Makes sense. AAA games are finance projects more than creative projects. Yeah there’s a lot of art and writing and stuff, but it’s all calibrated to make the most money and anything that threatens it is jettisoned. This makes them formulaic to a fault.
Indie games are passion projects, so you see a lot of weird stuff out there. Most of them are utter failures, financially, but the ones that survive are truly something special.
The huge majority of indie games never make any money at all. This link is a little older, but it claims that 50% of indie games on steam never make more than $4000, only 25% ever make more than $26 000 and only 14% cross the $100k mark.
Considering the cost of developers, that’s about 1-2 man years for the $100k mark, and then there’s only a 14% chance of even recouping that.
Passion projects work out because the people making them don’t value their time as work time, don’t make a salary from it, and even then in the huge majority of cases, it doesn’t work out financially.
Imagine having 10k employees and not setting aside an indie dev team or two for passion projects.
This statement holds true for pretty much every other corporation. Imagine owning a huge farm and not setting aside a few farm hands to grow old artisan vegetables. Imagine owning a supermarket chain and not setting aside a few shops for exotic sweets from Central Africa. Imagine owning a fast food chain and not setting aside a few restaurants for artisan burger variations.
Yes, every corporation could afford to do stuff like that, but they aren’t there to advance humanity by investing in arts and crafts, but for making every last drop of money they can. And yes, there’s much to criticise about this goal, but making little indie passion projects doesn’t work well with corporations.
Yes, being “safe” means you won’t make the next Minecraft, where a hobby budget turns into the best selling game of all time. But it also means that the people who buy every instalment of Fifa or Assassin’s Creed will also buy it.
These popular franchises almost always turn a calculable profit as long as they don’t experiment and do something new that bombs.
As sad as it is, it actually does work out.
That’s why we gamers shouldn’t trust on AAA titles bringing something great to the market. If you want to play a game like you watch linear TV (plonk down on the couch/in front of the PC and to whatever to relax and waste time), then AAA is great. If you want to play something new, something exciting, something that you haven’t played before, then go with lower-budget titles.
AAA is the McDonalds of games. You don’t go to McDonalds for the freaky hand-crafted vegan fusion kitchen bacon burger with crazy Korean curry mayo and caramelized lettuce.
Fear of failure becomes self fulfilling, yeah. You get so worried about making the wrong move and losing money that you can have your spotlight stolen by a challenger doing it fresher for 1/10th the budget.
Makes sense. AAA games are finance projects more than creative projects. Yeah there’s a lot of art and writing and stuff, but it’s all calibrated to make the most money and anything that threatens it is jettisoned. This makes them formulaic to a fault.
Indie games are passion projects, so you see a lot of weird stuff out there. Most of them are utter failures, financially, but the ones that survive are truly something special.
20 years ago AAA games could still experiment, but that was because back then AAA games had about the same budget as big indie games now.
You just can’t gamble if you have 10k employees and hundreds of millions riding on it.
Imagine having 10k employees and not setting aside an indie dev team or two for passion projects.
The huge majority of indie games never make any money at all. This link is a little older, but it claims that 50% of indie games on steam never make more than $4000, only 25% ever make more than $26 000 and only 14% cross the $100k mark.
Considering the cost of developers, that’s about 1-2 man years for the $100k mark, and then there’s only a 14% chance of even recouping that.
Passion projects work out because the people making them don’t value their time as work time, don’t make a salary from it, and even then in the huge majority of cases, it doesn’t work out financially.
This statement holds true for pretty much every other corporation. Imagine owning a huge farm and not setting aside a few farm hands to grow old artisan vegetables. Imagine owning a supermarket chain and not setting aside a few shops for exotic sweets from Central Africa. Imagine owning a fast food chain and not setting aside a few restaurants for artisan burger variations.
Yes, every corporation could afford to do stuff like that, but they aren’t there to advance humanity by investing in arts and crafts, but for making every last drop of money they can. And yes, there’s much to criticise about this goal, but making little indie passion projects doesn’t work well with corporations.
Being “safe” is also a gamble, if you aren’t bringing anything new or unique you’re gambling that the title or brand is sufficient for success.
Less so though.
Yes, being “safe” means you won’t make the next Minecraft, where a hobby budget turns into the best selling game of all time. But it also means that the people who buy every instalment of Fifa or Assassin’s Creed will also buy it.
These popular franchises almost always turn a calculable profit as long as they don’t experiment and do something new that bombs.
As sad as it is, it actually does work out.
That’s why we gamers shouldn’t trust on AAA titles bringing something great to the market. If you want to play a game like you watch linear TV (plonk down on the couch/in front of the PC and to whatever to relax and waste time), then AAA is great. If you want to play something new, something exciting, something that you haven’t played before, then go with lower-budget titles.
AAA is the McDonalds of games. You don’t go to McDonalds for the freaky hand-crafted vegan fusion kitchen bacon burger with crazy Korean curry mayo and caramelized lettuce.
Fear of failure becomes self fulfilling, yeah. You get so worried about making the wrong move and losing money that you can have your spotlight stolen by a challenger doing it fresher for 1/10th the budget.