Bioshock 4 ?
 

:barf:

Hmmmm, I didn't see that coming

Infinite was a great ending. They should leave it at that.

I keep meaning to give Bioshock: Infinite a try, and I keep forgetting to pick it up. Gotta grab that one on the next good sale.

No, just say no.
I wasn't a huge fan of the originals (IMHO one of the most overhyped games evar), but after the big disappointment Infinite was (to me at least), I have lost all my interest in the series.

Well, do prepare for a bunch of dubious resurrection attempts in the near future! :)

I've spoken to quite a few producers lately, and all of them expressed the very fragile state of affairs in the AAA game industry biz, and the enormous pressure on their respective projects.
In a nutshell, the Ultimate Hollywood Formula is in effect: minimum risk = high profit (i.e. milking established IPs with sequels, spinoffs and whatnot).

I am prepared to remasters and rehashes. Actually, the AAA game industry have done remasters and rehashes, prequels and sequels year after year, lately. The brand new ideas are coming from the indie devs.

Executives make lousy game designers. To be honest most Executives are overpaid scums but a few are really good.

Well, indies are the other face of evil, make no mistake.
The indie game scene practically destroyed the games business with the excessive amount of releases (about 500-1000 indie games are being released PER DAY), and suicidal pricing plans (free game? $0.99 game? heck, even $4.99 now counts as "premium pricing")

The result is a new type of consumer, who does not want to pay even as low as $0.99 for a game (but happily throws out $5 for a latte at a hipster café)

As a result, a new, greedy biz model came to life: fuck quality, only quantity matters.
Throw in some pay-to-win tricks (F2P+IAP, loot boxes, essential DLCs, etc), and you've got lotsa $profit$.

Traditional AAA game companies have only type of weapon left against indies and greedies: production values. However, the more expensive the game production is, the less the risk must be.

… and since the new consumer type is very much immune to quality (hence does not really care about production values as well), AAAs must adapt to this new biz climate somehow. Right now they are trying to convert themselves to greedies (DLCs, loot boxes, etc)

This is a genuine catastrophic situation, that hurts EVERYONE.

Erm, not really. What you call quantity is actually repetitive grind in a product without rich and diverse content.
Lootboxes, yes, but also daily login rewards and tickingtimer "events" emulating heroin addiction.

But no, indies did not destroy anything. It's EA/Ubi/Konami/Warner and likes who instead of burning those practices at stake when they appeared from the first time, integrated all of scams into their AAA titles.

EDIT:
Wait… What's this doing in a thread about "only dick matters" game?

No, quantity comes from the amount of games available in the market, most of them totally redundant (How many Flappy Birds clones are out there? Roguelikes? Metroidvania platformers? Even RPGs? WAY TOO MANY! ).

Have to disagree. Long-term market analysis and biz intelligence proves that in the long run, indies did more harm than good (see my rant earlier). Due to a simple cause and effect, they unwittingly helped spawning greedy companies like Tencent and many others.
EA/Ubi/etc while obviously no saints either, are just following suit in order to stay alive. (Cause and effect V2!)

.. and now back to the dicks… :)

Good point.

Now I believe I'm recalling why I've not acquired Bioshock: Infinite. Yay, more time to play/replay games that I enjoy!

Well duerer, I agree to you to a certain extent here:

I didn't say they were saints. I said the good ideas are mostly coming from them, lately.

Wait, you're implying the new greedy biz model (essentially, pay-to-win tricks) came to life because of … how can I put this? … the resurgence of indie devs??? Because the indies are putting out hundreds of games every day??? You're saying those bad practices (loot boxes, essential DLCSs, etc, I don't know what IAP is :) ) are coming from big studios because of the indies???

Triple-A studios have a budget bigger than indie ones (of course, of course) but it's their own fault when they only "play safe" by not introducing new ideas, by not trying to do things in a different way. Yes, I do agree not every indie game released is a good one, but Triple-A studios could and should make games with higher production values, regardless of the current "indie scene". They should be the first ones to carry out the flag of the good innovation, instead of only using their heads in order to get a fastest way "to milk more money from the cows".

Yes, that bad practice hurts everyone here, I do agree. But I can't agree it came to life because to the reasons you've putted. It's a good disagreement :)

Absolutely.
I'm an old fart enough to be in the game industry right from its beginning, and perhaps I know a bit more than most of you :) So allow me to explain a few deeper interrelations. It will be long, but hopefully not boring.

The huge, uncontrolled amount of indie releases have created such a crowded market, that traditional biz models won't apply anymore. Therefore, a more aggressive model has emerged.

The traditional biz model had two very important factors:
Publishers controlled the releases, carefully scheduling a year's output (e.g. big games scheduled for holiday seasons, so that marketing has enough time to build a pre-release hype, low-tier games scheduled in such a way that they won't harm the big games' sales, etc, etc). As a result, gamers had a very clear understanding about the upcoming games and could plan their expenses accordingly.

Publishers and developers were equally interested in the game's success.. Since releasing a game required so much effort/money (marketing, manufacturing, shelf space, etc), every released game had to be successful to a certain extent. And everybody did their thing: developers created great games, while publishers created effective ad campaigns and secured great retail deals.

Sure, this structure had its own share of problems (stalling, lack of innovation, monopoly), however the industry was pretty much healthy overall, because both publishers, developers, and gamers had some control and could plan ahead.

Enter the indies. They may have great ideas, and they certainly have the tools to rapidly create games. But they are all lone wolfs. There is absolutely no coordination.

So at first, indies were much about idealism, self-expression and attitude: I have a great idea, and I'll teach EA a lesson how to make a great game, DAMMIT!

Then, as dev tools become cheaper, and easier to use (nowadays practically anyone can make a game), there came a new indie breed with selfish greed and attitude: I wanna get rich RIGHT NOW, FUCK YOU ALL!

So, they have successfully disrupted the industry by exploiting the weakness of the system (sooo… you say the publishers are the central thing of all -- then let's leave'em out of the fun! Appstore/Steam does not need publishers anymore, yeeehhaaaa!)

Publishers have severely weakened, but not defeated: you guys made the new rules, so guess what: we are willing to play on your terms. Brace yerselves, IT WILL BE NASTY.
Enter the hyper-aggressive Tencent and its psychopath kins (the new EA, the new Activision, the new Ubi, the new Konami, etc)

Now this control is all gone, the game biz has became a huge, paranoid battlefield with guns blazing.
Nobody is your trusted partner anymore. Nobody knows anything, no plan-ahead is possible. Everybody does his own thing, alone. Absolutely no coordination.
As such, everyone wants to realize the profit right now, because no one knows what the future holds.

The result?
Legit idealist indies don't have a chance to stick out from the crowd (you could make the best game ever, but what for if you don't get recognized), so the quality is rapidly waning.
Ironically, the game biz generates more money than ever, but the profit dissipates somewhere among the many greedies who are absolutely not interested in quality.
Moreover, a new type of gamers emerged as well, fully conditioned to accept and embrace the New Terms. Shit games are OK, spending money is not OK ( We are so smart that we do not realize how dumb we are. )

So this is it. Hope this small rant sheds some light on the state of our passion / profession.

I think the reason for Indie success is straight-forward. Their games, well some of them, are fantastic and cheap while big AAA games in recent years have a very mixed track record with regards to quality and they are expensive. Even if the game has good ideas it is often very buggy and poorly supported where indie studios will often offer years of quality support. Mind you a lot of indie games are pure trash but there are enough very good ones being release on a yearly basis to give aaa develoeprs a real run for their money. Also indie developers often demonstrate that top notch gameplay/ideas/writing can trump flashy but hollow graphics.

For every indie game that is a success there are probably at least 50 that are not. People seem to forget that. The concept of indies is good, but they've watered down the market considerably.

I really need to replay Bioshock Infinite. It was a fun ride, and I never did play the DLC.

The story dlc is really good. Yea I think I said that only a few indie are really good and dilution/lost visibility is an issue. That's one thing AAA game have - lots of visibilty (for better or worse). Pity that some new ip just don't do well like prey.

Add a few zeroes more. I estimate about 1:5000 or even more would be more realistic.
Yes, the problem is that severe. :-/