This is an adaptation of an assessment completed for ITC467 Games 1 in Graduate Certificate in Mobile Applications Development at CSU.
Triple A is not a grading of quality, an expectation of the delivered product or even the nature of product being delivered. It is a credit rating. It is earned by having a strong credit history, generally also with some measure of liquid or solid assets and their ability or likelihood of being able to repay a debt. For this reason it is confusing when someone says they only play triple A games.
To understand this we need to dig through a few layers. A triple a studio is capable of spending very large sums of money. This normally translates into high visual fidelity with all the latest bells and whistles as this is an easy thing to invest large quantities of money into. This large investment necessitates a large volume of sales. Why is this the case? In different circumstances, a product that costs more to produce could simply be sold at a higher price to the consumer. The phrase ‘you get what you pay for’ comes to mind. Games, however, follow a fairly rigid pricing model. This may be due in part or in whole to; consumer expectations, saturation points (if it was priced higher total sales would be lower due to consumers refusing to the price point and total profit would be lower), effort barriers and perhaps most restrictive platform holder rules. Price point is locked so all that can vary is sales numbers, this leaves AAA games in the same situation as Hollywood big budget movies, they need to be blockbuster, runaway successes to be profitable. For example, hitman absolution sold millions of copies but fell short of expectations, only 3.6 of 5 million.
Just like big Hollywood productions these games are then required to possess high mass market appeal this tends to lead to known quantities for AAA games, genres and themes that are known to have high sales, predominantly based on what sold well last year. This also explains the high rate of ‘sequelisation’ in the games industry. Also getting the base game working tends to represent a considerable cost but then adding 10% more (new weapons, enemy types, textures) and all new level geometry for the sequel is, by comparison, quite cheap. This is also reinforced by the study that found sequels tend to fare better than originals or untested new IPs.
With this in mind we find that Far Cry 3 by Ubisoft Montreal is the quintessential AAA game. It was released in late 2012 on all current generation platforms, PC, X360 and PS3. It has sold over 4.5 million copies and is essentially an amalgamation of Assassin’s Creed, another Ubisoft property (which is annualised and sells millions of copies) and the First Person Shooter genre, which is arguably the most popular genre in gaming, with annualised franchises selling 10s of millions of copies every year and setting and then breaking its own record for sales in 1 day, 5.6 million copies. It is worth noting that Far Cry 3 is an unrelated sequel to Far Cry 2 also by Ubisoft Montreal released in 2008 which sold over 2.9 million copies. Like a hollywood action film, it is a visual fiesta, island paradise with explosions and violence. Motion captured and voice acted cinematics make use of all the available dx11 technology. A story about an unlikely american everyman that is now the only one that can save the day. Its story and mechanics are designed so that no one could be offended by them.