I guess that depends on where your cutoff is for AAA, but if you’re including FromSoft, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II just came out this year at a similar level of budget and production value. And I know people have their issues with Unreal, but it really has raised the bar for what a “AA” might be capable of. The likes of Avowed, The Outer Worlds 2, The Alters, Split Fiction, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 this year (and games like The Thaumaturge last year) are all what we would have expected out of a AAA game in the not-too-distant past, most of which comes down to scope, where a lot of AAAs are arguably doing too much.
I haven’t played any of those yet but isn’t the subject what we’re looking forward to seeing at the Game Awards? I’m not sure if those studios are rumored to be announcing anything on the show.
I’m gonna have to toss a going between Expedition 33 and KCD2. They both seem like my type of game
Well, you said those were the only AAA devs that weren’t making money printing skinner boxes, and we had plenty of counter examples just this year. Obsidian put out 2 or 3 games this year, depending on how you count, and it wouldn’t be crazy for them to have an announcement for a game coming next year.
Absolutely give those two games a try; they’re high on the TGA’s lists for a reason.
This is a really interesting post! I like how you highlighted both the main title and its cutaway twin it really shows how even small design differences can change the whole perspective. While reading this, I thought about how different interpretations of structures can reveal hidden details, and I came across a good resource that explains similar design and mechanical breakdowns in depth, which you can check out here https://5thaxis.com when you were looking at this, did you focus more on the historical context of the design, or were you more interested in how it works technically?
I’m not really excited about anything because I don’t care much for AAA but it‘s funny to me that a show like the Game Awards was never about the awards but just an excuse to show some world premier trailers.
They keep telling us how this is a celebration of this year while trailers for games in the coming years take center stage. It feels more like the most cynical funeral of old games while the new ones get coronated with their announcements.
And I know this is comment isn‘t deep or profound to anybody who ever watched the Game Awards but I just find it comical every year.
On the other hand, winning an award from this show has a tangible effect on game sales, so it’s nice when a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 can beat the mainstays like The Legend of Zelda and earn that bump for themselves.
The awards are done by the big studios anyway, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft etc, thats the jury, it always has a bias. Anything else only wins something if its so popular that it has to. It's just a AAA circle jerk mostly.
But its not about the awards anyway, its about advertising.
The jury is composed of the review outlets, not the studios. It does have a bias toward larger games, because the outlets reviewing games have an incentive to more reliably cover the games that most of their audience will be interested in, but it’s not because Sony’s voting for themselves to win.
Not exactly no, they are directly involved in the process. They pick which outlets can vote, so you immediately have conflict of interest.
As a fair awards show, its fucking awful, but as we know, thats just the facade to selling people new products. It's just advertising, hyped up.
Also media publications are often biased anyway as their entire business relies on exposure, which is infinitely harder to get if you are critical of games. Nobody is gonna slap a 5/10 on their product.
Not to mention its always games with money behind them, there's lots of actual quality games released that never get a mention, let alone a nomination, because they simply werent published by a big company. They have fucking DLC nominated instead of games if the big guys didnt release anything that year.
It‘s definitely clever to wrap the Award show into a Superbowl type of event for the gaming industry. It ensures there will be a lot of eyes on award winners. But they still have to share the attention with the new shiny things that are being advertised so it‘s always a little awkward. It‘s bizarre but part of the experience and let‘s be honest, most of don‘t care about popularity contests. We tune in for the trailers.
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