Is triple A a little... underrated?

He's miserable because you hate him! ...or do you?

I spend a lot of time with my own personal rants, pet peeves, and nitpicks on this blog. Of course I love talking about good things to, and do that a lot as well. One thing I'll often complain about though is the triple A industry, and I'm not alone in that. I usually fuss about how they irresponsibly spend, how nobody takes a middle tier route anymore, how they rarely pay attention to what people want, and would rather take features than to give them. However I also draw the line and name my exact issues, who's doing them, and I praise those that I feel get it right. Lets take Dishonored for example, I love that game! It was fresh, it took things that are sadly considered "risks" like trading multiplayer for campaign quality, it patiently waited and produced amazing DLC that might as well be a half sequel, and its just a really well built and fleshed out game. The only typical triple A gripes you could poke at it would be the matter of glitches (which is more on arkane's side judging from their other games... they've just never been a tight and tidy developer, but the glitches are sometimes kind of fun), and the pre-order bonuses that could have and should have been in the game. However I'll also note they gave out physical prizes as pre-orders, and I love that tarot deck I got off of it. Then there's freakin' Doom coming out, that's fixing a major gripe I have in triple A. Despite its mountain of problems I kind of defended Watch Dogs a good bit, and I still hold up to that because I actually kind of enjoyed that game way more than I should. However with other people I'm not seeing this sort of gratitude. A guy who also was having a blast with Watch Dogs not to long ago uploaded a video completely bashing Triple A as a whole and saying there just isn't anything out there for him anymore, and its a bunch of corner cutting and betrayal that follows through with the recent critical (though not commercial) disappointment Destiny. I'm hearing this shared a lot, and then people look to indies to pick up the place and say they're likely to do their gaming based a lot more on them. I then remembered at one point and time where people were even cheering for indies to one day overthrow the mass market, and triple A would die because of all its wrongs. A bit of a hard and harsh idea there. Personally this lead me to thinking for a while... could triple A actually be underrated a bit?

Eh alright I'm going to answer the question at face value, at least what I thin. No. In an industry where the media does the hyping for publishers, thousands go to sites for that kind of news, and triple A games often sell anywhere from 1 million to over 1 billion, I'd say no the industry is far from some underdog getting mistreated and beat on. However I would say the vocal hate is a bit overboard. For starters lets get the automatic conspiracies out of the way. I can't help but cringe when someone acts like they know for a fact that Destiny sucks because of Activision. Personally I think it sucks because it was trying to hard to look like an MMO that it compromised a lot of quality that you'd get from either that or an FPS adventure. Still its possible Activision made that call, or later made calls that ruined it. There are some suspicious things lurking in the untold developer stories... but that's another story. What isn't good logic is seeing Activision's name and instantly associating it as a terrible souless game. These are also the guys that made skylanders, and that as a concept works in an amazing and fun way that should be applauded... even if it later was milked in the typical fashion. Why is jumping the gun on this bad? Well lets look at where it leads us with Saints Row and Borderlands. Suddenly its a crime to produce new content for your enthusiastic and loyal fans. Suddenly you can't add more to your game without having an "angle" or without being considered a shoddy desperate developer trying to grab ever cent you can before the party collapses. To these cartoonishly cycnical gamers trying to hate on everything they can, you're not aloud to do these kind of things because you're "milking" the games too much. Similarly when Nintendo made DLC on their Wii U games, a few people on the corners of the internet paniced and said "oh great, even nintendo is doing it!". Oh no, fear the oncoming epidemic of MORE CONTENT. $12 for two packs that seem to add half of another MK's worth of content. Instead of opening their eyes and thinking of the good DLC can do, they want to pretend DLC can't exist from good developers or publishers. At the end of the day my point here is that Triple A is a broad term, and it covers some incredible games we get excited about. Pretending they all come with evil strings attached is a bit dumb. I have to wonder if the same people doomsaying about triple A are aware of Naughty Dog, Bethesda, Nintendo, From Software, and many more that still do a lot of good. Besides lets face it, sometimes we exaggerate how bad some of the bad practices are. Its a good thing we do because give them an inch and they'll take a mile, but lets not forget some of these games can still be a blast even with content chopped up for planned DLC, pre-order extras, season pass exclusives, timed console exclusives, and missing "limited edition" crap left out.

Triple A but still a blast

Second major thing is about the comparison with indies, and how they're supposedly the saviors in some gamer's eyes. Now I can enjoy some indies. To put a good hipster moment to use, I was even playing them before it was cool back when my uncle was letting me play Serious Sam off his laptop and I later stumbled onto the unique Cortex Command. Though with those games in mind, they actually are exception to a lot of the upcoming wave of indie games that were super linear, short, and often represented retro games. You know, ones like Braid, Limbo, Fez, or the crowd of walking sims, etc. That's not all of them, though sadly most websites only seem to highlight those, but for a while that seemed to be what the huge indie craze was about and it wasn't very appealing to some guys. Sure if you're into that, great, but not many of us are. The reason the industry has grown into such an expensive one is that bigger and constantly improving 3D games have been embraced. I don't think they need as much of a staff and budget as some are getting, but hey that's what's been going on and I'll take super expensive open world games over... well, Braid and Meat boy. I think that opinion and vote really isn't weighed in that much with all the backlash and negativity going around. Sure the games are going to be praised, but in this slanted fight with indies and triple A that you hear about so few actually bring this topic up. All those people absorbed and loving games like The Last of Us, and Red Dead Redemption, and those praising AC4 for reasons I still can't figure out, will be quite disappointed with what would happen if indies replaced them. Oh yeah and another example that couldn't happen, Batman Arkham asylum. Yeah we don't get well used license games often, but when we do people sure do adore them. Not going to see that a lot outside of bigger publishers.

I'd like to use Mark of the Ninja as somewhat of a blind example. Now disclosure, I haven't played it, but there's a reason for that. I enjoy the idea of action stealth games. I love Dishonored, sunk hours into MGS, and one of my favorite rentals was the time put with Theif and Splinter Cell blacklist. But mark of the ninja... just rubs me the wrong way in concept. Yeah I hear its got tight and great mechanics that translate stealth well into 2D, and I'm glad they did that and respect them and the fans, but I just can't see myself doing it. I'm not sure if I really stay for the precision and stealth alone. I love gadgets, multiple paths, I love secretly looking through documents and lore, that unpredictable element of guard paths the first time around, and on top of all that if I'm having fun I'll probably stay and test myself with good precision and challenges. I just can't see all that translating into a 2D plane perfectly. Where's the guards and paths? Oh that's always on your screen, right in front of you, and they go left or right. Where's the world to explore? Its all flat. Multiple paths? Maybe, but nothing too out of the box. Maybe you'll be able to enter a building through a window instead of the door, but either way its just a matter of height and whether or not the guards are looking at that spot. The game seems as if it cuts down on so much of the substance I love in my stealth games in order to perfect the idea of precision take-downs or getting around guards in a unique perspective rarely seen in stealth. Again that's all great, but its not for me and I know I'm not the only guy thinking along similar lines. This can be stretched to apply to pretty much every genre though. The same guy that adores fast paced arena shooters wont necessarily enjoy Contra or crimsonland style gaming. A guy who loves Tomb Raider wont necessarily enjoy Strider, part of the point was blending 3rd person action adventure with metroidvania adventure. A guy that loves GTA wont necessarily enjoy Retro Rampage. A guy that loves uncharted.... ok what the heck is Uncharted supposed to be replaced with in 2D!? I'd love to see last of us attempted with stealth, crafting, and limited resources on a 2D format but you'd be missing out on tons of the world building moments that helped make them more believable characters in a game highly praised on. Don't even get me started on the differences between 2D and 3D platformers. I grew up around both, one was an amusing distraction, the other made me a gamer. You can guess which one is which. I'm not hating on 2D. Its not like that's a bad or taboo thing, its got its purposes and fans. Just as well there are triple A guys that occasionally put out 2D games. I also want to note I love Risk of Rain, Dust, and I've had some quick fun with Aqua Kitty... all 2D indie games. Its just a matter of different tastes though. I hardly ever feel like getting into those luck based 2D games where my save is erased every time I die, or the countless 2D puzzle platformers I could have played on newgrounds. There's become a more unified taste for the triple A market that usually produces in 3D. Many indie games, especially the highlight ones, are often associated either with limited landscapes or 2D. Of course there's exceptions, and No Man's Sky, chivalry, and serious sam. Oh and Torchlight... LOVE torchlight. Still sometimes you just need a big wide open adventure that you just can't hold indies up to. Some want a 3D world, lore, replay value, maybe voice acting with your cut scenes and deep story moments, etc. That's stuff harder to find in indie games, and for some people that's ok or maybe even fantastic, but for others... not so much.

To try and bring this thing full circle, I think AAA gets a lot more mud slung on it without any of the credit. Of course what they look for is money and success, and they get lots of it. Still I feel like this article is both more clarity to where I come from on the issue, and a piece of advice to be grateful for what good still lies in the triple A area. I really don't think indies are the solution, nor does there need to be a "kill triple A" solution when some of them are doing fine and respectable work. I still love indies to of course. As a matter of fact I'm going to use this bit as an excuse to say how awesome Moon Hunters looks. No like... really, moon hunters looks absolutely brilliant, and I don't think I've ever been this excited for an RPG except maybe Dark Souls 2. That just bumped up my expectations for how incredible 2015 looks. Likewise I'm looking forward to using Minecraft on my vita. This wasn't meant to be anything against indies or lower budget games at all. Its just that I wanted to say to remember to be grateful for the good that comes out of the big guys at times. I mean lets even take arguably the most hated publisher, EA, and lets see one of the interesting games they've put out this year... Plants VS Zombies Garden Warfare. I'm not buying it because its online only, but honestly just look at it! It looks like a blast! That's just plain fun, and I don't see why we need to stay angry over mistakes all the time. Not only that, but its kind of dehumanizing. Despite whatever shoddy calls a publisher makes and deserves hate for, ultimately when you hate on a game too much and beyond its core point you're likely stinging the guys that worked hours off for days on end to make it fun. If you want to hurt the publishers more than devs, choose your words carefully. I'm trying to get myself to think more in that line as well. Now I'm going to go back to Tomb Raider. Its flawed, sold out to a big corporation with its sequel, and its got content missing due to pre-order stuff, but its still one of the better games I've played this year and I appreciate all the effort the team put forth to make it a good game.