While I’m eager to see what Frost Giant comes up with, but I fear that the theme of the game will not capture my imagination as much as SC2.
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Frost Giant will not have a game out for several years. Which is why I moved on to AOE4. Why waste time on game that is stuck in a stale meta and never gets patched.
I have no interested in ever changing rules to force new “metas” on players.
AoE4 holds absolutely no interest to me. I’ve tried watching the streams for many of the players I have been watching for years but just can’t get into it. I doubt I’d want to play it.
Which is why I’m concerned about Frost Giant’s game. They will probably want to shake up the formula that made games like SC2 and Warcraft interesting to me. At which point I’m going to be “meh”.
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SC2 had 60m budget fueled by WoW. Beat that as an indie. 
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Most of which goes into artwork. One to three programmers can put out something really decent (like Doom, Starcraft I, …) If there’s anything we’ve learnt from Hollywood it’s that big budgets don’t equal big quality. Don’t despair just yet. They’ll probably cut on cinematics and ‘fluff’.
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Big budget goes into “production values” and that’s A LOT of different things beyond coding.
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I think you both are right.
An indie can make a quality game, especially with the network connects that a team of industry insiders and veterans can muster. An artist with 20 years of experiences is going to have the productivity of less experienced artists even if the quality of their work is similar.
That said, being able to throw money at a problem is an effective tool for getting stuff done. And I think that for SC2 a lot of that large budge went into polish and refinement.
Cinematics, Music, Marketing (those big booths at PAX aren’t cheap), eSports, etc…
Of course you could do all of these things grassroots, which I wouldn’t even mind to be honest. I don’t really care for the mainstream pop culture nonsense that seems to have overtaken games and the competitive space. I can do without much of that stuff.
Most of this isn’t really my concern. What I am trying to express, however, is that Frost Giant will most likely purpose want to distance themselves from Starcraft 2, not only in theme (which I’ll be honest, is not an insignificant drawl for me) but also the game play. There’s a reason why I have no interest in Age of Empires. The game just doesn’t appeal to me despite it being a polished RTS game.
A game I did play a lot of and enjoy back in the day was Myth I & II but I don’t see Frost Giant going that route with their RTS either.
For the last… many years indie games are much better than AAA titles. Sure they don’t have nearly the same level of art, but gameplay-wise they are infinitely better than e.g. Assassins’ Creed №XX.
Even large budget games that are good are not exactly AAA games - e.g. Dark Souls or Resident Evil remakes are more close to indie games.
Counterpoint: How many indie games have you played to completion more than once? Probably not many, right? A lot of successful indie games rely on a gimmick, which isnt necessarily bad, but once you play the game and see the gimmick, then it loses a lot of its playability.
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This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this thought, particularly when it comes to From Soft games. How is From Software not considered a AAA studio? Same question for Resident Evil…Capcom is a massive company that pumps out games like no one’s business, how aren’t they AAA?
I define AAA in terms of a budget/team size. That’s the “muscle” of development. Games take A LOT of time to build. That’s why you need so many people. A small studio has no chance of making something which surpasses SC2. It’s like 10 “veteran” developers trying to build a skyscraper. It won’t happen.
I wouldn’t call it polished when it has been released with dated graphics and funny animations and pathing/unit movement during fights. Example of polishing, in sc2 not every unit shoots at the same time to avoid the game looking weird when every unit shoots and attacks at the same time.