AAA

[Thursday Next]

Dean actually makes a good point. From an advertising law perspective, if the Murasaki Baby developers stated in marketing that it was a AAA game, there would be no fallout, because it is a marketing fluff term that has no clearly defined meaning beyond a generally positive vibe.

 

 That's my professional opinion.

[TheMightyEthan]

I'd agree that it's not well-defined enough to support a claim of false advertising, but that doesn't mean it's entirely without meaning.

 

*Edit* - Again, like the term "Blockbuster".

Edited May 23, 2014 by TheMightyEthan

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Dean actually makes a good point. From an advertising law perspective, if the Murasaki Baby developers stated in marketing that it was a AAA game, there would be no fallout, because it is a marketing fluff term that has no clearly defined meaning beyond a generally positive vibe.

 

 That's my professional opinion.

 

Oh please if Team Meat starting calling Mewgenics AAA the internet would shit a brick

[deanb]

The internet shitting a brick about an indie darling? Unlikely.

 

If the term had meaning then it would be defined. It's like calling a game "pretty" or "innovative". There's not much beyond opinion on it. Many have said it's based on money, but how much and from what? Money spent or money taken? Can Indie titles be AAA or only titles made by publishers? Can a phone game be AAA? Is it based on review scores?

 

Blockbuster is defined by the takings. Which would mean for a direct translation AAA games would include the likes of:

Minecraft, Wii Play, Nintendogs, Wii Fit (in fact a lot of Nintendo games), Angry Birds, League of Legends etc.

 

Which does highlight a minor issue in the "blockbuster" stuff in that blockbuster is based on the cinema takings, games don't have the two-stage life cycle of films. Movies don't also tend to show the film for free, with optional scenes or new outfits for the actors purchasable as you watch. So it's a pretty hard analogy to directly translate to gaming without skipping a pretty hefty amount of non-console games. Though I would imagine for many people they wouldn't mind that since they probably might not consider anything out of the non-indie, console only, non-F2P spectrum to be able to be "AAA". Which this wouldn't at all be related to the fact console games from top publishers tend to have those top marketing budgets with their "gameplay" trailers for their must-have "AAA" games.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Blockbuster is defined by the takings. Which would mean for a direct translation AAA games would include the likes of:

Minecraft, Wii Play, Nintendogs, Wii Fit (in fact a lot of Nintendo games), Angry Birds, League of Legends etc.

 

I've never heard of these games referred to as AAA. Non AAA games can get popular.

[deanb]

Yeah, would be kind of the point. Many are saying that AAA = Blockbuster. But as you say many folks wouldn't class "blockbuster" games as AAA. It just doesn't really neatly fit. AAA games are the games we're told are AAA.

[TheMightyEthan]

No, I analogized it to a blockbuster, I didn't say they were synonyms.

[Strangelove]

I skimmed a lot of the stuff here, but I always assumed AAA meant the most expensive games with the most mainstream marketing. Tv commercials, ads on sides of buses, Jimmy Fallon "interviews". Being known by people who dont spend that much time on the internet. You know, normal people.

Thats what separates something like Minecraft from CoD or Assassin's Creed. Minecraft sells like crazy and is extremely popular in it's own right, but Id never classify it as AAA. Im also not sure how much it costs to make, but I personally don't think it looks expensive and I personally have never seen that many ads for it. It was mostly word of mouth that made it so popular.

Mostly to me it's about money. Budget and sales. Spending a shitload of money and making a shitload of it back and then some. It's not even about graphics or sound design or whatever else people may think. The Dead Space games, Mirror's Edge and Bayonetta always had the sheen of AAA, but I don't think a lot of people would group it with CoD, GTA, or Halo. It's just not up there.

 

And if I had to absolutely relate it to films, id say it was something like Avatar or Avengers against something like No Country for Old Men or Wolf of Wallstreet. All extremely successful films both commercially and critically, none were indie or even close to it, but Avatar and Avengers were ridiculous in how much money they made and how popular they became. And they were also expensive as hell and had tons of marketing.
 

AAA is kind of just a whole other world.

[toxicitizen]

When someone says blockbusters, I think more along the lines of big summer movies rather than strictly financially successful ones. i.e. Transformers, Marvel, etc... Not all of them will necessarily be good or even financial successes. Same goes for AAA games. It's not a perfect analogy but it works.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, if How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days had made a billion dollars, it still wouldn't be a "blockbuster".

 

I mean, from the Wikipedia article:

 

The term "blockbuster" in film generally speaks to the size of both the narrative and the scale of production.

 

"The scale of production" is a perfect way to describe what makes something AAA (or at least one aspect of it).

 

*Edit* - I can't believe this didn't occur to me before.  The first sentence of the AAA Wikipedia article is

 

In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion.

Edited May 25, 2014 by TheMightyEthan

[toxicitizen]

Yep. I think we're done here.

[deanb]

"no dean it's totally not a marketing term"

 

"with most mainstream marketing"

"level of promotion"

 

Seriously, no one honestly grasping its use as a marketing term where it's mainstream if you're told it's mainstream. The wiki itself states its origin comes from the Seal of Quality, just one that can be used by any in the game. And would you guys honestly believe that most of the AAA games that come out now are defect free? Heck onto the change of the term as the wiki article Ethan is using states it then became in line with a the ratings scores. But then hey it became even more advanced than that. Don't need to know the scores or the launch quality of the game because:

 

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.

 

A game is AAA because you are told it's AAA.

 

Interstellar Marines is an AAA game. Cost roughly $125,000+ to make, far below that of the GTA's and CODs. But it is an AAA game. It says right thier on their page. They can say it because it's a meaningless marketing term. No one from ASA is going to be coming down to check their books and make sure they spent $25million on advertising their game. It doesn't have to conform to a specific metacritic rating. It doesn't have to have a set amount of sales in order to call their game an AAA game.

 

Come on guys, how many gameplay trailers of the beta of the upcoming must-have AAA games do we need to go through before realising that the marketing departments are quite capable of putting out any old bullcrap terms to build hype, media attention and hopefully sales, before people realise the trailer was in-engine, nothing was changed from the beta and the game buggy as hell but with a marketing budget far surpassing the development budget.

[TheMightyEthan]

I didn't say it wasn't a marketing term, I just said it wasn't meaningless. It has a meaning.

[TornadoCreator]

I'd never really considered that the term AAA could be subject to interpretation. I've always seen it as this...

 

AAA Game - Heavily marketed big budget titles intended to sell millions at the standardized price point of $60/£45. It has no bearing on quality but development method. Film analogy would be the Hollywood action blockbuster.

 

Specialist Game - Niche title designed to compete with the AAA titles but with a lesser budget, smaller scope, and an understanding that this game will be unlikely to be overly innovative. Intended to sell to a niche audience so usually designed with the understanding that it probably won't break 1 million sales. Film analogy would be horror films like the Saw films, niche audience, lower budget, but still shown in cinemas.

 

Budget Game - Cheap to make games, usually using either last gen hardware or using assets from an existing AAA games owned by the same developer (eg. Captain Toad on Wii U). Usually sold at a reduced price or as a spin off for an existing franchise, sometimes done as DLC nowadays (eg. Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare). Film analogy would be direct-to-DVD films.

 

Indie Game - Cheap, often retro-themed or highly stylised game with a low budget, lower price point, and intended to be judged outside of the mainstream AAA scene. Film analogy would be indie films shown at Sundance that rarely make it to cinema.

 

A strong game industry needs all these models of games because it's simply too expensive to make all games AAA. Unfortunately no-one told Square Enix, Activision, EA, or Ubisoft... which is why all these games come out nowadays needing 5+ million sales to break even. Not content to make a good game that gets decent sales in a niche audience, todays devs want ALL THE MONEY! That's why previously niche titles like Resident Evil, Dark Souls, and Dead Space are butchered and forced to become AAA. So envious of the likes of Call Of Duty or GTA selling 25+ million copies, devs pump money into every franchise in the hope they'll do the same and panic when they realise that the CoD fans don't care because they already have CoD, and the old fans consider the game watered-down. There's no market for AAA survival horror, stealth games, or super-hard hybrid RPGs... but as niche titles they'd be fine which is why games like Amnesia and Slender did fine. If I can see this why can't so called "industry experts"?

[TheMightyEthan]

Can you give some examples of what you'd call a "specialist game"?

[TornadoCreator]

Can you give some examples of what you'd call a "specialist game"?

 

Sure, a good example is Dark Souls. A game designed around difficult action-RPG gameplay it had an understandably small niche audience, therefore its budget was appropriately sized too. While the remake of Tomb Raider was causing panic for Square Enix because it needed to sell 6 million units to just break even, From Software celebrated massive profits when Dark Souls broke 1 million sales... naturally they've now decided to ruin it all by giving the franchise a AAA budget, and there's no way it'll get 6-10 million sales and actually make money. Shame really.

 

Some of the struggling AAA franchises of today started as Specialist Games. The Hitman series and the Max Payne series for example, both started with specialist game budgets and small dev teams of less than a dozen people. Now they've got a massive budget, 100+ development staff, and unrealistic sales targets. 

 

Some specialist games still exist. The J-RPG series 'Tales Of...' and the Dynasty Warriors series are both good examples. They're still clearly current-gen, but by using slightly cheaper development methods they only need to sell on average around 600,000 copies to make a profit. This is more realistic for most games, but developer/publisher pride takes over and they delude themselves into thinking they can sell niche appeal games to Call Of Duty players if they could just get enough marketing...

 

...and these companies wonder why the industry is in colapse. THQ, Atari, Capcom... how many more have to go bankrupt or into liquidation I wonder?

Edited July 4, 2014 by TornadoCreator

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Oops. Bit slow there.

Edited July 4, 2014 by TheFlyingGerbil