AAA – what does this term even mean? Well, history indicates that the this term was borrowed from the financial industry, where AAA bonds are considered to be one of the safest investments, followed by AA, A and so on, all the way till C. Similarly, in video games, the tag AAA was attached to games that were considered to offer the lowest risk to publishers. All they had to do was advertise the game heavily, and the publishers could be assured of high returns. Since no one formally defined this term, over time, its definition began to change from “low-risk games” to “games made on a high budget by a large team”.
These days, AAA games are expected to offer best-in-class graphics, several dozens of hours of gameplay and much more, in order to justify their selling price of $70. In a lot of cases, they also have several higher-priced editions that offer extra content, most of which is considered unnecessary by the community.
But let us go back a bit to look at the originally intended definition of AAA games. Games that are considered to be safe investments by the publisher. That is certainly no longer the case these days, and in fact, it is quite the opposite. Making AAA games is a high-risk endeavour that requires hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, with almost no guarantee that you will break even, let alone make a decent profit.
Leave a Reply