Is the Mid-Tier Game making a major comeback?

So with The Order 1886 Right around the corner and garnering the "where there's smoke, there's fire" reputation my question to all of you is the Mid-Tier game making a come back?

This Generation hasn't been the most welcoming to AAA games so far but it has been kind to a lot of others

While these games are no top tier games ( Yes AAA game here and in the industry mean different things) they are very SOLID games

In the past year and a half we've gotten really solid games such as

Alien Isolation
Shadow of Mordor
Sunset Overdrive
Dying Light
Evolve
Life Is Strange
Lords of the Fallen
Wolfenstein TNO
The Evil Within

And a few others. While these games are not the best in their class they are really really good and surprising!

So what say you guys? Are these kinda middle tier games that almost went the way of the dinosaur last gen coming back?

If there are more games like Alien, Mordor, Dying Light, Sunset Overdrive, Wolfenstein and The Evil Within coming... Then yeah, I'm all for it.

AAA game are more and more about the hype and earning back the millions, billions of dollars spent on making and marketing the game. Usually coming with some really cheap tactics to do so, like releasing the game broken and patching later (BF4, Unity, ... or releasing boat loads of DLC and timesavers (BF4, Unity, ...)

But the mid tier is not free from that either. Case in point: Evolve.

@Animal-Mother: I wouldn't count Life Is Strange as mid-tier, but other than that I want to play it and the rest of the games on the list. Strange how most AAA games aren't pulling me nearly as much as those (with some mild exceptions like MGS5, FF15 and UC4).

I think they should rethink their pricing strategy though. Despite still costing millions it's hard for the average consumer to trust a new mid-tier IP when it costs just as much as the "traditional" and better known AAA franchises. $40-$50 would be the sweetspot IMO.

I'm all for it. The more options of games to play the better,

YOU GOT BANNED

Don't most of those games have AAA budgets, though?

I ROSE FROM THE GRAVE PLEASE REPLY TO THE TOPIC

I agree with this.

I don't think there's a clear definition of what defines AAA budgets.

I'm willing to bet all those cost AAA monies to make.

Yeah, I don't see how something like Shadow of Mordor can be considered mid tier... open world titles are ambitious and expensive.

i hope so.. some of my favorite games from last gen were the middle budget games.. Ninja Theory seems to be going the right way with Hellblade

Is Animal Mother making a comeback?

I don't consider most of those titles Mid-Tier since those had high production values and a lot of marketing. So, most of those are AAA. That said, yes I have noticed that most non-AAA games (not including lowest extreme aka indies) have been offering more than AAA games for some time now and people have started to realize that. I think most of the gems in game industry come from these games that lie somewhere between two extremes (indie and AAA).

Sony was king of AA exclusives last gen. Sucks that they are pulling away from that this gen. The Order is definitely AAA considering production values and marketing.

In recent years AAA has come to mean mediocre game and massive marketing budget. So the more game and less marketing we get the better it is for everyone.

AAA budget games will ultimately do more harm to the games industry than good.

I don't think any of those are mid-tier games because they were hardly budgeted and marketed like a mid tier game. They are still triple A titles.

Mid-tier is more like the indie kickstarter projects like Divinity Original Sin or what Nintendo is doing with Captain Toad and Kirby, budget titles at 40 bucks. That was what the middle tier was during the PS2 era.

I think the difference is Shadow of Mordor lacked the Carny Marketting that oversells what the game was capable of.

When I say mid tier, I mean that they don't garner the fervor that games like the order or a bunch of these "AAA" titles get ala gears or uncharted.

I mean that's more like just being any other multiplat that isn't a sequel, more hype oriented than the game being a middle tier game.

I will agree and say a lot of those games are hilariously more deserving of love than their AAA counterparts like Halo, Gears ,or Uncharted. The New Order was one of the better FPS games in a good while, Alien Isolation is one poor 2nd half being dropped from the game from being one of the best horror games I've ever played, The Evil Within in all its roughness is a nice throw back to "figure it out" gameplay that most triple A games refuse to be, because they cater to pansies, and Shadow of Mordor was....honestly it was aight.

Life is Strange is probably a better argument as a mid-tier game, I sort of like the first episode, but what's weird is that the whole time bending thing was a small element in Remember Me that actually had some interesting sequences built around it. Life is Strange is that entire mechanic, but with nothing built around it. You basically rewind time to change your dialogue choice, that's lame.

A large studio with skilled developers, published by a publisher, has a marketing team, etc. (And I mean that all of these are requirements as a whole, not individually)

It's quite easy to define.

Just inject wolfenstein into me

Eh, THQ and Atari weren't really triple A publishers, a lot of the projects they were funding were totally middle tier games.

GB really thinks THQ was

I mean late in their run they had to be, they sort of needed bigger projects to get them big pay days. Plus Saints Row The Third

What defines a large studio? Subjective

What determines whether or not a developer is skilled? Also subjective AND implies that indie developers are not skilled

All games are published by someone, therefore they all need a publisher.

What size marketing team? Small one person team who markets on social media is not a marketing team? What is the requirement?

Clearly not so easy to define, especially since we're talking about the different between AAA and mid-tier games.

I think you define it by the total budget of the game, but I'm not sure how many millions you have to spend to qualify anymore.

If you say so.

Well, I think THQ invested in the Darksiders series enough to call it their AAA "franchise". They did market that game decently.

I think one of the main ways to tell when something is "supposed" to be an AAA game is when it has extensive marketing. But like, idk if we're talking about AAA scores or AAA budgets.

i hope so because those are the games i most play TBH, a lot of my favorite games where mid tier games.

I tend to find Mid tier games to be a more solid gaming experience, Top tier titles tend to be Milked to hell and back and are usually the same old with a new lick of paint like call of duty for example.

Take Alien isolation, i found it to be a totally fresh gaming experience that had really Solid gameplay mechanics, solid graphics and i Found it genuinely Scary and it was a big old game, lots of bang for your buck.

It's nice to see an interesting topic on here for once instead of the Fanboy vs Fanboy crap, Nice one Animal mother