-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
David Jaffe- AAA games are dying (creatively speaking)
- Thread starter Borowski
- Start date
Good on Jaffe for taking it on the chin and updating his title. "AAA is dying creatively" and "controls and basic traversal mechanics are becoming standardized" are two really different arguments.
I'd say the second is at least partially true, but I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily. A lot of the more interesting innovation in platformers came after we sort of generally accepted that Super Mario Bros. was the starting point for how momentum and jumping should feel in a (2D) video game. I think there's a lot to be said for some basic mechanics becoming a shared language.
I'd say the second is at least partially true, but I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily. A lot of the more interesting innovation in platformers came after we sort of generally accepted that Super Mario Bros. was the starting point for how momentum and jumping should feel in a (2D) video game. I think there's a lot to be said for some basic mechanics becoming a shared language.
never played a TM other than the PS3 demo. A new TM would be a fun experiment for sure or save one for PS5 while at it lol
And he's the same guy who complained about games trying too hard to be like movies years ago. He's not a fan of AAA titles it seems
There are still nice risks in big games but definitely way less. The loss of the "AA" tier of games on consoles has hurt that creativity quite a bit
Unpopular (?) opinion: AAA games have been creatively dead almost since inception, and this is by design: you don't take risks in games that involve hundreds of people and millions of dollars.
I saw what he's on about while playing the Uncharted series from 2007 onwards, I think a lot did as I've read the criticisms of it being the same and quite a shooting slog, more so Uncharted 1 to 3. I've read the same about Gears. Core gameplay is unchanged.
I wonder if he thinks the new God of War switched it up as many saw it as switching to an already popular style. Different for the series but very samey for this gen.
I liked the jetski stuff in Uncharted 1 and they added the jeep driving in 4 but it doesn't change the game, it is the same.
I wonder if he thinks the new God of War switched it up as many saw it as switching to an already popular style. Different for the series but very samey for this gen.
I liked the jetski stuff in Uncharted 1 and they added the jeep driving in 4 but it doesn't change the game, it is the same.
In a certain light, he's not wrong, but many linear storytelling games are going to follow best tested gameplay paths. A fair bit of the experience is usually the story itself, voice acting, character interactions and emotional impact.
There can always be room to innovate, but Uncharted set some pretty set in stone gameplay mechanics from the start that were merely polished up/iterated on.
While there is a lot of make believe in it, it's not like they could introduce a jetpack successfully to the world. Some vehicle stuff got a little better in 4.
The bigger rustling of my jimmies has been the race for "our open world is now 10x the size of Skyrim", then it's mostly empty or full of terribly boring "questing".
There can always be room to innovate, but Uncharted set some pretty set in stone gameplay mechanics from the start that were merely polished up/iterated on.
While there is a lot of make believe in it, it's not like they could introduce a jetpack successfully to the world. Some vehicle stuff got a little better in 4.
The bigger rustling of my jimmies has been the race for "our open world is now 10x the size of Skyrim", then it's mostly empty or full of terribly boring "questing".
I don't entirely disagree with him, but there are still games within the AAA space that differentiate themselves and innovate.
But at the same time, with ballooning budgets, this is the natural conclusion. As games become more expensive to make, they're going to become more homogenized in order to appeal to the largest audience possible.
But at the same time, with ballooning budgets, this is the natural conclusion. As games become more expensive to make, they're going to become more homogenized in order to appeal to the largest audience possible.
They really should have done the draw system with the left trigger button.
We already went through this song and dance on the PS3. The game was good but it turns out that no one wants Twisted Metal anymore. Car Combat genre is dead for now.
You end up with a stagnant franchise or even worse, a stigma that X company only offers X type of game, which can result in loss of sales due to uninterest.
He also has been saying that Astro Bot should be a GOTY nominee and is a true new experience.
he is right, aaa is at its worst. open or a croucher. every time i see a new game with the same silly crouch mechanic its ridiculous
Yep, it was a damn shame it sold so poorly. I wanted to see it sell well and bring back competition like Vigilante 8.
Doom has the benefit of time being a critical factor, which is important to both of our points. This all deals with supply and demand. There was demand for more Doom due to it being such a long time between the previous entries. There's not really more demand for Call of Duty due to it being yearly, but there is plenty of supply. No one is going to bat an eye if CoD misses a year because most people will still be playing Blops 4 or the last title before it. Thankfully they mixed it up a bit with this Blops and CoD WW1, because people weren't too happy with Blops 3 or the last Advanced Warfare and were getting tired of future military and spaceships, which should both be cool ideas but the franchise was stagnant at the time.
A VR game getting a GOTY award is like a Comedy or Animation getting a BP Oscar.
Not saying it wouldn't be deserved but that's just not going to happen.
Uncharted games are not all AAA games... also, that series, in particular, was never focused on gameplay. It was always more of an "experience". I think Jaffe made a gaffe by anchoring his argument to that example. It is weak sauce.
As for film critics calling repetition and a lack of innovation out more readily than game critics... that is an industry that is dominated by Marvel. Are you out of your fucking mind with that statement, Jaffe? Did you consider what your were saying for even a second? AAA gaming is WAY more diverse and artistically meritorious than the equivalent in the film industry.
As for film critics calling repetition and a lack of innovation out more readily than game critics... that is an industry that is dominated by Marvel. Are you out of your fucking mind with that statement, Jaffe? Did you consider what your were saying for even a second? AAA gaming is WAY more diverse and artistically meritorious than the equivalent in the film industry.
Last edited:
He's right though, Astro Bot is high up there for GOTY... it's fantastic. Also a lot of games do feel the same, doesn't help that many big AAA games just copy the other AAA games mechanics.
To be fair he complains about it not getting even nominated.
Good times. Now I got the theme stuck in my paddy wagon.
Edit: Ah dang, just looked up why they were called Paddy Wagons.
"A nickname given to a vehicle police use to transport prisoners. The name came from the New York Draft riots of 1863. The Irish at the time were the poorest people in the city. When the draft was implemented it had a provision for wealthier people to buy a waiver. The Irish rioted, and the term Paddy wagon was coined.
Patrick, Michael, Sean throw those damnn Irish in the Paddywagon.
A police wagon used for hauling criminals. Often due to the stereotype of Irish (Paddys= Pattys= Patricks) being arrested for public intoxication. Also due to the high number of Irish men employed as police officers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries."
I should say I haven't played it, so maybe it is unprecedented, not sure it's AAA though.
VR and really precise 3D controller tracking can afford lots of room for totally new experiences, but the business isn't there for them to be AAA yet.
I don't know, the constant cry for innovation always seemed strange to me. Very little I play feels like it came from nowhere. Edith Finch is my favourite game this generation, and yeah, it's the best of the walking sims, but it's building on the games that preceded it. Bloodborne is incredible, but it's Dark Souls, that was Demon's Souls, that was Shadow Tower, that was King's Field.
Jaffe's God of War was shamelessly Rygar-esque.
If there was a time of frequent significant innovation, it hasn't been as long as I've been playing games. It might have been in the NES days when you get SMB, Zelda and Metroid back to back, but it's been a long time.
I don't really agree. You also have cases like Prince of Persia that completely makes its own foundation and spawned an entirely different style of game. "Tried and true" is nice, but you're just closing off possibilities if you see it as immutable.
I guess that is a pretty subjective thing that also varies depending on what games you already know, which genres you usually dip into, etc.
I see a lot of innovation, or at least a very successful and rare marriage of narrative and mechanics, in some games of the last two generations, but a lot of that also only makes sense within their own genres. It's certainly not Wizardry, Mario 64, Zelda 1 or Populous levels of innovation-newness-new genre.
(I am referring to games like Under Night In-Birth, as an example of innovation within a genre, and The World Ends With You or Danganronpa for narrative+mechanics.)
In the end though, I don't think it needs to be. Games like Her Story, One Night Stand, VA-11 Hall-A, Hand of Fate, Hacknet, everything Zachtronics does, Journey, etc are all getting at least a decent reception, one way or the other, while also feeling new and fresh enough. Even more when compared to the standard Ubisoft formula, the standard CoD FPS formula, the standard Bethesda RPG formula, etc.
And then there is an argument to be made for the emergency of Minecraft, the battle royale genre, the MOBA genre, etc too.
Yes, I'm sure the dude who created God of War and was called back by Sony to come and direct the new one, (but refused) is salty about the new direciton.
You sound really insecure, and illustrate exactly
what Jaffe describes as being wrong with modern gaming.
But none of those games are AAA at all. Minecraft grew into it, but it was a tiny project initially. You could argue Dota 2 counts, but it came after LoL, that came after DotA All Stars, that came after DotA.
To be fair, there was no AAA distinction in the NES days, but yeah, you got my point, within their market importance.
Publishers are conservative, it's easy for people to bemoan it, but we barely even get AAA campaign games at this point, that's how sketchy that business model is. Activision aren't going to give a team sixty million for something that isn't tried and tested.
We're really lucky the indie thing happened to be a source of that stuff, as the b-tier all but disappeared over the last ten years.
Well, yeah, that is the conundrum, isn't it? Even on the PSX/N64 days, the games "advancing" the art form or creating genres were not exactly equivalents of today's AAA. Depending on the exact year of the past eras, it's arguable that only arcade games were "AAA".
At the same time, some publishers are finding that they need that lower tier of game, sometimes experimental, though, aren't they? It could be just lip service, I dunno, but feels like stuff like A Way Out or Fae is also being explored more and more.
Demanding to see something new all the time is a sure fire way to get you bummed out and disappointed.
Except, you know, Mario and Zelda are AAA games and just fucking exploded with new ideas.
Such as? Mario took control of other stuff in Yoshi's Island, and climbing with grip gauges isn't new, Crytek made an entire VR game about it called the Climb.
They didn't really come out of a vacuum though. Super Mario Bros was building pretty incrementally off of the controls introduced in Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Mario Bros, and Balloon Fight, and a lot of Zelda's structure was putting a different spin on Hydlide.
He's complaining that sequels have the same core mechanics as their predecessors..? Don't all of the Twisted Metal and pre-2018 God of War games play almost exactly the same?
He's not wrong that there's a lack of innovation and risk-taking in the AAA but his examples are pretty lackluster. It's also not just a modern issue. The vast majority of AAA games have always played it safe. The difference is that AA games and AAA games were pretty similar in terms of budget back in the 90's whereas they couldn't be further apart today.
He's not wrong that there's a lack of innovation and risk-taking in the AAA but his examples are pretty lackluster. It's also not just a modern issue. The vast majority of AAA games have always played it safe. The difference is that AA games and AAA games were pretty similar in terms of budget back in the 90's whereas they couldn't be further apart today.
Twisted Metal is a strange example in that it's primarily a competitive series. Although he doesn't suggest his work doesn't suffer the same issues. He doesn't expressly say if he's done with AAA because he wasn't allowed to do something progressive, or if he was done because he was just unable to design something new.
Franchises are too samey though. Look at Final Fantasy as a counter example. IX was super traditional with their ATB, X went linear with turn based, XI was an MMO, XII was regioned progression with programmable party members, XIII went ultra fast and entirely linear, XIV was another MMO and XV was an open world action RPG.
If someone likes or holds any of the specific entries in high regard or not, they differ wildly. I think his Gears example was even better than UC and FarCry.
I'm not sure Final Fantasy is a good example. The franchise has been around for over 30 years so a lot of the changes came about as a result of numerous hardware and market changes. The decision to make a couple of MMOs, move away from turn-based combat and go open-world were simply following popular trends. In addition, most FF games aren't direct sequels. In fact, most of the games have nothing to do with one another aside from the existence of Chocobos.