Straley stands by criticism, blames industry leaders
3 Sep 18 11:48 PM · 5d ago · 1 post · 10 comments · 1 source · development 3 of 5
In follow-up posts, Straley did not retract his underlying point, instead expanding on it to argue that industry leadership, not individual dev teams, is responsible for the perceived lack of 'clear direction and conviction' in triple-A games.
“I want to apologize to the Laufey team for dragging you all into this uninvited & unnecessary negative attention. I was trying to illustrate an industry concern & my mistake of naming your game is being used out of context & for clickbait. You don't need this. I'm sorry.”
Bruce Straley, Game director · reddit ↗Bruce Straley Game director, The Last of Us / Uncharted; founder of Wildflower InteractiveSony Santa Monica Developer of God of War Laufey
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What people said 10 voices · verbatim
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Yeah nothing against indies (Cairn is my favorite game of the year so far) but I feel like people have turned too snobby with how much people talk down to AAA games while hyping up indies. Like you said, everything is rogue like, metroidvania, deck builder, cozy and procedurally generated worlds. And of course, friend slop type games. Like it…
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To be fair, those were direct sequels. For 2025 Blue Prince and Expedition 33 were pretty innovative in their respective genres. (E33's closest analogue for the battle system is probably Mario RPG / Paper Mario games, which are... a little different tonally). Edit: I agree with the Last of Us' game director though on his original criticism. I…
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I never understand this notion that AAA games don't innovate ever and only indies do. Every indie I see pop off is some roguelike, metroidvania, retro platformer or a combo of those things. Like I played both silksong and hades 2 last year and not once did I think "wow I'm seeing something I've never seen before" with them or their predecessors…
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Today I was thinking sony lost the plot. Their main job is to draw people to the platform. They are busy trying to be take 2 etc as if they don't make money off every GaaS game already (if they don't then they should be working on that rather than wasting money trying to build one). They shifted from the games that bring people to the platform and…
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Yeah it’s been a weird sentiment. I love a lot of indie games, but there are many that are equally beholden to convention and well worn design tropes as AAA games. That’s not a bad thing even. Videogames at this point are a relatively mature medium. It’s natural that there’s become a lot of common design language. It’s the execution that matters.
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Like what? Again I always see people say this but no one can say what they're actually doing. I don't consider sticking roguelikes into every genre, including card games now, to be all that innovative. I mean I guess it's technically new but at this point I just roll my eyes every time I see "_ but roguelike!" now.
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you just referred to a couple of the biggest blockbusters in all of indie. Indie games are still the incubator for new ideas, I see new takes and new ideas and fresh things from indie way way way way way more than I see it from AAA. I can't remember the last AAA game that felt like it was doing something fresh
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Liking indie games has gone from 'hey let's support small devs making good games instead of corporations' to elitism. Now if you say you're excited for a new AAA game a thousand people become and angry and cry about how they're better for being more excited about Floor-Scrubber Simulator than GTA 6.
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I need to hear someone actually say the title of the new god of war game. I have no idea how to pronounce Laufey.
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I'm shocked that you played a couple of sequels and weren't blown away by the originality 🙃
All 5 developments of Last of Us director Bruce Straley apologizes to God of War… →
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