4 ms·

Good article, bad choice of quote to take out of context for a title leading to a load of comments about history and inflation. That's not at all the point her

Good article, bad choice of quote to take out of context for a title leading to a load of comments about history and inflation. That's not at all the point here. It's about persistent, clunky notions about hit-making in the game industry. >'The problem with the AAA world is not the games; the problem is the structure of assumptions and arbitrary targets that surrounds them.' >'Gotta tick those boxes. Gotta justify that $60 price-point. And here's the rub: in a digital world, whether AAA or indie, those restrictions should be irrelevant.' I think that's spot on. --- Note: The original article/HN title was 'The Astronauts: "In 2014, $60 for a game is a little insane"'. HN has since been updated to something much more descriptive.

Retric 12y ago
People talk down about AAA games, but Skyrim despite being an ok game at release is far better value for money than any Indy game simply from all the free content. Modern graphics engines and real world building take capital and lots of it.
- krisdol 12y ago
  I don't think you can objectively say that. I spent many hundreds of hours in Minecraft, which I paid something life $5 for back in infdev. I also spent less on both Dark Souls games and sure enjoyed them more, but I wouldn't call them AAA (though that may be debatable). A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience.
  - criley2 12y ago
    Minecraft is the outlier, not the rule for indie games and for multiple reasons. It has a modding community larger than most actual game communities for indies. That's extremely rare in indies (and even AAA's!) to achieve an Elder Scrolls level of modding. Some of the modlaunchers/modapis that I use have more versions and active development than some indie games I play, and that's before we consider the mods themselves (hundreds, almost thousands, available for every MC point release) which are almost all separate projects being actively maintained. And two, Minecraft is a procedurally generated emergent game, an rarity among all games. My point is that it's wrong to use Minecraft as a generalization for "indie" game, when it breaks most of the rules/paradigms that most indies follow. ">A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience." Yeah, like Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.
    - NoPiece 12y ago
      It is not the rule, but neither is it an outlier. From the last several years I'd also point to indie games like Terraria, Starbound, Kerbal Space Program, The Binding of Isaac, Torchlight, FTL, and Spelunky.
      - criley2 12y ago
        Eh I don't like the list. IMO only Terraria and Starbound should be in the same category. Throw Cubeworld in there too, even though the dev wasn't capable of handling the demands of modern indie games and the project fell from popularity. There's some space ones like Space Engineers and StarMade. Games like torchlight are ARPG's played on rails, with zero emergent gameplay. Same with BoI when I played it, it's a rougelike not an emergent game. It wasn't a world to explore but levels to complete in order. KSP can be emergent but requires you to play very specifically to experience the content. FTL is cool but it's linear by design, no exploration, no freedom, no building, no game world destruction etc, just running from and attacking things on a mostly linear random path. But FTL is a game to play and finish, Minecraft is an emergent experience, a world to work on until you abandon your world.
        NoPiece 12y ago
        You are right they don't necessarily compare well to Minecraft as systemic games. But they have procedurally generated worlds, and rival the best AAA games in terms of amount of gameplay they offer, and at a fraction of the price. I have over 200 hours into Spelunky, and it still frequently manages to surprise me.
  - heliumcraft 12y ago
    decades?
    - krisdol 12y ago
      Yes, as in they've been capitalizing on the same gameplay formulas that have been hits since the mid 90s

Retric 12y ago

People talk down about AAA games, but Skyrim despite being an ok game at release is far better value for money than any Indy game simply from all the free content. Modern graphics engines and real world building take capital and lots of it.

krisdol 12y ago
I don't think you can objectively say that. I spent many hundreds of hours in Minecraft, which I paid something life $5 for back in infdev. I also spent less on both Dark Souls games and sure enjoyed them more, but I wouldn't call them AAA (though that may be debatable). A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience.
- criley2 12y ago
  Minecraft is the outlier, not the rule for indie games and for multiple reasons. It has a modding community larger than most actual game communities for indies. That's extremely rare in indies (and even AAA's!) to achieve an Elder Scrolls level of modding. Some of the modlaunchers/modapis that I use have more versions and active development than some indie games I play, and that's before we consider the mods themselves (hundreds, almost thousands, available for every MC point release) which are almost all separate projects being actively maintained. And two, Minecraft is a procedurally generated emergent game, an rarity among all games. My point is that it's wrong to use Minecraft as a generalization for "indie" game, when it breaks most of the rules/paradigms that most indies follow. ">A $60 game to me, commmunicates a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in gaming for decades and/or a sub 10-hour campaign with a bland multiplayer experience." Yeah, like Skyrim or Fallout New Vegas.
  - NoPiece 12y ago
    It is not the rule, but neither is it an outlier. From the last several years I'd also point to indie games like Terraria, Starbound, Kerbal Space Program, The Binding of Isaac, Torchlight, FTL, and Spelunky.
    - criley2 12y ago
      Eh I don't like the list. IMO only Terraria and Starbound should be in the same category. Throw Cubeworld in there too, even though the dev wasn't capable of handling the demands of modern indie games and the project fell from popularity. There's some space ones like Space Engineers and StarMade. Games like torchlight are ARPG's played on rails, with zero emergent gameplay. Same with BoI when I played it, it's a rougelike not an emergent game. It wasn't a world to explore but levels to complete in order. KSP can be emergent but requires you to play very specifically to experience the content. FTL is cool but it's linear by design, no exploration, no freedom, no building, no game world destruction etc, just running from and attacking things on a mostly linear random path. But FTL is a game to play and finish, Minecraft is an emergent experience, a world to work on until you abandon your world.
      - NoPiece 12y ago
        You are right they don't necessarily compare well to Minecraft as systemic games. But they have procedurally generated worlds, and rival the best AAA games in terms of amount of gameplay they offer, and at a fraction of the price. I have over 200 hours into Spelunky, and it still frequently manages to surprise me.
- heliumcraft 12y ago
  decades?
  - krisdol 12y ago
    Yes, as in they've been capitalizing on the same gameplay formulas that have been hits since the mid 90s