Lack of single-A games

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VideoGameCritic
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Lack of single-A games

Postby VideoGameCritic » January 7th, 2025, 12:35 pm

When reviewing games from generations past I noticed there was a lot more variety 20 years ago. Snow mobile racers. Helicopter shooters. Arcade racers. Movie-based games. Volleyball games. Plenty of niche titles to choose from.

When I look at modern systems however there seems to be a gaping chasm between the few AAA releases (Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Madden, Call of Duty, etc) and the ubiquitous small, independent, mostly download titles.

Where are you going to find a new jet ski racer or even a decent snowboarding game? It's a shame because with modern technology they could do some mind-blowing stuff.

Even Nintendo seems to be complicit. They don't have many new releases, and most seem to be Mario or Zelda-related.

Are game companies just afraid to take chances nowadays? There seems to be a lack of diversity in the types of games.

Miles Prower
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby Miles Prower » January 7th, 2025, 2:09 pm

I call it the Grand Theft Auto Effect. Ever since GTA III there has been this weird idea that every game has to be open-world, 500 hour epic story driven adventures because that's the only thing people want.

Then when you couple that with the fact that the cost of video game production has skyrocketed in the last several years, more and more developers are afraid to take chances and what we get are a bunch of games that are trying to be the next Skyrim or the next Fortnite in the case of all the looter shooters.

Personally, I think these big AAA studios (EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft) should take a page out of indie developers books and divide their money into a lot of smaller projects like you suggested. More arcade style games and shorter adventure games and charge 20 to 40 dollars for them. That way if one of them fails, the financial blowback won't be as disastrous as something like say the next Assassins Creed or mainline Star Wars game failing. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

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pacman000
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby pacman000 » January 7th, 2025, 4:00 pm

Studios that made single & double-A games found themselves "stuck in the middle." They had to compete against both AAA & indie studios. Competing in two markets at once is hard, so the studios & their publishers lost money & shut down.

jon
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby jon » January 13th, 2025, 5:58 am

I think the Sega Model 2 games were the perfect mix of unbelievable graphics, that in my opinion besides the Neo Geo are the most imaginative graphics of all time, and simplicity. That should’ve been how things stayed long term, not part of the path to over complicated games. Ironically I found the Model 3’s graphics dull in comparison. To me, I think about what other types of games the Model 2 could’ve done. There’s a game that’s a side scrolling shooter called Pilot Kids that looks freaking incredible. They did baseball games too. I think football game or basketball game could’ve been unbelievable.

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DaHeckIzDat
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby DaHeckIzDat » January 13th, 2025, 12:56 pm

The indie market is where most of the imagination is nowadays. That's what brought us games like Undertale, Slay the Spire, Balatro, and Hollow Knight while the AAA developers churn out Grand Theft Assassins Redemption 957: the Now It's Personalizing

jon
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby jon » January 13th, 2025, 7:05 pm

The problem is that the hardware these small, low budget, indie developers make games for is usually subpar. I gave Neo Dev Team a lot of flack for most games not utilizing the full power of the Neo Geo but now that they’ve winded down their operation I respect what they were doing. I mean, yes they didn’t take advantage of the system like SNK was in by the mid 90’s but hey, they did there best. And they tried something new with Gunlord, a genre that had never been done on the Neo Geo. Well done. If only these other developers had a similar quality of hardware.

GStratos
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby GStratos » January 14th, 2025, 6:47 am

Yes, with few exceptions, the A or AA space is pretty much dead, and even in terms of AAA games there are few that don't try to be overly cinematic games. The last AAA game I played that felt like a "real" game was Forza Horizon 4 - I heard the fifth game is worse in this regard. The main reason for this is that companies nowadays are more interested in gambling and other unsavory practices through lootboxes, microtransactions, season passes and whatnot. I heard somewhere that a horse mount microtransaction in World of Warcraft gave Blizzard Entertainment/Activision more money than the entirety of StarCraft 2, or that EA does not see the point in releasing A or AA games anymore because they're never going to make as much money as the microtransactions in their Madden titles. That is the industry we live in, one that I have carefully chosen to avoid with only a few select titles such as the aforementioned Forza Horizon 4.

That being said, as DaHeckIzDat eloquently put it, there's plenty of good indie opportunities, mainly on PC but also on consoles.

Voor
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby Voor » January 14th, 2025, 8:45 pm

What would you call Metroid Dread?

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Stalvern
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby Stalvern » January 14th, 2025, 9:55 pm

This type of game is very much alive but lives in the "indie" market now. Look at Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2 for a clear illustration of how the industry has changed over the decades. Disco Elysium, Stray, Hades, Phasmophobia, Palworld, etc. are just the first several that immediately come to mind as examples from a pool of hundreds. Few get physical releases; the investment of material distribution isn't worth the cost to small developers who would rather spend that on the games themselves now that it's become optional.

VideoGameCritic wrote:Where are you going to find a new jet ski racer or even a decent snowboarding game? It's a shame because with modern technology they could do some mind-blowing stuff.

They're on Steam.

fod
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Re: Lack of single-A games

Postby fod » January 15th, 2025, 1:09 am

This is no longer the Wii era. Bargain bin games can now be found in the eShops. There are probably thousands of them available on the Switch's.


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