Lower budgets would probably be better. High budgets mean high risk, developers and publishers try to minimize that risk and you get bland games that try to cater to too many tastes. Movies suffer from the same problem. They get budgets in the hundreds of millions and you wonder what they spent it all for.

[–] FangedWyvern42@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

High budgets are killing the film industry. In the case of gaming, it plays a factor, but greed is probably the main issue. Most big budget AAA games in the past made large amounts of money even if they didn’t have universal appeal. Because companies realised that they could make large amounts of money off loot boxes, microtransactions, cash shops and battle passes, they started trying to funnel players into games, mainly so that players would buy things. That’s one of the main reasons the AAA industry is getting worse: games need to appeal to as many as possible, while coming out as fast as possible, all so that players will buy the overpriced in-game items endlessly shoved in players’ faces.

[–] AEsheron@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love me some good AAA games and want them to stick around. But I think it would be much better if they were a bit fewer and further between, and the big studios shift to more regular AA games, and give their devs chances to do some more oddball stuff with even lower budgets. More expiremntation and risky projects can only enrich the industry.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 1 points 1 year ago

You never know what those experiments can lead too. There will be a lot of failures however someone is going to look at the failure and realize what needs to be need to be tweaked.