“The games that people are excited about are almost like semi-indie studios,” Chmielarz says, taking the example of The Witcher and Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt Red, which he acknowledges "has shareholders, but behaves and acts as if [it is] independent.
I am screaming internally.
We’ve redefined AAA to mean “games that are in crisis” and then keep shouting “AAA is in crisis” like it’s a shocking revelation.
Honey dear, if CDPR and Cyberpunk are goddamn indie games I don’t know what AAA is. Everybody is running around calling these massive games with nine digit budgets “indie” and pretending that they’re the exception in a “AAA” industry apparently entirely made up of Call of Duty.
At this point this conversation means exactly nothing. I am so exhausted of it.
That is exactly how being things and not being things are.
If you go with “well, it’s not an indie, but it behaves like one in my view” as selection criteria, then the remainder of “AAA” you are left with by that tautological selection process is by definition made up of whatever bad habits you’ve arbitrarily determined to be “bad AAA behavior”.
I’m very happy that the guy jives with CDPR. Good for him. But what he’s found is a AAA studio that works in ways he likes, not a “semi-indie” studio that just happens to own a first party platform (until last week, anyway), make massive games and be publicly owned.
If you define AAA as “studios that do bad things I don’t like” you can’t expect to be taken seriously when you complain about how all AAA studios are doing things you don’t like.
I am screaming internally.
We’ve redefined AAA to mean “games that are in crisis” and then keep shouting “AAA is in crisis” like it’s a shocking revelation.
Honey dear, if CDPR and Cyberpunk are goddamn indie games I don’t know what AAA is. Everybody is running around calling these massive games with nine digit budgets “indie” and pretending that they’re the exception in a “AAA” industry apparently entirely made up of Call of Duty.
At this point this conversation means exactly nothing. I am so exhausted of it.
“Almost like” and “behaving like an independent studio” is vastly different from being one.
Well, yes it is.
That is exactly how being things and not being things are.
If you go with “well, it’s not an indie, but it behaves like one in my view” as selection criteria, then the remainder of “AAA” you are left with by that tautological selection process is by definition made up of whatever bad habits you’ve arbitrarily determined to be “bad AAA behavior”.
I’m very happy that the guy jives with CDPR. Good for him. But what he’s found is a AAA studio that works in ways he likes, not a “semi-indie” studio that just happens to own a first party platform (until last week, anyway), make massive games and be publicly owned.
If you define AAA as “studios that do bad things I don’t like” you can’t expect to be taken seriously when you complain about how all AAA studios are doing things you don’t like.