Triple-A Ain't What it Used to Be

[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.

 

[SethAbercromby]

We're slowly getting there. Most gamers are fed up with the AAA market altogether and I feel that there will be a noticeable shift towards the indie market, which still communicates and listens to its fanbases and works with ambition at lest somewhat beyond "let's make as much money with as low effort as possible" and at some point the AAA market will struggle to maintain profits on hype alone because of the broken trust to their customers. The best we can do for now is to vote with our wallet by not buying games that are major offenders in this regard. Because all shareholders care for is short-term profit, this is of course not going to fix their approach because once their favorite cow stops giving milk, they simply leave to find another. This whole business model is the root of the problem and for as long as it exists, shareholders that only care for short-term profits will always be able to drive companies into bad decisions.

 

[Callate]

A small elite group decides that their riches and power means that they have control over the very fabric of the universe.

Welcome to America, baby.

I really don't associate "AAA" with quality, any more, if I ever did. AAA means one thing: budget. Unreal rather than Unity. Two hundred people on the team rather than forty. Recognizable music on the soundtrack rather than generic rock music by the in-house composer. Bloom, lens flare, and particle effects all turned up to 11.

There have been some great AAA games, and I tend to think that AAA games are more likely to pass a minimum quality standard in terms of things like stability and game mechanics, if only because some of that money probably (hopefully!) went into things like beta testing and a final check-through before the gold master disk.

Of course, now, with people paying to be alpha testers and games being thrown at the Internet without ever being turned into something as quaint and antiquated as a gold master disk...

Look, I think at this point most of us do recognize that AAA is likely a thrashing, dying behemoth, angering would-be customers with ill-considered pay-gates in full-priced commercial games and ill-advised attempts to court an imaginary "middle ground" gaming demographic at the cost of the identity that gained its fandom in the first place. I can't pull a AAA studio out of my back pocket that will "do it right". Big companies like EA and Activision have frequently all but made it their slogan that they won't be swayed by things like the detestation of their customers. I almost never pre-order games, and only rarely buy AAA-games at all barring one of those Humble Bundles or deep-discount Steam sales that have recently become the subject of controversy. What else should I, can I do, other than stand back and watch the behemoth thrash and bleed?

 

[Darth_Payn]

"Movie set in a desert" I heard that's a real thing. Somewhere in the desert in Southern California, there's a set of an old movie set in Babylon, or something. It cost to much to dismantle, so they left it to rot after filming wrapped up. Or just to screw with future archaeologists.

 

[Sticky]

Yahtzee, I know hating on the pillocks who gladly line up to buy anything the glowing box tells them to buy is the new thing, but please don't do the Jim Sterling thing of getting mad at "The Community" because of things that no individual can do anything about.

I can't stop this 'community'. I can't stop them from buying tasteless shit. It would be immoral of me to do that even if I had the power.

People are going to buy what they feel everyone else is buying, it's what they do to feel a sense of 'belonging', even if no one is watching or anyone cares. This has been a marketing trick that is so effective that it's akin to an artform.

The best 'the community' or any individual CAN do is ignore it. Speaking out about it only agitates the hordes and make them feel more right and more emboldened. After all, it ISN'T right to tell people that they shouldn't be having fun when they are the only gatekeepers to determining if that is true or not.

I really don't think anyone WANTS to see a world where someone going out to buy a tasteless game results in madmen with crowbars beating them to death just before they enter the local gamestop. As this would be the only feasible way to prevent these games from being sold, and even that wouldn't stop digital copies.

 

[Amir Kondori]

I have disagree pretty strongly here with Mr. Croshaw. First of all let me start with this statement:
"I mean, 'triple-A' used to mean good."
AAA never meant good. AAA means and meant expensive, high end development. AAA means there was a big budget and a big team who worked on it.
Next statement:
"Somewhere along the line 'triple-A' stopped being a label that is applied to a game after its good quality has been determined"
AAA has never been a label that meant quality. AAA only denotes it is from a large publisher and developer.
Next statement:
"Poster campaigns and billboards and trailers, a bit of veiled threat to the media now and then. But it's like a movie set in a desert. A dazzling exterior painted on canvas, and underneath, nothing."
Ben here is talking about advertising like it is a new thing. I remember reading gaming mags as a kid growing up in the 90's, there were ads for the next big game all over them. If the marketing budget was big enough, like Final Fantasy VII then there were TV spots. Marketing is not something new and is something a publisher is 100% entitled to. We as consumers are smart enough to see past marketing and look at things like pedigree of developer, genre, previews, etc., to figure out if want to actually buy a game.
Next statement:
"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"
Now here is a real issue with AAA development. As the graphics get prettier it gets more expensive to make a game, thus the games get smaller. This is a very real phenomena and the only solutions are to A, find ways to reduce the cost of making a game, or B, make games that don't look like a Pixar movie.
It seems like Ben Croshaw thinks that AAA developers are taking the extra 12 hours of content that their games are missing and putting that money straight into their pockets, which shows a gross misunderstanding of modern games development. Why does Ben think all the mid-level games publishers have disappeared? Who do we have left at that level, Paradox? THQ is gone. You either have indie guys or you have the ever smaller pool of big, AAA guys.
Last statement:
"Titanfall is two hours of content, sold at full price and dusted in the usual generic blinding pixie dust of current-gen"
Titanfall definitely has more than two hours of content. The campaign is not the main content of a MP only game like Titanfall. I have put in tons of hours into Left 4 Dead, both 1 and 2, much more than just playing through the campaigns would net me. It is not about the story or the campaign progression, it is about the shooting mechanics, the competition with others, and the in-game progression systems, which by themselves take more than 2 hours to go through.
There are definitely problems with the current AAA industry, but they are not driven solely by greedy publishers nor by apathetic gamers. In many ways gamers are more plugged in and more discerning than ever. The only solution is going to be some advances in the way that games are made, which allow really graphically advanced games to be made with fewer people and for less money, or to see an expansion of indie and mid-level developers again.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

"Hurr dur durp back in my day games used to be good". That is pretty much what I'm getting from this piece. I disagree completely by the way, every year I play a lot of incredibly good games, and it just keeps on getting better each year.

And Titanfall is only two hours of content? Are you serious? That has to be the most idiotic statement I've ever seen. If you only play each map exactly once and then never touch the game again then sure it's two hours, but this is a multiplayer game. I've already put 50+ hours into it and I've gotten more bang for my buck then I get from almost every singleplayer game.

 

[Fireaxe]

As gaming becomes "mainstream" it becomes like every other media type; watered down to suit the masses and not actually very high quality. Just like film and books (though to a lesser extent now as books are now, sadly, a niche product).

 

[GonzoGamer]

I think it comes down to what its always come down to; people don't like to admit that they've been ripped off.
That's why you had tons of people buying defective consoles last generation; then buying backup consoles for when it inevitably broke.

As for me, I think there's maybe one game a year (if I'm lucky) that makes me thankful I do game. And thankfully we do still have R*s and Bethesdas who cram a shiton of content into every game, and thankfully they are incredibly successful.