Ben Bolton

For anyone confused about the current AAA hate, let me help explain.. For years, big money AAA/publishers have told their fans to "stfu and like what we tell you to like", and if you didn't like what they were making, well that's bc you're a bigot, and maybe you should be silenced for your hate speech. This goes on for YEARS. Studios are co-opted, franchises are destroyed. Then indie comes along, flips everything around, and now it's a (mostly) true capitalist meritocracy. The marketplace decides which games succeed. The consumers decide. And they reward developers that build games people actually want to play. But gamers are now very pissed off at the AAA industry that grifted and lied to them. Their favorite games were stolen by the blue hair mafia and soulless corpo greed machines. Now the gamers want revenge. They want blood. The AAA devs were supposed to defend their audience. But they failed and allowed monsters to consume the craft. Some were willing participants, some were too afraid to say anything. But they failed. We're never going back to that world. Indie games have reconquered the space. The AAA budgets and fake news outlets no longer have any power. Everyone now competes on a level playfield. The free market will usher in a new golden age of gaming. For all the hate I see directed at AAA, I see even more love for indie games. It's incredibly uplifting and I'm honored to be a small part of it.