The Downfall of AAA Game Companies
Triple-A (or AAA) games have been in a downward spiral for the past several years. For the past several years, game companies like Activision, EA, and Bethesda have shown how much they care about their games by making you pay for more after purchasing the game.
First of all, there’s Activision. Activision is a massive game company that makes games like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Crash Bandicoot 2. With all these games, Activision makes a lot of money, and that's profit has gone to their head. When Activision created the first Call of Duty, it was highly praised by players and critics alike and was a new type of game in the world of gaming. It had a unique campaign interestingly telling the story of WW2. It tells two stories, one of a U.S soldier fighting in the Pacific and the other of a Soviet soldier fighting in Stalingrad onward. The first Call of Duty sold over a million copies and made 70 million dollars, the first of many amazing CODs(Call of Duty) games to come. After the first Call of duty success, Activision continued to make great Call of duty games like; Call of Duty 2-4, Modern Warfare 1-3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 1-2. These were called the “peak” of COD games by many players.
That all ended when Call of Duty: Ghosts came out. This is called the most hated COD game for the simple reason of many players just not liking how the game was. For example, COD is famous for its great campaign, which is one reason why many people play/buy the game. The Call of Duty: Ghost campaign wasn’t good. It had terrible characters and an okay story, but the multiplayer was even worse. Many players hated the larger maps and the gunplay, saying it was “too fast and too open” for COD.
After COD: Ghosts, COD fell even deeper with COD: Advanced Warfare, COD: Black Ops 3, and the super hated COD: Infinite Warfare. These games suffered from the futuristic genre. The future genre is fantastic, but these games overdid it. They used the future too much, ruining the experience for many players.
Now, Activision is doing an excellent job with COD: Modern Warfare(2019). Modern Warfare is an amazing game, and I can say from experience, it had a great campaign and an even better multiplayer. Some would say it was the revival of COD. With Modern Warfare being a great success, Activision made COD: Warzone a major hit. Activision was doing an outstanding job with COD, but that didn’t mean it would be great forever. With COD: Cold War, COD went back to being hated and forgotten. Now we shall wait for the next release and see how it turns out.
Next, Electronic Arts or EA is another major game company. It is famous for the Fifa, Madden, and Battlefront series. Fifa and Madden are EA yearly releases due to the nature of sports games needing to be updated seasonally. Now, they aren’t bad games, but they do suffer from EA’s greed. EA is notorious for the many ways they try to make you pay for more, almost useless items. For example, Fifa and Madden have Microtransactions. Microtransactions come in the form of currency, skins, and even DLCs. These items usually come in loot boxes, which basically make you spin a wheel. You have a certain percentage to get a variety of items. These loot boxes cost real-life money. Every year, EA comes out with a “new” FIFA and Madden game which has the same gameplay as the last game with slightly better graphics and always comes with Microtransactions. It just ruins the game because you have to pay for more than just buying to enjoy.
Another example of EA greed is with Battlefront 2. Battlefront 2 is a Star Wars-themed multiplayer shooter. Being Star Wars, it was a game many people wanted to play. When Battlefront 2 first launched, it was a generally good game, fun to play with cool characters. Of course, the thing that ruined Battlefront 2 was Microtransactions, and these were a lot worse. They gave players a competitive edge over others. This meant that someone who had just bought the game and wanted to have a good time couldn’t because someone had paid for the competitive advantage. It ruined the game to the point that many players stopped playing, making EA abandon it. EA did eventually get rid of the loot boxes, but that didn’t do anything.
The last example of the downfall of AAA games is with the company Bethesda. Bethesda is also a massive game company with incredibly successful games such as Skyrim, Fallout, and Doom. These games made the company super famous. The one thing that stopped Bethesda's success was Fallout: 74. The Fallout series was famous for its unique single-player campaign. Bethesda decided to change the game to an online multiplayer game, and in the process, took away what made Fallout great from Fallout. Along with that, Fallout has horrible microtransactions that eventually kill the game.
These examples have shown the greedy side game companies have, which leads to their games dying and them losing money. The greed of game companies will not disappear, but it will change; if players get tired of Activision and EA greed, they will eventually stop playing and move on.
