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[Mengy]

All of this talk about AAA games and such, but the term "AAA game" is subjective in itself. Does it mean a fun game with great gameplay? Does it mean a graphically modern looking game? Or does it mean a game with a huge budget, large dev team, and immense marketing campaign? To some a game like Minecraft may be a AAA game by one definition, while to others games like The Witcher 3 or Far Cry 4 would be AAA games by a different definition. I've seen a poster in one thread call Dark Souls a AAA game when the very next poster said it was only an indie game. Is that truly something worth arguing about?

All of this is just labeling games with the intent of separating them into categories, but why? Why segregate games at all? In the end all that truly matters to us is whether or not the game is fun and worth our money, and that is irregardless of how many people made it or how much money it cost to make or how many commercials are out in the wild for it. This whole AAA vs. indie games trend is just bad for the industry, it's divisive and misleading and not really adding anything of value to our hobby. We need to change it somehow, make it less polarizing and more effective.



What we need is a new classification system of games, a new way to quickly describe games that doesn't make one game immediately seem lesser than another simply based on how much money is behind it. Because to us that honestly shouldn't make any difference, what matters is the end product that we may (or may not) be purchasing. Or maybe just simply drop the AAA label altogether, as the lines defining the difference are blurry at best. Maybe using Metacritic user scores would be better? Call one game a 9.5'er and another one a 5.3'er to convey user ratings for games?


Because if a game like Banished which was made by one person can have a MC rating of 8.2 while Simcity 5 by EA / Maxis gets an MC rating of 2.2, then which game is truly deserving of the AAA title?

 

[Deleted member 47027]

it means budget

 

[Clear]

Its mainly about marketing budget.

Essentially to a publisher a AAA title represents a "big bet"; a product they foresee as a major profit driver and is thus backed to the hilt.

 

[Hasney]

it means budget

What he said.

If someone said Minecraft was AAA, they were mistaken.

 

[liquidtmd]

Why segregate games at all?

What we need is a new classification system of games

wut

 

[TransientDreamer]

More trouble than it's worth. AAA refers to budget. That's it.

 

[Patryn]

As has been said, it has nothing to do with quality, and it's all about budget.

Also, fuck spreading Metacritic's influence even further.

 

[Gnome Scat]

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

But AAA is budgetary, so it's here to stay basically.

 

[Bright-Light]

it means budget

What budget though ?
At what point is a budget a AAA budget?

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

the term "AAA game" is subjective in itself. Does it mean a fun game with great gameplay? Does it mean a graphically modern looking game? Or does it mean a game with a huge budget, large dev team, and immense marketing campaign?

No, no, no, yes.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

It doesn't even really mean budget. It's a like a bond rating, it just means the expected amount that will be sold.

AAA basically means it's a sure thing.

 

[Floridian]

Based on current output, quality has little to do with it.

 

[Deleted member 47027]

What he said.

If someone said Minecraft was AAA, they were mistaken.

OP also used "irregardless" so I'm not sure what to think of this

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

It means budget, and it CLEARLY doesn't mean Quality.

 

[Arcatax]

AAA refers to budget, but amount of money/work used to create a game doesn't mean it's going to be a quality game. That's where review scores come in I guess, but we all know that even they can be misleading.

 

[MatrixMan.EXE]

It is most definitely is an objective term. It's just that most gamers throw it around without actually knowing what it means. It's a marketing term which references budget.

 

[SerTapTap]

AAA definitely refers to budget. People using the term as if it referred to quality are usually the "I don't want them that INDIE GAEMS IN MY PS$ GARBLEMARBLE" types who refuse to accept anything less as a game, which may be why you're confused.

The interesting thing about how a lot of AAA games is recently it seems to refer to games with budgets that never existed in gaming before gen 7, to the point where it feels silly to even try and compare "AAA" PS2 games to what's currently considered AAA, and when people refer to "old AAA" it's hard to imagine what exactly they even mean.

Personally I think it's best to drop the whole thing but I don't think it will be possible. I just try to talk about games I like and recommend them to the right people. If you like big flashy crap I'll recommend similar stuff, same if you seem to like gameplay focused indies, arthouse affairs, anime styled games, whatever.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

AAA is a rating that reflects brand, budget, and marketing drive.

I really don't see a problem with how it'd used now. We just need to use AA and A more when describing games.

I'd consider Dying Light an A game, but it may be AA. It depends on the development budget and the marketing budget (not knowing about it until after it negative press for the preorder stuff tells me it is more likely A).


This system doesn't denote end quality. A C game can turn out just as good as a AAA title.

 

[Gartooth]

I think of AAA as gaming's equivalent to summer Hollywood blockbusters.

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

I'm UK based.
Its of American publisher origin, and represents the confidence they had in their product and what publishers mean by confidence is how much money they are prepared to throw at it.
Top tier studio? A
As-long-as-it-takes development cycle? A
Pull-out-all-the-stops-marketing-campaign? A

All 3?
AAA title.

Publishers would refer to a title they expected to do extremely well as an AAA title, journalists picked up on it and started using it, readers of games magazines started noticing AAA titles tended to score really highly (and in the 90s particularly in the UK you could still basically buy scores as part of the marketing budget), readers started to use AAA to mean "really good game".

.

 

[badcrumble]

AAA is a term that's extremely useful (arguably essential) to the industry for marketing purposes and nearly totally useless to consumers. If you want to change it, recognize the stakeholders you'll have to be pushing back against.

To be totally honest the entire ultra-expensive-to-develop game model of things is extremely unsustainable. The best way to eliminate the term "AAA" might be to eliminate AAA games altogether, tbh.

 

[Camwi]

Don't feel bad OP, I used to think it referred to something like quality as well.

 

[Khrno]

I've seen a poster in one thread call Dark Souls a AAA game when the very next poster said it was only an indie game.

Well going by that quote, it's not only the "AAA" term that gets thrown a lot wrongly, the "indie" term does too.

Since when is From Software, a company founded in 1986, an "indie" company? Does "indie" refer to a company publishing its own game -independently- of a Publisher?
That's what you would think and in that case it would apply at least to DS in Japan since it was self-published, but that's not what the "indie" term is used for in the game industry.

 

[Morph-0]

It would make more sense if these games were just called Mega Budget games.

 

[AmuroChan]

What budget though ?
At what point is a budget a AAA budget?

Whatever the publisher deems as a AAA budget. If you're looking for a specific number there isn't one.

 

[Tain]

As someone interested in playing games that I'll enjoy, I have no real use for dividing games into groups based on team sizes or budget. Similarly, I have no reason to be more lenient with my criticism toward games with smaller budgets or stricter toward those with larger budgets.

Generally people use the terms "AAA" and "indie" to make weak, off-base claims about the state of all of gaming. Thankfully some are above this!

 

[Steel]

It's a very simple term that refers to budget and organization.

Its mainly about marketing budget.

I wouldn't say it's purely about marketing budget, or else a mobile game like Game of War: Fire Age with a $40 million marketing budget would be AAA.

 

[nullref]

While I'd agree that the whole "AAA vs. indie" dichotomy is pretty useless for any kind of discussion, I've never found the term "AAA" all that confusing in and of itself. It's just industry jargon that refers to budget.

We already have these things called "genres", which seem like a pretty good way to classify and group comparable games. While certain genre labels come with their own confusing baggage, that's at least on the right track. I don't think how or why a game was made is all that important when you have the end result in front of you to discuss, evaluate, and compare.

 

[Deleted member 47027]

Also, why do you "need" to know if the budget is considered AAA? Let each game stand on its own.

 

[digita1alchemy]

It was a stupid marketing buzzword, blame the gaming media and community for running with it.

 

[AlphaDump]

...AAA like a bond rating, in terms of investor confidence.

I'd ask, a budget towards what? Development, marketing, both? What are those thresholds?

 

[AmuroChan]

I've seen a poster in one thread call Dark Souls a AAA game when the very next poster said it was only an indie game.

AAA and Indie aren't mutually exclusive. Hellblade is being marketed as a AAA Indie game. It's self-published by Ninja Theory, hence Indie. And it's got a big budget (allegedly), hence AAA.

 

[Conkerkid11]

This backfired

 

[Megatron]

Any way we describe games is going to be subjective because we are never going to have all the details about a game as far as what it cost to make, how much was spent on marketing, how much money it made, etc.

 

[Shauni]

I'll never understand how it is that such relative simple terms and ideas seem to confuse people to the point that they want to try and break everything down in the most pedantic ways.

 

[RM8]

Would you guys say Mortal Kombat X and Street Fighter V are AAA games? Because if they aren't, I'm pretty sure I'm not into AAA stuff anymore, at least for the most part.

 

[Tempy]

Don;'t forget the AAAA games!

 

[Percy]

AAA games were pretty clearly defined not too long ago as I recall (Game budget). It's just that overuse of the term by the more ignorant among us to describe anything that isn't an indie game to the point where it has lost all meaning now means none of us can be quite sure what the term signifies any longer.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

It means budget and there's nothing subjective about maths.

 

[John Bender]

All of this talk about AAA games and such, but the term "AAA game" is subjective in itself. Does it mean a fun game with great gameplay? Does it mean a graphically modern looking game? Or does it mean a game with a huge budget, large dev team, and immense marketing campaign? To some a game like Minecraft may be a AAA game by one definition, while to others games like The Witcher 3 or Far Cry 4 would be AAA games by a different definition. I've seen a poster in one thread call Dark Souls a AAA game when the very next poster said it was only an indie game. Is that truly something worth arguing about?

All of this is just labeling games with the intent of separating them into categories, but why? Why segregate games at all? In the end all that truly matters to us is whether or not the game is fun and worth our money, and that is irregardless of how many people made it or how much money it cost to make or how many commercials are out in the wild for it. This whole AAA vs. indie games trend is just bad for the industry, it's divisive and misleading and not really adding anything of value to our hobby. We need to change it somehow, make it less polarizing and more effective.



What we need is a new classification system of games, a new way to quickly describe games that doesn't make one game immediately seem lesser than another simply based on how much money is behind it. Because to us that honestly shouldn't make any difference, what matters is the end product that we may (or may not) be purchasing. Or maybe just simply drop the AAA label altogether, as the lines defining the difference are blurry at best. Maybe using Metacritic user scores would be better? Call one game a 9.5'er and another one a 5.3'er to convey user ratings for games?


Because if a game like Banished which was made by one person can have a MC rating of 8.2 while Simcity 5 by EA / Maxis gets an MC rating of 2.2, then which game is truly deserving of the AAA title?

???

AAA = Budget

It means budget and there's nothing subjective about maths.

.

 

[Mengy]

It would make more sense if these games were just called Mega Budget games.

Yes, I agree, much more descriptive and less divisive.

Also, fuck spreading Metacritic's influence even further.

I'm curious, why? For the most part I always tend to agree with the Metacritic user scores...?

???

AAA = Budget
.

Okay, so what's the cutoff point then? At what budget amount does a game become either AAA or non-AAA?

 

[LonelyGreyWolf]

What budget though ?
At what point is a budget a AAA budget?

That's irrelevant and ridiculous. Of course no company is gonna come out and say "look, here's the objective number at which point a project becomes AAA".

I don't even know why this is a big deal to people. Everyone knows what is referred to when someone uses the term AAA, thus the term is just fine.

 

[Disgraced]

So, is the video game industry term derived from the stock market term? If so, shouldn't AAA games be the ones funded by AAA stocks? Which in essense means the term's budgetary. Not that complicated, I think.

Though, I have no idea what I'm talking about so maybe dismiss that.

 

[Nugg]

AAA means huge budget, simple as that. It always has been that way, and smaller games won't change that, no matter how awesome and objectively better they might be.

You can have extremely bad AAA games, they're still AAA because of the cost and marketing attached to them.

 

[Honome]

it means budget

This.

At least is not another thread about

Spoiler

the order

(at least not explicitly)

 

[Steel]

Yes, I agree, much more descriptive and less divisive.

But AAA already refers to ultra-budget and is a shorter way to point that out. Just look at it as similar to bond ratings that also use AAA AA etc.

 

[Tain]

Would you guys say Mortal Kombat X and Street Fighter V are AAA games? Because if they aren't, I'm pretty sure I'm not into AAA stuff anymore, at least for the most part.

You won't get a clear answer on this, but generally posters will try to put as few specific games in the "AAA" bucket as possible.

 

[anddo0]

Phone companies use "Flagship", why that word replace AAA?

Each the big three release between 3-5 titles a year that could be considered "Flagship".

Would you guys say Mortal Kombat X and Street Fighter V are AAA games? Because if they aren't, I'm pretty sure I'm not into AAA stuff anymore, at least for the most part.

They are considered AAA franchises despite current opinions.

 

[openrob]

wut

No, those statements aren't contradictory. To figure out how to label games, we should understand why we want to do so in the first place.

I agree that the misuse of Indie is more damaging

 

[Shabad]

AAA is a high budget game from a recognized developper supported by a strong marketing campaign.

What the bolded part actually means could need some kind of more accurate definition, but then again, we don't always get numbers for this kind of things... Usually people agree on what is AAA and what isn't.

Minecraft isn't. Journey isn't.
The Witcher 3 is. Dark Souls is.