How are the high seas for gaming nowadays? I know it used to be pretty hit and miss before since many titles didn't work properly, crashed and had no support for updates without downloading a new copy.

I've never seen piracy as doing a lot to support indie games.

Generally, your principles should be more about who you'd like to build up than tear down.

personally AAA games don't appeal to me most of the time. Spare for a few titles that are on my wishlist like Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring (for the reasons explained below) I don't plan on buying any in the foreseeable future.

Most AAA games are plagued by the money curse - devs don't get the freedom to do what they want to do, they are made to create what will make money. Innovation is a risk and will be shut down by the money men unless your name is big enough to sell copies on its own. Sure not all triple A will turn out to be bad or meh, but they are pricey and often so, so, bloated. I was on the fence with Starfield, DIYed myself a demo and that thing was like 95GB with nothing to show for it.

I feel like it's two separate markets that are forced to share the same big tent known as "gaming".

I never play AAA games. I'm not on some moral crusade, they just don't appeal. I do not have the twitch reflexes for FPS, but smaller devs tend to make the sort of gameplay I like.

Right now the only indy game I can think of that's truly competitive is Battlebit, and that's only because everyone hates what became of Battlefield. Otherwise it's just me and what feels like a half dozen other weirdos out here trying to build a bakery so we can feed pie to harpies, while 90% of the world is playing COD like it's their job. It's two vastly different people who do not have the same needs, is what I'm saying.

So maybe people need to deal with that and stop honking the "play indy" horn so much. If that was the solution, people would already be on it.