Hey, I’m on board with that idea 100%, but then you can’t complain online about “Western AAA under-delivering”. That’s just “the studio’s own strengths and weaknesses”. Can’t eat your cake and have it, too.
It’s an awkward phrase in either version, but when I first encountered the original it was an immediate “Oh, so that’s what it’s supposed to mean” moment, so now I default to that. If people were shamed into abandoning “couldn’t care less” we can make this happen.
My pendantry is either a sneaky precision strike or a carpet bombing, no half measures.
you can’t complain online about “Western AAA under-delivering”.
I’ve played the campaign of Diablo 4 and watched the studio fumble a franchise that has historically printed money.
Definitely feels like underdelivering to me.
Can’t eat your cake and have it, too.
If you can’t see any material difference between DLC bloated franchise zombies like CoD or the latest FF flop, relative to a sprawling open world action/adventure like Elden Ring or a tightly scripted RPG like BG3, I’m not sure you know what “cake” is.
You should give Diablo 4 another look, it’s alright now. For the record, D4 seems to have sold pretty damn well. I’ll say that I personally like launch D4 less than endgame D3, but maybe a bit more than launch D3. But hey, we’re getting in the weeds there.
I can absolutely see the difference between good games and bad games, but I suspect you and I may disagree on what games we’re talking about here and where the examples in the OP slot in.
People keep doing this. They say “western AAA” to mean “these five games I don’t like” and, as pointed out above, Baldur’s Gate is suddenly not western AAA despite being a European game with a budget of hundreds of millions, while now apparently Final Fantasy XVI actually IS Western AAA despite being from a Japanese studio.
I get that this would be much easier to talk about if there was a neat label to fit all the bad games, or if they all were bad for the same reason. But… you know, maybe it’s just not easy to talk about in the space of a meme after all.
The thing that still amazes me about D4 is basically its optimization. In runs so damn smooth on my handheld it’s crazy. I can play helltide content on Torment with bazillion things going on at the same time and the FPS is rock solid at 60.
Hah. Say what you will about the decline of Blizzard, but they clearly still know how to do scalability from their “WoW must run on potato laptop” days. I played most of my D3 on a Switch and most of my D4 on a handheld PC.
Game studios aren’t individual people it’s hundreds of individuals working together to make a game. There’s no excuse for elden ring to be so laggy, there is most definitely some management decisions pushing back performance upgrades to the engine.
It’s almost like every game studio has their own strengths and weaknesses? Crazy.
Hey, I’m on board with that idea 100%, but then you can’t complain online about “Western AAA under-delivering”. That’s just “the studio’s own strengths and weaknesses”. Can’t eat your cake and have it, too.
I’m upvoting just for the proper version of the phrase
It’s an awkward phrase in either version, but when I first encountered the original it was an immediate “Oh, so that’s what it’s supposed to mean” moment, so now I default to that. If people were shamed into abandoning “couldn’t care less” we can make this happen.
My pendantry is either a sneaky precision strike or a carpet bombing, no half measures.
Um, isn’t that the correct form? If you couldn’t care less, then you care the absolute minimum amount.
Hah. I’ve internalized it so much I couldn’t even bring myself to write it the other way on purpose. I’m not even editing that :D
Now I’m not sure if you could or couldn’t care less.
I’ve played the campaign of Diablo 4 and watched the studio fumble a franchise that has historically printed money.
Definitely feels like underdelivering to me.
If you can’t see any material difference between DLC bloated franchise zombies like CoD or the latest FF flop, relative to a sprawling open world action/adventure like Elden Ring or a tightly scripted RPG like BG3, I’m not sure you know what “cake” is.
You should give Diablo 4 another look, it’s alright now. For the record, D4 seems to have sold pretty damn well. I’ll say that I personally like launch D4 less than endgame D3, but maybe a bit more than launch D3. But hey, we’re getting in the weeds there.
I can absolutely see the difference between good games and bad games, but I suspect you and I may disagree on what games we’re talking about here and where the examples in the OP slot in.
People keep doing this. They say “western AAA” to mean “these five games I don’t like” and, as pointed out above, Baldur’s Gate is suddenly not western AAA despite being a European game with a budget of hundreds of millions, while now apparently Final Fantasy XVI actually IS Western AAA despite being from a Japanese studio.
I get that this would be much easier to talk about if there was a neat label to fit all the bad games, or if they all were bad for the same reason. But… you know, maybe it’s just not easy to talk about in the space of a meme after all.
The thing that still amazes me about D4 is basically its optimization. In runs so damn smooth on my handheld it’s crazy. I can play helltide content on Torment with bazillion things going on at the same time and the FPS is rock solid at 60.
Hah. Say what you will about the decline of Blizzard, but they clearly still know how to do scalability from their “WoW must run on potato laptop” days. I played most of my D3 on a Switch and most of my D4 on a handheld PC.
But we can complain about AAA studios under delivering.
Game studios aren’t individual people it’s hundreds of individuals working together to make a game. There’s no excuse for elden ring to be so laggy, there is most definitely some management decisions pushing back performance upgrades to the engine.
*Some
Don’t forget that there’s many indie studios that are a handful of people. Seas of Stars only had 20-30 people on staff IIRC