With the new year upon us, the world of Video Gaming is changing ever presently. From the rise of new technologies and softwares, to hardware and expectations, the industry is shifting rather peculiarly into a new age.

For those unaware and caught confused by the title, triple A or AAA games are video games in which are, as google puts it, “produced and distributed by a major publisher, typically having higher development and marketing budgets” which, as a result, are of high quality yet slow release. Significantly, though the release of these games were often to celebrate due to being long awaited, with new expectations from audiences, especially younger ones, the wait is now deemed too long to bear, putting heavy strain on, and causing detriment to, producers.

As a result, this ‘new age’ has seen a development in the gaming industry  with said younger audiences becoming craving for new content, quicker than big budget studios can provide them. This, as well as a general but, less potent, absence of ideas, has caused an already massive change in audience desires in the industry, players now favouring simplistic, cheap and though quick-to-produce, better content. In a way, consumers have now raised the bar for game quality, expecting more from big studios, only to receive better prospects from games made by single or small team developers: indie games.

For instance, 2 of these indie, meaning individual, games released near the end of 2023, called “Lethal Company” and “Buckshot Roulette” have taken the internet by storm through their delivery of quality and fun gameplay for as low as $1.20. That's not all, however, as the stream of games as such stretches further back into the year, “Battlebit Remastered” also being released as far back as June, gaining spontaneous popularity through its simplistic and cheap take on the ever popular AAA ‘Battlefield’ Games.

“But why is this important?”, you may be asking. Well, with the industry’s aforementioned shift in audience, expectations with the rise of these games have skyrocketed for AAA Studios, players realising that, now, singular developers can make better games quicker and cheaper whilst AAA games are gradually becoming more-and-more profit-oriented. Notably, comparing the previous games mentioned with a new release from the end of January this year, “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League”, we can see this shift take place as, despite its branding, it received endless backlash for being a cash-grabbing, low quality, mess of a game, audiences enraged by its $40 to $100 pricing.

Anyways, with 2023 behind us and 2024 now underway, it is fairly easy to assume that, with new game releases, AAA games, due to their slow releases, expensive pricing and sometimes low quality, ‘indie’ or ‘individual’ games, becoming ever more present in today’s media, will slowly overtake the used-to-be elusive AAA games as big budget studios now see more-and-more competition. The only question now is: “Is this a good thing?”.