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what does AAA stand for? Why do we even use it? Why not just use "blockbuster" instead?

64bitmodels

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Why do we even use the term 'AAA' for big budget, popular games?

It doesn't stand for anything. AAA implies it's some sort of acronym, but the As don't stand for anything... they're just there.

Blockbuster for movies makes sense, as it comes from "blockbuster bombs" implying that they had a major impact... Which is true for big movies coming out. AAA doesn't have that same effect. it sounds like a battery type. Same for AA.

If anything, Indie is the one that makes the most sense. Afterall, it's a cute shortening of the word Independent. There's nothing left up to interpretation, it makes full sense.

For the biggest, most widely discussed games on this forum and in the gaming sphere, you think it'd make more sense that we give it a better term, no?
 
64bitmodels

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Comandr said:
Because spelling out “triple A” is stupid.

Edit for moar:

But see you defeated your own argument. We don’t say “A A A” when referring to batteries. You say double A or triple A. Unless you’re a psychopath I guess
Click to expand...
well yeah. What does the A in triple A stand for and why should we use it over any other term when referring to big budget video games with high prod values?
 
kyussman

kyussman

Member
Everybody knows what a AAA game is and what to expect from one......I guess that's why it's used,why would you change it if everyone understands it's meaning.
 
Muffdraul

Muffdraul

Member
It's just a rating and its meaning in gaming context has changed over the years. When I first started hearing it, probably late 80s or early 90s, it just meant 'very good high quality game.' At some point it seemed to shift to more like 'very expensive mega budget high profile game' even if the game in question was generally regarded to suck. The change became apparent to me ages ago when I think I referred to Mario Galaxy as a AAA game and everyone else was like 'wtf are you talking about, dude? Mario isn't AAA, it has a small budget and a small dev team." I thought, "Yeah, and? wtf does that have to do with it?" Referring to games as AAA predates the time when studios started to be so open and transparent about their project budgets. It wasn't until around the era of FFVII/MGS1 that started to become common.
 
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ReBurn

ReBurn

Gold Member
Letter range scales like A, AA and AAA are widely used to grade the risk of financial instruments. AAA is seen as the safest where A (which is better than BBB) is a medium risk. So the scale is valid. A to AAA is as good a scale as any to measure video game budgets I guess.
 
Zannegan

Zannegan

Member
As I understand it, it's just a budget designation and a holdover from film.

You've heard of a B-movie, right? When you hear the term, you think of a cheaply-made movie with poor special effects, no-name actors, etc. That's because it's a medium-low budget production. A-level movies were the big budget blockbusters.

As game budgets ballooned, big publishers wanted a way to distinguish their bigger, much more expensive games from other A-level games, so they came up with the term "AAA" to mark games that had assets and effects (and therefore budgets) multiple times that of regular ol' A-level games. It worked, and gamers picked up the term and started using it to designate game quality, just like the pubs wanted.

DISCLAIMER: This could all be head-canon. I've been confidently wrong before. Lol.
 
Wildebeest

Wildebeest

Member
Some people argue that computer games are different to other mass media because they were seemingly highly commodified from the start and never really had an "artistic" mission for existing. So in that way it makes sense for them to be categorised by their financial quality rather than their influence on society. But really this "accountant centric" vision of the game industry only came about after about 2000 when the corporate take over and lockdown of the games industry had fully established itself.
 
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L

LazyParrot

Member
64bitmodels said:
Blockbuster for movies makes sense, as it comes from "blockbuster bombs" implying that they had a major impact.
Click to expand...
What if they flop, though, and don't have much of an impact at all?

Most people on this board would probably agree that an Anthem was an AAA game. But could you really call it a blockbuster if the impact it had was limited to making people laugh at EA?
 
F

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
64bitmodels said:
Why do we even use the term 'AAA' for big budget, popular games?
Click to expand...
AAA is a monicker for quality in certain industries (mostly finance - which is what this is based on for games anyway - it basically just means budget size).

64bitmodels said:
Blockbuster for movies makes sense, as it comes from "blockbuster bombs" implying that they had a major impact... Which is true for big movies coming out. AAA doesn't have that same effect. it sounds like a battery type. Same for AA.
Click to expand...
Yes - but games have been chasing movies for decades, but don't want to BE movies - just ... kind of LIKE them but better. Just ask Chris Roberts if in doubt.
 
ReBurn

ReBurn

Gold Member
LazyParrot said:
What if they flop, though, and don't have much of an impact at all?

Most people on this board would probably agree that an Anthem was an AAA game. But could you really call it a blockbuster if the impact it had was limited to making people laugh at EA?
Click to expand...
I think it's more the expectation of performance than the actual performance. Giving a game a AAA budget doesn't guarantee success. Look at the most recent Saint's Row. $100 million budget and flopped, but would still be considered AAA.
 
L

LazyParrot

Member
ReBurn said:
I think it's more the expectation of performance than the actual performance. Giving a game a AAA budget doesn't guarantee success. Look at the most recent Saint's Row. $100 million budget and flopped, but would still be considered AAA.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's my point. OP's suggestion that we use the term blockbuster instead fails to account for the fact that there are plenty of AAA games that don't turn out to be blockbusters.
 
SmokedMeat

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Blockbuster is a term earned by being a huge ticket seller. It’d be silly referring to a movie as a Blockbuster simply because it has a big budget.

Big budget movies bomb too.

The AAA term is accepted and understood across the industry. It just refers to budget size, not success.
 
Sakura

Sakura

Member
It is a rather pointless term as pretty much everything is either AAA or it isn't.
Whether something is AAA or not too is pretty arbitrary as there is no set budget for when something becomes AAA, and for most games, we don't know what their budgets are anyway.
I don't think we need any specific term because it serves very little meaning.
 
StreetsofBeige

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
To me, AAA just means a game with high productions values. It doesn't mean the product is good though.

It's like sports. The pro league has the most revenue, teams have high payrolls, and the league has the slickest production values on TV played in the best stadiums.

But the teams can be pure dog shit.
 
CamHostage

CamHostage

Member
ReBurn said:
Letter range scales like A, AA and AAA are widely used to grade the risk of financial instruments. AAA is seen as the safest where A (which is better than BBB) is a medium risk. So the scale is valid. A to AAA is as good a scale as any to measure video game budgets I guess.
Click to expand...

And like most industry terms, it probably should never have escaped the board room...

However, some cokey marketing manager was hype for the sound of it in drafting a press release, or some markass writer grabbed the term from a corporate doc, and now we have to argue forever more if Nintendo games are AAA when they don't even have voice acting or if "AAAA" is really a thing.
 
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Robb

Robb

Gold Member
It just means a game with a big budget.

To me blockbuster isn’t synonymous as a AAA game doesn’t have to have a big impact, or any impact at all. It’s just about the budget. If Stardew Valley had the same budget as The Last of Us they’d both be AAA games.
 
ReBurn

ReBurn

Gold Member
CamHostage said:
And like most industry terms, it probably should never have escaped the board room...

However, some cokey marketing manager was hype for the sound of it in drafting a press release, or some markass writer grabbed the term from a corporate doc, and now we have to argue forever more if Nintendo games are AAA when they don't even have voice acting or if "AAAA" is really a thing.
Click to expand...
Someone wrote a wiki page about it

en.wikipedia.org

AAA (video game industry) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

They say it started at conventions in the late 90's.
 
Trilobit

Trilobit

Member
According to Google a blockbuster is "a film, book, or other product that is a great commercial success."

In that respect you could consider Minecraft a blockbuster, but I don't think I see it as an AAA game. So Ax3 seems a better denotation to high budget games.
 
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CamHostage

CamHostage

Member
ReBurn said:
Someone wrote a wiki page about it

en.wikipedia.org

AAA (video game industry) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

They say it started at conventions in the late 90's.
Click to expand...

Right, but then the way that got out to the public was from it being picked up as an insider term by like DieHard Game Fan or somebody like that looking to make their report seem more in-the-know. Usually these industry terms get reinterpreted in enthusiast press to relate in common language to the public. Gaming luckily doesn't have a Variety magazine where these terms get regurgitated as if a mass audience is full of smart marks in on the industry kayfabe. (And writers know that "AAA" doesn't mean a product is going to ensure purchasing quality... the thing's not even done yet at that point, all that's known is that the best people and biggest amount of money is being thrown at it to try to make it a blockbuster.) Yet sometimes these terms do escape out and become part of popular lexicon.

Not that we the public could have avoided the term. At some point, E3 went from a trade show to a public unveiling where downloadable/streaming video or DVD recordings of these conference events were shown in their entirety to the public. At points in the middle of that transition, the execs still did the business of the industry show speak in between the jazzed-up showings for public consumption, and so words like "AAA" and "IP" were thrown around for the people in the room, as did sales projections and other boring shop talk. (Press releases from studio slate announcements or publisher investor relations meetings also got out in the public with the dispersion capabilities of the internet, and those would have had industry terms embedded in them as well.) At some point, 'AAA' wormed its way out into the public, and now it's here to stay.

"AAA" came to us regular people from suit-and-tie trade show events like this one, where anything to make the audience's ears perk up for 2 seconds helped get through the business at hand.

 
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ahtlas7

ahtlas7

Member
A grading system with meanings something like this:
HOVAjWc.jpg
 
DemonGamerTTT

DemonGamerTTT

Member
It depends on the company making the game...


I could mean:
  • A very polished high budget game made with ambition
  • A somewhat good game that sits on a bigger name
  • A shit pay to win trash made for retards that just like to post screenshots of their "transmogs","outfits" or any other virtual shit they don't even own(soccer player cards????) online
  • A shit pay to pay more trash made for man-child retards that will do/pay whatever the company running the game asks
 
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