So what non-multiplayer AAA game you played 400 times as long than an 10 hour indie experience ? Or did you had 400x the fun playing it?
That's very MBA way to look at it. Game's budget is only vaguely correlated with how good it is as a game. Sure prettier blah blah blah, but we had plenty of big games coming out mediocre and just being bought coz of market inertia of average non-internet-scouring user buying next AAA title from big publisher and not even looking at the smaller ones or indies.
Like, if I look at the top amount of spent time in game (the "value" per spend money) it's some small dev management games (Factorio, Banished, Rimworld, X4), the type of game that most AAA developers just refuse to make in the first place. Most of "singleplayer story driven ones" I've played also fall out of AAA space because while 20 years ago industry was busy making games like Baldur's gate or Fallout, now anything similar only happens in sub-AAA space.
I don’t care for those kinds of games at all. That’s the problem with most indie games: they rely solely on gameplay. Me, personally, I’m more into story driven games, and that additional budget buys you better writers, actors, mo-cap, etc.
> the type of game that most AAA developers just refuse to make in the first place. Most of "singleplayer story driven ones" I've played also fall out of AAA space
I’m mainly a PlayStation gamer and they release a lot of story driven single-player games. It’s the may reason I stick to PS. God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, TLoU, etc. are all amazing games and impossible to make on a small budget.
I have yet to see a story as good as the Blackwell series. Perhaps you have made up your mind that indie games do not have good story lines, so you are not looking for them. I don't know.
The thing is, I have limited time to play games, so I can be very selective what I spend that time on. This means I can limit myself to games that do everything right, not just one thing. That means story, but also production value. Good acting, good mo-cap, good graphic, a good sound track, etc.
Why would I spend the limited time I have for gaming on games that don't check all the boxes ? There may not be a lot of games that do, but there are enough for me to only play those kinds of games.
But honestly I don't play AAA titles because they are expensive (don't feel worth it for me, so similar argument as yours), and are designed for long immersive sessions and not 20 mins here and there. There are secondary factors like Linux compatibility and disliking the companies. For story and visuals I prefer films. Second hand I hear that mainstream titles are either designed stupid easy, or in a small niche with spiteful level of difficulty, but this is probably exaggerated sentiment.
I like films, but the problem with them is that they have to cram a story into 2 hours, maybe 3. With games being 20-40 hours, there is much more room for in-depth storytelling and world building. Also, being in control of the main character makes a story hit differently from passively experiencing it.
because they were first. Look at later games from the list http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/
Gemini Rue, Primordia, Technobabylon, Shardlight, Strangeland, but especially Unavowed!
Clifftop Games Whispers of a Machine and Kathy Rain are also good https://store.steampowered.com/developer/clifftopgames/#brow...
This in effect is why you're indirectly picking games with massive advertising budgets - they're far more likely to reach you than the average lower budget indie game.
It's fine that you like games with high production values, but don't just cast the lower production ones into this 'low-value' bucket and never look at them. AAA games might be diamonds, but you might just find other types of rare stones in the other buckets.
You only list successes, but it's exactly this type of story-driven block buster games that can sink a development studio if just one thing goes wrong (and it doesn't even have to be the fault of anybody involved with the game).
Enjoy this type of game while it lasts, because this era is coming to an end, it's just not sustainable. Eventually each studio will produce an expensive flop, and it's much harder to build an AAA development team then to destroy one.
Do you also think blockbuster movies are not sustainable? Because AAA games have a very similar business model. Actually in some ways games are more attractive due to the possibilities with DLC.
The fact is game taste is quite subjective and different people value different things.
My most favoure genre is roguelikes/roguelites which is just not present in AAA titles.
I... guess? If your only calculation of value is how much money was spent making the latest edition of a cookie cutter experience like 90% of AAA games are (because execs aren't willing to risk budget coloring outside the lines). And frankly I find that pretty sad, but looking at sales numbers I guess that's the majority of the gaming market.
However you can look at the same logic from a different perspective: If you're playing an AAA game, you're playing a game made for everyone - and therefore for no one. This is why some people (including me) aren't fans of AAA games.
Imagine the world (future) where material costs of most things are insignificant and majority of the cost of your food will be paying the designers of this food. Would you want to eat the same, bland (can't be too spicy, can't have particular ingredients-allergens, has to be safe for children…) stuff everyone else eats? Or would you develop a taste for something more niche?
Due to high budgets, the companies also don't want to take risks, that's why indie games are innovative (and that's why indie games fail more often?).
That's how modern gaming is. There's a lot of "free" stuff out there, but outside of Hogwarts Academy those players aren't looking for niche premium games. So you're no longer catching thst general audience, rather those seeking that certain design of game.
Games are software, if you sell 10 copies or 10 million, it’s basically the same amount of work. That is: no matter how big your development budget is, or how many you expect to sell, 100% of that budget goes into developing 1 copy of the game.
However, the actual budget does scale with the number of expected sales. A game that is expected to sell 5M copies is going to have a much larger budget than a game that is expected to sell 10k copies. Add to that the lower price of indie games and there is a huge budget difference.
The end result of this is that as a game I can choose between a €20 indie game represents maybe €500k of development effort, or a €80 AAA game that represents €200M of development effort. The AAA game may cost me 4 times as much, but it gives me 400 times the value.