A thousand games. Yep, I’m a gamer. And this is just my steam library. I have more on twitch, switch, and individual PC games. I had even more until I moved but I gave hundreds of console games, and several consoles, to my kids because I couldn’t afford to move them all.
I am showing you this to say I have spent thousands of dollars on these games, even more if you consider I’ve been purchasing games for more than twenty years and how many I have sold, thrown away, deleted, etc over the years. But now…I’m not that interested in spending money on developers that don’t care about their user base.
Last year was a shit show. Triple A game after Triple A game being put out with game breaking bugs (Anthem, Fallout 76, Left Alive), game devs giving in to angry internet trolls that don’t even play games, game devs firing massive amounts of their people after record profits (EA and Activition,) and just the unbelievable exploitation of loot crates, microtransactions and pay-to-win garbage. $2 for a dot? COME ON!
I’ve had it with Triple A titles. They are supposed to be BETTER because they have the people and the backing to provide better games.
The games I loved last year? Moonlighter. Donut County. Celeste. Gris. Raft. Subnautica (and Subnautica even has a squeal out this year.)
And many older games like Stardew Valley are still adding new content to their games. For FREE.
So many games, and they all have one thing in common: indie studios made them!
And when the players complain about bugs what do they triple A studios do? They get Steam and Epic games to hide reviews. They ban players who highlight the problem with the game. They ban their top player. They ignore feedback, double down on microtransactions because they aren’t making enough, and in general make it worse. Even No Man’s Sky, a game overhyped, released too soon, with many of the features missing, has slowly kept adding those features, fixing their game for free and making it better every year. Instead Fallout, Anthem and other Triple A titles are doubling down.
Oh, and then they transfer IP’s we love to mobile and say “Do you guys not have phones?” They are so out of touch with their community. They aren’t selling to this market anymore, they are trying to break into the Chinese market which is heavily mobile based with microtransactions, and leaving us behind.
I’m not buying Triple A titles anymore until they are out, and vetted by the first players. I will support great games in the indie market and encourage those companies to grow. I will be making videos about them because I love them, and adding them to my recommendeds because I will not support an industry that does not love the games they make. If all you are in this for is money (which Activition and EA clearly are) then you don’t love what you are producing. If you don’t love it then why would I love it?
I’m done. I don’t trust games journalists anymore because I know they are just writing what the big companies tell them to write, and then lowering scores of indie titles so the big companies sell more. That’s why game companies black list so many smaller game reviewers, and even Kotaku, because they don’t want honest reviews. I’m tired of it. I want indie titles to win! Because they are amazing! They are creative, innovative, and actually WORK.
So go buy GOOD games and leave the trash where it belongs.
Author Crissy Moss 
Seems like the many years where I didn’t really have time to play games so ended up years behind the release curve (I’ve just started Assassin’s Creed 2) are paying off again: I already benefit from both games being much cheaper after they’ve been out a while, and not having to upgrade half my components to play a game; but now it seems I have years before I run out of good games to play.
Admittedly, I do miss out on a lot of conversations with people who buy close to release, and have to be very careful on the internet to avoid having any surprises spoiled because everyone assumes everyone’s played a game after a year.
Ya, a lot of the games I have are older titles because I just enjoy them. And most are indie. There is some shovel-ware in among all the indie titles, but there are some really good games in there too. And they are cheaper to begin with. Three &$20 games or one $60? I’ll take the three than you.
I sometimes wonder if the AAA pricing is almost entirely designed to allow discounting: Steam emails me about once a month with a deep discount on a certain game that came out for £80.00 a few months ago; so, perhaps their model is to sell above what they need to pay the developers, then chop that off again so it attracts people who want a “bargain”.
Depends on the title. I know AAA games that do well usually do not go on deep discounts. Things like Fallout 76 that are god awful and can’t keep players interested, or are buggy to all heck, have been given away for free with the purchase of something else entirely. I was seeing people who bought hard drives forcing Fallout 76 on people. The good games go on 10, maybe 20% discounts about 3-6 months after they release. But rarely more than that.