You're pretty much on-spot; now every single Triple-A title needs to run a prototype through a board of corporate suits before it's even approved to continue development. These suits, mostly a cadre of decaying septuagenarians, or a whole bunch of corporate dullards who've never played a game in their lives, are pretty much giving the final Yay or Nay on what gets made and what doesn't. And this, in turn, is basically causing the industry to start "bleeding" talent, as this Old Guard of developers, many of which were Franchise Founding Fathers, are leaving the companies to become Indies/Freelancers, and are being replaced either with talentless hacks who are out to twist games into what they want them to be, or simply new blood, fresh off college, who think they've made it big because they got hired by Triple-A, before they come to realize the nefarious nature of the places they've stepped into, which leads us to the second problem.
The problem with Triple-A goes beyond mere cash milking and corporate meddling, the conditions in which Triple-A Developers work is downright inhumane. Jim Sterling in particular has done A LOT of videos on this particular problem; on how Big Triple-A considers mass layoffs, crunch, unpaid overtime and workplace psychological abuse not just the norm, but an ABSOLUTE NEED in order to deliver a finished product.
Oh, and while it's true that inflation has gone up and game prices had stayed the same, bear in mind that many, MANY Triple-A games are simply beyond overfunded (considering the quality of what they deliver), and that a whole lot of that money doesn't go to development, but to the bonuses and royalties of all the suits in charge.
So, you have a legion of stressed and unmotivated workers, doing the bare minimum they need to make to please their corporate overlords and deliver a product that's "showy" enough to attract sales, while still being as marketable as possible. Which means that any kind of risky, original or unique ideas, get put aside to continue repeating the tried and true formulas that have the stats proving that they sell.
Also, since said corporates usually promise the moon in the sky to their stockholder vultures, whenever a game makes less than "All of the money in the world", it's considered a failure (even if the game was well accepted and loved by the playerbase). Which is why you see the perpetual hype machine being cranked even higher every year, only to fall even harder on its face.
Now, thanks to the SW:BF2 debacle, and politicians worldwide clamping down on Lootboxes and Microtransactions as a whole, this particular problem has been lessened up a lot in recent times, as the industry retreats back to other less-controversial methods like Subscriptions and Cosmetic Stores (with the exception of the Mobile Market, where Microtransactions and Lootboxes rule supreme) until the outrage is fully past and the waters are calm for them to try sailing that ship again. Although given how many countries are outright banning anything they see as "Gambling in Games", I highly doubt that the Lootbox will make a comeback any time soon.
Now, looking at the other side of the coin, both Indies, and what's being called "Double-A Developers" (basically that gentle mid range between "small indie game" and "big-budget Triple-A") have been improving both in quality and quantity over this last decade. Sure, asset flippers and meme games still exist, as do perpetually Early Access games, but the death of Steam Greenlight has certainly curbed their appearance.
Indies have, since forever, been the haven of creativity and innovation of this industry; with developer only being limited by time and money (and this last one has been greatly remedied by services such as Kickstarter or Patreon, which provide either a bulk sum or a steady stream of revenue). However, Indies are usually the choice of the "cultured" gamer; that OG gamer who's been playing since before it was
Mainstream and that often has a discerning eye for quality and content that (most) Triple-A simply won't meet. Sadly, most of the money made by game sales nowadays comes from Casuals; these new generation of gamers who game because it's "Cool" and will pay for what's essentially the same game with an incremental number or subtitle at the end as many times as possible. So, sadly, Indies can't compete with Triple-A when it comes to raw profit, no matter how popular the game is. Their biggest enemy is exposure; lacking the massive marketing budgets of Triple-A, they must either rely on hearsay, the Steam algorithm, or more recently, YT reviewers liking their game and making mention of it (P.D.
ACQUIRE BRIGADOR, it's GREAT).
Double-A, however, are an entirely different animal. Many of them are successful Indies, who've basically "leveled up" enough to start tackling more ambitious projects. These are basically smaller but better well known studios like Firaxis, Paradox, CDPR (who is in the process of ascending to Triple-A), and the like, who can deliver better looking (and hence, more Casual-appealing) games, and who can afford some amount of marketing to make themselves known. These are the guys who are currently leading the market, and many may even grow enough to become Triple-A themselves (for better or worse), and this is causing many changes in the market, specially as Big Triple-A tries to "eat" those smaller studios into themselves, and some fight against it.
Speaking about market changes, however... one of the most unpredictable thing of recent years is the fact that now there are full-blow porn/hentai games announcing AND SELLING themselves on Steam and funding themselves through Kickstarter. And I don't mean just VNs. Games like Subverse (Basically a Mass Effect-style game created by well-known/dreaded 3D Porn Makers STUDIOFOW), Breeders of Nephelym (Breeding Season/Cloud Meadow knock-off), Princess & Conquest (Towergirls' Official Game) and many other titles that, years back, would've only existed in obscure internet forums, or on hentai sharing sites. This is also causing for many Hentai/Porn veteran developers of many kinds to step out of the shadows and start showing their talent as Indies (for instance, the recently extremely popular game, Helltaker, had its music made by Mittsies, a Legendary Furry Game Music Composer), which has created this strangeness in where you can find fully pornographic stuff on Steam. It merely locked behind an age filter.
So, yeah, given the way things are looking, as old studios bleed and rot away, new ones are rising from the Indie crowd, porn games become more visible and accepted, we are indeed upon a new era; an era where all of these Indie, Triple-A or Double-A are kinda meaningless; as long as you like the game, that's all that matters.
Feathers wrote:No Man's Sky earned my respect though, they have done well for an indie company and keep improving it.
Yes they have, and it's not half bad now. And believe it or not, Fallout 76 is also good now.
The Wastelanders patch made for a Fallout experience I've frankly enjoyed more than FO4 (mainly because the old style dialogue, with skill-checks and intelligence/charisma choices, is back). Also, believe it or not, the Atom Shop is the least annoying "Cash Store" I've stumbled upon in YEARS. Because the game pretty much SHOWERS you with Atoms as you play it, meaning that, unless you wanna buy EVERY SINGLE THING, you can usually buy stuff without paying one penny, just using your earned Atoms.
Also, the "Pay-2-Win" stuff (the repair kits and scrap kits) aren't as much "Pay-2-Win" as they are "Pay-2-Not-Play", because anyone willing to put half a grain of effort on it can do without them (also, they sometimes drop as prizes from certain quests/events which can be done limitlessly).