Triple-A Ain't What it Used to Be

[Ratty]

Yeah I haven't associated "AAA" with quality in a long long time. It's just a description of budget size. Too bad mid-level development is basically dead so all we have now are tiny Indies and AAA.

And that's why I never buy AAA games until they're >$10 on a steam/gog sale, if I get them at all.

 

[TheMemoman]

We've basically come to associate AAA to budget. It's either AAA or indie. And now I'm beginning to see a trend to also associate AAA with mechanical stagnation and "indie" with mechanical experimentation. This keeps evolving as time goes by, inevitably.

When companies were able to squeeze decently rendered cut-scenes out of their technology, a big trend (that I can see just now we're beginning to overcome) was to derail games towards the cinematic. This was show-off-y and expensive, which suited big companies because they were the only ones capable of employing this gimmick as a carrot on a stick, marveling gamers with essentially, micro blockbusters peppered through out their video games. Suddenly a game needed a plot and a storyline. And in the most ham-fisted ways, a protagonist and antagonist.

Eventually it got ridiculous and games became a vehicle consisting of unimaginative gameplay and stagnating mechanics with the sole purpose to get us onto the next little vignette. QTE's being a twitchy half-assed compromise to mash gameplay and cinema together.

On the other side, the emerging indie scene, initially, had no such budget, it could not compete in terms of dazzling its audience with cinematic visuals and set pieces that would render limp the most powerful videocards. So they started focusing on gameplay mechanics and cheap aesthetics. We got our first wave of indie games on nostalgia cash-in, pseudo 8-bit, 16-bit graphics and usually based around one single gimmicky mechanic.

This is all evolving right now, as AAA seems to leverage it's economic bicep more towards the multiplayer component and its inherently costly infrastructure. And indie gaming, while struggling to overcome on its retro-aesthetics cliché, is getting a substantial boost from newer more affordable and flexible development technologies, and also its own community of developers.

The line between AAA and indie will continue to blur and both terms, opposing sides of a war, will become meaningless as more and more people are able to access development without the patronage of multi-million dollar corporations. Hopefully it all ends with corporate mandate and "Moneyball" style of development gone forever. Utopia? Pipe dream? A man can only dream. And my dream is that games are made by those who want to make games and want them to be played. Not those interested in streamlining the money milking udder mechanisms.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Guys, this article describes the universe in microcosm. The video game industry is just one more bit of our world that is falling prey to the overriding pattern. The problem Yahtzee points out is not unique; it's a symptom of the gradual entropy of human existence.

We've reached a point, I think, a kind of singularity, where things have become so self-aware and so automatic that people can't keep up anymore. We ALL know that things are not the way they should be. We all KNOW that the world could be a better place if we were just willing to change it. But since the world has become so unimaginably big in our perception, we think there is nothing we can do. And I think we're right.

It's going to be a long, slow, painstaking decline from here. Companies will become more corrupt and lazy. Governments will become more oppressive and obscure, trying to hold ever tighter on events that cannot be controlled. Morals will become more token and hollow. People will become more disinterested, disheartened, and disenfranchised.

This is a very dark thing I'm saying, but I've thought about it a lot. The future I see for our species is not a bright one. I'm not a doomsayer, I don't think the human race is going to destroy itself in some sudden nuclear war or by ruining the planet with climate change. We'll change and adapt to such physical pressures. It's the intangible pressure on our psyches that threatens us. What I foresee is a gradual decline into meaninglessness and misery.

So, have fun while you can, I guess?

 

[TheMemoman]

Morals will become more token and hollow. People will become more disinterested, disheartened, and disenfranchised.
So, have fun while you can, I guess?

Cheer up, man. Just because you've thrown in the towel, doesn't mean we've all given up. Courage comes from adversity. Being courageous when all is nice and dandy is not really a challenge. Facing insurmountable odds, that's for the brave.

 

[Bobular]

You know, these days the only games I look forward to seem to be indie games, things that I have kickstarted or by indie companies that I have previously enjoyed games from. I can only think of one AAA game coming out this year that I am probably going to get.

I just don't associate AAA with quality anymore, glad to know I'm not the only one.

 

[Evonisia]

I've never really associated AAA with quality, but that's because I'm too young (and at the same time out dated) to have looked into it much. I had a PlayStation 1 as my first console about four years after the PlayStation 2 came out and my PC gaming habits were mostly just games my Dad liked playing (WW2 shooters of the early 00s). I do find it weird that no example is given for their quality though, was Resident Evil 4 a AAA game, Half-Life, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time?

Nowadays AAA just seems to equal the amount of money flung into it. If "A" meant good, what did "AA" mean?

 

[sageoftruth]

"But I think the larger problem is that the internet has ensured that we receive a constant stream of news about companies being terrible, and then it just becomes white noise. We can't get angry about all of it, so we just accept that this is what they do"

This was my favorite part of the article. Maybe I have nostalgia blinders on but before the Ps3 and 360 era whenever there was news about games it was usually new mechanics, something positive, or interesting. Now 95% of the news I see about anything gaming industry related is saying how they were wrong to screw their customers over before they go and do it again, EA doing something stupid again, and the occasional sexism debate.

Gaming news in my opinion has finally caught up to other news outlets where it is all negativity all the time. What this does to gamers is exactly what Yahtzee says. 24/7 negativity has now become white noise to gamers so now no matter how fucked up the game industry treats us, people cant get mad for longer than a day because another company will be fucking them over.

It is utterly disgusting to see those who accepted a big dick in their ass just because someone is lubing up every day to have a go at them.

Shoot! I really messed up that post. It looks like I hijacked someone else's post. Sorry about that.

 

[Casual Shinji]

That's what I was thinking.

Triple-A games have been getting ridiculous amounts of hype since the start of the 6th generation (and probably even before that, but at that time I wasn't aware of it). Anyone remember Metal Gear Solid 2? Remember how fucking crazy that shit got (before anyone got exposed to Raiden)?

Games were getting large amounts of hype in the PS1/N64 era and they sometimes actually delivered on it: FF7, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. All games from AAA studios, made with AAA budgets and AAA marketing, but the games were actually good. So if you want a time when AAA games were actually good, that's it.

What, and they're not now?

 

[Pink Gregory]

"Gameplay times are shorter. Content is lesser. Sandboxes are smaller."

Y'know, I don't really agree that sheer volume of content is equivalent to quality. Otherwise Skyrim would be the epitome of gaming quality, and...well...it isn't. Of course I would rather that things be more organic, but let's think about context here. Linear design/setpieces don't serve some genres well, but others wouldn't exist without them. Down to tastes, I suppose, and a certain lack of diversity in the higher tiers of game development.

I 'unno, ever since I've been hearing the term 'AAA', I've only ever associated that with either long-established companies and publishers or budget and size of the team. Creating what is essentially an abstract genre to describe quality seems absurd.

 

[RandV80]

"AAA" to me means the same thing as "blockbuster": it's massive production costs that may or may not lead to a good game. It's just slang for "we spent so much money on this, and on hyping it, that we can dominate the conversation for a brief period".

[

Yep, another instance in the gaming community where a label is completely misleading. If something can be labeled 'AAA', then that should indicate that there are tiers below it. But the marketers aren't going to want to here anything about it, and the more embarrassing elements of the gaming community would throw a hissy fit if you suggested their games were less than AAA.

Because clearly there are games at the top, with 10+ million sales like GTA, Call of Duty, Halo, etc. Other much beloved serious like Mass Effect or The Elder Scolls might fall into AA status. Personally I think we would be better off if this were the case. Too often in their homogenization of everything the big publishers look at these second tier and below games and say 'what elements can we add or design choices can we make to make them more appealing to the larger AAA crowd'. What's overlooked is the fact that this larger audience may not care about the core value of the game, in the case of Bioware that would be a lengthy story driven campaign and deeper character interaction, and they don't ask 'what's the best design choices for the audience of the core game principle?' And then you end up with messes like Dragon Age 2 or Resident Evil 6.

 

[Kolyarut]

Gameplay times are shorter. Content is lesser. Sandboxes are smaller.

I didn't really agree with a lot of this article, but this was the bit that seemed most egregiously wrong to me. Assassins Creed 4 was small? Arkham Origins was smaller than the previous game? There was less content in Far Cry 3? Skyrim was just too damn short?

A lot of measures of quality are subjective, but to say that AAA sandboxes are getting smaller is just an outright lie.

 

[Atmos Duality]

New games psychotically play up the shiny spectacle for the sake of trailers and being intriguing at the single-glance level, while the actual gameplay being offered is being systematically reduced. Gameplay times are shorter. Content is lesser. Sandboxes are smaller. Levels are more linear and set piece-driven. This is all the shit that matters to me about games, the shit that used to be sacred.

Those are the reasons why I've all but stepped away from AAA productions and that was after years of criticizing and complaining. Eventually, I just stopped buying their dross altogether, because it was a waste of time and money.

All of those were the result of the industry changing its goals from "make games, make money" to "make glossy blockbusters, make bigger amounts of money". Smaller productions were confined by budget, and were forced to innovate if they were to ever rise above mediocrity.

At the time of this post, I have FTL: Advanced Edition running, and am soon approaching 100 hours total time (so sayeth Steam anyway); a game I spent 15 bucks on in late 2012.

15 bucks would get me maybe a new mission about 1-3 hours long and a few guns from most AAA games.

Like I said, this is nothing that hasn't been more or less understood and accepted for a long time. But acceptance is part of the problem. We accept, and roll our eyes and mutter gravely about the soullessness of the whole over-moneyed business. We regard it the way we regard our dog wiping its bumhole along the carpet - not much more than an irritating inevitability of having a dog with an itchy bumhole. And by writing it off as an inevitability, we simultaneously absolve ourselves - there's nothing we can do, we are but helpless victims of the itchy bumhole fairy. Some time ago, perhaps we would've slung the dog out, or at the very least shampooed the carpets, but the itchy bumhole has always returned with such persistence that we just can't summon the energy anymore. And so our carpets just get bummier and bummier.

It's the height of insanity to keep supporting someone who has no interest in listening to you.

When someone burns a bridge with you, you do not ask to rent their boat. You walk away.
Yet, the greater market seems irate enough to whine, but too complacent to do the right thing.

Personally, I stopped buying into AAA's bullshit years ago.
(I can count on one hand the number of AAA titles I've willingly, personally purchased in the last 4 years. Usually no more than 1 per year, if any.)

 

[ZombieSuicide]

This article pretty much sums up why I can't get into the hype around new Triple A's. I'm more excited about Goat Simulator than Titanfall. Please let the gravity of that statement settle in. Goat Simulator is a game (barely) that has had very little advertising or hype. I've only heard about it because of this site pretty much. But Titanfall? There's a countdown on my Xbox live home screen for it. And I could care less about it. I know the name but I'll never buy it probably unless it dips to $10 and I know I can have fun playing single player. Well written article, I whole-heartedly agree with this.

 

[w23eer]

It could be that we accept this because video games are still considered a niche thing (despite being used by what any statistic bureau would consider a majority)...

I've no idea where this came from. You flat out dismissed all evidence contrary to your point ("games are niche") with absolutely no tangible reasoning just because you don't agree with it. That's not a strong basis for an arguement. It's only a small point, but it's pretty indicative of your attitude.

Anyway, as for the rest of the article, I'd kinda like to say "it's as bad as it's always been" but I can't as I haven't actually played a game in years (apart from crappy flash games). I do have a bit of a point to raise though.

Your article constructed a narrative, sorta. That the Triple - A game industry were coaxing the media to market their newest COD killer or whatever when in reality the game is a shallow experience - duping all us witless gamers to buy them. The only reason we (as a community) only put up with this is because the deteriorating quality is so gradual we're acclimatized to it, and we've reached the point where we're wallowing in our own shit and we're doing nothing about it.

The media are subtly carrot-and-sticked into providing endless coverage that become more like coverage of hype surrounding a game rather than the game itself...But the moment the game is out, and placed in the hands of people with no vested interest in making it look good, then all of that seems to end. That which any idiot could have seen was the usual generic tosh is now revealed as such, but everyone stops listening.

It's quite a clever thing the triple-A industry has done, all things considered. It's managed to maintain a level of terribleness that continued along the same level without at any point ramping up so hard that it provoked outrage, but all the time it was gradually climbing without anyone noticing.

The thing is, the Triple A game industry isn't one group of suits pulling a bunch of strings. It's not as if every publisher met each other one day and decided to act as a cohesive whole to deliberately make games worse. I know that's not the moral to your story, but lines like "It's quite a clever thing the triple-A industry has done" almost suggests that that's what you believe. These are just a bunch of people publishing games. The fact that we don't like them doesn't make that a crime, and if people buy those games then that's their prerogative.
I know this might be hard to believe, but millions of people bought COD and GTAV because they genuinely enjoy playing them, regardless of what anyone considers "shallow." There's certainly much to criticize about them, and you should, but saying things like

...we feel that we must accept the industry we have been given, out of fear that we will end up with no games at all.

is ridiculous. "We feel we must accept this..."? Accepting that many people around the world actively enjoy playing Titanfall? And it's "everybody's fault"? I'm sorry, but I really don't feel all that guilty about it.

There's a lot wrong with Triple A gaming culture - business practices and such - but a lot of what's said here in this article is nonsense, in my opinion.

 

[hermes]

I mean, 'triple-A' used to mean good. It used to mean the very epitome of good.

No, Yahtzee... That was never the meaning of AAA. AAA just means good production. It means top dollars were put by top companies to get top people to create top marketable games. It is the same as blockbusters in movies. And the same as with blockbusters, it means nothing in reference to the quality of the product.

Are there good blockbusters? Sure. I just saw Captain America 2 and found it pretty enjoyable. And (despite Marvel current trend of calling themselves "artistic" and "underdogs"), there is no denial that they used all the firepower of Disney to finance that movie. Are there bad blockbusters? Of course. The Star Wars prequels, for example.

As I said, being a blockbuster does not mean a thing in terms of quality. It just means it has a level of spectacle and production that other, smaller products can't achieve. But since that production money mostly goes to make the movie even more bombastic (or to sell it as such), the only thing we can all agree is that "they sure look expensive"

 

[Lightspeaker]

I'm really not understanding all of this hatred towards Titanfall's alleged lack of content. Titanfall is NOT a "play through the campaign then you're done" game. Its a round based multiplayer only FPS and thus should be compared to other round based multiplayer only FPS games.


TF2 launched with, if I remember correctly, 6 maps. It was around £35 for The Orange Box which made it around £7-8 per game; though two of them (HL2 and Episode 1) most people already had so without them it was around £11 per game. So between £1 and £2 per map. We're comparing launches on this one because comparing a now F2P game with all that development time with a bought one that came out less than three months ago is pretty unfair.

Natural Selection 2 can be had for £19 on steam (£30 for the Deluxe edition). There are 8 official maps in the pool right now which makes it just over £2 per map.

CS:GO sells for £12 with 23 maps (it launched with £16) which makes it pretty solid value. Around 50p per map.

Titanfall sells for around £30 to £35 depending on where you get it (PC price). Fifteen maps. Around £2 per map.



Its at the upper end of the scale but I don't find it to be grossly over-expensive compared to similar games, and the whole loadout and burn card system may be viewed as easily giving some extra value to makeup for the price difference. Other games have their own benefits (like community made maps), but it varies from game to game where the extras come in.

Ultimately the point isn't to just play through all of the content. Its to play the maps over and over, honing your abilities and competing for the fun of it. Its not a completionist kind of game any more than DOTA2 is a game that you play once and then go "right, I've finished the game now, there's no more maps".

 

[Alterego-X]

I think it's not so much that AAA games got worse, they are looking worse now in perspective.

It's true that a decade or two ago, almost all of the most beloved games would have been AAA ones. But those still had their many problems, including shallowness, overhype, and technical problems. They were the best because there was no alternative.

Games like Starcraft, Diablo, GTA, Half-Life, Mario, Final Fantasy, or Need for Speed didn't have an "alternative" counterpart that tried an entirely different path for being enjoyable. There were largely just the games with the highest production values, and the games that tried to reach that level and failed (either on a spectacular level, or just by being subtly less polished).

The games industry, if you count the indie movement into it, isn't getting worst, it's just starting to grow diverse and daring enough that the previouly self-evidently revered genres and attitudes start looking mediocre in it's perspective.