I wouldn't call Factorio AAA, but with their ever increasing price tag, Space Age certainly feels like one of the best made "AAA" Games of the year.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

Yeah, the line between AAA and Indy games is kinda blurred at this point. Especially because quality has split into production quality and gameplay quality and higher production quality seems to be getting more accessible to smaller dev teams.

Like I've been playing Enshrouded and have been enjoying it. It's a large game (like I think the map is comparable to a WoW continent with fewer total regions but each region is larger... I think it's a bit bigger than breath of the wild) but I have no idea if it would fall into the AAA box or not. Nothing about the game screams "Indy" or "small development team" other than the game being (IMO) really well done and not feeling like a product of a ??? step between "start making game" and "profit" like so many AAA games have felt like with all their season passes and MTX.

Ultimately, "good game" vs "bad game" is more important than "AAA" vs "Indy" (or whatever other categories), which is why I first asked about it. My bias has gotten to the point where I'll ignore a lot of the games that look like they are AAA games tuned for engagement and profit rather than necessarily being fun, but I could be missing out.