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Who makes better games: Indie or AAA?
mgilbrtsn
Member EpicPosts: 3,430
In numerous threads, people bemoan AAA games or Indie games, depending on your thinking. Overall, who do you think is better at it? The big boys or the little guys? The argument is generally that the AAA games have the funds, but have lost their zest for the spirit of MMOs. The Small guys have the zest, but lack the funds.
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Comments
AAA games generally have better funding and that means that they are generally running better at launch.
It is easier to get funding for weirder ideas as a small independent dev though, but to be fair might that just be because most indie games have way lower budget, that a $20M risky project is easier to get money for then a $100M risky project is of course a no-brainer.
MMOs & non MMOs.
That being said, I've played quite a few fun indie games, they just never manage to compare though.
I self identify as a monkey.
We talking MMORPG's, or including single player titles as well?
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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I'm oddly the opposite for single player games, though; I find indie games to be low quality with not enough gameplay variation from their AAA counterparts to justify it.
Voted AAA. For every crap AAA you'll find 20 crap indie ones. There's just far more garbage within the indie scene.
I went indies for patriotic reasons, but my favorite MMOs so far are certainly AAAs - Warhammer, Age of Conan, Vanilla & BC WoW.
Indies potentially make the better games, but since everyone is so used to having at least basic functionality and/or clarity in UI design, art direction and graphics that don't look like the PS2 era, they mostly fall short.
At present I would suggest that AAA games are better than the indie's, but lets face it you cannot compare games like Darkfall and Mortal Online to games like ESO and SWTOR. (Sorry I will not include the endless survival games as MMORPG's).
Hopefully this will change by the end of this year or in 2018 with the release of indie games like Pantheon, Crowfall, Camelot Unchained and not forgetting everyone's favourite Star Citizen
I still feel that AAA games will still win out in the production values, but hopefully the indie's can return the soul and make MMO's a world instead of a fancy single path lobby based game.
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Following a brief look at my timeline...some very early games Might N magic ,Ultima...then a big step up to Quake..Unreal...Eq series..FFXI..Dishonored..several more games in between but the best games were big budget games.
We also have to be careful what game we tag as Indie,i have seen tons of experienced game developers labeled as Indie.Indie games tend to be arpg's,moba's,facebook,browser,mobile all the lowest budget platforms you can build a game.Big developers will of course jump in on these markets and sadly will not do them any better,just the same with a different twist or different cash shop.
Also looking back on my gaming...until EQ2 switched over,not one of my games had a cash shop.Now even single player games are releasing early so they can sell DLC's,basically ripping off the consumer.
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Some of these small companies later became big Corporations due the popularity of their games, but some retained the Small Company mentality at heart, putting the quality of their games first before the profit.
There are 3 Companies that started as Indie and became Corporations which still have my respect for creating beautiful games and in some cases true Classics.
1) Bethesda: For the Elder Scroll Series.
TES is my favorite game franchise of all time, I started playing Arena (TES 1) and I just fell in love with the whole series, it just got better and better.
They kick started the trend of seamless 3D RPGs games with Daggerfall (TES 2) in a period dominated by isometric games like Baldur's Gate and Ultima.
With Morrowind they reached to the masses and more Studios started making 3D RPGs due to its success.
Even though today Bethesda is one of the biggest game Corporations, they don't cut corners, and as a result the artistic quality of their games is outstanding, bugs and all (it's called Bugtesda for a reason).
Though Fallout wasn't originally their IP, they really did justice to its legacy. Same could be said for Doom.
And with ESO they proved they could make good games for the MMO market as well.
2) Bioware: The Masters of RPGs.
While Ultima is the daddy of Isometric RPG games, Bioware brought the genre to a new level with Baldur's Gate. True Classic.
But they didn't stop there, they consistently delivered throughout the years with Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, even though SWTOR was a bit disappointing in my opinion.
Even after Muzyka and Zeschuk's departure the Studio kept producing great stuff.
3) Blizzard: The King Midas of gaming
Whatever they touch, they turn it into gold.
Say what you like about Blizzard but they can do no wrong, even though they stopped being original more than a decade ago, they are the ones that made the RTS games popular with Warcraft and Starcraft, and basically created the Hack and Slash genre with Diablo.
But obviously their biggest success is WoW which brought MMORPGs to the masses, a true Classic of gaming.
The quality of Blizzard games is always high standard, and though they are starting to lose touch with their huge fan base, they are still a great Company in my opinion.
I self identify as a monkey.
Its not just a matter of funding, AAA games also use experienced programmers and artists, whereas a lot of indie games are made by people who are just starting out. It will be interesting to see how Crowfall and CU go since even though they lack major funding, they are being made by pros.
Note: if you include games like Divinuity Original Sin as "Indie" then I will need another category "They all rock".
the indie side definitely has the advantage if they can deliver what they promised...
AAA companies puke out a lot of reguritated garbage (FIFA, Battlefield, COD.......) same games different skins....
for some reason those games still get high ratings? there are some amazing indie games out there... binding of isaac, faster than light.... sadly very few mmorpg's and even fewer good ones
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There's no inherent marker of quality based on budget alone.
That said, I would tend to prefer AAA games - but they need to be funded by "suits with a semblance of courage and vision" - meaning they're extremely rare. Games like WoW, DDO, LotRO, TSW, AoC and a few others are all games of significant budgets and publishers with SOME courage - enabling the developers enough time to do something decent. They're all far from ideal, however.
Indie games are severely limited when it comes to the density and quality of content, simply because of the resource/manpower factor. There's no way around that - and I'm not interested in playing a game that revolves around mechanics almost exclusively. I need content and a reason to actually invest.
The ideal would be something else entirely - and the dream of Star Citizen is an example of that. We'll have to see if they can pull that one off, though.
I myself can't answer that, because it has been different case by case. There are projects ruined by publishers, and they are projects ruined by developers. Someone gotta do a count and let us know--and if you factor in the size of the project you can never have any answer here!
AAA means budget. So you're asking who makes better games, people with less money or people with more money? Can't imagine a situation where having less of a budget would actually help a project.