AAA games, and value for price

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Okay, so a couple of individual questions this time...

Two things I constantly hear about lately is people either claiming that "Such and such game is not worth X amount! Because blah blah blah!" or "Is this really a AAA game?".

I've been hearing both of these things ALOT, and it seems like the answer might be really subjective and differ alot from one person to the next.

So, out of simple curiosity and because I am bored, what do you guys think about these two things? What is it that puts a game into AAA status? And seperately, what, to you, decides wether or not a game is worth full price? Or even half of usual price, or whatever.

What makes a AAA game? I think it would be : The size of the budget, the degree of hype, and a high level of expectations generated from said hype.

From what I've seen, a game is labeled as AAA by those who make review scores. Those who rate a game as AAA are bribed by the Developers and Publishers of the game in certain ways. One way being advertising on their website or magazine. Of course, they will do their best to generate hype in various ways as well. People are very impressionable. They will follow popular opinions without having any critical thinking ability themselves, or no time to do so. If a game is worth full price, it's because the person is very hyped about the game. It's subjective entirely, but in a hive mind way.

Budget, development team size, marketing, preorder goodies, hype, hardcoreness, developer size, etc...

Games such as Call of Duty, EA Sports, Halo, Battlefield, Fall Out, GTA, GT series, etc... are all AAA.

Nearly everything Nintendo produces is considered AA or less because Nintendo is efficient and uses budget controls.

It used to be reviews that stipulated whether a game was AAA or another, though that changed for good around 2007.
Developers and/or publishers will now go after reviewers and publications who "fail to review it proper".
Many people have been fired over their reviews, which were spot on regarding the state of said game, and publishers and developers flexed their muscles over it.

Most decent sized publishers and developers will go after them for less than stellar reviews and black list you from industry events and stuff.

Ironically Nintendo encourages honest feedback about their games...


Personally I don't buy into AAA - indie grade system.

I value games based on the following criteria:

*Content (the more the better)
*Polish (is it riddled with bugs and glitches? was it rushed to market?)
*Replayability (Will I never touch again after completion?)
*Length (How long will it take to complete the game?)
*How many cutscenes (I don't want a game that is an interactive movie! Some cutscenes are ok like Xenoblade, Fire Emblem Awakening, Sonic Generations, etc...)
*Day 1 DLC (How much of the completed game was ripped out and put behind a paywall day 1 for sheer profits?)
*Content locked on disc (Do I have to buy a DLC patch to unlock the rest of the content that is stored on the disc already?)
*DLC done right (If DLC is done right like Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors, Sonic Lost Worlds, City Skylines, etc... then it might sway me into buying it. If DLC is done bad, then I might avoid the game all together)
*Day 1 patch (if it's huge, I'll probably wait for a sale or price drop. If it is a minor one, then I don't mind)
*Price drops (will the game have a price drop within the first six months of it's release?)
*Other (yeah there are other issues that can happen that don't fit a category)

I weight this against the price to determine if the game is worth it to me.

Was Simcity 2013 worth the $100, I put into it over time? Yes, I received over 400 hours of play time building futuristic cities.

Was Splatoon worth the $60 I paid at launch? Hell Yes, though I do need to log on tonight and play (over 30 hours and counting).

Games worth their asking price:

Mario Kart 8
Smash Bros Wii and 3DS (I bought both and don't regret it)
Pokemon X
Pokemon OR
Animal Crossing New Leaf
Fire Emblem Awakening
Shovel Knights Wii U
Mario Kart 7
Ocarina of Time 3D
Captain Toad
Hyrule Warriors (I still haven't dented the amount of unlockables yet)
Lego City Undercover (Wii U)
New Super Mario Bros U (it's one of the best 2D platformers ever made)
Bayonetta 1&2 pack for Wii U
Sonic Lost World (Wii U), Yeah it's a good Sonic game!
Cities Skylines (PC/Mac)
Nintendoland (it deserves a mention)
Splatoon
Simcity 2013 (After it was patched)
Wii Fit U (yes I still use it)

Etc...

Games worth buying on sale:

Samba De Amigo ($5 when I bought it for Wii)
Sin and Punishment 2
Majora's Mask 3D (in my book, didn't care for it that much)
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (the game is meaty RPG with too much tutorials, which ruined the game for many).
Xenoblade Chronicles 3D (If you want to buy this version too, wait for sale, I bought it for $24).
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (I bought it for $8 on Wii U)
The Wonderful 101 (not for everyone)
Injustice (The Wii U version turned out not to be worth the full price, because we never got all the DLC).
007 Legends (any version wasn't worth $60)
Flingsmash (great little Nintendo game, though bundled with Wii Remotes for $40).
Etc...

Games not worth buying well obviously I'm not going to list them since that would be a very long list.

Be nice if more people thought this way, rather than determining it ENTIRELY based on graphics, cutscenes, and.... graphics. Those really do seem to be the entire set of factors for many.

Of course, it's very subjective... Simcity 2013 for instance, well... if I'd gotten it for free, I'd STILL feel ripped off. Got into Anno 2070 instead, and never looked back.

Or Splatoon, where you hear things like "But all you do is just shoot walls on a few simple maps, there's like hardly anything to it, it should be like $20", which just... ugh. I dont even. Or more often now, comments along that line about the upcoming Mario Maker (I'm already REALLY tired of hearing about that game's price being a problem, though I've so far resisted arguing with anyone about it, which is rare for me).


I personally find that quite alot of games are worth the asking price, but then the sorts of things I buy often dont agree with super popular opinions. If I bought more mainstream games, well.... it might be a very different story.

I've forgotten whatever else I was going to say.


EDIT: And now I've been reminded that the Splatfest is happening. Time to attempt to not suck at it. Here's hoping the playercount for the 2 sides wont be horribly lopsided.

My own opinion of a AAA game is just a game that I like, something satisfying.

The phrase "AAA game" usually means the popular opinion of a game as being high quality.

For me the basic things that a game need to have to be considered an "AAA" or be worth my money:
Enough content - How much would "enough content" be I can't say for sure. There are games that completely satisfied me with a couple hours and others that I'm always wanting more. It depends of what the game purposes and what it delivers;
Polished gameplay - And by that I don't mean anything fancy, it just need to be something smart and well done even if it's simple;
Unlockables - One of the things that I enjoy the most is to have secret things to unlock by doing challenges and things like that;
Be a challenge - Well, there are times that I play games that have almost 0 difficulty and can still have fun, but most of my favorite games challenge me one way or another be it with puzzles, or maybe extremely tactic gameplay, be it by challenging my reflexes or whatever.

To be fair, Splatoon is seen as incomplete game by a lot of people in part due to it lacking features of most shooters and due to content.

Mario Maker is a different story, in part because it is 2D.
A lot of people won't pay very much for 2D games these days.

Though the physical release of Mario Maker comes with a decent sized art book.
The game as whole comes with over 100 2D levels as well.

Maybe they don't want to play in 1080p and with a very consistent 60fps, like Rayman Legend manage to do on nearly all consoles?

Wiki says it all:

In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion.

Essentially its all based on how much the developer and publisher forked up to get it made and advertised. Today the crap quality games being made get massive advertisement budgets (sometimes double what the game cost to make) because that drives the sales...not the game itself.

Star Citizen is the only true AAA quality game being made right now.

I wouldnt be so sure about that one if I were you.

It still needs to DOUBLE that amount just to catch up with what Destiny ended up costing (and development of DLC on that one continues constantly now with a rather large budget). Grand Theft Auto V had a similar level of cost. Let alone other games. You better hope though that they spend a good blob of millions on advertising though as well, for Star Citizen...

I absolutely 1000% guarantee you though: It's not the only game at that level of funding being currently made.

It still remains the one I'm most suspicious of though (particularly considering just how that money is being spent... $35,000 to make ONE ship? Seriously? That's a major warning bell, to me. Which is typical of AAA games, far as I'm concerned). Granted, I say that about alot (all) of AAA-level games (or games anyone perceives as AAA), but.... none moreso than that one. The hype on that one has just been a bit bizarre, and reminds me of nothing more than Planetary Annihilation, with the same bizarre pricing during beta and what I perceive as the same level of greed. Let's just say... that game didnt live up to all the hype it had all throughout it's development time. Beta, alpha, and otherwise. I ended up being very, very glad I didnt pay the batshit insane prices they wanted just to get into the beta or alpha. I had almost done it, too, considering what the game was meant to be, and how promising it was during those periods.

And note, I'm speaking of JUST development costs in all of this.... not advertising here. Grand Theft Auto V was 137 mil just to MAKE. Another 128 mil to advertise. Who knows how much number 6 will cost.

The big example of derpy spending though (even if it is effective) is Call of Duty. Other games... you really dont get the "spent a bazillion on advertising but only 2 dollars on making the game" effect as strongly as that one (because reaching a certain production level for the actual game requires SERIOUS money in most cases). Modern Warfare 2 cost 50 to make... and then a baffling 200 to advertise. And people wonder why that series seems so low on actual content. But then, it IS recycled like crazy...

However, my original question had nothing to do with the official meaning of AAA, but everything to do with what everyone here PERCEIVES it as. Mostly being about games that already fully exist and are in a completed state (because it's very, VERY hard to argue the status of an unfinished game; so many games over the years have had truly massive budgets, and promise, and everyone thinking it'll be the thing that rules the industry... and then it's mediocre as all hell once actually fully out. Even if those players praising it beta tested it to hell and back). This all being based on the fact that so many people constantly argue everywhere about what makes an AAA game earn that status. Most dont seem to take the advertising side into their perception whatsoever (if they even are really aware of that aspect; I know I dont pay attention to that crap).

Now all of that being said, as a rule I dont actually give a flying fart about how much was spent (since dramatically less costly games are often dramatically better, with a MUCH heavier focus on the actual gameplay to make up for the lack of graphical uberness) though I'm almost always suspicious about any game that's spending too much to be made. But mostly, I dont care, particularly as graphics can no longer impress me anymore. Of course, that viewpoint seems very rare these days...

But it's interesting to see how others here are viewing this.


Ugh, didnt mean to ramble on quite that much, but I seem to have alot of energy today.

Not exactly, there is no agreed upon monetary level to classify games, even AAA games.


Star Citizen will be lucky if it ever sees completion let alone a release (it was promised for a late 2014 release).
Hell the game isn't even 50% complete and is already nearing the $100M mark in development budget aka Shenmue 1 budget (Sega spent close to $100M on the game until it released in 1999, because it had such a long development ).

It held the title as the most expensive video game ever made just on development, until GTA V passed it by with sheer development costs of $137M total development budget (marketing cost Take Two $128M and accounted separately).

AAA quality video games are decided by official reviews and then are weighted by Metacritic and Gamerankings.
PC/Mac/Linux games are typically excluded unless the games receive console and/or handheld releases.
All iOS and Android games are excluded as well.

If official reviewers don't like you and/or your game, then you will never achieve the AAA quality mark in the industry.
It has little to do with actual quality, more with greasing the wheels.

On topic funny notes:

Crytek has literally gone through bankruptcy restructuring since Star Citizen began official development in 2011 (the game uses their engine)
Star Citizen started unofficial development about the same time as Legend of Zelda Wii U in ~2009.
Both games entered in to official development in 2011.
Funny enough Zelda U will likely beat Star Citizen out the door... If Zelda Team can beat you to release, then something is wrong with you.

Top 10 rated games of all time (as of tonight):
1) The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (N64)
2) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (PS1)
3) GTA IV (PS3)
4) SoulCalibur (DC)
5) GTA IV (360)
6) Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
7) Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
GTA V (XO)
9) GTA V (PS3)
10) GTA V (360)
http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/ ... ?sort=desc
PS4 version of GTA V is #14 on the list due how publication and sites are reviewed via Metacritic (same for the other multiplat games)
Gamerankings list almost identical.

Ocarina of Time (N64) has held the top spot on both lists since it's release in 1998.
No game has been able to out do it, in AAA quality to date.

You may hold the belief that Star Citizen is an AAA game in quality, it doesn't make it so (it would have to score 9.5/10 and 95/100 to succeed in being granted the AAA quality ranking).

AAA is a label which indicates the amount of effort and resources put in development, it is no guarentee for quality.

i do think that many so-called AAA games are not worth the money, but that is an opinion.
there are many indie games that are a lot better than some AAAs, but then again, many indies are garbage, and plenty of AAAs are still as good as you'd expect from the status