007 First Light - Official Bond game from IO Interactive

I find it easier to just look at negative reviews from gamers on steam. I can usually get an idea of why people who don't like the game feel that way as they usually have similar complaints that will start to repeat. Sometimes their complaints don't matter to me and sometimes they have a good point but I usually don't choose to buy or avoid a game based on that info. It's just good to know before diving in. Massive bugs, bad performance or activist agenda will usually sway me and in those cases I will look into youtube videos if I need more info on the problems before just taking peoples word on it at face value.

polonyc2 said:

for videos like this I appreciate that they added timestamps so you can just skip to the parts you want to know more about

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Yeah, it helps a lot. This guy doesn't hate the game (played it twice), just that it is not worth the cost and has many legit issues that are negatives to him. I'm not a huge hitman game fan, never finished one and just watching 007 footage, I get cognitive dissonance with how easy it looks and doesn't make sense in how the guards react (as dumb). The watered down section of the video covers this.

pendragon1 said:

for one, you can find out how lame and gay it is, and if it was built to please journalist/activists instead of players.
i never got the "defend the corps" attitudes but people do that too

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Not really, you can see what they decide to show you and the light they want to show it in. I just question why someone posts about a game they have 0 interest in playing. Seems like activism to me. But the DEI rage is just laughable for me, it's just clickbait for people that want to rage about it.

polonyc2 said:

this concept of watching other people play games on Twitch or YouTube is something I'll never understand...either I play a game or don't play a game...I have zero interest in watching another person play a game

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I enjoy watching people* play games I already played. Too see how different their playstyle is or their reactions to certain things. Or to see them breeze through segments you struggled with but also struggle where you had no problems.

*Of course not just any random person but people whose commentary you find insightful. I've possibly had more fun watching other people play this game, than playing it myself. I'm looking forward for the EFAP & friends supercut.

Has Amazon released a successful game yet? An original game, not one they just published?

Absalom said:

Does it matter that Dave the Diver is not considered "indie"? Not really.

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The most common definition of indie means a small game, or something that looks like a small game. It's usually something that doesn't require top graphics, and most commonly associated with 2D platformers. Dave the Diver fits this definition.

A more accurate definition is when the developer has full creative control. Kojima's indie by this definition, but for some reason no one thinks of him as such. Palworld, Expedition 33, Black Myth are in the same bag, but people reject those as indie, since they're not small games.

I don't know what publishers do these days. In the past, they fronted the funds to produce CDs. I guess they front the cash for ads?

stuffmonger said:

The most common definition of indie means a small game, or something that looks like a small game. It's usually something that doesn't require top graphics, and most commonly associated with 2D platformers. Dave the Diver fits this definition.

A more accurate definition is when the developer has full creative control. Kojima's indie by this definition, but for some reason no one thinks of him as such. Palworld, Expedition 33, Black Myth are in the same bag, but people reject those as indie, since they're not small games.

I don't know what publishers do these days. In the past, they fronted the funds to produce CDs. I guess they front the cash for ads?

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The problem with your logic is Dave the Diver is not a small game. It might have look or feel that's "indie", but that's not the point. The studio that made it, Mintrocket, has 60+ employees, and that's not what I consider a small team. Not large like Kojima, but not exactly small. Also, the game and studio were backed by publisher Nexon, who has BILLIONS of cash to float. While these guys can claim they operated without corporate influence (a farce claim as long as they are owned by Nexon), they did this under the guise that they had a huge safety net. There's little risk to the studio if it flopped. There's a distinction here. This all adds up to not "indie."

Kojima Studios, have you looked at any of the behind the scenes footage of the making of either Death Stranding games? Kojima has access to state of the art mo-cap tech, Hollywood actors, the Decima engine (which is not a cheap license) and they probably invented some stuff along the way. Kojima has access to pretty much anything he wants. Yeah, Kojima can claim his studio is "independent" of Konami, Capcom, Sony, etc. corporate influence, but that does not make his product "indie." Death Stranding is the literal definition of big budget AAA title. His 200+ employees were cherry picked from his Konami days; nothing has really changed except the reporting structure. Nothing coming out of that studio is what I'd ever call "indie."

Absalom said:

Decima engine (which is not a cheap license)

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Decima's only available via direct partnerships. There's no public commercial pricing info. It could have been $0 and 5% royalty like Unreal.

What does AAA mean? The engine doesn't make a difference anymore, since Unreal is free, delivers top visuals, and allows creating pretty faces like Hollywood actors. Mocap can be done with an iPhone.

60 employees is very small for a game that requires a good amount of content, and optimization. I've never played a game that was made by a studio that small. The only one that looks interesting is Teardown, but surely you'll find a reason why it's not indie either.

stuffmonger said:

Decima's only available via direct partnerships. There's no public commercial pricing info. It could have been $0 and 5% royalty like Unreal.

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Let's both agree it was not $0. And they (Kojima) purposely chose Decima over Unreal for reasons.

stuffmonger said:

What does AAA mean? The engine doesn't make a difference anymore, since Unreal is free, delivers top visuals, and allows creating pretty faces like Hollywood actors. Mocap can be done with an iPhone.

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Sounds like you've been drinking the Kool-aid. I will agree that the engine plays less a part these days, but the Mocap tech Kojima used (probably invented) does make a difference. And it clearly wasn't done on an iPhone. Of smaller note, if it had been done on an iPhone, then I'd give you a single point towards "indie.''

AAA, these days, means you have nearly unlimited resources at your disposal to realize a vision. Historically, this has also meant big budget.

stuffmonger said:

60 employees is very small for a game that requires a good amount of content, and optimization. I've never played a game that was made by a studio that small. The only one that looks interesting is Teardown, but surely you'll find a reason why it's not indie either.

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You're completely missing the point. This studio is still Nexon, despite the guise. Nexon is big corpo. Do I need to say more?

CohhCarnage even agrees with me that Mintrocket is not an indie studio. Has even corrected himself on multiple occasions when he refers to Dave the Diver as "indie." It means we've been conditioned to on-the-spot to think because something looks indie it is. That's not always the case these days.

Absalom said:

AAA, these days, means you have nearly unlimited resources at your disposal to realize a vision. Historically, this has also meant big budget.

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So what's the cut off for indie? $30M? Are there further spending limits on stuff like mocap?
What's the headcount limit?

Dave the Diver's budget was around $10M, same as Expedition 33, which was funded by French aristocrats. Does that count as indie when it's royalty instead of corporations?

I don't like either, but I appreciate the one that doesn't try to look like it's from the 90s a lot more. I also don't like Death Stranding. $200M to make a game about walking is weird. Kojima wasted the budget on things that didn't sell.

There is no cutt off. Indie means independent. They are used to thinking Indie means low budget or a small game because of internet pop culture. There is a difference between a developer who is funded by someone else like Nexon and a small or large developer that is independently funded. Dave the driver is not indie but kojima studios is. Kojimo funds everything he does on his own and makes his own decisions. How much money he has doesn't matter. The more success he has the larger his projects will get but he will remain indie. Indie developers can make games that match AAA developers because they are successful and they can do it without having to agree to all of the activist shareholders that fund AAA studios. Warhorse games agreeing to make their main character gay is an example of a studio changing their artistic vision in exchange for funding. This doesn't happen to true indie developers. Even if a developer is indie on paper that doesn't mean there isn't some undocumented source of cash that has an influence on things but there usually is a paper trail if you know what to look for. Large publishers propping up fake indie developers will be a common thing going forward. Low budget AAA games are now re-entering the scene, the sad thing is there used to be niche games that AAA publishers were happy to support and eventually abandoned in their greed, games like Splinter Cell. Now they are being forced in reverse to stay alive. Good times.

AAA developers could fund the creation of a mainstream title and then use the same engine and assets to create smaller niche titles but they got greedy. They stopped hiring real developers and now they have to pay for other people's game engines, other people's IP's and teach brainless monkeys how to use other peoples tools, and it takes them 10 years to do a project that should be done in 5. The games are buggy and packed with activist slop because they got kickbacks for hiring people based on sexual preferences and sexist BS instead of skills. Now they are laying them off an cancelling their games which is a step in the right direction.

Both AAA and indie developers can make low budget and high budget games. Pop culture trends are brain rot. I'm sure AAA publishers want you to think that you have to buy from them if you want an AAA game and everything else is gutter waste but that's not how it is. They intentionally create false trends that allow people to make false assumptions in their favor to gain money and control.
Imagine if a group of rich restaurant owners convinced the public that they were AAA food providers and any food made by any other process or people not related to their established business model were incapable of AAA quality and should be dismissed as low quality gutter slop and people were dumb enough to believe it. Imagine being so mind raped that you would rather believe that an independent studio with a 200 million budget is magically not an indie anymore than accept that an indie studio can produce high quality products.

the_sextein said:

There is no cutt off. Indie means independent. They are used to thinking Indie means low budget or a small game because of internet pop culture.

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This. Indie just means you are independently owned. There are a number of AA or AAA games out there that are indie. Indie doesn't even mean self published, it just means your studio is independent. You might get a publisher for one game, and then a different one for another game, or self publish another. They tend to not last very long, the independent studio model largely stopped existing in the late 2000s as most of the studios were bought out. Big publishers like Ubisoft and EA absorbed studios in house and generally don't do a whole lot of traditional "publishing" anymore. They do some, but most of what they do is in house.

A bunch of indie studios like Obsidian were bought up over the last 5 or so years.

AA or AAA just refers to the budget. With AAA being extremely big budget. But a AAA game from 2008 comparatively has a much smaller budget than one in 2026.

I agree but I think a developer has to be capable and have published it's own game IP's to be truly independent. Being independent, they can chose to go through another publisher but it's a choice they can make and don't have to make. In the case of 007 Amazon will probably require that Amazon publishes it as part of the agreement for IOI to use the IP in the future. Personally, I don't like what Amazon has done to it's Hollywood IP's through Netflix and it's game studios have never proven themselves before. Everything Amazon has worked on when it comes to video games has failed.

Flogger23m said:

This. Indie just means you are independently owned. There are a number of AA or AAA games out there that are indie. Indie doesn't even mean self published, it just means your studio is independent. You might get a publisher for one game, and then a different one for another game, or self publish another. They tend to not last very long, the independent studio model largely stopped exists in the late 2000s as most of the studios were bought out. Big publishers like Ubisoft and EA absorbed studios in house and generally don't do a whole lot of traditional "publishing" anymore. They do some, but most of what they do is in house.

A bunch of indie studios like Obsidian were bought up over the last 5 or so years.

AA or AAA just refers to the budget. With AAA being extremely big budget. But a AAA game from 2008 comparatively has a much smaller budget than one in 2026.

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I do agree with you, but generally what people mean when they say indie is some tiny studio making their first or second game.

Valve and Epiic Games would be considered indie according to the literal definition.

Yes I think we can all agree with the general public's intention when they use the word indie. The problem is that it's wrong and then you get people criticizing posts that state irrefutable facts and it turns into a big argument. People misunderstand what a company is and some of them mindlessly attack any developer who is successful or has money because they think that rich companies make bad games and indie companies are the underdogs that need their support. They then use their misunderstanding of the term indie to bash actual indie developers for no reason which is why people should do research instead of mindlessly following lazy and sometimes incorrect pop culture trends that were probably influenced by mega corps for their own gain. Indie is the team to fight for because they are much more immune to todays activism problems but not all developers that can produce AAA quality games are bad and many of them are in fact indie. There are also examples of AAA game studios making low budget games and plenty of indie games with activist slop. It's not so black and white.

An Indie developer that has the success to make AAA titles and a track record of zero woke games with nearly 3 decades of experience, is one that I wouldn't mindlessly throw under the bus especially if it's a new IP or one owned by someone else. I don't think 007 is going to be a game that's aimed at me and I agree with many of the people who criticize the gameplay but I'm glad it's doing well with the general public and I'm happy for IOI. I hope they continue to thrive because I support indie developers that can make AAA games that do appeal to me. Games like Hitman.

Make a damn definition of indie thread already. Talk about off topic…