The “AAA’ game is a lie.
I have a good friend, Cindy, and she likes Aion. I played with her one night in Beta, and played a few other nights in the beta. Even though it was just beta, and I forgave the few issues, the game just isn’t my cup of tea. I have another friend that plays in LotRO every night. While I enjoy the game, it is by far not one of my favorites.
Does this mean that something is wrong with me? Something might be off with my tastes? No, not at all. This means that I am a normal, healthy gamer.
But I hear so much talk about the “AAA” games that for a while I thought that I must be mad to consider some “non-AAA” games better than most “AAA” games. But what does “AAA” mean? To get a definition, I guess I’ll get to Google. Good ole’ Google.
(Looks for a few minutes. Stops after realizing that there are 5 billion definitions for the word, just like he thought.)
See, many popular words that are thrown around in gaming are defined by the individual. There are general definitions, though. In example, I asked one of my friends to stop using the word “retarded” because it was offensive when he used it to mean “people that suck.” Retarded people do not suck just because they are retarded. Retarded people, just like non-retarded people, have different levels of suckage. His general use of the word “retarded” to mean “people that can’t play games” was, in a word, stupid. He said he meant the literal meaning of the word, the one that means a “slow person.”
If he expects me to believe that, while in the heat of a raid he screams out “…You RETARD!..” that he meant “…You are slow to respond, sir…” then he must think that I am stupid.
It’s the same with “AAA”. There are literal meanings for it, but in MMORPG’s, it is simply referring to the largest games with the most success and the biggest budgets. But, that definition doesn’t even fit most games. That fits World of Warcraft. WoW is the largest subscriber-based game out there. While there are many games that make WoW’s 11 million players look like chop suey, that’s 11 million people paying every month. So, does the profit equal success? ONE type of success, sure. How about critical success? How about a game with more players? Maple Story has somewhere around 10’s upon 10’s of millions more players than WoW. Would they play if it were not free? I don’t know. Would they play it is was not FUN?
So why do people throw around “AAA” for games like LotRO, or for CoH, when there are F2P games not only making more money, but also holding onto to MILLIONS more players than those titles? Yet, those F2P titles are not considered “AAA”? Tell that to Nexon’s accountant.
Could “AAA” be referring to the players experience? I think so, in most ways. When people say “..it was a AAA game..” they probably mean that the experience was more shiny, polished, finished, full…you know, a nice well rounded experience that worked and worked well. Again, it’s more opinion that describes more games that are not considered a “AAA” experience. Also, that’s like saying “good art.” There is no such thing as “good art.” There is just art, but saying that a work is good or bad (do I really need to say this?) depends completely upon the viewer. I will promise you that if I had all the magic power in the world and could magically show you what every single person thought of the greatest works of art in the world, there would be plenty that considered those masterpieces to be total wastes of space. So, who is right?
“AAA” should just be considered a general term, like “cool” or “neat.” Just saying those words means “..in my opinion.” It is a given that the person using those words is giving you their side of the story, but since they are talking about something as light as entertainment, they do not need to give you more details.
Bob: “How was that band last night?”
Steve: “They were cool.”
Bob: “OK, I’ll go check ‘em out. What’ll it hurt?”
So let’s not use “AAA” to mean anything deeper. “AAA” has no literal measure or quantity. It is not talking about budgets or number of players, or even profit alone, so it cannot cover all games out there to it’s candle of success. There are games that cost near nothing that make millions, and games that cost millions that are now gone forever. There are games like WoW that have millions of players, yet players like me think that the game is fun but only has the depth of many basic MMOs. My gut feeling is that players use the term “AAA” to describe some kind of hopeful wish, as in “This new game looks “AAA”, it will be the WoW Killer” without knowing what a WoW Killer would even look like, play like, or be like; as though being the biggest game out there is somehow the only measure of quality.
Maybe that’s it? Maybe “AAA” has become the new term for the burnt out gamer, the player that grows tired of games as soon as the first ding hits. Maybe “AAA” is something they are looking for, a badge they hang on a figment of their imagination? Perhaps it is just a set of three letters, that mean absolutely nothing, unless framed within a very specific conversation, like “biggest player-base” or “most profit”? Whatever it means, I never use it. I think that it’s about as silly as saying “..that guy is retarded for liking bad art.”
Beau
Welcome to the party.
Your late.
I’ve never used that term before, as I knew from the get go that it had no real definition, except what each individual makes of it.
It’s kinda like ‘WoW clone’, or ‘WoW Killer’.
Moronic terms for toughs who lack vocabulary.
As an artist, I see exactly where your coming from with that art analogy, and like art, there isn’t a ‘good game’ as such, as there is just different games.
Good and bad a purely subjective terms, and what is good to one person may be crap to others.
The best one can do is to show what they like and why.
I figure, if you like, you like.
If you don’t like, then you don’t like.
There’s no need for useless terms like ‘AAA’.
Although I do find it amusing that many people think that just because they like a game, that everyone else is just like them, and likes the game also.
Funny enough, reality doesn’t work that way.
(the word ‘like’ was used 11 times in this post….. make that 12)
~Yoh
AAA is the stage at which the game participates on. I take my usage of the word from minor league baseball, AAA being the highest level you can participate in. Just ignore the fact there is a Major League Baseball
So, AAA games are those that come into the market expecting to be a “big” player. The key identifiers are: big budget and big name developer.
PS. I think your comparison of the uses of AAA and retarded, is retarded.
But one of the issues of saying that big money and big name developer is that many NA players are using the term without using it for the other markets out there, just another example of how NA might be missing quite a few boats. There are more large companies and major money being made outside of the US than in.
My comparison of the two words is to show that in both cases people are using whatever definition serves them at the time. Both terms are stupid.
You can do this with every word if you want to. AAA means whatever most people understand it as or what your audience understands it as. This is how a lot of words work. That is why languages change, evolve, etc. It’s like talking about God, depending where you are people will assume something different.
So in the English speaking internet gaming culture what does AAA mean? From what I’ve gathered they are MMOs with huge ad and/or development budget. They also seem to have big name development teams and/or publishers.
It’s not really about how successful the game is because the term is assigned before the game is released. Although if a no name game happens to become massive and profitable I’m sure it would get slapped with AAA.
NEXON may have millions of players. I’m sure lots of flash games and Facebook games can say this too. But who knows, even Blizzard’s 11 million is always scrutinized. So you end up using revenue as a measure. NEXON isn’t even close to half a billion at the moment. Most of the AAA competition is multi-billion, aside from maybe Atari.
Maybe we can use new terms? NEXON is like a niche cable television channel (thinking HGTV or Food Network). SoE, Blizzard, EA, etc could be network television. EvE could be…Showtime?
We are talking about MMO’s, though. WoW is the top of the heap for profit. Not for number of players, style, playability or many other things (many of which are based opinion, yet peopel use it to set the standard.) My point is that “AAA” is used to refer, still, to a certain group of MMO’s. But, just as I expected, everyone that commented on this blog in the 3 or 4 different places I post has a different definition for the word when pressed, but many still use it to mean “big budget, big success, big company.” It’s like “happy.” We all know what that means in a general way, but yet have unique definitions for ourselves.
I am a F2P fan, and usually hear about how many of my favorite titles are not “AAA”, while the rules of “AAA” (according to those people) rule out all but WoW for the title of “AAA.” Name the next largest games behind WoW: Lotro, WAR, EQ2. COmpare their profits to the profits of many in the F2P market. If LotRO is “AAA”, then so is many other games.
It’s silly. These divisions are what cause half of the people that I talk to about the F2P intl. market to go “..there are OTHER games?”
It’s a little fascinating: this definition that everyone has, and that everyones expects the “real” definition of the word to be.
Exactly what Gemski said. Words are like that. They are slippery and the meaning is based on what the people using it agree the meaning is. As you found when looking for the meaning of “AAA” there are more meanings to a single word than what is included in a dictionary. A “spindle” for a machinist will be different than for a software engineer, will be different from a butcher or a fashion designer. (This is Wittgenstein.)
When someone refers to a AAA game in an MMO crowd, we all know what type of game is being referred to. I don’t care for the term either, but I found myself using it recently in reference to Aion because the term is a form of shorthand, it is a fast way to explain the nature of the game.
As a sidenote, how are you judging Nexon’s profits? Are you pooling all of their games together? Because no single F2P game they make, generate as much revenue as Lotro, WAR, or EQ2 do. Especially in North America.
They do however have better profit margins by keeping cost low with low quality clients, poor customer support, etc.
Well, one fairly clear measure is “does it come in a box available from a retailer.” In most cases, folks tend to think of those as “real products” as opposed to “just a download.” It’s an artificial one on a technical level, but it feels substantial.
I am using all of Nexon, being that once you have a log-in, it is the access for all their games. With other companies with multiple titles, you must buy each title.
And how would you know what profits these companies are making? Just curious, I just go to google and search. And there was some good info at GDC, too.
Despite whether Nexon is making more money or not does matter anyway. Turbine makes nowhere the profit that WoW does (same with all the other “boxed AAA” titles) but yet LotRO can somehow be in the same bracket as WoW?
All this proves my point: everyone thinks their definition is right. Its only opinion, actually, like saying “poor customer service.” I have received great customer service the 3 times I needed it in a Nexon game, so how many have you experienced? What facts are you pulling from other than what is actually your opinion?
This is why “AAA” means nothing.
Ok, WoW is AAAA.
lol, You might be right.
Beau
(Hi Beau, I see you on AG. Nice to see your blog.)
Guys, words are not slippery. People are slippery. Words always mean what they mean. People often mean what they feel. Language does not evolve because words are rainbows. Language evolves because human culture evolves. Just because you tell me “pie” means “cat” does not mean a pie IS a cat. What it means is that you wanted to use the word pie instead of the word cat because it suited you to do so.
Sure, social senses might go in and out of vogue but a word’s root meaning never changes. If a group of people decide to use a word incorrectly to the point it becomes accepted, all it means is that they aren’t linguistically ignorant for using the incorrect word. They were still imprecise. That said …
The phrase “poor customer service” is a great example of an opinion we dress up as fact because the implication somehow bolsters the speaker’s own opinion without implicitly (and embarrassingly) claiming ownership of an emotional response. If you can convince another person that what you feel is rational by being “slippery,” you can feel better about being emotional. The correct thing to say is, “I believe I received treatment which violated the business agreement.” If you did not and cannot, the unfairness exists only in your opinion. That is valid for you, but in no way justifies you in believing that anyone else shares your opinion or experience (although they are likely to agree to something so general).
You can’t please everyone all of the time and most people are impatient, greedy, and angry. Sometimes genuine mistakes and oversights happen. MOST of the time the customer feels it’s more acceptable to cry “bad customer service” when they don’t get what they want, pretending that the company is victimizing them. They are frustrated. They are anonymous. The company is a large faceless entity. No one can PROVE that “bad customer service” didn’t happen so people will likely sympathize with the speaker if he claims he was treated unfairly. And that’s what it’s about. It’s like a teenager claiming all family members are “stupid” save himself, or an adult claiming all his countrymen are “ignorant” save himself. No one can prove otherwise. Listeners will most likely show a degree of sympathy in private conversation, and so, the speaker is likely to have his feelings of X validated without ever having to mention he has irrational, personal emotions about the issue at all.
Relation?: “Everyone plays this game.” (Read: I don’t know how I feel about my strong attachment to this entertainment product. I feel more secure when I think everyone else is attached, too. My security is assured if you also believe everyone plays.)
This is close to, “This is a highly regarded AAA title.” (Read: You really need to get this game if you are in the know. I heard this and believe it’s true, and identify myself as one in the know. Your agreement justifies my feelings about this. If you buy it, you agree this is an important product and I’ll feel (a) justified in making this purchase although I actually dislike it (or b) more secure about saying I love this game.)
The difference between a marketing term like AAA and a word like spindle is that “spindle” is a noun directly related to a series of real life objects that perform the same task despite being found in different environments. Adjectives used in marketing are only marketing. They do not refer to objects. They refer to desires. Calling something ‘New and Improved’ is subjective. It quite possibly describes a product that works insufficiently when compared to the original product, but, in a way, it is “improved” simply because it is new.
If you think even game developers know what ‘AAA’ and ‘Indie’ mean, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but they don’t. Not precisely. It’s marketing speak and that’s all it is. We could debate the meaning of what the marketers meant regarding which product, but in the end, all we would decide on was whatever we thought they wanted their phrasing to mean, and in turn, what they wanted us to think their phrasing meant.
“Low quality clients?” “Poor customer support?” What do these statements mean? You can’t prove an imaginary wall exists with an imaginary hand but profit is profit. If these “low quality customers” end up making a product more profitable than the next product, that’s a matter of business plan. They win. It’s the only law in business. You make more profit, you are more successful. Unless you break the law of the government granting you the ability to do business, that’s it. That’s how independent businesses or products can be ever become widely successful. That’s why marketing even exists. It’s not simply to let you know a product happens to be around.
None of this is to say you can’t use marketing jargon. It’s good to know what it’s all about. This isn’t to say you can’t use trendy terms or slang language, but the next time someone points out that something is not, in fact, “new and improved”, and you get indignant that they aren’t agreeing with the writing on the package, ask yourself what you feel you have to gain by arguing that the phrase meant what you wanted it to mean.
The point is not in whether AAA is a philosophically real state or not. The point is that there is no reason we should care.