threatens us. What I foresee is a gradual decline into meaninglessness and misery.

So, have fun while you can, I guess?

 

[TheMemoman]

Morals will become more token and hollow. People will become more disinterested, disheartened, and disenfranchised.
So, have fun while you can, I guess?

Cheer up, man. Just because you've thrown in the towel, doesn't mean we've all given up. Courage comes from adversity. Being courageous when all is nice and dandy is not really a challenge. Facing insurmountable odds, that's for the brave.

 

[Bobular]

You know, these days the only games I look forward to seem to be indie games, things that I have kickstarted or by indie companies that I have previously enjoyed games from. I can only think of one AAA game coming out this year that I am probably going to get.

I just don't associate AAA with quality anymore, glad to know I'm not the only one.