AAA and Indie are the two different types of game developers. Triple-A games are made by major studios who sink millions into their development. Indie games on the other hand are usually made by small operations with minimal to no funding. They are completely different setups but that begs the question, does it effect the final product?
Because of the amount of resources that is put into developing AAA games their first and foremost objective is to make money. They spend millions upon millions on everything from graphics to sound to the cinematic trailers that get all us gamers hyped for the new release. All these things that are used to make a game top of the line can have a drawback however, and that would be what I like to refer to as "red tape." Now what I say red tape what I am talking about is the corporate side of the development.
As the old saying goes you have to spend money to make money and after spending millions on making a game you can be damn sure that Mr. CEO wants to turn a profit. Ask anyone and they will tell you that there is nothing wrong with wanting to make a few bucks and I agree with this whole heatedly but there have been more than a hand full of games that were released riddled with bugs because the had promised a release date and they had to meet it.
One incident that comes to mind when you think of this is the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare launch where there were problems on both PS4 and Xbox One the day of release. These issues were later resolved through several patches but there in lies another problem. It used to be that once a game was released there was no going back to fix anything you missed. Today however, any bugs can be fixed after the game is released. This is a nice feature to be sure but some developers are taking advantage of it as a way to release an incomplete game. In some situations this is fine by me but only when a game is still in development. If people want to spend money on a game they know is incomplete that is their choice but I do not think studios should release a glitch filled game while calling it complete. Another way to look at it is if you turn in a paper to your teacher you cant come back the next day and say "do you mind if I get my paper back for a few minutes? I forgot to check my spelling and grammar."
Indie games are becoming more and more common today with all the tools available to anyone who wants to give it a shot. Because of this there are a ridiculous amount of them out there and I am sure a good number aren't worth a piece of toast that landed butter side down in a public bathroom. Just because there are so many bad games out there does not mean that all indie games are bad.
Someone I greatly admire is the developer of Unturned, Nelson Sexton. He released this game in 2014 at the age of 16 and has since made millions off the sales on steam and continues to update and add new content to it. The game has been described as a DayZ Minecraft hybrid and having spent a considerable about of time playing it myself I can say that it truly a fun game.
Because they are usually smaller operations, indie developers usually make smaller games or take much longer to make bigger ones than a triple A studio. The upside to this is that they are in less of a rush to release it. They have no investors pressuring them to release before they are complete and they can work at their own pace until they are satisfied with the result. Another huge upside is that they have more creative freedom. They are not being pressured by outside forces so they can do what they want, they only have to answer to themselves.
Indie developers work with few resources and are almost always guaranteed to have on financial backing. They lack the resources, finances, and man power of a AAA developer and yet they manage to keep coming up with games that people love to play. I believe the answer is that the larges resources that triple A developers have does effect the final product. They can make bigger and fancier games than indie studios but who's to say that's a bad thing? As far as I am concerned it is the player who gets to decide what makes a game good, not the developers.
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