In recent times, AAA games are receiving a lot of interest and attention from users, typically in this case Big Time game. Let’s find out what AAA games are and the innovation that AAA games bring to the GameFi market.
Before jumping into the article, everyone can refer to some of the following articles to understand better.
- What is GameFi? GameFi’s operating mechanism
- Big Time & New Advancement in the GameFi Industry
- What is Play To Earn? The trend opens a new era for gaming
What Are AAA Games?
True to its name, AAA game, also known as Triple A, is made up of 3 elements including:
- A lot of money: Lots of investment money
- A lot of Time: Lots of design time
- A lot of Resources: Lots of manpower
Therefore, AAA games are games produced with high budgets, often published by famous game manufacturers such as EA, Ubisoft, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Nintendo, etc.
What are AAA games?
This term has been around since the 1990s and now refers to hundreds of games on the market. Although there is no set limit on how much money needs to be spent on a AAA game, they often cost a lot to produce and market, such as the recently released Big Time game that has gone Viral all over. Social networking platforms such as Twitter, ….
In addition, AAA games require a large team of many members and work for a long time to create the most meticulous and detailed lines in the game. Therefore, AAA games launched on the market are classified as “blockbusters” and receive great attention from the community.
History of the AAA Game Industry
As I said above, the term “AAA” began to be mentioned frequently in the late 1990s, when some game development companies started using the term at game conferences in the US. The term is borrowed from the credit industry’s bond ratings, where “AAA” bonds represent those bonds that are safest and most likely to meet their financial goals.
Final Fantasy VII – One of the first AAA titles
Final Fantasy VII features unprecedented cinematic CGI production values, film-like presentation, instrumental music, and an innovative combination of gameplay and dynamic cinematography. Its expensive advertising campaign was also a new venture for a video game. This has pushed future AAA game releases to have a strong focus on innovation and narrative-driven gameplay set against modern graphics.
How Are AAA Games Made?
A AAA game is created through an extremely complex process with the participation of a large team of many different positions and roles. Below are the main steps in the process of creating a AAA game on the market today.
Come up with the first ideas and concepts
Like any other game, it’s all based on the first ideas and concepts of the art and design in the game. This is an extremely important aspect of game design to establish the idea in mind right from the beginning of the game.
Because AAA games have extremely complex content, they often need additional “game design documents” (often abbreviated as GDD) to direct the development process on the right path and avoid getting lost in ideas. Rambling doesn’t exactly get to the heart of the game.
Game design
After completing the idea, game design is an inevitable part before a AAA game enters the next stages. This stage focuses on designing game characters, gameplay, game plot, etc. In addition, in AAA games, the design team is also divided into many sub-groups such as the character level design team. animals, game content design team, UI/UX design team,…
Artistic design
This is the stage where developers need to develop the game’s art style, such as animation, science fiction, etc. At this stage, the art team will also create characters and environments. fields, animations and special effects in the game.
AAA quality works of art require meticulousness and attention to even the smallest aspects of the game. Such as the different movements and actions of the characters in the game, weather effects, etc.
Program
As soon as the design is ready, programmers will start writing game code based on the available designs. For AAA games, the programming team will be divided into many small groups and each group will be responsible for writing code for some functions in the game.
In addition, the team of programmers must also cooperate closely with manufacturers, designers and a number of other departments to be able to create functions in the game that match the original purpose when designing the game.
Testing/ Testing
After completing all programming stages, the game will now be in Draft mode – meaning it can be played but there will be potential errors or character actions that are not in accordance with the original purpose. This is when quality assurance experts get involved in the process before the game is officially introduced to the community.
In addition, we often hear of Alpha (playable but incomplete) and Beta (final complete) versions that allow a small number of players to participate in the game experience as a form of to test the game before officially releasing it.
Release and post-release support
Once the development and testing phase is over, the game is finally ready to be released to the world. Usually, major publishers often have their own official online platform to announce the release of new games or updates to existing games.
In addition, there are also available platforms for game publishing such as: Steam, Itch.io, Kongregate. Some famous AAA game publishers at the present time include: Epic Games, FoxNext, Electronic Arts,…
Genres and Outstanding Trends of AAA Games
AAA game genre trends from 2018 to 2022
The chart above shows major changes in AAA game genre trends over the past 5 years from 2018 to 2022. Looking at the chart above, we immediately see that the genre that is always at the top every year is Action (action) and Adventure. This is true for each type of game and each year. Some popular games in these two genres in the past 5 years include Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Action, Adventure), Red Dead Redemption 2 (Adventure), Super Mario Odyssey (Action, Adventure) , Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (Action, Shooter) and Battlefield 1 (Action, Shooter).
Action and adventure games are becoming extremely popular among gamers because they offer two of the best things about gaming: Escape and engagement. As the main character in these games, players often participate in journeys of discovery and intense battles in the game. With the advancement of technology, the game’s context as well as the abilities of the game characters are becoming more and more amazing, so these genres are always at the top of popularity.
Following the above two categories are several categories vying for third place with varying results depending on the year. One genre that continues to gain attention here is the Shooting genre.
Shooting games are arguably one of the most popular types of games, regardless of the popularity scale. When it comes to sales, Call of Duty is consistently among the best-selling games each year. When it comes to actual play time, some of the most played games in the world are shooters – Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite and PUBG: Battlegrounds.
As newer shooting games come out, the social aspect associated with these games is constantly enhanced as well as a greater focus on tactics, team coordination, and communication. This helps this genre always be popular whether it is single-player or multiplayer games.
AAA Game In Crypto Market
It can be said that AAA Game is only in its early stages and is not well known in the Crypto market. This is understandable because it is inherently difficult to put a game on Blockchain, let alone a AAA game with graphics and quality of content in the game guaranteed to be at a high level.
Despite the difficulties, perhaps VCs and game developers have had ambitions in building quality AAA games on Blockchain for a long time. This is shown through huge capital calls from the end of 2021 and throughout 2022 and 2023. We can mention some deals such as: Champions Ascension with 32M USD from A16z, EVE Online with 40M USD led by A16z, Loki with 50M USD from A16z and Makers Fund,…
As a result, up to now, we have seen a number of AAA titles appear on the market. One of them that cannot be ignored is Big Time – a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) built on the Ethereum Blockchain. Right after the BIGTIME token was launched on October 11, 2023, it was multiplied more than 10 times and the list was almost full of major exchanges, reaching a trading volume of hundreds of millions of dollars in a day.
Big Time – A new beginning for AAA games in the gameFi market
This is an extremely rare thing since the last project to do this was StepN with the Move To Earn trend (which took place in March 2022). In addition to Big Time, a notable game is Champions Ascension which is in Alpha version and is rushing to complete the final updates before the official launch later this year or in 2024.
The appearance of well-invested AAA games in the Crypto market promises to bring players unique experiences and remember that there is one thing that creates unique characteristics of Web3 games compared to Web2 games: Earn still appears although the Ponzi feature will probably be somewhat removed to ensure balance in the economy of current AAA games.
summary
AAA games are a topic that has been discussed a lot in the market recently. Above is all the information that I want to introduce in this article, hope everyone has some understanding of what AAA games are.
