I think game studios take too much pride in being "bigger than movies" now. There's been this grandiose creep in game studios where the most important thing is that everything gets done as quickly as possible and that everything looks silky smooth. Management is not good enough to iron out the bugs, which are unavoidable with the scope of the teams they're using, within time.
AAA is not a seal of quality. It's a seal of work ethics. Even if you work 10 years on a game with a small team and produce a superior product, both in quality and in size, it won't be received as an AAA game.
I like to think this is not the case with movies though. The history of movies is vastly different from games of course, but nowadays big budget films will range from anything with artistic inquiry to explosion-filled "action blockbusters". Big budget games aren't sophisticated yet. Movies are taken more seriously because the big names know that people who crave insight aren't a small niche. Perhaps this will come with time for games. I hope so, at least.
Indie games still lack the marketing impact that AAA studios can give. Publishers might grant you this luxuriance for a brief moment if you are willing to hand in part of your vision. There are no professional writers who are willing to start the conversation about their books with game studios. There won't be a Game of Thrones of games for quite a while.
Instead, we have "game directors" who'd really rather make a movie. Indies don't wish to unite in large because that would ruin their supposed integrity. I really wish a big innovative break-through in games would come from the indie scene, some argue that indies have showed they're more than capable of doing so, I just don't know if that's a way to engage the conversation with the public. We need the big studios to make a change to the environment of games if we want to change public perception. It's hard to say if they'll ever be willing to make something truly eye-opening.
It's not that indie aren't capable of breakthrough is that those breakthrough will necessarily be clumsy and small. The efforts needed to solve a problem also take away from other stuff. It's something you learn the hard way, finding the correct way is about redoing stuff endlessly and trashing massive amount of work each time, when you make something in a proven format, you have example to look for and criticize to perfect it, you also have focus because you know what to do. Let's say I'm making a platformer, I know it will be a sidescroller, to use tile, to have enemy with pattern and end goal on a map. Now let's say I make a romance game? what's the best presentation? mechanics? structure? Imagine a world where only platformer exist, an expert in platformer want to make a romance game, I can tell you that romance game will lbe about traversing a map full of obstacle to meet the girl as a end point of a map, that's what game are today mostly ... it tells you nothing about the nature of the experience, it merely illustrate it in a dissociate way. That's why AAA that tries things that are too new often are broken, also why I oppose the integrity concept of JWK5.
But what's missing is still a deep understanding of the format of game, especially in expression:
- In theater there is this concept of the fourth wall, the mediation between the fiction and audience. The physicality of theater also impose some aesthetical constrains on its language. For example, unity of time, place and actions is all about how in theater moving in and out scene is difficult and can only be done in "entract" aka intermission, thus story follow this principle, similarly the forth wall decide how actors move inside the scene to mediate action, monologue happen in front toward the audience to let the public know about inner thoughts because there is no other way to develop innerlife.
- Switching to movie, this theater language persisted, but movie allow things theater could not, it allow discontinuity and freedom of the fourth wall. Where in theater you needed intermission, in movie you only need a "cut" it's instantaneous and don't break the flow, melies was the first to take advantage of it with special effect and telling compelling stories. There was also the fact the forth wall could move and wasn't fixed anymore, it lead to the realization of framing. And finally scene wasn't tied to locality anymore it could be anywhere. Also audio didn't need to be concurrent to action. So with a shift in potential of the main conveyor of expression the narrative language changed, discontinuity (or editing) mobility and instantaneity give birth to the language of cinema.
- Video game on the other hand expend on two media, games and narration. It's audio visual therefore it inherit all the languages of cinema, framing, editing, etc ... all still works because of the video part. It also inherit the language of games. Again the potential of the fourth wall change, as outline by janet murray in "hamlet in a holodeck", the audience now exist in front of the fourth wall as a public but also behind it as an actor, he has control over events and share responsibility for them with the performance, not just as an actor but also as a director as he move the fourth wall (the camera too). What's interesting is that the fourth wall operate on a permission basis, the game give permission to the audience to move or not the camera in contract that is based on context, but the ultimate authority is still the game. However game still has some limitation akin to theater, instant discontinuity of time and place are still limited by intermission in most case (loading screen). So games have actually two problematic with the fourth wall crossing it from audience to game (interface and therefore tutorial problem) and from game to audience through expended filmic language. Therefore we have two languages set to take in consideration that can mix and match. That's the difficulty of finding game's languages. Ludo centrism focus too much on audience to game, narrative focus too much on game to audience, and almost noone pay attention to the interaction between these two languages.
- VR explode yet again the fourth wall by making it irrelevant. But in the game to player direction.
- motion control reintroduce physicality by making the interface conceptually disapear in the direction of player to game.
So when we look at game that makes things differently, that what we assess, not how much it is original in the constrain of traditional design based on it's own content, but on how it hint us at how to use the basic languages of games, themes impossible to address using tradition is generally a good way to assess this.
For example you said you didn't see indie making big innovative breakthrough, I'll point to thirty flight of loving, clumsy little game which reintroduce the concept of instant discontinuity of time and place (I wish I would be the first
I had this idea for a long time but no content to support it).
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