What does AAA mean?

WW4BW · August 2009

Could someone please explain to me what the hell AAA means and why its being put infront of mmorpg half the time.

I assume it means its top of the line or some such but it bugs the hell out of me not knowing what the letters represent and even more the nagging feeling that half the people using it dont have the slightest clue what it means either.

So, what does AAA mean?

SomeOldBloke · August 2009

I think it's a baseball reference... you have Major League (red sox, white sox, etc.) then the Minor Leagues... Minor Leagues are split into several division AAA, AA, A, etc. AAA being the best of the minor league divisions.

WW4BW · August 2009

yeah minor league baseball is so far the best explanation.

If that is what it means I think I wont use it myself.

Bigdavo · August 2009

It means it's a top shelf MMO usually made a by a big developer, such as WoW, LotRO, WAR, etc.

Upcoming AAA titles for example would be Aion, SW:TOR, big devs, big bucks involved. Doesn't exactly mean the game is great, but usually it's one of the bigger/better ones around.

mhsk · August 2009

It's just a game lingo (ie noob). basically means high quality game.

LynxJSA · August 2009

Basically, it means the top ranking titles.

"IDGA defines AAA titles as those ranking among the top 5 titles based on unit sales of the year." - Video Game Basics

"We are developing Earthrise with the idea to make it comparable to the top MMO titles nowadays, which in your words means AAA MMO" - Ostiak, Earthrise Team

Lately, a lot of marketing teams, especially for F2P games, have been pulling the term out of their ass.

Lobotomist · August 2009

AAA means the game was developed by major game developer (fe Mythic,Bioware,SOE,Blizzard) and development budget was substantial ( 20+ million dollars )

It doesnt mean the game is or was any good. But it means that developers had all means to make it good.

LynxJSA · August 2009

Originally posted by Lobotomist

AAA means the game was developed by major game developer (fe Mythic,Bioware,SOE,Blizzard) and development budget was substantial ( 20+ million dollars )
It doesnt mean the game is or was any good. But it means that developers had all means to make it good.

That's a very good point.

brostyn · August 2009

AAA is the highest bond credit rating a corporation can have. That is where it comes.

A game developed by a AAA company has a lot of integrity and history behind it, therefore, would be a "safe bet" to say the company will not make a flop. As we've seen lately, that is why investing is so risky. Sometimes theses don't come through, and are downgraded.

fmnch35 · August 2009

It's a really small type of battery.

Mrbloodworth · August 2009

Budget and production value.

WW4BW · August 2009

Thank you for these very good answers.

I feel much better, now, about not being able to come up with 3 words beginning with A that would make any sense in this context.

Torak · August 2009

In the MMO market it generally means that a big publisher spent a ton of money on it and a lot of advertising and you can expect the game to not work at launch and about a 12-24 month recovery in which time the population will dwindle to hardly enough people to fill a gymhall.

I am always very leery of the big "AAA's" like SOE, Funcom, and Turbine for example.

x_rast_x · August 2009

AAA means a big expensive well-advertised game published by a big name publisher.

AAA MMOs have a pretty bad track record - they seem to spend buckets of money on trying to gain a broad, mass-market audiance and usually mess it up one way or another and this causes everyone to go back to WoW. WoW is the only AAA MMO that's achieved the level of success such a game needs in order to be considered a 'success'

This is why there's so many people clamoring for indie games, they cost less and have a much narrower appeal, but the audiances they do appeal to they tend to appeal to very strongly and they don't need anywhere near as many subscribers to be considered 'successful'