The first part of the session tried to find a common ground description of what is an
AAA title, and what goals should a developer follow to create one. All interviewees agreed that
the first of these components would be mass appeal, meaning that a game wanting to become
an AAA needs to belong to a broad market, and appeal to a lot of different people across age
and gender groups. Some speakers mentioned just sales as the unique characteristic of these
titles, but most argued that achieving high sales is contradictory with a niche market approach.
Another aspect all experts mentioned is the idea of the perfect craft: AAA titles have a level of
polish and aesthetic completion that conveys a large team, working with a clear audio-visual
direction. The same way movie blockbusters should have great visual and audio effects,
spectacular shots and great characters, AAA games are expected to be perfect in their technical
and artistic execution. As a corollary of this, AAA titles should be not only playable, but fully
enjoyable within the first five minutes of play time. Mass audiences do not want to wait forever
while the game builds up its entertainment value: the game must be self-explanatory, with fun
value appearing real quick to avoid casual gamers from bailing out.
Another consequence of this perfect craft is that, to become an AAA game, a title must be
exhaustively tested, both for bugs and usability and entertainment value. With games lasting
well over fifty hours, it is mandatory for the best titles to guarantee a continuous, well balanced
entertainment from beginning to end. A specific part of this testing must go to the GUI, to make
sure it is aesthetically pleasant, yet functionally optimal. Many games fail to reach mainstream
acceptance due to poor GUIs that make gameplay quirky and non-intuitive.
Once all these issues are sorted out, all that a game needs to become an AAA title is a decent
amount of marketing and hype. All experts coincided that games, like movies, need marketing
force to reach mass audiences. Yet, all stressed the fact that no marketing can save a lousy
title, and so marketing can only make sure good titles reach the audience they deserve on the
first place.