this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
337 points (98.8% liked)

PC Gaming

14361 readers
648 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Spam or Porn.
  3. No Advertising.
  4. No Memes.
  5. No Tech Support.
  6. No questions about buying/building computers.
  7. No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
  8. No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
  9. No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
  10. Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
EXiLExJD@lemmy.ca
UncleBadTouch@lemmy.ca
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
337
"Triple-A is in crisis" and games "don't have staying power because they're bad," says ex Gears of War director and Painkiller creator (www.pcgamesn.com)
submitted 3 months ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
144 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"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.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"Almost like" and "behaving like an independent studio" is vastly different from being one.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 3 months ago

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.