When people say “Indie games are better” they don’t mean this as some universal truism, as if awful ones don’t exist. Of course they exist.
They mean that triple-A gaming has lost its way, and the soul of what is great about gaming is no longer found there, but in Indie.
Indie games are free to be just games - built with the intent of creating fun for the player, or telling a memorable story, or being interesting in whatever way the creator likes.
Triple A games are becoming only products, designed to make money. They are increasingly stuffed with mandatory accounts,microtransactions, DLC, and predatory gambling mechanics to keep players hooked while drip-feeding them dopamine.
The people at the top don’t care about games as creative expression, just games as a money product. If publishers could create ‘games’ without the annoyance of needing studios of developers or designers and creative types who have ‘vision’ and other bothersome things, they would. If they could just pull a lever and shit out another AI-generated turd, they’d do it.
Even single-player triple-A games aren’t immune. Despite enormous budgets games are coming out half-baked and bland, because they are made by a huge and disparate team who lost sight of the game’s vision because it’s too dilute, and they are overworked and being pressured to just fucking finish it already because we need this out in time to boost the Q4 shareholder results.
When people say “Indie games are better” they don’t mean this as some universal truism, as if awful ones don’t exist. Of course they exist.
They mean that triple-A gaming has lost its way, and the soul of what is great about gaming is no longer found there, but in Indie.
Indie games are free to be just games - built with the intent of creating fun for the player, or telling a memorable story, or being interesting in whatever way the creator likes.
Triple A games are becoming only products, designed to make money. They are increasingly stuffed with mandatory accounts,microtransactions, DLC, and predatory gambling mechanics to keep players hooked while drip-feeding them dopamine.
The people at the top don’t care about games as creative expression, just games as a money product. If publishers could create ‘games’ without the annoyance of needing studios of developers or designers and creative types who have ‘vision’ and other bothersome things, they would. If they could just pull a lever and shit out another AI-generated turd, they’d do it.
Even single-player triple-A games aren’t immune. Despite enormous budgets games are coming out half-baked and bland, because they are made by a huge and disparate team who lost sight of the game’s vision because it’s too dilute, and they are overworked and being pressured to just fucking finish it already because we need this out in time to boost the Q4 shareholder results.
So yes.
“Indie games are better.”