Indy and small budget games are where all the innovation in game mechanics is occuring. The AA/AAA industry has become a conveyor belt of ever more expensive graphics on the "omni game" mechanics.

Like, I appreciate the effort that goes into big AAA releases. I really do. I get wrapped up in the stories a lot easier when the game is nice to look at and the voice actors are really good.

But if a game isn’t fun, it isn’t fun. A lot of indie games are fun first, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Valheim, factorio, timberborn gave much more hours of fun than some expensive games like GTA 5.

LOL. More like "triple A" studios need to start making games that are actually fun rather than focus on quarterly peanut accounting practices while giving management bloated salaries and bonuses. Also fix up that abusive shitty 'cram' development cycle culture that's entrenched in game development.

Games like Vampire Survivors and Balatro show that games can be fun without many visual frills, but contain depth beyond the standardized, uninspiring, recycled game mechanics. While if you go the length of being true to storytelling like Baldur's Gate, Divinity OS2, rather than sloppy storywriting, people are willing to pay bigger bucks for it.

Somewhere along the way, during the mobile games boom, studios forgot about what actually made games 'fun'. They started to go after micro-transactions to drain every last dollar in your wallet while delivering barely any substance that was 'fun'. They deserve to die given the current trajectory. They forgot the meaning of what video games are.

Silksong launched at €20.

I could buy the best game of a generation at full price FOUR TIMES, or Forspoken once. Tough choice

Wow, who knew.

To recoup lost revenue on declining sales, major publishers will be raising the base price for games to $90, with extended 'complete' editions retailing $145.

Says, major CEO "gamers need to stop alienating themselves and pay up. When sales increase the prices will ~~go down~~ stop increasing (as much... maybe)."

Beatings will resume until morale improves.

I just got Vintage Story last week for $24, and that's gonna last me literally until either the world ends, the Dev team disbands for some reason, or I die.

It's still in early access, but there's already TONS in the game that you may not even see depending on your world spawn.

Too many big studios/publishers just keep releasing the same shit over and over and over. They don't innovate, they don't take risks; they don't exist to make good games, they exist to make shareholders money.

Good games aren't just about graphics, they are about game play. Game play involves mechanics like collecting, exploration, story, strategy, challenging bosses, and world building/crafting. A good game will do 2-3 of these things really well regardless of what the graphics look like.

Consoles are the rich man's platform these days. If you have a bit of technical know-how, it's not hard to find a cheap old PC and get some games running on it.

smaller games that are fun have a better chance of getting bought on a whim, who knew!

Can't even remember the last time I spent over £30 on a game tbh.

Steam sales. That's where I'm at.

Epic Game Store also gives away some AAA freebies.

People who haven't gotten raises to keep up with cost of living are buying cheaper indie games that are fun and supported instead of 80 AAA games that are abandoned because they didn't make all of the money.

Gee, shocker.

Most of my library is indie games but I'm really looking forward to CONTROL Resonant and the 007 game (love me some Hitman).

I'm happy to pay the premium for graphics/voice acting/whatever if the game is actually fun. A shame that so many AAA developers forget about that last part.

I MIGHT buy a new $30 game if there is no DRM. A DRM'ed game, at $12? No way.

I just splurged and bought Moonlighter for like 2.99 so yeah checks out i guess.

I very rarely get $60-$70 games at full price any more. The last 3 were Assassin's Creed Shadows, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and Crimson Desert.