The pressure applied by the need for video games to act as investments is not aligned with artistic expressiveness, innovation or quality.
This is why games from smaller Companies or indie developers continue to be the huge, genre-changing breakout hits. They’re still being made with the intention of making a game that’s fun, weird, or interesting as a primary concern, rather than just being a vehicle for profit.
This trend will continue.
This might come off as being a old gamer, but I feel like they’ve been saying this about AAA games since 2000s.
Sure, 90% of them will play it super safe. But there’s always 1 AAA game that breaks the mold and suddenly, the AAA games will follow that. Or imitate whatever indie game is doing with a higher budget.
Sam Lake is still out there fighting the good fight. Kojima too - whether you think he’s a genius or think he produces incomprehensible nonsense you can’t deny he is at least flying the flag for the weird.
I respect that he burned a giant hole in Konami’s pocket and tried his best to block them off at each turn.
Then they fired him before the game was finished and released Metal Gear Survive lol.
Also respect that he made a fucking AAA hiking delivery game, with fucking jar-babies, and Princess Beach.
Sure, but look at the PS2 catalog, for example—way more weird games with relatively high production for the time.
