First part of the post will say about history of AAA games, you can read that it was interesting story or not, you can scroll down totally and know what is AAA GAME and how it was made.
HISTORY OF AAA GAMES
In the early 1980s, the aaa games (which is pronounced as triple-A) industry is highly profitable, because people in America and some people who live in tier one countries bought gaming consoles in their homes. Seeing this many investors, invested their money and savings in videogame stocks. With a lot of money gaming companies like atari, Nintendo and "UBISOFT" started developing many new gaming consoles and released them in markets. Many rushed third-party developers rushed into the gaming industry and started developing games.
To this extent, the gaming enterprises' development faced a huge crash in 1983. So this year is a very problematic year of the video game industry. Let's take a look into it.
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| VIDEO GAMES CRASH |
Actually, for this great depression, a reason has listed that atari Which is under control of warner communications Inc. In 1980 we don't have PlayStation and Xbox to play aaa games still clearly even computers aren't reached to people as well.
Microsoft was not introduced at that time, so atari was the only king with no competitor in the gaming fields.
At that time Atari released a game called "PACMAN" which we know already and reserved a special place in our hearts in the olden days, many bought Atari consoles to only play PACMAN in that time. Atari got a jackpot and at the end of the 1980s atari sold approximately 10 million game consoles. And pacman's cartridge sold 12 million in that time.
Usually, there was a bad habit that if one game or movie becomes successful the creators will start to develop its second part which will spoil the fame of the first part.
Like that, atari also developed its second part and which was made the worst failure in the history of gaming, because its graphics were the bad than the first part which irritated the Pacman lovers. And believing this game atari developed 7 million cartridges already which they buried in the land.
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| BURIED PACMAN AND E.T |
So atari planned to compensate for the loss . In that time, many consoles became on the market with better options and budget-friendly moreover which made atari a huge loss.
At that time, a movie called E.T made a huge profit, and atari told that they going to develop a video game based on the story of the movie E.T. this message spreaded like a virus in the middle of the 1980s.
Many waited curiously to play that game finally this game was also released on the market. Then this game furthermore again irritated the gamers many decided and became confident not again to waste their money in buying a gaming console.
Even now, if you google "top worst games in the world" this game is surely listed first in that list.
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| ATARI E.T |
LOSS OF WARNER COMMUNICATIONS INC.
Because of E.T, atari was pushed into the place where it can't get up and decided to announce devolve of Atari. Not only for atari all the gaming consoles lost heavily because of E.T. and Pacman. Example:- I'm communications, policy, fair child channel F also declared to devolve their company.
Like this, the video game industry was laid down totally. People believed that the video game industry will not wake up anymore.
EVOLUTION OF GAMING IN 1985
The condition was followed for 3 years and in 1985, the one came into the gaming market when people are not ready to play and invest their money in the game anymore. He is Nintendo. And we need to thank Nintendo for entry because if it didn't enter the market today we know video games only from our grandparents.
Nintendo's introduction
The thing that changed this industry happened in 1985 but not in America or other European countries it was in Japan Nintendo was only became overseas in 1985 which means
NINTENDO was originally originated from Japan.
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| NINTENDO SWITCH |
It became overseas only after 1985, which means it started selling gaming consoles in America only after 1985.
The atari was replaced by Nintendo, then after times, also in the arcade and in-home gaming consoles, SEGA jumped into the race, because of this heavy competition and low budget ATARI was vanished after some times. Nintendo planned to make a golden seal place in the game cartridges which helped gamers buy a good game rather than wasting money on bad games. This is the main reason for AAA games.
But this seal was placed only in Nintendo, so people decided to make a standard value of game ratings that is "AAA".
WHAT DEFINES A TRIPLE-A GAME
Like in schools we gave an A grade to D grade, Gamers ranked good and best games in A grade and the top worst games in D grade. So this grade was later disappeared and became AAA (pronounced as triple-A)in later years.
But these three AAA's have three different qualifications that are:
| A |
A |
A |
| QUALITY |
FINACIAL SUCCESS |
INNOVTION |
It means that needs to be a quality game worth it for money and needed to gain huge profit then it needs to be innovative.
We can easily tell innovation and quality before releasing the game but financial success is considered only after release, but games releasing now are getting AAA because the conditions today were changed nowadays because if we start to create a AAA we need to hire a big team of developers, software engineers, animators, the motion capturing, 3d modeling, texturing, also people who well knowledge in real-world physics.
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| AAA seal |
Sometimes, the team can't develop ideas in the same field or branch, they will start to hire also freelancers across the world.
For example, some of the VFX effects and animations in cyberpunk are developed by rockstar India.
So that much effort and hard work occur to make a successful AAA game.
Even if some games are branded as AAA but some AAA games are didn't fulfilled the true full meaning of AAA.
For example cyberpunk yeh cyber has many innovative things in it. But it didn't get succeed financially.
WHAT IS AN INDIE GAME
we saw about AAA games, so we can't ignore indie games.
Many say indie games mean that Indian game or Hindi game but that's not exactly true. But honestly, there is no relation between indie and India, indie means an independent game. Independent is shortened as indie here.
If you going to start building a game using your idea that exactly will not become a AAA game, because you didn't have much budget like that so it was like a short-budget film.
INDIE VS AAA?
Like I said before, the AAA game is like a film that has music and a good story also some cinematic shots but indie games can't do that because of budget.
For example, if any problems occurred in the game engine software the company can fix its problem because they have their software to create games.
YET, INDIE games can't do that, they can only use an open-source game engine like unity and unreal engine.
Overall, I can say that AAA games are like avengers endgame and pirates of the Caribbean, which is made with a high budget, good story, and new ideas.
Then, INDIE GAMES like a jungle book and MOONLIGHT, with a good story at same time low budget.
WHY CREATING AAA GAMES EFFICIENT IN COVID LOCKDOWN?
1. High income and dividend.
2.Have a lifetime settlement because people are ready to spend more time and money.
3.during lockdown sitting at home, many gamers are ready to spend their time in front of the screen.
4.AAA game publishers can achieve a global brand like " APPLE", because of its popularity.
5.providing high-quality games.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO MAKE AAA GAME
AAA games provide high-quality graphics and require a big team to work together in different fields like motion graphics, animations, programming, texturing, and layout design. It may cost very high occasionally, it is all about your story and concept of your game like GTA V. Rockstar gamers spent approximately 265 million to make GTA V. You might wonder, why aaa games are these much spent to create. But not always exactly, you can budget even 1000 dollars to make an
Indie game. Many money was used vastly in these different fields.
Let's get deeper into this field:
MOTION GRAPHICS:-
motion graphics are often called motion designing. Motion graphics are used to design highly ads, good stories in games, adding audio, animation to text, and adding audio.
For creating good motion designing:
1.write a story that forms a pillar of your game, to any extent you have a good story as much your game will become successful.
2.add VFX to your game designs so that it can virtually represent your idea in the game.
3.produce your layout design.
4.Animate the final designs and add audio to your animations.
PROGRAMMING: after finishing, the motion graphics, animation, and audio, programmers are called game developers who will develop the functions and controls of the game after close discussions with the graphic designers. Some specialists who develop the character to run, shoot and make it do other functions according to the game company's vision, to complete this phase the programmers or developers need a deep understanding of animations. They will have a pro experience already in open source software like unity and unreal engine.
Steps to develop good programming in a game.
1.using
C++ in the game will vastly improve your game's performance because it is lite and faster than
python and java.
2. Create a basic outline and fulfill the requirements in functions what exactly the users and gamers need.
3.add smooth well-working buttons in the game.
4.discuss closely with
animations, motion designers, and 3d modeling artists for developing a good user-friendly game.
This phase will complete the total design of the game.
REACHING TO AUDIENCE
Even you hired a top programmer and a good game designers team if you don't reach the audience all those efforts are useless and will make you financially weaker.
In the AAA gaming industry, most of the budget was spent only on marketing.
Rockstar gamers spent a sum of 40 million to advertise their game, this is a very small amount comparing to other games because
GTA V had already reached people widely.
And they will get players to buy their game even if it didn't spend on marketing.
But many other unpopular games need to spend a lot for their games to reach an audience. It may be higher if you spend more. Companies that spent more money to create to create their games:
POPULAR AAA GAMES
| COMPANY |
GAME |
BUDGET |
| ROCKSTAR STUDIOS |
GTA V |
$265 million |
| PROJEKT |
CYBERPUNK 2077 |
$316 million |
| ACTIVISION |
CALL OF DUTY |
$200 million |
| ROCKSTAR NORTH |
RED DEAD REDEMPTION |
$664 million |
| SQUARE ENIX |
TOMB RAIDER |
$75 million |
| CRYSTAL DYNAMICS |
MARVEL AVENGERS |
$100 million |
Can one person make AAA game
On reading the above steps you can have an idea of what is a AAA game is actually, and you can't make it individually by doing all works, even to finish a full work you need very good and deep programming knowledge, so if you have good knowledge in all these fields, making a AAA game is not an easy thing, so sorry to say this, you will be less successful when starting to develop a game individually.
For that, I going to give an idea of how you can create your own AAA game.
Most of the time is spent not only on layout designing but also animating the character according to your choice, for helping your character to animate you can use mixamo free animation assets you can download
Click below
Also, you can download and your layout from the unity free asset store:
Click the link to
Most of the popular assets are free but some cost money.
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