Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sandworm101 537 days ago
>> might be impossible to create your own AAA game

Like Minecraft? Factorio? Modern tools allow for very small team to quickly generate very AAA games. Eye candy is still an issue, but AI is quickly creeping into that space. I would not be surprised if within the next decade we have the tools for a single person to generate what we would today call a AAA game.
4 comments
lawik 537 days ago
"Very AAA" games and Minecraft/Factorio are not related.

Minecraft and Factorio are both simpler productions in terms of visual fidelity and lean on gameplay that is captivating. AAA is not a label for the quality of game, more of a style/level of execution.

Both Minecraft and Factorio started indie to my knowledge which is a separate path and approach from AAA games. Unrelated to good/bad.

link
BehindBlueEyes 535 days ago
Neither minecraft or factorio are AAA.

AAA requires not just using but creating the latest visual and audio innovations, creating a huge surface area prone to bugs which all need to be polished out and creating tools to manage your version of that complexity, optimize everything so it runs smoothly and doesn't take an unreasonable amount of disk space.

Even with AI, anything an individual could do, hundreds to thousands of people are also doing at AAA studios. An individual might innovate in a few aspect, but never clear the AAA bar as AAA is a constantly moving goalpost, and most tools the individual can use are likely contributed back by AAA studios to popular AAA game engines like Unreal.

It's like racing in a hamster wheel against the person making the wheels...

link
Fire-Dragon-DoL 536 days ago
Both factorio and minecraft used their own proprietary engine, built in-house, ad-hoc for their game, as far as I remember? Minecraft was pioneering voxels, while factorio was the first one dealing with that massive amount of objects running at all time.

So by definition, they did not use modern tools.

To be clear, there are plenty of games that do that, I just think those 2 are terrible examples.

link
eterm 537 days ago
Neither are AAA.

Also, Factorio was crowdfunded via a kickstarter-like platform.

Also both are around 15 years old. They are both closer in age to 1995 than today.

link