💜💜Small Indie Games VS Big AAA Titles💜💜

Its called fun and style.
Both are timeless.

I find myself keeping coming back to games like Odallus and La-Mulana (2d retro metrodvanias) and in my case isn't much about nostalgia because when young i couldn't afford many games and completely missed the metroidvania genre. Thats just one example of many.

Fun have nothing to do with graphics. Heck, i recently got a good machine and im having a blast with games like witcher 3 and such with all the fancy graphics i couldn't run before. I get AMAZED by the graphics- but the fun i have with them i would have if they were released 10 years ago with worse graphics.

Then theres 'style' - trying to keep my english simple for you - a part of the experience that is affected by details such a camera, simplicity or complexity of controls and mechanics and such. Depending on a games style simpler graphics work better then fancy, in other cases the opposite. Some genres like platforming and metroivania for example work way way better as 2d sidescrolling then 3rd person whatever. Not saying there aren't good modern fancy graphics games of those genres, but its different. A different experience.

Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time Rank 2 i guess

Indie games look more original than AAA games to me. Yeah i really liked GTA 5, Witcher 3 or Tomb Raider but they didn't give the refreshing feeling when i played Furi for example. Or I didn't even play any of the games as much as Don't Starve. Yeah GTA 5 is a good game but it's not really different from any other GTA when it comes down to feeling. New expreinces are what makes games more enjoyable for me.

AAA games that catch my eye are extremely rare. As it's been already mentioned above, almost all of them belong to a small handful of genres, and I'm not interested in any of them. They are mostly about what an average user wishes, but an average user is only the peak of the Gaussian curve, it's not everybody. The stories are calculated so that they would satisfy target groups and sell better - and so on. They are also rarely not about killing and/or simply using your reflexes. My beloved adventure games nowadays belong to the indie niche completely, therefore almost everything I play is indie (or classics developed before such terms even appeared).

A game can be great regardless if it's Indie or AAA. It can also suck spectacularly and be a stinky pile of shit regardless if it's Indie or AAA.
Those are just labels which in the end don't mean much when it comes to quality. I'd say it's a lot more important who developed and/or published the game than if it's Indie or AAA. :P

That said- AAA games tend to be the big budget games, so they tend to be more expensive, so that tends to put off people like me who are too stingy to pay that much for a single game (even when it's on sale... I mean, seriously, 60 euro at 75% off is still 15 Euro for a single game, wtf!). So price is a big factor.
Also, a big deal of AAA games are published by... less than likeable publishers who follow many heavily anti-consumer practices. This is where the (usually justified) negative bias towards publishers comes into play. But, like I said, Indie games are by far not immune to this- just look at most of the garbage that comes on Steam because of Greenlight. They're all "Indie" but people are in no way nicer to them when they are terrible than when AAA games are terrible.

1 This, Just Cause

It's just a matter of taste and budget. Furthermore for certain indie titles there isn't any AAA alternative

It's not black and white, there are some great AAA games like the Witcher 3 that are not just big and beautiful but full of ideas and/or good stories and there are a lot of shitty indie games which are just cheap because the label "indie" let's it to be that way. But opposed to the current AAA lineup the best indie games dare to do something new gameplaywise beacause the budget is smaller so they can risk a new idea. A COD can't really do it the investors have too much millions in those projects to fail. Indie games also have the nostalgia factor because many times they look like games I would die for 15-20 years ago. But they also are "more modern" than many "modern" games. And another reason: they are smaller in scale so I can finish them even next to a full time job and a wife.

I've never got people that won't play indie games. A game is a game, no matter how much was spent on making it. And I play games that are good and fun to play. Whether that game is AAA or indie doesn't matter in the slightest. If you make a good game that I like the look of i'll play it. End of.

I got confuse why so many people interested to take even top tier of the bundle, and spending times play those indie games, when they can play AAA title

There are some great AAA titles out there, no doubt about it, but more often than not I find that they try to throw too wide of a net. They aim to do a lot of things, and are fine with doing them good, rather than great, while the indies that end up with an overwhelmingly positive review score tend to do one or two things, and do them really well. There are exceptions to this in the AAA scene, and those AAA games often end up with large cult followings (like Dark Souls). And personally, I usually prefer games that do one or two things really well to those that do a lot of things good.

Probably what everyone has mentioned, I like some but AAA games tend to either "bandwagon" or is basically a remake of their successful predecessor with better graphics. Indie games are spread over more variety even though 98% are total trash. It comes down to how much you play games, do you enjoy putting thousands of hours into the same game or do you get bored sometimes and want to play something different but creative, new, exciting - you know, what most people would define games as "fun".

In this case, the VA-11 Hall-A game's lowest price has been around $10 for that single game so anyone wanting any one of the T3 games would be getting a good deal.

I do enjoy good indie games. I've played many hours in several of them. I like the creativity of indie games, and the retro appeal of many although there are some that have a very modern look and feel. So I'm not going to knock the genre, it does offer something.

That said, there's no question to me that a well done AAA game offers a vastly superior experience to even the best of indie games. Skyrim is an example. The world is so beautiful and immersive, and the depth of the game gives an experience that indie developers can't compete with. Fallout 4, Dark Souls 3... I could go on. Those are the games that I look forward to the most.

The answer is simple, there are great games both in AAA and also in indies. Believe it or not it's the truth. Its just a matter of finding them and exploring them. I personally enjoy both from time to time. It all depends on how good a game in its genre is of course, and how open your mind is to trying hybrid or creative games in terms of genre. Graphics are nice, but not everything.

And if you want to explore diversity and play the most addictive/fun games, budgets indeed have nothing to do with it most of the time. Its the love behind a game's making that gives the overall quality some times. So my personal advice is to look out, for both AAA and indies. Gems will pop out from both, from time to time. And some of these gems are so unique and great, that you can't really substitute them for other games.

I like them both but:

• AAA games are expensive.
• Sometimes I want small nice experiences in games, I don't want to have to spend a lot of time on a single title.
• Most AAA games nowadays I cannot run :P

It doesn't matter whether a game is AAA or Indie, it all depends on whether the player enjoys it or not. That's the only thing that matters.
An AAA game isn't automatically good the same as Indie/Retro games (as OP mentioned before) aren't necessarily bad/inferior.
People don't choose a "bad Indie game" over a "good looking AAA game", they play whatever game they feel like playing.

For example, I have double the playtime in Stardew Valley (Indie) than I have in Sleeping Dogs (AAA).
I loved playing both games equally and would love to put the same hours into Sleeping Dogs, but I'm done with the story, races, side missions, events and 95% of the collectibles, so of course I'm gonna choose to play another game instead to enjoy my freetime with.

AAA games usually have an endgame whereas indie games let you continue playing for as long as you want.
Most gamers aren't rich, so they'll eventually run out of AAA games to enjoy and look for other titles they'll love.

Yes. AAA games have the same formula that entertains the general public.
Yes. Indie games try to think outside the box to entertain the general public.

Nobody sacrifices playing AAA games for their Indie games.
People just play the genres they enjoy, no matter where from.