Hope it comes out right.
I know being an indie dev means less $ and developers but does that mean you shouldn't make what you want even though it requires content or is not the ideal beginner game. On Jb-Adams blog, i see "you are not making indie games". Why should games be classified as indie or professional? What is so wrong in making a game that seems AAA even though you are indie? And why does "AAA games have million dollar budgets and many developers" come up everytime as an excuse for a dev to not make an ambitious game?
The kind of games i see on this forum and on the net, wherever indie/beginner is involved include:
Spell casting rpg, mmo top down rpg, puzzle, turn based games, space shooter/space <something>, platformer, side scroller, top down rpg, zelda like game usually with funny/cartoony graphics.
Yes, they are fun to play but there are similar. None creates a jaw dropping effect or suspense. Just normal similar games.
I don't have problems with getting experience by making old games like Pong but it's a different case when a beginner/indie decides to make an ambitious game and the advice includes "i have (> 10 years of programming and have worked in EA, Ubisoft etc.", "games like that have million dollar budgets and many developers so scale it down or something".

And why does "AAA games have million dollar budgets and many developers" come up everytime as an excuse for a dev to not make an ambitious game?

Because that's not excuse, that's the reason. There's only certain quality that smal developing teams can make with low funding, hence they usually abandon most graphical "shinies" and rather focus on mechanics and content. You can't possibly expect that the 10-man team makes a next Call of Duty or Titanfall.

None creates a jaw dropping effect or suspense. Just normal similar games.

What would you expect? Most of the people here are either one-man teams (me included) or developers in small teams. In both cases, it's extremely hard to make anything "jaw dropping" when you solo have to do absolutely everything, so people rather stick to the "normal similar games" as they're easier to actually get done. I, for example, am making 2D game with ball which automatically goes up-down and you control its horizontal movements, and goal is to get to the exit of the level. With my level of knowledge, I can't hope make anything larger at the moment.

"games like that have million dollar budgets and many developers so scale it down or something"

That's perfectly valid advice. If you're doing any project by yourself, set its size to something you can actually manage and finish. If you want to make ambitious games, join some of the big houses and teams they have for those kind of games.

And why does "AAA games have million dollar budgets and many developers" come up everytime as an excuse for a dev to not make an ambitious game?

Because that's not excuse, that's the reason. There's only certain quality that smal developing teams can make with low funding, hence they usually abandon most graphical "shinies" and rather focus on mechanics and content. You can't possibly expect that the 10-man team makes a next Call of Duty or Titanfall.

None creates a jaw dropping effect or suspense. Just normal similar games.

What would you expect? Most of the people here are either one-man teams (me included) or developers in small teams. In both cases, it's extremely hard to make anything "jaw dropping" when you solo have to do absolutely everything, so people rather stick to the "normal similar games" as they're easier to actually get done. I, for example, am making 2D game with ball which automatically goes up-down and you control its horizontal movements, and goal is to get to the exit of the level. With my level of knowledge, I can't hope make anything larger at the moment.

"games like that have million dollar budgets and many developers so scale it down or something"

That's perfectly valid advice. If you're doing any project by yourself, set its size to something you can actually manage and finish. If you want to make ambitious games, join some of the big houses and teams they have for those kind of games.

There you go adding the same advice.
Budget for? (game engine, mocap tools, marketing etc.)

As an example with quotes and numbers:

Gran Turismo 6 spends roughly 6 months on developing 1 car. Source: http://www.gran-turismo.com/us/products/gt6/cars/

Gran Turismo 6 has roughly 1200 cars. Source: http://www.gran-turismo.com/us/products/gt6/

These people are among the very very best in the whole world when it comes to creating this kind of game -- they've been doing it for decades.

How long do you think it would take if you had to create 1200 models of the fidelity and quality as are in Gran Turismo's models?

The answer is basically: too long.

That's why they hire more than 1 person to do all the modelling. Actually, they hire a huge team, just for creating those models.

Hiring a team of people costs a lot of money, and the best people usually cost more than beginners.

So, if you had absolutely everything else, and just needed the car models, you would either have to spend hundreds of years making models yourself, or spend a lot of money in order to get other people to make them for you.

Now, part of the problem is... you do not have absolutely everything else. The same logic applies to everything else in the game: sounds, particles, tracks, music, the rendering system, text (+ localized versions) … the list goes on, and on, and on.

There are limits to how fast someone can produce something good.

For example, I bet you understand that even if you were a super-pro car modeller person, you wouldn't be able to create 1000 unique car models in 1 day. There's just not enough hours in a day for that to make sense.

The issue is that it's equally unlikely to create 1000 unique car models to the detail level mentioned above in 1 year.

As I've mentioned before, if people were able to do that sort of thing, they would have been hired by the huge companies already, and the games would not take 4 - 5 (or more) years with several hundred people working on them.

Budget for? (game engine, mocap tools, marketing etc.)

Tools. Marketing. Licences. Living.

Until you manage to make and sell the ambitious game, you have to survive during that time. As other people said, it would take 100+ years for a single man to produce a game of AAA quality. Do you have the required money to survive until that, assuming you work only on it and don't die of old age?

Budget for? (game engine, mocap tools, marketing etc.)

Tools. Marketing. Licences. Living.
Until you manage to make and sell the ambitious game, you have to survive during that time. As other people said, it would take 100+ years for a single man to produce a game of AAA quality. Do you have the required money to survive until that, assuming you work only on it and don't die of old age?

So it's the money?

Money, time, ability/skill, motivation, etc.

I thought that there is an age limit on the forums.

He is not able to grasp simple concepts like how much time a work takes. He has been programming for 4 months, yet, he basically thinks he can program 100 times faster as an average professional programmer/modeller/writer etc.

A trait of a teenager.

I'm waiting for his first "idea for compressing any file to 2 bytes and decompress it with no data loss" thread.

I'm not mature enough either because these threads fuck me up and I can't resist shouting, but the Longe has been flooded with his bullshit lately.

Close this thread too, please.