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video game industry The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstrea ...
, AAA (pronounced and sometimes written triple-A) is an informal classification used to categorise games produced and 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 games, by using games-as-a-service methods such as
season pass A season ticket, or season pass, is a 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 United States in 182 ...
es and expansion packs. The similar construction "III" (Triple-I) has also been used to describe high-production-value games in the
indie game An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...
industry.


History

The term "AAA" began to be used in the late 1990s, when a few development companies started using the expression at gaming conventions in the US. The term was borrowed from the credit industry's bond ratings, where "AAA" bonds represented the safest opportunity 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 is a 1997 role-playing video game developed by Square (video game company), Square for the PlayStation (console), PlayStation console. It is the seventh main installment in the ''Final Fantasy'' series. Published in Japan by Square, it was r ...
'' (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 Cinematic describes anything related to ''cinema''. It may refer to: any movie updates, cinema nights, cinematic review Film-related * Cinematic cutscene, a sequence in a video game that is not interactive * Cinematic music, original music writt ...
CGI production values,
movie A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
-like presentation, orchestral music, 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's ''
Shenmue is an action-adventure game series created, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki. '' Shenmue'' (1999) and ''Shenmue II'' (2001) were developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for Dreamcast. '' Shenmue III,'' developed by Suzuki's company ...
'' (1999), estimated to have cost (inflation adjusted ). By the seventh generation of video game consoles (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 original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...
or
PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...
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 A white paper is a report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. A white pape ...
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 from earlier in the 1990s had brought elements like cutscenes, and the advances in real-time 3D graphics 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 (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ...
'' 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'' series, following 2008's ''Grand Theft Auto IV'', and the fifteenth in ...
'' was approximately $265m. The same conditions also drove the growth of the
indie game An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...
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 '' Assassin's Creed'', '' Far Cry'', ...
, 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 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 First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pla ...
that drew on the popularity of the ''
Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest military decoration and is awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardians and coast guardsmen who have distinguished themselves by acts of val ...
'' and ''
Call of Duty ''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter video game franchise published by Activision. Starting out in 2003, it first focused on games set in World War II. Over time, the series has seen games set in the midst of the Cold War, futuristic ...
'' 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-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 game An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...
s 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.


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 models, where players continued to contribute revenue after the initial purchase, either by
premium Premium may refer to: Marketing * Premium (marketing), a promotional item that can be received for a small fee when redeeming proofs of purchase that come with or on retail products * Premium segment, high-price brands or services in marketing, ...
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, a ...
. 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 nu ...
in terms of revenue from individual consumers, similar to the way
MMO game A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players, often hundreds or thousands, on the same server. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent world, persistent open world, alt ...
s generate income – these included those with expansion or season pass content such as with '' Destiny'', '' Battlefield'', and the ''
Call of Duty ''Call of Duty'' is a first-person shooter video game franchise published by Activision. Starting out in 2003, it first focused on games set in World War II. Over time, the series has seen games set in the midst of the Cold War, futuristic ...
'' series; and those which generated revenue from selling in-game items, sometimes purely cosmetic, such as ''
Overwatch ''Overwatch'' is a multimedia franchise centered on a series of online multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment: '' Overwatch'' released in 2016, and ''Overwatch 2'' released in 2022. Both games fe ...
'' or '' League of Legends''. Titles of this type are sometimes referred to as "AAA+". In 2016, ''
Gameindustry.biz Gamer Network Limited (formerly Eurogamer Network Limited) is a British mass media company based in Brighton. Founded in 1999 by Rupert and Nick Loman, it owns brands—primarily editorial websites—relating to video game journalism and oth ...
'' described AAA+ games as products that "combine AAA production values and aesthetics with
Software as a Service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...
(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 tend to be priced compared to (as of 2021) that triple-A games are priced at. Examples of games considered to be double-A titles include '' PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds'', '' DayZ'' (a key game in the survival game genre), and '' Among Us''. As of 2022 game publishers and studios that are currently considered to be AA include Devolver Digital,
Warhorse Studios Warhorse Studios s.r.o. is a Czech video game developer based in Prague. Founded in July 2011 by Dan Vávra and Martin Klíma, the studio produced '' Kingdom Come: Deliverance'', which was released in February 2018. In February 2019, the compa ...
, Obsidian Entertainment,
Hazelight Studios Hazelight Studios is a video game development company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Founded by director Josef Fares in 2014, the company is best known for developing cooperative multiplayer games '' A Way Out'' and '' It Takes Two''. Both games we ...
, and PlatinumGames.


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. Examples of III games 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'' for Xbox that's self-described as being a AAAA game, while Ubisoft announced ''
Beyond Good and Evil 2 ''Beyond Good and Evil 2'' is an upcoming action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and published by Ubisoft. It is a prequel to '' Beyond Good & Evil'', released in 2003. Its development was characterized in the media by uncer ...
'' and '' Skull & Bones'' 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 '' ScreenRant'' noted in September 2020 that " e term AAAA has been floating around in recent months online, but it hasn't been adopted by the game industry at large," adding that "what a AAAA designation even means is still unclear, as nothing has yet to ascend beyond the scope of a AAA title. With the next generation of consoles releasing later this year, perhaps this new level of technology will usher in a new wave of games beyond the current standard of the industry as it currently stands, or 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 used ...
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 low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
, made-for-TV, or
direct-to-video Direct-to-video or straight-to-video refers to the release of a film, TV series, short or special to the public immediately on home video formats rather than an initial theatrical release or television premiere. This distribution strategy w ...
scene. However, titles such as '' Deadly Premonition'' and ''
Binary Domain is a third-person shooter video game developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega. It was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in February 2012 and Microsoft Windows in April 2012. The game is set in Tokyo, Japan, in the year 2080. ...
'' have been dubbed "B games" due to developing
cult following A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
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 Shovelware is a term for individual video games or software bundles known more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness. The metaphor implies that the creators showed little care for the quality of the original sof ...
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 is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing cards. ...


References

{{Video game genre Video game industry Video game development