Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7842808" data-attributes="member: 18">What the heck?No-one thought that. The concept of "indie games" didn't exist in 1998 (not for anything that wasn't basically shareware, and we didn't call them "indie games" - that term emerged in the later 2000s, mostly after Xbox Live Arcade) and AAA barely did (like it had literally just started being used). That's a truly bizarre thing to say. AAA is about budget and team size - and by the standards of the time, most of the games mentioned were in the general range people, in say, 1998-1999 considered to be AAA. Which was a hell of a lot lower than it is now.BG1 might have been at the low end of what was considered AAA back then, but BG2 and NWN were huge budget, huge team games for their time, with lavish production values. There were unquestionably AAA.The "Trails of the..." games you mentioned exist in the space between AAA games and indie games. Sometimes they're referred to as AA games - it's becoming increasingly popular as it becomes clear there are basically three "budget ranges" for game dev, all of which can be profitable.No, you've literally just made that up! That is not how AAA is used in the industry. An indie game that sells millions of copies and makes tens of millions (and many have) is still an indie game. It does not "turn into an AAA game". Ever. Please stop misleading people!It is an informal term, but it's about the size of the team, ambition/scale of the game being developed, and the budget. If you read the rest of the wikipedia article, rather than making things up which aren't true because someone said the word "blockbuster" (which they are analogous to, not the same as!), you will see that. Typically that means a dead minimum budget of $20m, usually more like $40m, and it typically means a team size, from about 2014 onwards, of 100 people. Indeed, 150-200 is increasingly common. CDPR has 400 for CP2077!These numbers have increased over time. To make an "AAA" game in the early 2000s, you could have a lower budget and team size, but those are what the numbers are now, and this company is claiming they're going to make AAA games now.I just wanted to say how very well-said this is. Quite right. I don't think people are looking at the longer-term consequences here. If WotC blow $30m+ on Tuque, as seems very likely if they develop an AAA game, even assuming the development goes well, that's money taken from the development of D&D, and if Tuque's game doesn't sell well (as is quite likely - first-time teams making AAA games to order do not have a great history), then that's money lost on D&D's balance sheet.Further, as Dausuul points out, it makes D&D games from competent dev studios less likely, as they have to get past being considered "competition", and will be more harshly scrutinized re: the profits they offer WotC. WotC already told Obsidian and Beamdog to sod off. I guess we're just lucky Larian got in before Tuque was acquired or BG3 might be with Tuque.No. AAA is an industry term. It is not a "buzz word". I am astonished that people who appear to know absolutely nothing about the computer game industry are making wild and definitive claims. Sure, they could be LYING when said they're going to make AAA games, but that's a case of LYING not a case of "a buzz word".</blockquote>

Verification