I remember growing up playing Nintendo games up and other AAA games until I started watching YT. Particular TB and adjacent YouTubers.
Now-a-days, especially watching most of Summer Games Fest, I feel like I really am not excited about AAA games as I used to be and generally prefer indie games
Think it's a combination of time, DLC, gamba bs, same game released 7 thousand times and broken games at launch that have mostly turned me away from AAA games. Nintendo, Ubisoft, Blizzard, SquareEnix and others, have further tainted the appreciation I once had for these companies with the level of abuse to their fanbases and even their own employees.
How you all feel about AAA vs Indie games? Which do you prefer, and has this changed for you over time?
EA/Ubisoft/Activision/etc. used to put out like 50 games per year, and now they put out like 5. This is a result of many things, including ballooning the size of the games that they make, but measurably, they are just making fewer games. That means games you used to enjoy playing no longer get made, whether that's Burnout or Deus Ex. Companies like Anna Purna, Devolver, TinyBuild, Paradox, and Embracer are rising to meet that middle ground of production value to feed those hungry customers the kinds of things they want but haven't been served in years.