The Order: 1886 dev on AAA development: 'AAA basically means quality'

Ready At Dawn spoke about making AAA games quality experiences.

[BrandanT]

It seems like a lot of people don't think of it like that. Most just seem to think "AAA" means the game comes from a big developer.

[Overload]

I don't know what the hell they're talking about, AAA is representative of a games budget, nothing else.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...

What a stupid thing to say.

[Eidolon]

If you read all of it and I'm not talking about the first sentence or paragraph, it seems to imply through the first couple paragraphs of the "Origin" that AAA does mean quality, but then kills it with the next sentence when they compare AAA to a blockbuster movie(budget/sales != quality). So an intentionally small game(not necessarily game length), and therefore not requiring a high budget, but with exceptional quality and coming from a huge renown developer is considered a B game? Where is this scale for budget and do developers&publishers disclose these budgets?

[morganfell]

Did you really just list wikipedia as a reliable and defensible source of information and reason?

[ApocalypseShadow]

Wikipedia... The site that you can go to and type anything you want and deem it true.

When gaming started, AAA meant the quality of the title. AAA for car insurance doesn't mean how much money they spend or the consumer spends. It means the quality of the company wants to be seen as.

Gamers just took what it meant and changed it to be how much money is spent on game creation. If the game sucks and millions was spent on it,

"How would you DESCRIBE its QUALITY?"

Gamers don't seem to have an answer to that.

[Eonjay]

Okay after examining all of the comments, reading RAD's comment and the wiki, AAA has more to do with projected revenue from a title than the actual cost. However, it should be noted that in order to get those 'movie blockbuster' type returns it is expected that a lot of money is spent on the title in the same way that it would be spent on creating the movie.

"AAA is not an acronym, but a way to classify games, in some cases, referring to it as an equivalent to a movie blockbuster.
As the years progressed and during the new millennium, many publishers started to consider their games to be AAA even before their release, and justified this decision through huge development and marketing budgets."

So, AAA is nothing more these days than a term that a publisher assigns to a big project that they expect to produce returns. As such, more money can be invested in these titles.

The problem is that not all supposed AAA games sell like AAA games.

[Eidolon]

The problem with the term AAA is when gamers started using it, they labeled this and that AAA or not AAA and it became pointless. Budget usually returns quality(to some degree) but that's often not the case overall as we've seen many times before.

[Overload]

Are you people for real?

http://gameindustry.about.c...

http://www.gamedev.net/topi...

"I've worked on a few supposed "AAA" games, and not for one instant would I believe it means quality. I've played far higher-quality games that didn't have that label, regardless of genre differences.

Read This -----> "The press and marketing wants you to believe it means quality, and they're succeeding quite well. In reality it just means budget and production values, how much "manpower" went in it and how marketable it is."

[Ashlen]

Why are people trying to define it so strictly?

It's like Indie, it's become a loosely defined word that can earn it's meaning and be defined by many different aspects or combinations of aspects.

AAA can mean large publisher or large budget or quality and more or any combination.
Indie can mean no publisher small budget small studio and more or any combination.

[opinionated]

Exactly lol. "B-movie" means it's a budget movie. It has nothing to do with quality. There are AAA funded games that are complete ass.

[nix]

The Order was AAA.

[garrettbobbyferguson]

@Morganfell

This is no longer 2006. Wikipedia has been a reliable source of information for a very long time. Much more reliable than Encyclopedias. Mind you I have an entire shelf of them that contain a lot of WRONG information. And if you're that anal about it, go read the freaking sources at the bottom.

[morganfell]

Wikipedia still continues to be inaccurate as hell.

http://www.techtimes.com/ar...

That is just one example. Try researching the continued issues with Wikipedia. No one is being anal when they despise inaccuracy. Maybe you enjoy skewed or outright deceptive information. I do not. It is laughable you accuse me of being anal when you are the one that enjoys getting screwed by misleading information. The fact it has happened in other forms of reference is no excuse for it to occur elsewhere.

[Eidolon]

The term is dumb, it's made up and we should have some real scale. Can small developers have high budget and marketing for a game? Wouldn't you assume AAA's mostly come from huge developers by the budget definition?

[garrettbobbyferguson]

AAA literally means budget. It does not mean quality.

[Golden_Mud]

In all facts, AAA in business is referred to as big projects that require a lot of money, so at all ends, define it as whatever you want, but you can't redefine it in business, business means business, you can't redefine that.

As for quality, quality does not come with budget, it comes with talent, and I'm 100% sure Ready At Dawn doesn't lack that, we can't judge them on one mistake against many corrects.

[game4funz]

Yes but in different businesses the big budget can vary.. For instance... The first assassin's Creed maybe didn't cost as much as the latest... Does that mean the first wasn't triple A? How about between devs... Maybe cd projekt didn't spend as much money as ea did with the recent cod.... Does that mean the Witcher isn't triple A?

Triple A cannot be based on budget... It is forever changing and different devs spend different amounts... One dev may view a budget as huge while another that budget is small.

[Golden_Mud]

It is based on budget, why do we call indies "indies" ? Because they have a lower budget than those big companies that spend millions on one game.

And in the gaming standard, we have only AAA titles and indies which is weird because we can define projects as AA or BB or anything of those.

[game4funz]

Actually I call indies whatever game is made by an independant developer.
Gamers in their ignorance have taken to calling all low budget games indies. Which is weird since most of the time gamers have no idea what the costs were.

[AngelicIceDiamond]

He says that now because they're making that party game. With that logic he thinks Rocket League is AAA.

[gangsta_red]

So true, they are trying to damage control going from The Order to whatever the hell that game they showed now.

[Goldby]

Rocket league is AAA quality gaming. havent had that much fun in a long time.

[Naji4Me]

Please dear RAD
Go to ND
Get some tips.
After that let's talk about AAA

[game4funz]

Yes cuz of course they wouldn't talk to you.

[sandman224]

I loved the order. It had an amazing campaign and great gunplay. All it needed was a leveling system for the weapons and a multiplayer, preferably one that ran at 60 frames. Then it would've been a box hit.

[Goldby]

no to the multiplayer. the only way multiplayer could have worked was with Co-op.

[WellyUK]

The order with a MP could of been fantastic... We get it you hate MP but it was the only thing that could of saved The Order.

[Goldby]

no, i actually love multiplayer games, but a game like that wouldn't have worked with Multiplater, maybe co-op but not team vs team. Because there was no real fight against the werewolves except for QTE how would you have translated that into multiplayer? would there be QTE in mp? if not then people would have wanted those same type of battles in the real game.

Co-op yes. Death match style MP no

[mogwaii]

Pity these guys failed at actually making one.

[goldwyncq]

They certainly failed at producing one with The Order.

[annoyedgamer]

No it doesn't

[Imalwaysright]

I thought that it was about budget.

[Herbalistic]

publishers are referring to big budget titles when they mention the term AAA

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

Of course it does. If it's a quality game from inside out. Then it's AAA. If the game had no problem, runs smooth, gameplay is fun and replay value is there then it's quality.

[ziggurcat]

no it doesn't, it's the game's budget...

[Majister-Ludi]

Why do articles on these guys keep popping up. You are not an elite studio stop pretending you are. 1886 was as far from AAA as you can get. Yes great visuals but that's it, come back when you learn that gameplay is the most important. Pretty visuals mean nothing when your game is not fun.

[Yui_Suzumiya]

Lots of trolls up in here today xD

[jessionpc]

Coming from this gens shithead kneejerk developer... YEA.... Kay buddies.

I may not make games, but I've played them most of my life, and I certainly wouldn't call the Order 1886 quality, a game, and this new thing they came up with?

Feels like they watched Lirik play Gangbeasts and thought, "HUR BOYS, LETS PUT IT ON BALLS!!"

[Yui_Suzumiya]

One of the top games ever developed

[sadsatan]

the order is easy to sum up. the devs put all their focus on the art side, and very little focus on building an actual game.

[GamePeace]

Strangely many of those so-called AAA games don't provide that feeling of quality ...

[Phil32]

I always thought AAA meant budget.