AAA (video Game Industry)
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In the
video game industry The video game industry is the tertiary industry, tertiary and quaternary industry, quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the video game development, development, marketing, distribution (marketing), distribution, ...
, AAA (Triple-A) is a
buzzword A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply ...
used to classify
video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
s produced or distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games. In the mid-2010s, the term "AAA+" was used to describe AAA type games that generated additional revenue over time, in a similar fashion to
massively multiplayer online game A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players to interact in the same online game world. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent world, persistent open world, although t ...
s, by using games-as-a-service methods such as
season pass A season ticket, or season pass, is a Ticket (admission), ticket that grants privileges over a defined period of time. History The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' has illustrative quotations which show the term ''season ticket'' used in the ...
es and
expansion pack An expansion pack, expansion set, supplement, or simply expansion, is an addition to an existing role-playing game, tabletop game, video game, collectible card game or Miniature wargaming, miniature wargame. An expansion may introduce new rules ...
s. The similar construction "III" (Triple-I) has also been used to describe high-production-value games in the indie game industry.


History

The term "AAA" began to be used in the late 1990s by game retailers attempting to gauge interest in upcoming titles. The term was likely borrowed from the credit industry's
bond rating In investment, the bond credit rating represents the credit worthiness of corporate or government bond (finance), bonds. The ratings are published by Credit rating agency, credit rating agencies and used by investment professionals to assess the li ...
s, where "AAA" bonds represent the safest investment opportunity and are the most likely to meet their financial goals. One of the first video games to be produced at a blockbuster or AAA scale was Squaresoft's '' Final Fantasy VII'' (1997), which cost an estimated (inflation adjusted ) to develop, making it the most expensive video game ever produced up until then, with its unprecedented cinematic CGI production values,
movie A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...
-like presentation,
orchestral music An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * String instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, a ...
, and innovative blend of gameplay with dynamic cinematic camerawork. Its expensive advertisement campaign was also unprecedented for a video game, with a combined production and marketing budget estimated to be (inflation adjusted ). Its production budget record was later surpassed by
Sega AM2 previously known as is a video game development team within the Japanese multinational video game developer Sega. Yu Suzuki, who had previously developed arcade games for Sega including ''Hang-On'' and ''Out Run'', was the first manager of th ...
's '' Shenmue'' (1999), estimated to have cost (inflation adjusted ). By the
seventh generation of video game consoles The seventh generation of home video game consoles began on November 22, 2005, with the release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 home console. This was followed by the release of Sony's PlayStation 3 on November 17, 2006, and Nintendo's Wii on November ...
(late 2000s), AAA game development on the
Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the Xbox (console), original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detail ...
or
PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...
game consoles typically cost in the low tens of millions of dollars ($15m to $20m) for a new game, with some sequels having even higher total budgets – for example '' Halo 3'' is estimated to have had a development cost of $30m, and a marketing budget of $40m. According to a whitepaper published for EA games (Dice Europe), the seventh generation saw a contraction in the number of video game developing houses creating AAA level titles, reducing from an estimated 125 to around 25, but with a roughly corresponding fourfold increase in staffing required for game development. Triple-A titles produced during the late 1990s and early 2000s brought a shift towards more narrative-driven games that mixed storytelling elements with gameplay. The earlier widespread adoption of
optical media An optical disc is a flat, usuallyNon-circular optical discs exist for fashion purposes; see shaped compact disc. disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid o ...
from early-1990s had brought elements like
cutscene A cutscene or event scene (sometimes in-game cinematic or in-game movie) is a sequence in a video game that is not interactive, interrupting the gameplay. Such scenes are used to show conversations between characters, set the mood, reward the ...
s, and the advances in real-time
3D graphics 3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the purposes of perfor ...
in the mid-1990s further drove new ways to present stories; both elements were incorporated into ''Final Fantasy VII''. With larger budgets, developers were able to find new innovative ways to present narrative as a direct part of gameplay rather than interspersed into pre-rendered cutscenes, with ''
Half-Life Half-life is a mathematical and scientific description of exponential or gradual decay. Half-life, half life or halflife may also refer to: Film * Half-Life (film), ''Half-Life'' (film), a 2008 independent film by Jennifer Phang * ''Half Life: ...
'' one of the first of these new narrative games to nearly eliminate cutscenes in favor of interactive storytelling mechanisms. During the seventh generation, AAA (or "blockbuster") games had marketing at a similar level to high-profile films, with television, billboard and newspaper advertising; a corresponding increasing reliance on sequels, reboots, and similarly franchised IP was also seen, in order to minimize risk. Costs at the end of the generation had risen as high as the hundreds of millions of dollars – the estimated cost of ''
Grand Theft Auto V ''Grand Theft Auto V'' is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the seventh main entry in the Grand Theft Auto, ''Grand Theft Auto'' series, following 2008's ''Grand Theft Auto IV'', and ...
'' was approximately $265m. The same conditions also drove the growth of the indie game scene at the other end of the development spectrum, where lower costs enabled innovation and risk-taking. At around the period of transition from seventh to eighth generation of consoles, the cost of AAA development was considered by some to be a threat to the stability of the industry. Staffing and costs for eighth generation games increased; at
Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Anno'', '' Assassin's Creed'', ' ...
, AAA game development involved 400 to 600 persons for open world games, split across multiple locations and countries. The failure of a single game to meet production costs could lead to the failure of a studio – Radical Entertainment was closed by parent
Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...
despite selling an estimated one million units on console in a short period after release. Triple-A games also began to lose uniqueness and novelty; a common trend were a range of "grey brown"
first-person shooters A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...
that drew on the popularity of the ''
Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest Awards and decorations of the United States Armed Forces, military decoration and is awarded to recognize American United States Army, soldiers, United States Navy, sailors, Un ...
'' and ''
Call of Duty ''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter military video game series and media franchise published by Activision, starting in 2003. The games were first developed by Infinity Ward, then by Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games. Several spin-of ...
'' series but did little to advance gameplay improvements. Ubisoft game director Alex Hutchinson described the AAA franchise model as potentially harmful, stating he thought it led to either
focus group A focus group is a group interview involving a small number (sometimes up to ten) of demographically predefined participants. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are used in market researc ...
-tested products aimed at maximizing profit, and/or a push towards ever higher graphics fidelity and impact at a cost of depth or gameplay. The limited risk-taking in the AAA arena and stagnation of new gameplay concepts led to the rise of indie games in the early 2010s, which were seen as more experimental. This also led to the creation of the "AA" market in the industry, larger studios that were not at the scale of AAA developers but had more experience, funding, and other factors to make them distinct from the smaller teams usually associated with indie studios. AAA game development has been identified as one environment where crunch time and other working pressures that negatively affect employees are particularly evident. In a 2023 report by the UK
Competition and Markets Authority The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is the principal competition regulator in the United Kingdom. It is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair beh ...
which blocked the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft it was stated that AAA games that were greenlit for a potential release in 2024 and 2025 received an average development budget of $200 million and up an increase from an average of a $50 million to $150 million from 2018. Court documents presented in a case accusing Activision of contributing towards the Uvalde school shooting revealed that the budgets for three ''Call of Duty'' games released between 2015 and 2020 had budgets of $450 million to $700 million.


Related terms


AAA+

In general use, the term "AAA+" (Triple-A-Plus) may refer to a subset of AAA games that are the highest selling or have the highest production values. However, there are at least two more specific meanings. The first describes AAA games with additional methods of revenue generation, generally through purchases in addition to the cost of the base game. The desire for profitability has caused publishers to look at alternative
revenue model A revenue model is a framework for generating financial income. There can be a variety of ways for revenue generation such as the production model, manufacturing model, as well as the construction model. A revenue model identifies which revenue sou ...
s, where players continued to contribute revenue after the initial purchase, either by premium models, DLC, online passes, and other forms of
subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century. It ...
. In the mid 2010s large publishers began a focus on games engineered to have a
long tail In statistics and business, a long tail of some distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having many occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution. The distribution could involve popularities, random n ...
in terms of revenue from individual consumers, similar to the way MMO games generate income – these included those with expansion or season pass content such as with ''
Destiny Destiny, sometimes also called fate (), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. Fate Although often used interchangeably, the words ''fate'' and ''destiny'' ...
'', ''
Battlefield A battlefield, battleground, or field of battle is the location of a present or historic battle involving ground warfare. It is commonly understood to be limited to the point of contact between opposing forces, though battles may involve troop ...
'', and the ''
Call of Duty ''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter military video game series and media franchise published by Activision, starting in 2003. The games were first developed by Infinity Ward, then by Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games. Several spin-of ...
'' series; and those which generated revenue from selling in-game items, sometimes purely cosmetic, such as ''
Overwatch ''Overwatch'' (abbreviated as OW) is a multimedia franchise centered on a series of multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment. ''Overwatch (video game), Overwatch'' was released in 2016 with a success ...
'' or ''
League of Legends ''League of Legends'' (''LoL'', commonly referred to as ''League'', is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by ''Defense of the Ancients'', a Mod (video games), custom map for ''Warcraf ...
''. Titles of this type are sometimes referred to as "AAA+". In 2016, '' Gameindustry.biz'' described AAA+ games as products that "combine AAA production values and aesthetics with
Software as a Service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...
(SaaS) principles to keep players engaged for months or even years".


AA (Double-A)

"AA" or Double-A games are mid-market video games that typically have some type of professional development though typically outside of the large first-party studios of the major developers; these may be from larger teams of indie developers in addition to larger non-indie studios. Double-A studios tend to range from 50 to 100 people in size. A double-A development studio will typically be backed by a publisher but not fundamentally part of that publisher, and thus have somewhat more freedom to innovate and experiment compared to triple-A studios, though will still be constrained by specific risk-limiting targets and goals from their funding source. Double-A games generally tend to be priced lower compared to triple-A games. Examples of games considered to be double-A titles include '' PUBG: Battlegrounds'', '' DayZ'', and '' Clair Obscur: Expedition 33''.


III

"III" (Triple-I) has been used to refer to independently funded ("indie") games that meet an analogous quality level in their field; i.e., indie games that have relatively high budget, scope, and ambition; often the development team includes staff who have experience working on full AAA titles. In 2018, GamesIndustry.biz considered examples of III games to include '' Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey'', '' Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice'', and '' The Witness''.


AAAA

Starting in 2020 leading up to the launch of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X, two studios started using the term AAAA (Quadruple-A) to describe upcoming games in development. Microsoft's studio, The Initiative, is working on its debut title ''
Perfect Dark ''Perfect Dark'' is a 2000 first-person shooter developed and published by Rare for the Nintendo 64. The first game of the '' Perfect Dark'' series, it follows Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute research centre, as she attempts ...
'' for Xbox that's self-described as being a AAAA game, while Ubisoft announced '' Beyond Good and Evil 2'' and ''
Skull and Bones Skull and Bones (also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death) is an undergraduate senior Secret society#Colleges and universities, secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior-class ...
'' would both be AAAA games. Despite the announcements, there is no agreed-upon definition for the term AAAA or what it entails. Olivia Harris of ''
Screen Rant ''Screen Rant'' is an entertainment website that offers news in the fields of television, films, video games, and comic books. It is owned by Valnet, parent of publications including Comic Book Resources, Collider, MovieWeb and XDA Developers. ...
'' noted in September 2020 that "it hasn't been adopted by the game industry at large," adding that "perhaps it's just the latest self-aggrandizing
buzzword A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply ...
conjured up to help games stand out in their incredibly competitive field."


Other terms

The console video game industry lacks the equivalent of a
B movie A B movie, or B film, is a type of cheap, low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second ...
, made-for-TV, or
direct-to-video Direct-to-video or straight-to-video refers to the release of a film, television series, short or special to the public immediately on home video formats rather than an initial theatrical release or television premiere. This distribution strat ...
scene. However, titles such as '' Deadly Premonition'' and '' Binary Domain'' have been dubbed "B games" due to developing
cult following A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The latter is often called a cult classic. A film, boo ...
s or accruing significant amounts of critical praise despite widely acknowledged flaws, with critics often noting that such a game's ambitions in the face of budget limitations add to the game's charm (a trait common among B movies). Games like this are the exception and, when they are not critically well-received, are often referred to as " bargain bin" titles. The term shovelware has also been used to describe games that are quickly made without great care for the quality of the product as to make easy sales to consumers, as a metaphor for shoveling material onto a pile. Licensed video game tie-ins for films often tend to be considered shovelware, for example.


See also

* Nintendo Seal of Quality


References

{{Video game genre Video game industry Video game development