The State of Games

Polygon is an video game website part of Vox Media. It was formed in 2012 by Christopher Grant and replaced The Verge, the previous video game website that they were on. In “The State of Games”, the members of Polygon detail what the games industry is like in a five part article. Here are three of the parts form the full collection, The State of Development, AAAs and Indies. In each, the staff at polygon discuss how industry and development is at 2012 and what the future might be.

The State of Games

Polygon Staff

The State of Games: The State of Development

If the first four parts of our State of Games series have made any one thing clear, it's that the video game industry is experiencing great and sudden change. Just as in Mary Shelley's classic consideration of science and technology, this metamorphosis is causing pain. But in an industry defined by technological progress, change shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. In the eternal struggle between stability and opportunity, the latter is taking a decisive lead. The good news is that stability may ultimately be the end result anyway.

The modern game developer should expect a constant diet of change and opportunity, as painful as that can be. But these transformations that rack the game industry are also what make it so resistant to collapse; where one business fails, many grow to take its place. And for the young student eager to break into the industry, or the AAA veteran, this is good news.

Stay in School

"Just like games themselves, academic programs are popping up across the globe," Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association Gordon Bellamy told Polygon.

Where once we had only vocational programs like the Portal-producing DigiPen in Washington or the Florida-based Full Sail, we now have a variety of elite university programs like NYU's Game Center or USC's Interactive Media Division offering eager students academic approval of their one-time hobby. And while those examples are all in the U.S., schools around the world are also joining in.

For the self-learners, a community of bloggers focusing on thinking critically about games has taken root. These blogs are written by professors, designers, journalists, and hundreds if not thousands of enthusiastic hobbyists. An abundance of intelligent criticism of games is available to anyone with an internet connection. Gamers are growing up, and being educated, within a historical context that didn't exist 10 or even five years ago. They are now able to learn more about games than just what the editors of a few magazines feel like covering.

The result is a growing knowledge base of all sorts of games. While previous generations of game developers may have grown up wanting to work on Madden, today's game developers have another set of role models: indie developers.

Indie Again

Nearly 20 years after two guys named John founded id Software in a lake house in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1991, Markus "Notch" Persson turned down what many would consider a dream job at Valve Software in order to start Mojang and continue development of his soon-to-be mega-hit Minecraft. In the late '90s and early '00s, the promise of fame and fortune offered by success stories like id Software mostly evaporated while gaming publishers, and their AAA franchises, grew increasingly massive (id itself was bought by ZeniMax Media only three years ago). Now, thanks to digital distribution, new platforms, and easy-to-use middleware like Unity, it's possible to make commercially viable games in your garage again.

While navigating the rocky shores of distribution options may be intimidating, would-be indies have far more data available to them than ever before. Gaming websites, blogs, social networks, forums, and digital acquaintances combine to provide a density of support that made such navigation all but impossible just five years ago. Want to know why Xbox Live Arcade may not be the best choice for a young studio? Let Hello Games and Team Meat tell you, via conference coverage from video game websites. Want to read up on PlayStation Network's "Pub Fund," in which Sony invests in indie game development and allows indie studios to self-publish? Sure, there's plenty on that.

Shared knowledge allows for a more distributed video game industry, where development can coalesce around new aggregators, like schools, or shared workspaces, or affordable regions in which to develop a game (like Philadelphia, as noted in the sidebar below). It also simply makes for smarter developers, which in turn makes for a more stable industry.

The Sudden Viability of Cheap Games

There's a reason we're all suddenly (too?) familiar with the M word - monetization. Back when most video game developers were indie developers by default, we had experimental models like "shareware," which was successful enough to spread Doom across high schools like a virus. As AAA franchises exploded, and "premium" console experiences became the norm, pricing experimentation died. PC games still enjoyed the "expansion pack" but until the release of the Xbox 360 in 2005, $50 retail games were the standard.

With a generation of internet-connected consoles, a strong resurgence in PC gaming (thanks in large part to Steam), and entirely new platforms like touch-based mobile gaming, web-based social networks, and free-to-play games, the video game industry's focus on a AAA price point has been challenged like never before.

It's a brave, and lucrative, new world for video games, with an emphasis on the "world" part. For much of its history, video game development has been concentrated in Japan and the United States; however, Montreal is now a major capital of AAA game development thanks to some well-timed tax incentives. Blockbusters can come from companies as far away as Espoo, Finland (Angry Birds), or McKinney, Texas (Words With Friends).

As of May, Angry Birds has been downloaded over one billion times, with 648 million of those happening in 2011 alone. To put that into perspective, if Wikipedia's franchise numbers are to be believed, there are more downloads of Angry Birds in the world than there are physical Mario games. Weird, right? And that's from an independent company, founded by three university students in 2003, years before Apple's iOS App Store changed the rules for mobile game development.

When Microsoft closed the Dallas-based Age of Empires developer Ensemble Studios in early 2009, four new studios were formed. Though one didn't survive, the other three have shipped games across the monetization spectrum: Bonfire Studios released WeFarm for iOS and was purchased by Zynga in October 2010, then renamed Zynga Dallas; Newtoy shipped the immensely popular Words With Friends for iOS and was subsequently purchased by Zynga later that year and renamed Zynga With Friends; and the exceptionally prolific Robot Entertainment began work on Microsoft's free-to-play Age of Empires Online, and shipped the XBLA and PC game Orcs Must Dieand the iOS tactics game Hero Academy.

All of these studios have one thing in common: their games are less than $15. Most are free.

All of that output was born from the collapse of a single AAA developer and there are plenty of other examples (including more with "Zynga" in them). There are myriad new opportunities out there for the adventurous student or the veteran developer.

The Changing AAA Landscape

But what if you don't want to make the world's best free-to-play mobile game that totally leverages social? What if you've sharpened your teeth in the AAA space? The good news is, there's now a spectrum of project sizes that have been proven viable in the market. While the buy-in for massive AAA projects expands beyond the already enormous studio sizes to include multiple enormous studios; Ubisoft, in particular, has spread its AAA game development across its global studios to great effect with the Assassin's Creed series, and others — the opportunity for other products along the spectrum from free-to-play to AAA is growing.

You don't have to look far to find former AAA developers who've struck out on their own, forgoing the not-all-that-secure security of working for a major publisher to start their own studios. Last year's award-winning Bastion was made by former EA Los Angeles developers; Kickstarter project République is being built by Seattle devs, including some Halo 4 vets; none other than gaming luminary Peter Molyneux left Microsoft in March to start 22Cans, which he hopes can be more nimble than large developers. The list goes on and on.

Both inside and outside of AAA development, studios have an appetite for new skills that are applicable in this new landscape. Take, for example, foreign languages. While most global publishers have settled on English to organize their teams, being fluent in other languages could land you a spot at a big publisher in Europe or Asia. Or, if you're an indie, being fluent in other languages can help you with outsourcing components of your game. Have a background in statistics and analytics? Boy, has the video game industry got a job for you! The biggest publishers and the smallest mobile developers all paid attention when Zynga veep Ken Rudin said, "We're an analytics company masquerading as a games company."

If you're from the PR or marketing side and you're good with a Twitter account, direct-to-customer relationships are increasingly important as you vie for the attention of the increasingly nomadic gamer and the hard-to-please press.

With great change comes great opportunity. I can't tell you exactly where the industry is headed and if you know, you've probably already put all of your money eggs into that (potentially holographic?) basket. For everyone else, as painful and frightening as it may be to accept, realize that the industry is headed in whichever direction you take it. There is no roadmap and it's a big open world, full of possibility. The change is yours to make.

The State of Games: The State of AAA

We hear a lot of talk. At gaming events, at press conferences. At private functions or over dinner with well-connected friends in the industry. People talk, even when they shouldn't. And we listen, even when we can't quote them.

Here's what they're saying:

The state of AAA is chaos, bordering on impending doom.

AAA development is a high-risk, narrow margins game with only a very few winners, and too many players.

It's chaos.

It's falling apart.

No one is profitable.

The last is what we hear over and over. That no one is making money in AAA games. Costs are too high and the number of units that have to be sold in order to break even is in the mid-millions. Nobody is hitting those marks with any predictability, which means nobody is winning, or so they say.

Now let's look at the truth behind the rumor.

By the Numbers

Industry sales data posted last month by Variety points to modest gains in the last fiscal year by all three of the major third-party publishers, Activision, EA and Ubisoft. Although in each case the gains were posted largely in the fourth quarter, bolstered by online sales and non-AAA revenue.

Ubisoft is the winner of the door prize, posting $48 million in profits versus a $67 million loss the previous year. Virtually all of that growth, however, came from its virtual game sales, which rose 111%, and games for the Wii, which comprise a third of their total revenue.

Also worth noting is that $48 million is the profit off of total revenues of $1.4 billion. That's a 3% profit margin, for those keeping score at home. Which is not great.

EA did slightly better for the year, posting total fiscal year profits of $76 million, versus a $276 million loss last year. But before we get all happy weepy over the turnaround, let's consider that $56 million of that profit came in the fourth quarter, and that EA's money-maker for that period was Mass Effect 3. That game's budget has been estimated at around $40 million, and look at those numbers closely. EA spent $40 million to make $56 million, and they had to ship more than 3 million copies to make a profit at all. That, my friends, is why people in the know are starting to panic. EA's $76 million in profits came in over $977 million in revenues, which is close enough to a round billion that it'd be exciting if it represented more than a 7% profit margin.

Now let's take a look at the 800 pound gorilla in the room: Activision. Activision posted a profit of $384 million in the first quarter of this fiscal year, down from $503 million last year. But hey, $384 million is still over $300 million more than anyone else, so what's to worry about? Plenty.

For one thing, that profit is driven largely by World of Warcraft, which posted flat subscriptions last year for the first time since it launched 8 years ago. Call of Duty continues to dominate AAA multiplayer gaming, but dominating that market will not yieldWoWnumbers any time soon unless Activision finds a way to make subscriptions palatable to console gamers. Even then, it'll be a stretch. Even WoW fans are beginning to question the wisdom of paying a monthly subscription. Which means Acti has another year, maybe three of guaranteed crazy-insane profitability before it needs Plan B to start paying off.

Also worth worrying about, Activision's $384 million in profit comes off of $1.2 billion in total revenues. Not only is that revenue number down 19% from last year, but it represents a $200 million shortfall against Ubisoft's yearly revenues, putting Activision into second place, revenue-wise. Its massive 30% profit margin has to be some consolation, however.

So, those are the numbers, and by themselves they tell a pretty compelling story, but why is the industry in such peril? Why is only one of the major AAA studios earning a double-digit profit margin, and why are everyone's profits coming off lucky gambles or marginal models like virtual purchases and Wii games? Why aren't AAA games making money?

The expense of developing a AAA game is old news. With teams often starting at 100 people and budgets soaring to multiple hundreds of millions of dollars, developing a AAA game is rapidly becoming one of the most expensive enterprises humans can undertake, outside of building battleships, launching space vehicles or making movies.

The Woes

1. Outsourcing

The once controversial (and now traditional) primary means of offsetting this expense, i.e. outsourcing low-to-mid-level coding and graphic development, continues, but the pace of the savings have failed to keep up with the cost of remaining competitive.

For one thing, outsourcing is difficult to scale. Each externally-developed component requires mid-level management, straining the talent pool precisely where it is typically most vulnerable: the creative leadership. Video games are not automobiles. You can outsource production of level design or texture development, but in an artistic enterprise, that outsourcing comes at a cost to innovation and quality control. It requires much more finesse and attention to detail to successfully manage multiple, cross continental game design teams than to import ready-made bucket seats. And the publishers who are most successful at this tend to be those who already have an edge in the market, making it that much more of a losing proposition for studios "on the rise" to catch a break in AAA.

2. Extended console cycle

AAA game development requires a broad base of potential players. No one is going to sink millions of dollars into designing games for a platform for which no one is willing to buy games. Unless that developer is Sony and that platform is Vita, but I digress.

Historically, there have been two or three concurrent AAA platforms. In the United States, as of now (i.e. "current gen") that platform is the Xbox 360, and to a lesser extent the PlayStation 3. These are two platforms inching into their 8th and 7th years, respectively. By the time the next generation of consoles hits the market (experts agree this will happen either late in 2013 or in early 2014 for the new Microsoft console) the current gen will be a decade old. That's more than twice the usual lifespan for a home gaming console.

On the one hand, the longevity of the current generation is a sign of the popularity of the games for the generation. In theory, it makes developing AAA games for these consoles relatively low-risk and somewhat less expensive. In practice, however, these gains are marginal, and are offset by the reduction in "wow" factor of games that look so much similar to games released almost a decade ago.

Developing AAA games for a decade-old console is, by definition, devoid of innovation, and this innovation deficit is opening the door for the PC platform (which continually innovates) to steal market share from AAA consoles and siphon off the attention of the hardest of the core gamers. New technology like Intel's Ivy Bridge processors are providing a compelling excuse for hardcore influencers to spend their gaming dollars on PC platforms and games, instead of on far less graphically impressive console titles.

Not only does the widening technological gap between consoles and PCs siphon profit and attention from AAA games developed for the consoles, but it puts the major publishers into a double disadvantage considering the staggering losses they generally attribute to developing strictly for the PC. Multiple sources speaking anonymously have pegged the PC game piracy rate at close to 90%, meaning only 10% of the people playing AAA games in the PC platform have actually paid for it. A new generation of console tech would cut that source of attrition off at the knees.

3. Graphic reach

One of the biggest fears about the upcoming console generation is that in spite of nearly 10 years development over the last gen, the graphical improvements just won't be all that shiny.

Ever impressive graphics are to most AAA games what ever larger explosions are to Michael Bay films.

As the goal of producing photo-real graphics approaches, there is very little room left for practical innovation. It seems very unlikely that the next gen will represent as significant a graphical leap as the last gen, and it's entirely possible the advances will be so slight as to be unnoticeable to most consumers. What this means on the ground is that your average gamer (i.e. the "broad middle") will be unlikely to see the next gen as a significant enough advancement to warrant investment. Early adopters will be few, and some consumers may skip the generation entirely. Which means some publishers and developers may skip it entirely as well.

The Core Problem

Yet none of this really gets at the heart of what exactly is ailing AAA development. These are symptoms, and serious ones, but not the disease.

The disease is how games are developed in the first place, and, in some part, how consumers judge them.

The reason so many studios are willing to take a gamble on multi-million-dollar AAA development cycles, even knowing the odds of commercial success are slim, is that there really aren't that many other options. You can make a living making indie games, or making social and mobile games, but between that tier and AAA is a wide swath of budget and team sizes at which it is practically impossible to survive.

To explain why, let's compare games to film once again. In the film industry, the craft of filmmaking is relatively well-established, and costs a certain amount in terms of crew and equipment. Filmmakers can save money by cutting scenes and getting creative with locations, but by-and-large, the cost of making of a movie is relatively fixed. Yet the visual quality of the film being made does not change by a wide margin from film to film. Woody Harrelson looks like Woody Harrelson, whether he's in The Messenger or The Hunger Games.

In film, the difference between AAA and everything else is largely in the abundance or lack of computer graphics, explosions and other graphical effects that cost a great deal of money to create. So-called "B" movies may have fewer well-known stars, but are typically just as well produced and look similar to AAA films, minus the dinosaurs and rocket ships. In games, it's all computer graphics. The general consumer metric of quality is the pinnacle of graphical technology, which in games represents 100% of what is seen on the screen, as opposed to film, in which that percentage is much, much smaller.

The rising competition to mainstream, AAA games from the mobile and social sectors is creating a market for "B" level games entirely outside of the scope of traditional development. EA and Ubisoft are investing heavily in this sector for the express purpose of getting a foot in the door of what they believe will be the next big audience, but for core gamers un-interested in this market, the choices are slim. In video game development, there is nowhere to save money without sacrificing quality. "B" games look, to the consumer, like bad games. There is no market for "straight to DVD" or "second run theater" titles. There is no "made for TV." In games, If it isn't AAA, it's bargain bin. There is no middle ground.

This is why Ubisoft, which is concentrating heavily on the low-end market with Wii games and games designed for children and families, is pulling in revenues higher than Activision, which is focused almost exclusively on AAA development. This is why the iPhone, for which games are sold for under $10 and cost merely hundreds of thousands to develop, is currently the most popular gaming platform. This is why the MMO industry, which a half-decade ago employed close to a million game developers, is now shifting to a "free-to-play" model, where consumers pay only for premium extras, at a few dollars a piece.

This is also why the AAA developers are also looking at premium or "freemium" models, in which consumers may still pay for a game off the shelf, but will also continue to pay the more they play. If you think Call of Duty Elite and EA's online pass programs are a flash in the pan, think again. The next generation of consoles (and the one after that) will rely heavily on online distribution, and once that happens, the control of the market will shift from retailers to console makers, and then directly to publishers.

Having learned (through experiments with DLC and MMO subscriptions) that the broad middle will pay continuously to prolong an enjoyable experience, publishers are shifting to extend the process of paying for games into well after their release. The initial cost of a AAA will most likely not decrease, but it will also not go up. How you pay for the increased cost of the game’s production will depend on how you want to play it.

If you are a fan of single-player experiences and deep narratives, expect to get a short, open-ended experience for your initial $60 investment, and then pay for successive installments down the road. If you are a multiplayer fan, expect to get a very basic, no-frills multiplayer shell for your $60, and then pay a subscription for map support, and additional hard money for skins and other extras.

This is not supposition; this is happening. Right now. I predict that this will ultimately become a failed experiment and that the industry will have to take a hard step back to limited experiences with limited price tags (for developers and consumers), but the next 3 to 5 years of AAA development will look a lot like the airline industry; where you pay a little for a seat, then a little bit more for the peanuts.

In an industry where consumers have traditionally paid the same price for a product no matter how much that product cost to create, the publishers have traditionally eaten the margin. Those days are over. The bottom line of the state of AAA is that the cost to produce AAA content is soon to be coming out of your pocket. Get ready.

The State of Games: The State of Indies

By now, anyone reading this has come in contact with Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja or Minecraft - games that have inspired sequels, toys, movie tie-ins, conferences and even Halloween costumes. The indie game renaissance has finally gone mainstream.

And yet, the average person might not know what an indie game is - a game developed without the financial support of a publisher - or why the indie community is important - because it is the first legitimate alternative to the publishing system since the majority of video game designers left their garages for office spaces in the late 1980s.

Times they are a changin'. Expect public awareness of the indie moniker to improve this year, as indie developers and fans begin to attract more publicity with their charity work, dramatic life stories and increasingly popular games.

Indie Developers

The life of an indie developer can be dramatic, as they often scrape by on little to no income. This has led to a rush of mainstream human interest coverage. Earlier this year, the Atlantic ran a profile of indie superstar Jon Blow, and last year The New York Times Magazine told the story of brothers Tarn and Zach Adams, the lonely developers of Dwarf Fortress, a game played and funded by only a few thousand hyper-loyal fans.

At this year's Sundance Film Festival, Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary tracking the lives of three indie game makers, won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award. Premium cable company HBO and superstar film producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network) saw enough material in the film's portrayal of the indie game scene that they optioned Indie Game: The Movie for a fictional television series. In June, following a short theatrical run, the film was released.

Indie Games on the Frontline of Games as Art

At large, the critical elite are beginning to shift away from the once widely held negative view of games, now supporting games as a legitimate medium, one that can be used for more than entertainment. Indie games, which generally lack the bombast and blood lust of AAA games, are playing an important part in winning hearts and minds.

Tisch School of the Arts at New York University is the latest college to operate both undergraduate and graduate programs in the study of video games, joining institutions like the University of Southern California, Carnegie Mellon and MIT. The NYU Game Center is run by Frank Lantz, who is an indie game designer on the side. His company Area/Code was absorbed in 2011 by Zynga, itself an indie game developer turned publisher. Under Lantz's supervision, the program has spawned a number of talented indie designers, along with programs like annual indie game showcases. In the fall, the program hosts designers speaking to the future of the industry. In the spring, it hosts a Street Fighter tournament.

The ivory tower highlights one of the key differences — real or perceived — between the independent and AAA gaming communities. Where the latter gauges success from profit and Metacritic scores, a division of the indie game community prides itself on the romantic artistic ideal. They create games because they have stories to tell, and believe games are the medium with which they must be told. Obviously this philosophy reaches beyond the indie game scene, but these developers are known for putting that priority above, say, financial comfort.

These artists cover topics commercial publishers will not, like the tough memories from being a child, in Aether by Edmund McMillen, or the emotional toll of undergoing hormone therapy, in Dys4ia by Anna Anthropy. The medium provides first-hand experience, allowing the player to connect with a story personally. Games allow us to walk a mile in the shoes of another, and thanks to indie games, those shoes no longer belong solely to white beefy men.

Small Games, Big Causes

The indie game community at large has begun to distinguish itself as the generous and collaborative division of the broader gaming community. The Humble Indie Bundles allow consumers to purchase collections of popular indie games at the price they deem fit, choosing to split the money amongst developers, along with Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity. A number of imitators have appeared, each directing some portion of profits to similar causes.

Fans of indie games have also played a role in this communal undertaking of goodwill. Kickstarter and Indiegogo, websites that allow people to pay money to game creators (or anyone, really) in exchange for a promised complete product and other optional incentives, have helped to fund a number of projects that otherwise would have never made it off the ground. Developers can now go to the consumers directly for advance payment, rather than borrowing from a publisher or a bank.

Is There a Difference Between Indie Games and Independent Games?

Artistic integrity and goodwill pervades a significant portion of the community, but that doesn't make the indie development scene immune to money woes. Most indie developers are focused on becoming successful businesses.

Spelltower, developed by digital artist Zach Gage, has sold over 80k units. In an interview with New York Times Magazine, Gage confessed to not liking word games, and designing Spelltower as a sort of antithesis to what he didn't like about the genre.

Sword & Sworcery, developed by Superbrothers and Capybara Games, is the opposite of Spelltower. It is an ode to the AAA games of the late 80s and early 90s. It sold over 350k units on iOS devices, and has since expanded to PC and Mac.

Minecraft is what you might call a AAA indie game. Developed by Mojang, originally the trio of Markus Persson, Jakob Porsér and Carl Manneh, Minecraft has sold over 9.2 million units on mobile, console and PC platforms combined. It operates a now annual conference, the first held last year in Las Vegas, and the second to be held this year at an unannounced venue in Europe. A cottage industry has formed around Minecraft, selling everything from t-shirts to plush toys.

With this level of success, the line begins to blur between indie developer and something less defined. It's an interesting question: Are ultra successful indie games, with large teams and flush bank accounts, still indie?

An example of an independent developer generally not perceived to be part of the community is Rovio, which has seen its Angry Birds franchise nested atop the iTunes App Store since it landed in December of 2009. Like Minecraft, Angry Birds has spawned an entire subculture of fans. Unlike Minecraft, it is developed by dozens of people, and its fans are non-traditional gamers: older women, commuters, the star of Mad Men.

One could argue Angry Birds isn't indie simply because it doesn’t have a legion of gamer fans willing to define it as such.

A New Label

We've begun to see the fissures in the "indie game" space. We have a groups of a handful of men and women pounding code in dark apartments or rental office space. That's one side of the spectrum. On the other are flush juggernauts like Rovio.

In the next few years, I believe the key differentiating factor will be authenticity. Is this an authentic indie game experience, an authentic portrayal of the artist's vision? Was their development process authentically indie? Were they Davids to publishers' Goliath?

Developers connected to big companies or profit-driven projects will be pushed outwards. From the authentication of indie games and the creative collapse of AAA games will rise a middle ground. Creative and ambitious, but financially responsible. Neither flighty artist nor corporate pawn.

Rovio is an example of this in-between studio. Not a giant, but not a small fry. A company that produces what it wants and has enough in the bank to do so without worrying about paying rent. Their games, built by more people, may not have as pure of a vision, but they still take risks. Angry Birds Space is a weird, creative take on a property that could have turned out the exact same for the next half-decade. 

The state of the indie game industry is so strong that it’s birthing a whole new development culture. A rival for both itself and the publishers. We're witnessing the game developer middle class crawl from the primordial ooze to new office space, not owned by a publisher but by themselves.

What is the association between the AAA and Indie parts with the State of Development portion at the top of the article?

The general State of Development section gives an overview of the subjects in both of the subsequent sections. It describes the growth if indies and the role that they play along with describing the role that the AAA titles have in the industry. It contrasts the rebirth of indie games with the long established AAA industry and sets the stage for the next two parts.

How does Polygon’s coverage of AAA titles and Indie titles differ?

The coverage of AAA titles talks about the problems that AAA titles have while being developed and how companies are taking big risks with big money. It is shown as an industry plagued with problems that have to be fixed. On the other hand, Polygon covers Indie games as tiny gems that are able to produce entertainment. It is portrayed as a small company trying to make it big.

In the State of AAAs, how does the part that describes people’s preconceived opinions of AAA titles serve as an effective way to illustrate what the real problem is?

The short, terse statements stating people's ideas of what is happening in AAA game development helps people not only learn about what most people think about when it comes to AAA titles but also allows Polygon to compare the reality with what people think. In addition, the bluntness and the length of the statement cause people to draw their own attention to the problem and has them think about their own opinions.