Is it about popularity? The publisher of the game? Or maybe the quality?
Budget
it’s a measurement of how much money was spent on development, it means absolutely nothing about the actual game and is very misleading.
It does mean something about the game. It losely sets the bar of expectations of quality.
Well, not entirely. There’s still plenty of AAA games that are generally considered great (Witcher 3, Gta 5, RDR 2, Cyberpunk, Last of us, etc.) but there are also many more that are “playing it safe” or straight up bad. Sequels like Call of Duty or Assassins Creed are almost impossible to tell apart, gameplay of too many AAA brings nothing new, and so on.
And then there’s AAAA Skull and Bones which was just absurd piece of shit.
I don’t get why you say well not entirety, then proceed to say something that has nothing to do with the bar being set anywhere.
Games come out good or bad, but if it’s a triple A it is expected to have a quality soundtrack, good voice acting etc, like a movie. Indies is forgiveable if they got simple stuff replacing those.
It’s definitely not quality or popularity given how many have been flops recently. It’s about the budget and publisher. Big money and/or big names = AAA.
Ideally, it has to be a big publisher that spends a ton of money on it.
In truth, an AAA game can be spotted by a price tag of over 60 €/USD, at least one season pass, 3+ different editions, a huge day-1 patch and a lack of anything that’s not predatory monetization of any remaining gameplay elements.
As a general guideline, that check list looks about right. It seems to me that the company doesn’t strictly need to have all of those features in the game. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 put all of their dev points into having the most catastrophic launch possible, and they had none left for predatory monetization. Others have chosen a more balanced approach. Some game breaking bugs, a little bit of whale milking etc.
A is short for Aaaaagh. The number of As represents the amount of crunch and exploitation that goes into making a game.
the budget
It’s really sad that AAA games suck as hard as they do, considering their budget, compared to indie games.
I mean, really. Indie games are awesome.
Indie games don’t have shareholders demanding extra-short term profits to please, they can afford to innovate. An AAA game needs to pay the shareholders as fast as possible, and how to do it? Well, the way they do it now; take your cod, or fifa, or whatever AAA ip you want and you’ll see how the patterns repeat in all of them.
AAA games are the fast food of videogaming.
yep. that’s certainly part of it. But also look at Starfield. 25 years in the making and… I regretted that buy so hard. There were lots of just stupid oversights (Like shipbuilding ladders/hatches being random. Could they not create a mid-module part that creates the hatches? like equipment plates?)
“you can be what you wan’t, but we’re going to nag you about it nonstop.”
I hardly ever consider looking at AAA games. All my time is spent on indie games.
It’s the same with movies, music, books…the big corporations try to make a safe, mediocre, standard experience that will have the broadest appeal without taking risks. To find really good stuff, you need to look to creators who really care about the art (which is a lot more work and has higher risk of being boring, but higher potential for reward too).
High cost, high potential, high advertising budget, low creativity and lower likelihood of being interesting or meeting the expectations they fostered among the buying public.
The Budget
AAA movies were called that by haveing A-class actors A-class musicans and A-class production company. this correlates to nothing in Videogames. Its mostly a marketing term. I agree with most that initial budget plays the biggest role.
It’s determined by the publisher’s PR department.
If it makes hipsters angry, it’s AAA.
Requiring AAA batteries, obviously.
that’s a good one!
Because AAA is the sound you make when you realise that your favourite game franchise has been rendered creatively irrelevant by boardroom executives who hold no stock in the company they’re being paid fuck-you money to ruin, the game itself will cost as much as a day of cocaine and multiple concurrent sex workers, you’ll be squeezed for subscriptions and rereleases for the next decade at best before the next uninspired trend-chasing sequel, and it won’t even work on launch.
Alternatively, it’s the sound you make when you contemplate that your favourite game hasn’t even come out yet because it’s being made by a legendary but somehow underfunded indie developer whose uncompromising creative integrity rivals the 1994 lineup of Gwar as they snubbed a distribution deal with Warner Bros. just to keep the song “Baby Dick Fuck” on the album, and the game has already created an online community of toxic fans who hate it before it even launches, and you realise that the only way you’ll ever have satisfaction is by becoming a game developer yourself.
deleted by creator
