What are AAA games?

[𝓢𝓸𝓽𝓪𝓲]

AAA games, "top" games, etc. Who or what decides this? The amount of sales? The metascore? The development budget? The number of online players? Other? All of the above? And whatever of those it may be, what exactly is the threshold?

[ProChaser [Linux]]

It's simlpe - it's on you what you consider AAA :)

[Ve]

I think it's all of what you said, with the exception of the number of online players.

[Oerthling]

Big budget game with high quality graphics hyped by big budget marketing bought by millions.
Not always the best gameplay.

But you already knew that. ;-)

[headlesscyborg]

I was thinking about that too. Is HL2 AAA game for example?

[Cosmo]

I think Portal 2 (possibly also Portal, but I don't much about the hype back then) would qualify, but I don't know that HL2 would.

Personally, to me they appear to be a combination of big budget and big hype. The primary consideration is hype, at least, so far as it is relevant to getting a port.

[Oerthling]

HL2 - yes.
The only reason you are unsure about this is that it is an old game.
At launch time it was a AAA title.
Now it's a few years old and looks a bit dated.

On the plus side - gameplay often doesn't age nearly as much as the look and feel of game.
While graphics tech and the effort put into the media assets increases every year - gameplay is more a matter of good game design and can stay great. In fact many modern games are no better and sometimes worse when it comes to the actual gameplay compared to games from a decde or 2 ago.
I rmember games from SSI that I would buy immediately - even with crappy late 80s/early 90s graphics if only they were available for modern hardware and OS.

The big studios will always sacrifice faetures and geat ideas and loving details in favour of stuff that looks great during the marketing hype. And they'll happily duimb down everything if that gets more sales.

While you wrote your question I bought HL2 for Linux. :-)

[UnkendTech]

CS was too

[Shark]

Triple A titles are high budget games which are published by big publishers like Valve, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, ect. Atm only have trple A titles by Valve and Serious Sam 3 on Steam for Linux.

[[FIT]hmnt]

So is there a specific reason why it is AAA and not AA or AAAA for example? I mean who decides this?

[sounds like a wooosh]

It is only big budget games I think.

At least for example Steam considers great games with high quality even as "Indie" if they were not made by one of the big mentioned companies. AAA is therefore not a sign of quality at all. It just says that the company normally spends huge amounts of money for the production of a title. (And its advertisement.) Which could of course lead to good quality! But that is often not the case. Instead bigger innovations are easier to realize in smaller projects where it is less risky to try new ways.

[𝓢𝓸𝓽𝓪𝓲]

"Triple A titles are high budget games which are published by big publishers like Valve, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, ect."

If this is it, it doesn't answer the question about what makes them "big"? Is it simply the net worth, thus development budget? And if it is that, at what monetary threshold does one developer's game go from A to AA to AAA? What is the monetary number of the budget which defines it? Is it just a matter of opinion as others have noted?

[sounds like a wooosh]

Originally posted by Info-High:

what makes them "big"?

I think it just means "big" without any comparaison given.
I'd say it's the money they invested in the production and advertisement.

[Cool Chulainn]

Originally posted by FIThmnt:

So is there a specific reason why it is AAA and not AA or AAAA for example? I mean who decides this?

Thank you. Nobody can or will answer this question. Nobody actually decides this; "AAA games" is just a buzzword/buzzphrase that people keep throwing around but really is meaningless, considering that everyone's definition will be different.

I really wish people would stop making claims that "Steam for Linux won't be big until it starts including more AAA titles." I'd rather have high-quality indie games that are cheap and fun to play than expensive, intensive, computer-overheating, so-called "AAA" games.

[𝓢𝓸𝓽𝓪𝓲]

"I really wish people would stop making claims that "Steam for Linux won't be big until it starts including more AAA titles."

That's more towards the point I was trying to get to. AAA is a moving target if it is only an intangible, self-inflicted buzzword. We might as well be calling it mojo if nobody can give a number of the budget which makes a game AAA. If it's only mojo, I guess we can call AAA art apreciation, like fine wine or expensive abstract paintings? Except that we see a lot the "big budget" mentioned as the explanation (which is tangible, but no numerical range seen), so maybe not. Then maybe it's more in the other direction of art apreciation. What if it's some scientific formula related to a ratio of polygon count//texture-size/effects vs. frames per second vs cost of minimum hardware to run?

[Saner than a coconut]

I personally thought it was just a tag given too games that sold/would sell a certain number of copies, like 1 million (don't know how many copies games sell, just a random number), and came from a company with a well established reputation. That was just my own thought though, don't know if there is an official definition or not.