Editorial: Are AAA Games Losing Their Relevence?

Editorial on CVG.

My answer: No. Next question.

The trouble is risk-mitigation. Big-budget titles are growing less ambitious and far more samey (the joke is that all Western developers really only want to make one kind of game, some Co D hybrid), while it gets easier for Indie companies to gain recognition, and the "Awards" circuit is just as out-of-touch as its always been.

The industry is headed to some great schism or new collapse, that much is certain.

Except it's going to a place where "pretentious = good".

Maybe to your eye? I cant say I can think of a AAA game in the last 2-3 years that actually interested me enough to be a day one purchase.

hell, what the he;ll does AAA game even mean, really?

edited 6th Mar '13 10:43:36 AM by Midgetsnowman

Not really. While shit like Fez and Braid will continue to be made and praised as "deep" and "fun", we've got a great cast of new games coming from Kickstarter. Star Citizen, Wasteland 2, Torment, Project Eternity, etc.

edited 6th Mar '13 10:42:58 AM by Kev-O

You don't like Fez and Braid? How come?

4xThe only game I can associate the word "prententious" with is Heavy Rain, not something like Journey.

edited 6th Mar '13 11:06:26 AM by ThatOtherGriffin

The problem with AAA games is they require massive budgets that often go way too much into marketing.

Look at Resident Evil 6, even selling millions it was deemed a failure.

If the bubble has not burst yet, its getting close.

edited 6th Mar '13 11:08:23 AM by Thorn14

AAA refers mostly to the resources that go into the production of the game. Big budget or blockbuster also work, but those terms are associated with filmaking. Unsurprisingly, a lot of games in the AAA scene are described using movie buzzwords.

I can honestly say that Dear Esther fits under pretentious as well.

so games geared towards the lowest common denominator.

Granted, I admit to kind of wanting assasins creed 3 and tomb raider. but the reviews for AC 3 turned me off before I wasted the money.

Really, some of the indie stuff I've gotten for Linux like Crusader Kings II (/broken record) and FTL Faster Than Light is better than any recent AAA title I've played.

Ni No Kuni counts as triple a, doesn't it? I bought that at full price the week it came out. Don't regret it. I got Skyrim the same way on the xbox. I have bought a helluva lot of other triple a titles when they came out on Steam sale or second hand though, so overall, no, I don't think they are losing all of their relevance, I just exercise my right as a consumer to choose when and where to buy them.

the closest to AAA I've bought at release lately is Atelier Ayesha

....Atlier games have never been considered AAA games....

..well, then that narrows the list down to zero.

In what market would that be the case? I have a feeling, without doing any google fu, that they are triple a rated games in Japan.

That's more of a double A game.

Hmmm...Metal Gear Rising is AAA, isn't it? And the consensus seems to be that it's pretty damn awesome.

AAA games aren't losing their relevance, there will always be a market for them.

They are losing their chokehold over the industry. Independent developers are finding ways to make the niche titles that are either ignored or bastardised in the AAA industry without the need for publishers or huge budgets.

So we're just getting more variety, and this is a good thing.

No, MGS 4 might have been but not rising. There wasn't a massive advertising campaign for example, which is needed for AAA.

Oh right.

...it's slowly dawning upon me that I have no idea what makes an AAA title. :?

How big does an ad campaign have to be? Because I remember several E3s with it being paraded. Though, I wonder if the ad campaign really needs to be any bigger than "It's a new Metal Gear game".

Production values and marketing, like I said. The number of people working on it could be another indication: if a team has more than 100 people on it, chances are good that it's a AAA title. This article is a good explanation of both what a AAA game is and the problems with AAA development.

Billboards in NYC and ads on the sides of buses in San Francisco are generally a good sign. Superbowl ads are another.

edited 6th Mar '13 4:32:05 PM by Watashiwa

The last AAA I remember getting actively exited for was Kid Icarus Uprising

Which was fun, funny, interesting and played nothing like any on-rails/action-platformer I played.

(Do Nintendo handheld games even count as Triple AAA? Or is that reserved for the PS 360 "mature" Games?)