this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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[–] BiomedOtaku@lemmy.dbzer0.com -4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Good. I pray by the day triple A dies. You can fuck off with your DEI, boss girl, slop games.

[–] Stamau123@lemmy.world 0 points 8 hours ago
[–] IEatDaFeesh@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

If it doesn't run well on mobile gaming consoles, then it's losing a huge market. It makes sense now that handhelds are popular af.

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What's driving this trend? The enshitification of triple AAA titles fucking slapping surcharges on EVERYTHING; day one dlc, microtransactions, always online DRM, the ability to revoke access to the shit we pay for, it's death by 1000 cuts. EVERY anti-consumer action, every attempt to squeeze more of us while delivering the same rehashed shit over and over just drives me further into the arms of indie developers. The intent of us withholding our money and refusing to purchase your shit is to provide publishers with a sense of pride and accomplishment for retaining their customer base.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago

I havent taken a stance but games requiring subscriotion have moved me away. Seasons pass, dlc etc.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

to me, aaa = mark of inferior quality, barring some exceptions

[–] benjirenji@slrpnk.net 33 points 1 day ago (3 children)

For me it's a lack of creativity and innovation when it comes to gameplay. Indies or just smaller studio productions take more risks and that's a lot more exciting.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah, AAA productions:

  • Must be multiplayer, ostensibly because people 'demand' it, but a narrative easy to believe when you know players are stuck with your servers and you can effectively shut down the game when it no longer makes money for you.
  • Relatively fewer games to be made, no chances may be taken. Conventional wisdom tells them that people got over turn-based in the 90s, so even the FFVII remake refused to do real turn-based, while Clair Obscur showed that it was still absolutely welcome gameplay.
[–] BygoneNeutrino@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 for the first time right now. I'm not particularly a fan of turn-based games, but I'm digging there interpretation of the genre. I like how each character has a limited amount of movement per turn and the ability to navigate through the entire environment. I'm surprised more developers don't use a similar model.

[–] benjirenji@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 day ago

I admit I was thinking about E33 as well, but my niche is narratively strong games or puzzle games. Too many AAA games are narratively disjointed open world messes and when it comes to puzzles indies are just king. Animal Well, Blue Prince, The Witness etc.

[–] superduperenigma@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Zero creativity, zero innovation, zero passion. Too many AAA games feel like all of the design and decision making happened in a boardroom full of executives and market researchers, then the actual designers and developers just churn out whatever the higher-ups have decided the product will be.

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[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

To me, AAA means but it in 6-12 months for $10-20

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm too lazy to find my 3 year old comment but it went something like "AAA games are about as AAA as the mortgage bonds were in 2007".

The era of the AAA gold standard is long gone. You no longer need a million dollar studio bankrolled by a big name publisher/console to make a groundbreaking AAA game.

Most if not all of those studios have been cost cutting for the past decade to maximize profit which is how we reached the current market of UE5 slop and DoA live service games.

There's even an entire YouTube channel dedicated to showing how many current "AAA" titles have regressed in graphical optimization and quality from older game engines due to the lack of proper development, despite the advancement in consumer hardware.

[–] Benchamoneh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Care to link the channel for the curious friend?

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You know what this is called? A healthy and competitive market.

Yeah, I get there's layoffs, but that's mainly at AAA studios and is a symptom of a previously unhealthy, highly consolidated market. The job losses suck, but now diversity and competition is coming back, and that's generally a good thing for consumers.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Whenever investors get involved things go downhill. If the only two parties are a buyer and a seller, the only way the seller can make money is by making a product the buyer wants to buy. But investors don’t care about the product. They may not even understand the product. They only care that the product makes money.

AAA studios are failing because they want to please investors, not buyers.

[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

It’s this.

and it’s always worth distinguishing between executives and investors.

Executives are going to push the problem, but the core issue is shareholders. In the US, where most of these companies are based, a publicly traded company is expected to make money for its shareholders. Shareholders have subplanted customers in the companies ethical obligagions. The law has been used to make this national policy. Controlling shareholders can (and do) vote to remove company leadership that won't act how they want. It is not just that they have to generate revenue, they have to generate as much revenue as possible as determined by shareholders. It's corporate cartel tatics. Fail us and die. Do well and you'll get rewarded with some of the take.

If a company goes public, It's only a matter of time until it's product goes to shit.

[–] zuckey78@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

I want to upvote this one million times

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[–] forkDestroyer@infosec.pub 8 points 1 day ago

It all costs too much now, and my backlog will hold me over until I die of old age. I'm at the age now where I don't care about the new stuff.

[–] FluorideMind@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They don't seem to understand not every game needs to be a red dead.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm happy with every AAA game striving for RDR2 level of quality if we also get AA games from the same studios. And of course indie games are always gonna indie.

If they try to make only super huge AAAs and nothing less, then games are infrequent and quality suffers when they have to be rushed out when money's getting tight.

[–] BillCheddar@lemmy.world 63 points 2 days ago (7 children)

I'd pay the $70 or even $100 for a AAA title...if it released complete, relatively bug-free, and didn't try to soak me with microtransactions and subscriptions.

But that's not what's they're selling.

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[–] Azrael@reddthat.com 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The only AAA game that I have legitimately enjoyed and played more than once is Red Dead Redemption II. Other AAA games are okay, but they feel a bit hollow and lack the immersion that RDR2 has. Then again, RDR2 was showing off a bit with what the industry can do.

[–] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

RDR2 is a fucking masterpiece.

[–] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago

Like when BG3 came out and other devs whined about being unable to deliver such a game? Maybe they shouldn’t be considered AAA studios if all they do is waste their budget.

[–] sheetzoos@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I fear for the new Mass Effect game.

[–] Alandrus_Sun@ttrpg.network 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I'd love to play AAA games- Crimson Desert and Spider-Man 2 are on my wishlist. But now that they've been optimized for frame generation, my 3070 can't play them to my standard.

If I'm going to stare at a pixelated mess, I'd rather it be curated by an indie artist than technical difficulties from DLSS compression

[–] Baylahoo@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

What expectations do you have for resolution and frame rate? My 3070 plays Spider-Man 2 just fine. I think I'm running 1440 at 60. It's as good or better than the original console release.

[–] Alandrus_Sun@ttrpg.network 1 points 8 hours ago

I have a 3440x1440 resolution. I aim for a smooth 60. Maybe they made performance better. But, it didn't work for me well at launch

[–] Soggy@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

3070 can’t play them to my standard.

You've poisoned yourself. Chasing fidelity and refresh rates has done for graphics what short-form media did to attention spans. I'm emulating PS1 games and playing Fallout 4 on a 970 while my computer fans blow like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and I am free.

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Those still doing 1080p/1440p gaming get the best of both worlds: high framerates with all the fancy graphics turned on, without needing to rely on frame gen or spend a thousand bucks on a graphics card.

IMO 4k isn't enough of a qualitative leap to justify all the hacks needed to make it run acceptably on current hardware, let alone the sky-high VRAM costs for that resolution. I'd rather run a game in ultra quality at 1080p than medium quality in 4k.

[–] mellowistheyellow@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

That and they are also $70 new. Like yeah no thanks

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 178 points 2 days ago (22 children)

Same thing happened with music.

It doesn't mean AAA will go away, just like big stadium packing artists like Taylor Swift never went away. They just accounted for less of the industry's total profits than they used to.

More of people's disposable money is spent on a wider variety of music and games, often opting for more "indie" and cheaper versions of both. It's a good thing, honestly, for people's tastes to be more diversified and unique.

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[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 27 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Do they still make AAA games anymore? They take so long to develop and lots of them get cancelled at the very end or a month after release.

[–] Azrael@reddthat.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No. AAA games don't really exist anymore. They're a thing of the past.

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 1 points 12 hours ago
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[–] BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Good, nearly all AAA games provide is pretty graphics and little to no substance. Those that do are the very rare exclusions. Like CyberPunk2077, its story was good, graphics if you could run them good, but the gameplay was hollow until a lot of reworking.

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[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Well duh. Most of those AAA’s launch in broken states with lots of bugs and performance issues. And a lot of titles don’t even run well on the best hardware you can buy. Borderlands 4 ran atrocious on even the absolute best GPU you could buy.

And with the whole season pass, day one DLC, preorder bullshit, shit is more expensive than ever.

The industry only has themselves to blame for this.

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