AAA Games Should Drop At Least One Of The 'A's

"What do the As even stand for? Nobody ever told me!"

[CrimsonWing69]

I guess is just in reference to budget and production size?

AAA being like Hollywood level blockbuster sized productions with lots of money and staff working on it.

AA being smaller productions and less money.

Then, uh, A being… I guess indie level productions 🤷‍♂️

[closed_account]

Yea, it's just a rating. The A's don't stand for any word. They could have just googled it, it was borrowed from the credit industry's bond ratings back in the 90's, where "AAA" bonds represented the safest opportunity most likely to meet their financial goals. The credit industry also has BBB, BB, BB, CCC, CC, C & D ratings as well. Let's just keep it at AAA, AA, A though! Better and easier. 😅

[P_Bomb]

XXX was already taken 😇

[closed_account]

Lol @P_Bomb 🤣

[VenomUK]

The article says: “I reckon AAA games could take notes from the indie scene and go for a bit more style. Not only would it help titles stand out more, it would help shave off a couple zeros from bloated budgets. What really sold me on the need for this was Game Pass.”

[closed_account]

@VenomUK, I just take that as publishers should just invest more in AA productions as an addition to AAA titles, not a complete replacement. AAA sells, but building new franchises to that point is hard. I felt that the very first Assassin's Creed game felt more like a AA title in its bland, repetitive gameplay... but the actual stealth mechanics and ability to climb any surface made the title stand out enough to help build the series into something greater. Those kind of new gameplay mechanics take a lot of R&D investment, which will ultimately bloat the budget anyways. The graphics were quite nice for that time period too, but again that usually takes more conceptual time than established IPs, because you don't know what the artistic style is going to look like yet. It requires more experimentation. The thing about indies is, many of these are being made by private individuals who will actually will go without pay in hopes of turning around a profit after it is completed. They'll sometimes recruit people who are willing to work for free, and something to build their skills and portfolio. For every successful indie that turns into something big, there are many many more that fail and never turn a profit. Bigger developers and publishers can't work like this.

[Godmars290]

Its in reference to pointless hype,

[Crows90]

It used to represent games without bugs and glitches in an era of gaming that was full of broken and bad games.

You would expect a certain level of quality from AAA that you wouldn't know if you'd get in a non AAA title.

[JackBNimble]

I've never heard that before, I even googled it and couldn't find the "old definition " . But I got to know, when exactly did games ever release bug free?

[Crows90]

Interesting. I know I didn't make it up. I wonder how much of old Google searches still show up today.

Read my comment again though. It represented bug free games. But it didn't always turn out that way. Which is why the following line in my comment explains the goal of AAA.

It was a way to distinguish shovel ware from actual games in an era where a lot of nobody's were putting software out to make money.

AAA industry put a stop to that at first. Now of course AAA games don't mean anything except ridiculously high budgets.

[closed_account]

@Crows90 Of course they aim higher and have the budget to "try" and have as few bugs as possible... but there's no such thing as a completely bug-free game. It's the nature of coding. Spend any amount of time in game development and you'll quickly become aware of this. You can certainly minimize as much as you can, but you'll never reach completely bug free. Some are just harder to find than others, and some may go years without being found bc sometimes it takes pushing a game way outside its intended play to hit.

And as most of us know, the list of bug-ridden AAA game list throughout gaming history is enormous!

[ApocalypseShadow]

You're not dreaming. In the past, in the 80s and 90s, AAA meant high quality games like Nintendo's seal of approval. With no money or marketing attached. But I saw it form into how much money was spent on a title. If you read Die Hard Game Fan or Gamers Republic or even EGM, the different reviewers didn't speak of how much money was spent on making a game. In most circles talking to others, it meant quality. It could have been that the money spent was the real meaning from developers at conventions and in board rooms. But not on the street it wasn't.

Any other form of AAA meant quality. That quality could come from money spent but that wasn't the meaning then. So, don't feel like you're the only one out there who used it for the best games you could get. Not for how many millions were spent making it.

Others used to think the same
https://www.neogaf.com/thre...

Edit: Microsoft coined the term AAAA. Did that mean they were going to spend a billion on the game being that Halo is is rumored to be 500 million in creation and marketing? It did they mean they were going to make a very high quality game? My opinion is that they were gunning for high quality. Course, that never panned out for them. Lol

[Daeloki]

I believe it's more about the size of the studio and the budget behind the game, which should translate to higher standards. Bugs and glitches have almost always been in games to some degree though. The difference is that the bigger and more complex games get, the higher the likelyhood that the game has bugs. And at the end of the day, no matter how high budget a game is, it's still (mostly) humans working on it. The bigger the studio, the more people (in most cases) are involved. And the more people are involved, the more chances there are of mistakes being made. Add the ridiculous pre-order culture we have, and suddenly there's the added pressure of delivering a game that people have already paid for and we've seen how people react when a release date is postponed. I'm not saying the big corporations should get a free pass because of any of this, but consider the people actually working on these games. These days they can't win. Postpone, they get shit, release a bugged game on time, they get shit. And in rare cases they manage to pull off a mostly bug-free game, but even then likely at the cost of working themselves half to death while higherups reap the rewards.

I'm not sure if I mean't to agree or disagree with you anymore, it ended up more as a general rant against the author of the opinion piece.

[staticall]

How much it will cost you? Each «A» used to be roughly $20. I think this is much easier to understand rather than budget/quality/production size, because it's different from publisher to publisher.

[Charlieboy333]

What a stupid question. It is just a term to describe the scope and budget of a game. A more important question is, do you seriously waste your time wrestling with such inane things in your life... enough to even write an article about it? What's the next conundrum that's gonna tax your brain? Hmmmm....what does it mean when they call a movie a 'blockbuster' ? Must be because it breaks blocks right? Or does a 'hit song' mean that it punches you in the face? Oh god please make sense of it all!

[The Wood]

1 company already has............

Not saying any names

[rippermcrip]

I hope you don't mean MS... because they added an A. Where is Initiatives game anyway? AAAA where you at?

[The Wood]

lol.....my bad

[closed_account]

Crackdown 3 bc it has the power of the cloud!

[jznrpg]

If it’s called a double Z game and it’s great why would I care?

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

“A” = $20 or less
“AA” = ~$40
“AAA” = top price, $70

How did somebody without any sense of this get a job writing about video games for Game Industry?

EDIT: surprise surprise… it didn’t take more than a few paragraphs for the article to turn into an effort to downplay the value of AAA blockbuster games from Sony and Nintendo that push the medium forward, and the article starts glorifying Game Pass and its AA offerings.

I don’t even want to spend time playing Exo Primal, it doesn’t look like a $60 game, and I won’t be gaslit into thinking it is better to play Exo Primal and Hi Fi Rush for $18/month than to play Spider-Man 2 for $70 outright.

Make games Xbox, and stop paying for articles.

[JackBNimble]

It's about the cost of the production or the budget of the game, not the price at retail.

Although the retail price usually does reflect that but not always.

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

When hasn’t the price reflected the production budget?

[Bladesfist]

Warzone and other games that allow gamers to play for free but have a huge budget?

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

I’d point to the amount of content behind a paywall…. Literally every achievement reminds me to buy a battle pass.

[LG]

Conan Exiles is A because I spent 6 bucks on it. Spider-Man: Miles Morales is A because I spent 20 bucks on it.

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

*Retail price at launch, you clever gal.

[mkis007]

For me the A's are like dollar signs for budget.

[purple101]

Halo infinite * caugh caugh * 500million..

[Elda]

That BS didn't cost 500 million to develop if so then MS was ripped off.

[Noskypeno]

That is more than twice the budget of Horizon FW. Even with the long cycle I can't justify it being that expensive, even tho the multiplayer is some of the best experience right now imo.

[northpaws]

Are they purposely using Spider-Man 2 thumbnail to trick people that think that it is lower quality?

[Vengeance1138]

Is Dualshockers taking Microsoft bribes lately? For a pro PlayStation site, they've been producing quite a few hate articles on Spiderman.

[jznrpg]

They’ve been like this for years now. Was a decent site back in the day

[Destiny1080]

if phil dropped one of the As, it would still be AAA

[crazyCoconuts]

Phil dropped an A in a hole...

[Godmars290]

If its going to be used as anything other than PR term, be taken seriously, then it official industry recognition. Maybe have a rating when announced, then another post launch. Say something promised as "AAA" reviews at "B" or lower with an average grade given to studios. Key developers.

[Doomeduk]

These go to 11

[anast]

As long as it doesn't give people a pass to do the minimum.

[Moegooner]

Dualshockers should drop their so called journalism.

[Father__Merrin]

The budget and size should like previous gens. Just looking back at the ps2 era things was just so good.

[Bathyj]

Get Gamepass if you want less A's

[LG]

I find it entertaining how a lot of people are going crazy after predatory marketing tactics in AAA games, or the next controversy on the next day, or the next controversy. Meanwhile I'm just playing my relaxing indie games. Every now and then I look out my window and I see the chaos that is AAA gaming news. And I dip my toes in, but then I come back to playing my relaxing indie games.