Does AAAA just mean awful triple A games now?

It's just a marketing term. Just like AAA is a marketing term meaning we spent more money advertising this product than we spent on development.

109

Ah, i guess the “A” in “AAA” stands for Advertisement.

40
- Monopoly Go is the only real AAAA
  
  14
- Except that there was no advertising for concord lol.
  
  9
- The A is for "Actually this game is $90 now instead of $60."
  
  7
It originated as a marketing term for Skull and Bones, right?

Realistically, its a corporate buzzword that is supposed to mean that the game delivers an exceptionally high quality experience, graphically, narratively, gameplay wise...

...but what it seems to actually mean is that the budget and manhour count and development calendar time ballooned to far greater than the original plan/estimates due to incompetent management.

At this point, I propose that 'AAAA' applies to basically any extremely costly game backed by a huge publisher that owns many development studios, that has been in development for over 4 years before any kind of release, ie, stuck in development hell, execs convinced its going to be a massive hit such that they sunken cost fallacy other games or even other studios out of existence so they can keep funding their uber project.

With a definition like this, Skull and Bones qualifies, so does Concord and Suicide Squad.

Basically... it doesn't have to be from a grandiose marketing campaign attached to a AAA game, its more about being stuck in development hell and continuously funded to the point of destroying other parts of the business making it, like a financial cancer.

14
Have any companies besides ubisoft used the term yet?

8
- I seem to remember MS claiming they were opening the "first AAAA dev studio" (The Initiative). Since then, the studio has been radio silent, lost a bunch of talent, and needed help from Crystal Dynamics to work on their first game (Perfect Dark reboot).
  
  11
- iirc Square Enix called Forspoken 'AAAA'
  
  5

I'm gonna release a AAAAA game. It'll cost $95 and when you install it, it'll just be a romhack of Super Mario World changing all the enemy sprites into butts. There'll be a link to file complaints that just points to a terrible image made in ms paint that says "lol f u".

My stock prices gonna hit the moon.

84

And for $70 more you can play it 2 days early! For why? No fucking reason other than to flex! Gotta flex on those poors by getting it earlier than them amirite?? This ensures you will be invested in our product from the very start and you are the type of person who we can do no wrong.

And for $30 there's 2 extra skins that are just the worst looking piles of shit. But again if you don't have them how will you flex on the poors? This is lumped in with the earlier assurance that we can do no wrong in your eyes.

And the battle pass is $10 - every 30 days. It has nothing of value except at tier 150, which is a new flagrantly pay to win weapon. This ensures we own your time, every month.

But also we didn't finish the game, instead we released a roadmap. We will scrap this roadmap a week and a half after the disastrous launch because the game sucks so my donkey dick we cannot possibly add content to the absolute bugfest of a game. This is an abuse of loyalty to our brand, but you've stated you don't care as long as you get to play it.

Now that the game is out for a month, we've added a cash shop. This flies in the face of regulation on the box not indicating gambling elements, but fuck those stooges standing in the way of our profits! We can make a new box with the proper markings on them in a month. Surely you would like to buy a sword skin or character skin beyond looking like normal Mario right? Also there will be at least 1 skin that blends in with the background a little too well and attracts p2w allegations for the multiplayer mode. We don't care and neither do you because you will buy it. You wanna be a winner right?

We noticed you're already level 8, congratulations! We halved level reward drops, but increased rarity of those items by 30% but from here on we tripled enemy hp at every 10 levels to make sure the game is a slog, so you buy overpowered shit from the shop and battle pass.

You reached level 10 in only 5 hours? That's amazing! How about a XP Booster? Like the above we actually made progression become ungodly slow after level 10 unless you pay us $35 for an XP booster - in a single player game. We will make sure this pops up every time you level up to remind you we intentionally slowed progression so you make this purchase.

Also we can't help but notice you picked up a Fancy Locked Box. You can divert from the main quest to grind the crafting materials and it will take 6 hours to craft, OR you can buy a key for ONLY $5! This will pop up EVERY time you pick up a Locked Box with the option to go to the shop, and be SUPER disruptive, to get you to cave.

And lastly, a "donate" button on the main menu where you just give us money for nothing, because at this point why not right?

30
- This comment is more effort than the person you're responding to was going to put into the game.
  
  12
- Don't forget the meta where a new paid DLC weapon is super unbalanced and great for two weeks until the devs nerf it into the ground and everyone goes back to the default weapons that are just ok.
  
  5
I'll only support this if I can pre-order it for double the price, and have an option at launch to pay an additional $50 to make the butt sprites into dickbutt instead

12
- I'll pay triple if I can play it 25 minutes before anyone else has access.
  
  6
- The $50 dickbutt DLC isn't scheduled to be released until a month after the launch, but for an extra $70 you can get the limited edition collectors edition at launch, that comes with a cheaply made Mario-with-a-butt-instead-of-a-head limited edition figurine.
  
  And for $40 you can also purchase the "getting started" pack--that includes a save file where we beat the game, so you don't even have to play it. Your name, email address, and SSN will be on our first-to-finish list!
  
  6
- What about us whales? Can i pay triple and have a digital art book and a poorly painted plastic dickbutt figurine?
  
  3

The extra A comes from the MBAs adding their grain of salt that no one wants.

55

So the extra A is for 'Asshole'?

31
- A (A Grade, not B grade)
  
  AA A Advanced
  
  AAA An Advanced Advertisment
  
  AAAA An Advanced Advertising Arsehole.
  
  12

To elaborate a bit more than just budget/marketing, AAA games used to be distinguished from AA titles. Modest mid level titles from a studio between tentpole releases that would pay your bills and didn't break the company if they didn't sell well. It also generally related to the price you would be expected to pay. These days a AA/Indie game is $40, and a AAA title is $60/70. The rise of AAAA is a self aggrandizing to try and justify slapping a higher pricetag on products.

A great example would be an excerpt from Activision in 2004. Doom 3 in August would be AAA, then in September a bunch of AA games - cod game "united offensive", X-Men legends, Rome:total war, and Shark Tale. Then in October a AAA title with Tony Hawks underground 2.

History Lesson enclosed

Nowadays it's either AAA or Indie. Around the turn of PS3/x360 games became seen as a product and companies became more focused on individual games moneymaking, so fewer and fewer AA games got made in favor of big blockbusters. Game companies went broke trying to compete in this new market, and because so much rides on individual games that when they fail the company is in danger of going belly up - and so gets bought. This is why you heard about all those acquisitions and power consolidation in the past 20 years of the game industry. Big boys with money to spend buying up the losers tables when they lose their win streak.

About the turn of the 2010s and the changeover from PS4/XOne, the Indie Scene exploded in the vacuum left behind in the wake of those buyouts. Older Millennials who had been in college for programming games graduated and came to market and began publishing through steams Greenlight and even finding publishers not bought yet to make it to market. Games that were either easier to make or play and needed word of mouth. Sometimes you would have a real break out like Minecraft, super meat boy, Celeste, that would catch the attention of big studios and get the offer of a lifetime to sell out and go big.

And that brings us to today. Now because of market stagnation AAA has kind of lost meaning, because so many games are releasing in a poor state. In an effort to set a title above the others, a couple of people have tried to dub a game "AAAA" to try and reinvoke that sense of quality and polish that used to come with AAA. This started in 2020 with a Perfect Dark reboot (The Initiative) from Microsoft. The game has yet to release. It was subsequently laughed at and dismissed as silly corpo nonsense. Then Ubisoft stated Beyond Good and Evil 2 would be AAAA, this went under the radar because the game is vaporware and no one cares. And so this brings us to Skibidi Bonesacks where Yves (the CEO) called it a "truly AAAA game" to try and set it above games like assassin's creed and call of duty. And because it's nothing more than a buzzword to allow a ceo to stand on a stage self-felating, it released as a fucking disaster, like so many AAA games now anyway.

51

Skibidi Bonesacks

As one of those "older millennials" you referenced... What the fucking shit?

20
- The meme is because Skull and bones is so bad of a fumble, to also just fumble its name. I picked it up from some review but I can't remember who it was. Dunkey? Ah too long ago.
  
  15
To elaborate a bit more than just budget/marketing, AAA games used to be distinguished from AA titles.

To be a bit of a pedant, "AAA" was basically the marketing term to denote a game with a larger budget. The term "AA" came around afterwards as a way to distinguish games that fell between smaller indie games, and larger budget AAA games.

Edit: Corrected spelling.

16
- To be a bit of a pendant
  
  To be a bit of a pedant, it's pedant.
  
  2
- pendant
  
  pedant?
  
  Sorry
  
  2

I mean, the only AAAA game, as called by Ubisofts CEO, was complete dogshit. So technically all AAAA games are bad :)

45

AAAA was a term said by a single out of touch Ubisoft executive for a single game that wasn't very good. He was ridiculed for it at the time.

So AAAA means nothing. At all. Stop using it.

44

I think there is some merit to using it in a critical sense, just based on what happened that one time it was used.

To me, AAAA means a game that was given way too much budget for its scope, to its own detriment. Take what should be a niche, mid-budget game and pump it full of cash. The game becomes too big to fail and needs to use every "play it safe" strategy the MBAs demand in order to recoup its budget. So it aims for broad appeal, which makes it fail at being the niche game it was supposed to be, and it ends up flopping.

11
Permanently Deleted

7
AAAA is those tiny batteries that power electric pens

1

We need it for IPv6. Don't hate

35

Mhh, DNSv6 (name doesn't make sense but everyone still knows exactly what is said. Like "pointing toe".)

3
- I mean, it's just DNS with an extra field type.
  
  2

Yes, yes it is. The term coined by the Ubishit CEO trying to cover his own ass by claiming that Skull and Bones took so much time and money to make, and was being sold for higher than $60 (while still being a pile of shit) by saying it was a "AAAA game" and the term stuck. I mean, it's own very first use was to describe a terrible AAA game. It's only natural.

30

Oh hey, I forgot about that game's existence until now. It's name is so generic I used to accidentally call it Sea of Thieves, cause that's a more memorable name. Also a more memorable game.

14

How to pronounce AAA: "Triple A."

How to pronounce AAAA: "Aaaah!!!"

25

Artificial Abomination Absolutely Avoid

18

I looked at an "AAA" game maybe twice in give or take the last decade and both times have regretted it. Indie games are the bomb.

17

I mean, triple A just meant a big studio made it.

So I'm assuming quadruple A is going to be a game from a large study thats recently been bought by a giant corporation and fucked with everything despite not knowing video games.

So yeah, that's pretty much what AAAA means, although some end up decent

16

Yes. The 4th A was to the front and it stands for Awful AAA game.

14

where does AAA even come from. Is it like michelin stars and the american automobile association started it. If not why don't I hear about the AA or just A or B or C or D games. They should do like the recording industry and have categories based on amount sold and I would limit sales for full retail price. Once they set the price as what they think of it then they only get credit for those who pay full freight. Just to limit deeply discounting to pump the numbers and maybe to encourage a reasonable starting price.

10

My assumption is baseball

AAA is the best you can get in minor leagues before you move to the major leagues

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-A_(baseball)

8
- Or hockey
  
  1
- I think the more likely relation is to credit ratings or something similar, since the "AAA" is based around budgets and financial investments.
  
  1
My understanding is AAA is literally just a buzzword in the vein of AAAA. It doesn't relate to budget, team size, publisher/no publisher, kind of same as indie at this point.

It maybe made a little more sense when it was a publisher descriptor? EA, Activision, Ubisoft were publishing games at a different scale than Midway, Acclaim, THQ, etc. But still, as far as I understand is more of a marketing term as opposed to designating anything specific.

6
It comes from the publishers in the 90s. They needed an easy way to tell stores/distributors how popular they thought each of their games would be, to help them decide how many of a certain title the distributor should order. The games expected to be GotY contenders would be marked AAA, AA for otherwise decent games, A for more niche games and B for "this is a starshot, we're hoping it will sell enough to justify production costs". That then lead to more and more games being marked as AAA due to budgets getting increased, and the whole system became a bit redundant.

3
- he games expected to be GotY contenders would be marked AAA, AA for otherwise decent games, A for more niche games and B for “this is a starshot, we’re hoping it will sell enough to justify production costs”.
  
  Is there any evidence of this being the case? Personally, I don't remember anything other than "AAA" back in the day, with other variations coming about much later as budgets grew and people wanted more specific delineations.
  
  2

The extra A is for abomination.

8

AAAA games are clearly inferior to AAAAXY games.

7

I would say I really enjoyed Sony's games the last few years but they also don't seem to be able to tell their non-creatives to STFU and are damaging their games recently so I'm inclined to agree.

Ohh Capcom are still good...right?!

7

Oh sweet summer child. Capcom is on a very sharp edge imo.
Their games are solid, but everything around it is utter god damn dogshit.
Sf5? Beta was very solid, was fucked up before release. Also had a terrible microtransactions system.
Sf6? Very very solid base game, but to get all character and stages since last year + the game you have to pay +160 euro.
Re4? Very solid remake, but prepare to loose performance on pc due to dunovo despite it being a single player game.
Re: the village? Very solid game, but better pay shit up and also loose performance despite ALSO being a single player game.
Megaman: mega who?
Monster hunter : safe, for now. Monster hunter wilds looks amazing and loads of fun, but watch them fuck it up somehow..

I like capcom a lot, have always supported them despite shit decisions and a few near bankruptcies but its the microtransactions/usage of dunovo and other weird ass decisions is making me hold back on buying their stuff atm..

4
- Monster Hunter and Devil May Cry and Dragon Age: full of insipid, unnecessary microtransactions ranging from regular consumable items, to cosmetics that were usually just included with the game normally. God I love Capcom's games but I hate them as a company.
  
  1

Wait, we're doing quadruple As now?

6

An Ubisoft exec described Skull & Bones as the first AAAA game. Given the generally unfavorable reception this game got, “AAAA game” has become an expression of mockery.

15
Ubisoft are

6
That's nothing. French porc offal sausages do five of them:

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_amicale_des_amateurs_d'andouillette_authentique

It's also onomatopoeic, as it's the sound one makes when first smelling one

5
- Oh I do bloody love a bit of offal tho. I think that AAAAA screaming might be my guts, cos it's deffo not my gob
  
  5

It just corresponds to the length of the scream now.

5

It always did.

5

It means that the key is stuck.

4

We need a new way to symbolise a good game like QQQ for Quality Quality Quality or something. AAA just means unfinished mess that cost a lot which you pay extra for.

4

The closest approximation we currently have (and likely will ever have) are game ratings...

4
Awful Awful Awful Awful

3

I don't know, but if I ever create a meme game (assuming I ever got the opportunity), I'm definitely gonna market it as a AAAAAAAAAA game that was so good we had to downgrade it to a meme because your face would melt just by looking at the title screen due to how high quality it was.

3

That must be how they named this.

4

Awful Alright Alright Alright

2

Always has

1