The term 'AAA' has nothing to do with production values or budgets

[DonFerrari]

danasider said:
I did a google search and came up with the following:

As per Wikipedia: In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") or Triple-A is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game or to be among the year's bestsellers.

Sure, it's Wikipedia, but all of the following results said the same thing in slightly different words. So there is a perception of expected sales or quality, because people conflate big budget and high production values. Doesn't mean the end product is going to be good. We see overhyped big budget games fail frequently. However, there is a perception and expectation that quality and sales come from putting a lot of resources into the development.

So I agree that not all AAA games are great. However, I disagree that this changes the definition of the phrase. The phrase is about budget and promotion. Quality is assumed but not necessarily realized. Can't change that, just because there are heavily promoted games with huge budgets that end up sucking.

Yep, a lot of AAA are shit and several B or A games are great. Doesn't change that the first one put a lot more money on it (and usually will sell a lot more).

Myself I end up buying most of my games when they are both AAA and good.

irstupid said:

DonFerrari said:

I think that for movies they need to sell a lot to be blockbusters (movies that the waiting line would go over the block), but yes generally they'll all be those high budget and usually action movies.

Would you not consider John Carter a blockbuster? The movie cost a shit ton and marketing was huge. The movie was a giant bomb. Like one of the largest of all time.

Shiken said:

Then we as gamers need to word things better when making certain requests.  Like instead of saying, "I want more 3rd party AAA games on Switch," people should say  " I want more QUALITY 3rd party games on Switch."

 

Most people would rather have games like Octopath Traveler, Mario Plus Rabbids, or Fortnite on the console than many of the other lackluster AAA games.  They would be nice to have, and people would brag, but quality seems to be trumping games that cost more to make.  Even the better AAA games that do come to Switch seem to struggle despite people wanting them on the system.  DOOM and Wolf 2 for example, while great ports, lacked in quality when compared to their counterparts.  But cheaper games that are just as good like Crash, Sonic Mania, Octopath, etc are selling like hotcacks.  So when most Switch gamers beg for more AAA 3rd party games, they are not truly asking for what they want based on sales numbers.

 

I am not saying you are wrong, it is just a difference of perspective.  One party is looking at it from a consumer standpoint (mainly Nintendo fans) while the other is looking at it from a development standpoint.  Both sides have a point, and while the development standpoint seems to be the traditional term, a difference in perspective is causing a lose in translation when the topic is discussed.

Obviously we want quality and quality helps a system sell as well, but whether or not a AAA game ends up being good or sells well in the end, before it is released it works as one giant advertisement for the system. People will buy a system for the promise of a future AAA game coming out for it. When the game comes out and sucks, it don't matter, the system was already sold and that consumer is in the ecosystem for that system.

So when people want say Call of Duty for the Switch, it's not because they give a shit about the game, it because they want those that do give a shit about that game to buy the Switch.

John Carter may have been created to be a blockbuster, but for me if it didn't bust the block it aint block buster (I may be wrong and for Hollywood blockbuster mean only high budget, but for me, only if it had high sales it would be blockbuster).

And also there are some that want CoD on the system not because they will play but just so they don't see the publisher not caring about the system as they do. Myself I wouldn't have any complain if they dropped the yearly sport and fps games on PS4, but I know that would probably impact a lot the sales of the system.

GoOnKid said:

Alright, thanks to all of you so far. Thanks to some of your posts (especially by vivster and Shiken) I realized that there are indeed two ways to look at this subject and I realized that I indeed looked at it from the wrong side. I can admit that. In hindsight I should have made a different thread that revolves around the link between high budgets and good games. This is an entire different subject and doesn't fit into this thread, so maybe this one can be locked, I guess.

Still, nobody of us can truly explain when a game is AAA and when it isn't yet. We can only make guesses.

danasider said:
I did a google search and came up with the following:

As per Wikipedia: In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") or Triple-A is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game or to be among the year's bestsellers.

Sure, it's Wikipedia, but all of the following results said the same thing in slightly different words. So there is a perception of expected sales or quality, because people conflate big budget and high production values. Doesn't mean the end product is going to be good. We see overhyped big budget games fail frequently. However, there is a perception and expectation that quality and sales come from putting a lot of resources into the development.

So I agree that not all AAA games are great. However, I disagree that this changes the definition of the phrase. The phrase is about budget and promotion. Quality is assumed but not necessarily realized. Can't change that, just because there are heavily promoted games with huge budgets that end up sucking.

This is exactly the thing. There is a level of expectation about the quality when we see or hear that a game has a high buget. Let's look at future blockbuster games like Ghost of Tsuhima or Smash Ultimate. We easily consider those games as AAA because they look huge and have high efforts put into them. But we don't know how expensive they are to be produced. We only project a high quality into them as we believe that a) high budgets are to some extent necessary for games like these and b) high budgets ensure that these games will be good and c) other games that look similar are known to be expensive. All of those are nothing but guesses.

Nogamez said:
What planet are you from? AAA means production values and money, nothing about quality, its a phrase that was coined to describe a certain game(s), similar to a blockbuster movie. Why are you coming round here trying to sprout bullshit that aint true?

You've probably had a bad day, hadn't you? Wanna grab some ice cream, perhaps?

It is not that hard to investigate and see if a game could be qualified as high budget.