What starts to make a game - AAA, in your opinion? Simply in your own eyes, not by official AAA tag

Ainem Enamas

Ainem Enamas

Member
For me it's the interaction with the game world. If the game reacts to your thrown fireball and then the game world stars to burn... that's definitely the line

How about you?
 
Budget. That's what it comes down to.

You can, for free, make a game where you throw fireballs at trees and they burn down. That wouldn't be a AAA game, right?

Look at this game coming to early access next year, for example. Not AAA, but fire interacts with the environment in real time and spreads.
 
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I just perceive "AAA" as Michael Bay games. Presentation and cinematic aspirations over gameplay and design substance. AAA is a euphemism for blockbuster with absurd production values that therefore have to be recouped by appealing to as many customers as possible as main the design goal. Sometimes I enjoy a blockbuster just the same but I've zero interest in this type of thing in the past few years. I like friction and problem solving.

Maybe that's unfair and kneejerk-y but that's what I think when I read AAA.
 
Ainem Enamas said:

What starts to make a game - AAA, in your opinion? Simply in your own eyes, not by official AAA tag

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Definitions are definitions, they don't depend on opinions. AAA games are what AAA games are.

In the same way some person can identify themself as a trisexual green horse but in reality they're a male or female human being, you can wrongly think or say AAA games are a car, a blue monkey or something like that, but you'd be simply be wrong.

'AAA games' are the game with very high budget productions, just that.
 
Perception among gamers can vary greatly, but within the industry, the designation of labels like AAA and AA comes to the budget. Ultimately cost is what the publisher cares about. The scope and everything else are secondary. The final decision to greenlight a project comes down to how much is it going to cost and can we make money from this product.
 
For me it's pretty simple and obvious, you just have to look at the project's scope.

1 – Can I see design, visuals, graphics, physics, and enemy AI that actually match what this generation is capable of?
2 – Can I feel gameplay that clearly had a team spending a lot of time planning and refining it?
3 – Can I see professional, well-thought-out level design?
4 – Is the sound and music treated at a cinematic level?
5 – The story doesn't have to be complex, but is it convincing and consistent with the game's aesthetic?

None of this comes easily unless it's an AAA game, because it requires massive investment in people, time, and money. That's why it's expensive, that's why it has value, and that's the best the industry can deliver. At the end of the day, something like GTA VI is what will have the biggest impact and move the gaming industry the most, not only by inspiring ambition in the present and future, but by cementing in players' minds what a truly premium project looks like.
 
Ainem Enamas said:
For me it's the interaction with the game world. If the game reacts to your thrown fireball and then the game world stars to burn... that's definitely the line

How about you?
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A big world that speaks about the latest tech elegantly, a characters personalities that transcended the actual timeline like Geralt and Ciri, something unique about it you don't see elsewhere and it could be anything, has positive simping like Devil May Cry and Resident Evil.
 
Value Production, it's that simple. You can see, hear, feel and even smell and taste (so to speak, of course) that a company put a truck load of money into that product and money was WELL SPENT.
 
Full-Game Voice Acting.

Whenever I hear voice acting for EVERYTHING, and I mean every single NPC in every single side-quest in every nook and cranny of the world you're exploring, that's when I know the game is big budget.
 
Production quality and gameplay.

There are plenty of games that have a "AAA Budget" that are absolute crap.

Likewise, there are plenty of games with "AA budgets" that have amazing production quality and gameplay, and should be considered AAA
 
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The only true way to know if it's AAA or not.
 
The game keeps you coming back for more for weeks. New discoveries or plot twists continually surprise you. You want to discover and explore everything the game has to offer. You want to keep levelling up.
 
The quality of a game.
There is AAA quality, and AAA budget.
An AAA quality game doesn't mean it has to use an AAA budget.

There are absolutely AAA budget games that are inferior to AAA quality indie games.
 
I always understood it was just a matter of budget. There's lots of shitty AAA games.
 
Make It Rain Money GIF by Jasmine Star


This stuff was utilized in great amounts.

Typically more than necessary.

Oh, and usually the game loop is shallow and boring, and it's overly cinematic because the director can't unlodge their head from their ass, the smell of their farts is just too enticing.
 
IIRC the current meaning of AAA wasn't what the original term meant.

Back at the beginning of the Internet when we talked about games, AAA meant a game with a high average review score.

It's wild that it now simply means how the game is funded.

You can tell by the name AAA that at one time this was a reference to the percieved quality of the game and not who published it, keke. At one time more recently "goty" meant who won the most goty awards and not who won at TGA. TGA been around a while but only gotten exponentially huge the last bit. Before that goty just meant personal opinion. and goty wasn't really an abbreviation, we wrote everything out back then except mmo abbreviations.
Aging Old Man GIF by A&E
 
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It's just budget at this point, definitely not quality.

I used to throw in scope too, but then No Man's Sky kinda threw a wrench in that.
 
In the past you could see the quality and high prodution values of where the money went and in gameplay, now we are not seeing where these millions are going or what they are being spent on. So the answer is, im not sure anymore, i cant tell now
 
Zacfoldor said:
IIRC the current meaning of AAA wasn't what the original term meant.

Back at the beginning of the Internet when we talked about games, AAA meant a game with a high average review score.

It's wild that it now simply means how the game is funded.
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Nope.

You're mixing up the public understanding of the term with the actual definition of the term.

Back in the day, there was this peak golden era of blockbuster games pushing boundaries, sales, and acclaim all at the same time. The greatest games came from the greatest designers working for the greatest publishers, leading to the greatest success in the market. So the Final Fantasies, the Metal Gears, etc, the games which were huge in scope and hired actors instead of just displaying text and showed a perceivable no-expense-spared approach to production, those games were dominating or influencing the market.

Because publishers saw that gamers recognized the production investment into a title as a seal of quality, marketing started mentioning part of the internal production and distribution alignment letter grades in product promotion. (It's worth asking though whether the term "AAA" was first used early to greenlight a project or if it was cheekily added later as an obnoxious exclamation point on the distro chart, as it was usually only A/B/C; my guess would be the latter?) Similar to how Disney fans started to equate "E-Ticket Ride" with top-tier experience even though it was only meant to regulate park flow and offset budget on expensive productions, magazines and eventually websites (both quoting press releases) started telling consumers about big "AAA" games coming down the pike.

And because a good number of those AAA games actually lived up to their hype (even though many, many, many forgettable ones did not) , the concept stuck in the populace as "AAA = Greatness".

AAA has always meant how a game is funded, or at least marketed (and this funded on the tail end.)
 
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To me it is about budget and normally the best way to tell a game had a relatively high budget is through the quality of character animation detail (mocap) and voice acting in the game. AA and indie games are just as fun to play but that's when I know they put in the big bucks into the game.
 
Obviously money and multiple side studios/contract work but also:

- polish and tutorials/easing the gamer into the game
- accessibility options
- hardware scaling, optimization (even if some don't, they fix it after a few years)
- long term support
- deeper discounts imo

Borderlands 4 runs bad today but give it couple of years, MH Wilds as well.

This isn't always true.

Counter example: GTA Trilogy and RDR remake. GTA Trilogy as of today still runs ass and has terrible KBM controls, aggressive vertical auto-center but RDR1 remake is flawless, smooth and stunning even today with DSR 2.25x and DLAA. GTA trilogy is a shame, truly one of the worst games I have ever played, it looks like some school project lol, performs and handles similar. Like some fucking UE asset flip.
 
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Loomy said:
Budget. That's what it comes down to.

You can, for free, make a game where you throw fireballs at trees and they burn down. That wouldn't be a AAA game, right?

Look at this game coming to early access next year, for example. Not AAA, but fire interacts with the environment in real time and spreads.
Click to expand...

This what I meant. It feels like AAA because of fire expanding, at least for me. That's the AAA thing in there which feels like that
 
TerribleAtThisGame said:
I just perceive "AAA" as Michael Bay games. Presentation and cinematic aspirations over gameplay and design substance. AAA is a euphemism for blockbuster with absurd production values that therefore have to be recouped by appealing to as many customers as possible as main the design goal. Sometimes I enjoy a blockbuster just the same but I've zero interest in this type of thing in the past few years. I like friction and problem solving.

Maybe that's unfair and kneejerk-y but that's what I think when I read AAA.
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From AI: In video games, AAA (pronounced "triple-A") is an informal classification for high-budget, high-profile games typically produced and distributed by mid-sized or major publishers. It is the gaming equivalent of a Hollywood "blockbuster".

The definition is there but for me it's the smaller elements in the game world
 
used to be AAA represents how much work and attention to detail had been put into a game. now a days it only represents how much money went into it. I think I had not really gotten into any AAA game since Cyberpunk 2077. these days I find a lot of indie games and maybe AA games are where the joy of gaming really at. they're usually not beholden by the shareholder's push to squeeze more money out of every aspect of the game and actually brings enjoyment to the players.
 
it's meant to be about budget but that's a bit silly because we can only thumbsuck what we think a budget is before launch, going by the A's analogy, Concord was AAAAA.

so i think now it's more just a reflection of the size and profitability of the publisher who is publishing the game. So like Microprose, A -> AA. Microsoft -> AAA
 
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