AAA game industry (2017-present)

"They need to launch on the first day complete. A concept that has been lost to the era of...Modern Gaming!"

- The Act Man

AAA (pronounced Triple-A) is a type of game industry with higher budget video games produced by a mid-sized or major publisher. In the 2000s and early 2010s, this industry was known to have many successful and well received titles, even from hated game publishers as mentioned below. However, ever since around 2017, the industry has been criticized and controversial for starting a decline in quality.

' QUICK NOTE : This doesn't mean that all the AAA games nowadays are bad or mediocre as there are still many of them that are critically acclaimed and meet gamers expectations. This is only to cover the recent bad practices that companies have implemented into some of these games that have caused them to somewhat or massively suffer in quality.'

Why It Sucks Now

 * 1) Complacency. It is when publishers take forever or refuse to make games for beloved franchises. Rockstar Games, Bethesda and Valve are the best examples of this. Rockstar Games focus more on their online multiplayer components like Grand Theft Auto Online and Red Dead Online (which were online counterparts of mh:awesomegames:Grand Theft Auto V and mh:awesomegames:Red Dead Redemption 2, respectively), and barely make new games for Max Payne, Bully, Manhunt, or Midnight Club. Bethesda barely took five years after the success of mh:awesomegames:Fallout 3 and New Vegas' to make mh:awesomegames:Fallout 4, a product that was polarizing to fans due to missing features well known, toned down lore, and infamously retconning a lot of backstory. Valve continuously milk Dota 2 as much as they can and flat-out refuses to make a third entry to their franchises like Left 4 Dead, Counter Strike, Team Fortress, Portal and Half-Life (Half-Life: Alyx is a prequel and doesn't count). Although in Valve's case, there WAS an attempt to make a third entry to Half-Life and Left 4 Dead but it didn't work out.
 * 2) Annual Releases. Not much to explain about but the gist of it is games that come out on a yearly basis. This is especially true for sports titles like FIFA, Madden, NHL, NBA Live, NBA 2K and MLB: The Show because all the leagues need updated rosters. And to a lesser extent, Activision's Call of Duty franchise, SEGA's Sonic The Hedgehog (until 2020, in which they went on a year-long hiatus until the 30th anniversary), Nintendo's Super Mario universe (multiple games per year in different genres, for over 40 years, despite most of them being good), Ubisoft's Just Dance franchise, and Konami's PES series (until it got renamed as eFootball and became one game with updates) get released year after year with next to no refinement, resulting in some of these franchises where games are being practically copy-paste iterations of the previous game, that also feature heavy monetization.
 * 3) Many major and mid-sized publishers, such as the infamous EA, have started relying on greed. This had been a big issue, which many gamers rather stick to small indie devs, Sony, and mh:awesomegames:Nintendo instead, as they don't rely on greed.
 * 4) Microtransactions. Back then they were the trend for mobile gaming (like Gameloft for example), but then things got worse when they started to leak into AAA titles. And while there are some titles that did them right, like mh:awesomegames:Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor 2, many others had turned out very badly due to the fact that gamers had to pay money if they want more features. EA and Activision are extremely infamous examples for using this practice. In fact, it was done many times long before 2017.
 * 5) Loot Boxes. They have been the most controversial practice in the history of gaming, which was popularized by Overwatch. They were used by gamers to pay to unlock items that are locked behind an RNG system. As a result, it's more of a gambling system, a slot machine, or pachinko machine of some sort. This practice made gamers angry even more than microtransactions, because at least they let you decide to purchase them or not. Loot Boxes are always awarded to players and they give you nothing but randomized items that you don't want. Star Wars Battlefront 2 was so infamous for this, that countries like Belgium started banning Loot Boxes.
 * 6) Games as a Service/Live Services. This trend was the sole reason that many gamers had given up on the AAA titles and, as mentioned above, rely on indie titles, Sony, and Nintendo. This trend's original purpose was to make games last a long time, and while some games like Warframe and Overwatch had done it the right way, most of the time, it has been a failure. Publishers can release a game lacking with content, filled with technical issues, and have microtransactions and loot boxes. Fallout 76, Anthem and  Marvel's Avengers had been the most notable failures for this practice.
 * 7) Crunch time. An infamous practice that's leading many to consider a unionization. It's when a studio is not able to achieve its milestones and forces their employees to work extra hours in order to release the game on time. While this has been a mildly successful strategy in finishing games like Red Dead Redemption 2, it has also led to having poorly received and broken games like Fallout 76, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, and Cyberpunk 2077. But most importantly, it has been heavily criticized for overworking and mistreating employees who would constantly take weeks off or quit the studio entirely. EA, Rockstar Games, Epic Games, CD Projekt and Naughty Dog have been widely accused of this practice. It was practiced by these kinds of companies even long before 2017, but has recently gotten even worse as past actions were finally revealed to the public.
 * 8) Rushing Game Development. The trend that Pac-Man (Atari 2600) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial popularized, for all the wrong reasons. It acts very similarly to the aforementioned Crunch Time except it's most commonly used for the Christmas Holiday Season in order to earn extra amounts of revenue. However, this has led to the actual products themselves being unfinished, broken, or outright abysmal to play. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, Fallout 76, Warcraft III: Reforged, Fast & Furious Crossroads, Balan Wonderworld and Battlefield 2042 were very infamous examples for this, as upon their release, they were filled with numerous bugs and glitches that made them borderline unplayable.
 * 9) Custom Engines. Although this is not bad on paper, it gets worse when the engine is built specifically for a certain type of game. Companies, however tend to build all their games with a similar engine, regardless of the game's genre, with said games ending up being unplayable. It also proves that they're not willing to pay for third party engines like Unity or Unreal. EA is a prime example of this, as they build all their games with their Frostbite engine, which was specifically designed for the Battlefield series.
 * 10) Mistreatment of Employees. On top of Crunch Time and Rushing Game Development, lots of AAA companies are known for treating their employees badly whether it's giving them physical or verbal abuse, taking away their creative freedom or severely underpaying them. Konami was an infamous example of this, because of them laying off many employees and not even paying them. There was also a controversy of DOOM: Eternal's poor soundtrack mixing by Bethesda, which caused Mick Gordon to announce that he will never compose future DOOM games again. Even worse, companies like Activision Blizzard, Riot Games and Ubisoft have been accused of creating a toxic work environment with rampant harassments such as xenophobic, sexist, misgender, manipulative, discriminative, and misogynistic remarks towards their employees that have led to multiple class action lawsuits and mass protests against them. Like Microtransactions and Crunch Time, it was something that was also done even long before 2017.
 * 11) Nostalgia Pandering. While bringing back nostalgia can be a nice thing, it has been heavily abused lately as they constantly re-release their old games and shove in old gameplay mechanics into their newer games (which can potentially ruin them as a result). Sega, Square Enix, Capcom and Blizzard are infamous examples of this as they use it as a cheap and easy way to make lots of money.
 * 12) Political Correctness. Many titles started pandering towards the infamous social justice warriors. Battlefield V in particular was mocked when its first trailer came out. Many had criticized it's historical inaccuracy, so EA did the unthinkable, and told players to "accept it or don't buy it". To their surprise, many had done the latter, causing them to mock players with #EveryonesBattlefield. Another infamous example is when Sony, starting from 2018, created a censorship policy to ban violence and sexual content in Japanese games (and occasionally western games) in an attempt to pander towards the #MeToo Movement, which has only led to poor sales in Japan and various Japanese developers gravitating towards Nintendo instead.
 * 13) Style over Substance. Many developers often focus development on gorgeous visuals and graphics in their games, in an attempt to distract players from their mediocre/bad gameplay and story (the most crucial parts of a video game). Star Wars: Battlefront, Destiny, Anthem, Sea of Thieves, The Order: 1886, No Man's Sky (pre-2018), and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint had been criticized by players for putting focus on great visuals rather than gameplay and story.
 * 14) Hype. There are many forms of this, but it can still have a capacity to destroy the anticipation of an upcoming game; whether it is via a barrage of advertising, using marketing buzzwords, using scripted CG trailers that aren't indicative of the final product, or selling unnecessary special editions and BETA access to convince you to pre-order the game (more on that later). There is nothing wrong with trying to sell your product to an audience, but when a game's budget is spent more on advertising rather than game development, it shows you where the publisher/developer's priorities lie. Bethesda, Microsoft and Ubisoft have become infamously known for overhyping and falsely advertising their games, one of the biggest and most recent example would be CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077.
 * 15) Release Now, Fix Later. Adding to Rushed Game Development, many AAA studios have started releasing their games with barely any content and then release the rest o  f the game later. This seemed to have come into effect after No Man's Sky 's redemption. However, No Man's Sky was the result of an indie team overstepping their boundaries in what they were able to accomplish in such a short time with such a small team. The redemption came from a sense of sincerity and genuinely wanting to make up for such a lackluster release as proven by the post-launch content and patches. This is clearly not the same case with AAA studios since they have the team and budget to avoid such a thing. Major companies like Nintendo have been shown to be guilty of this (despite Shigeru Miyamoto's saying). But to make things worse, some of them would release their games with lack of content and then charge for them, EA is a good example of this.
 * 16) Pre-Order Culture. It's a practice where you order the product before it's released. But the publishers can chop out pieces of the game, and sell it off as Pre-Order incentives, like when Square Enix tried to pull that crap with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where they offered a staggered reward system that "allowed" you to choose what items you wanted, and unlock the next tier when an arbitrary number is reached. These aren't even "rewards" to begin with, they are fluff pieces stripped out of the game to entice customers into pre-ordering. Pre-ordering has also been abused a lot in the past 4 years, with multiple editions, collector's editions, pre-order bonuses, and even pre-order announcements before an iota of gameplay is even shown just shows a lack of regard for the average customer, especially if it's a new IP that has yet to establish or prove itself.
 * 17) Paywalled next-generation upgrades and $70 standardized prices. Take-Two Interactive (2K and Rockstar)'s CEO Strauss Zelnick came up with this practice, and most major publishers are charging $70 for their titles, or an extra fee to upgrade.
 * 18) Some of these companies don't care about handheld gaming (after the Nintendo 3DS was discontinued). Even if you take out the microtransactions and P2W mechanics, at least they gave mobile gamers a game, or even ports of their original games, while handheld gamers are left out in the dark.
 * 19) Many once great companies like Bethesda Softworks, Blizzard Entertainment, Square Enix, Konami, Gearbox Software, Rockstar Games, Valve Corporation, Nintendo, Ubisoft and Microsoft have been changing for the worse.
 * 20) *Bethesda once claimed that single player games were not dying (since EA claimed them to be), but they succumbed to the claim by releasing Fallout 76.
 * 21) * Blizzard began to pander to China, by banning Hong Kong gamer Blitzchung for supporting the Hong Kong protests and partnering with NetEase to release Diablo Immortal.
 * 22) ** They originally announced that Diablo Immortal will be mobile exclusive (though it received a PC port later on), and called out players who did not have phones (and making the game cost over $100,000 to fully upgrade a character).
 * 23) ** They made bad remakes of their classic games, like Warcraft III: Reforged.
 * 24) ** In July 2021, Blizzard was exposed for having an extremely sexist workplace.
 * 25) * Square Enix started going downhill in 2020, by saying that successful games didn't meet their expectations, investing in the metaverse, and selling off their North American studios.
 * 26) * Konami used to be one of the greatest gaming companies of all time, but by 2015, they were exposed for a horrible workplace and began to milk the money out of pachinko machines even going as far as using some of their beloved gaming franchises as themes like Silent Hill and Metal Gear. They even kicked Hideo Kojima out from the Game Awards and did not credit him.
 * 27) * Microsoft used to deliver groundbreaking games and services that would revolutionize the industry. But starting from the Xbox 360 era, they became horribly greedy and constantly make terrible decisions that continue to damage the Xbox brand. For example, causing Windows Vista to launch in a horrible state, popularizing paid online multiplayer on consoles (thus ultimately killing free online on consoles for good), paywalling free-to-play games, pumping $500m into advertising the Kinect, overhyping games, cancelling games and shutting down studios (or putting them in a financial crisis), and recently lacking in exclusive games. When Phil Spencer became the head of Xbox Game Studios, Xbox Game Pass managed to salvage the Xbox's reputation.
 * 28) * Nintendo started to go downhill around 2015. They became more overprotective of their IP's, and the Wii U was a commercial failure.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Although being a minority, there's still a bunch of good AAA companies in the industry, such as mh:awesomegames:CD Projekt, mh:awesomegames:THQ, mh:awesomegames:Avalanche Studios Group, FromSoftware, Devolver Digital, mh:awesomegames:Remedy Entertainment, mh:awesomegames:Codemasters, mh:awesomegames:Bandai Namco Entertainment, mh:awesomegames:PlatinumGames, mh:awesomegames:SNK and Respawn Entertainment.
 * 2) * Even mh:awesomegames:Capcom can partially be a good example, despite their downfall, they've actually improved a lot as of 2017 because of mh:awesomegames:Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
 * 3) * Even the first-party companies own a few good developers:
 * 4) ** Sony has mh:awesomegames:Insomniac Games, mh:awesomegames:Guerrilla Games, mh:awesomegames:Sucker Punch Productions, mh:awesomegames:Bluepoint Games and mh:awesomegames:Polyphony Digital.
 * 5) ** Nintendo has mh:awesomegames:Next Level Games and mh:awesomegames:Retro Studios.
 * 6) ** Microsoft owns mh:awesomegames:id Software (through Bethesda), Double Fine Productions, Obsidian Entertainment, InXile Entertainment and Playground Games. With their purchase of Activision Blizzard, Beenox and Toys for Bob.
 * 7) They created several great games which kept the industry alive and active, a notable example being mh:awesomegames:Team Fortress 2, mh:awesomegames:Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain, mh:awesomegames:Overwatch, mh:awesomegames:Fallout: New Vegas, mh:awesomegames:Red Dead Redemption 2', and mh:awesomegames:Tom Clancy's The Division 2.''
 * 8) * Even from the hated publishers, such as mh:awesomegames:Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), mh:awesomegames:Borderlands 3, and mh:awesomegames:Doom Eternal.

Bad Examples

 * Electronic Arts - The prime example. Known for making lots of money as possible, as they put loot boxes and microtransactions into a good majority of their games, such as most of their sports games' Ultimate Team modes. Also, they killed off a lot of studios such as Origin Systems, Bullfrog Productions, Westwood Studios and more.
 * BioWare - They went downhill after EA acquired them as they released some mediocre games and started to rely on heavy monetization practices.
 * Square Enix - They support NFTs, constantly released games with a "Games as a service" model, treated Yuji Naka and PlatinumGames poorly and published the infamous Balan Wonderworld with the former, and said that successful games were still disappointments. They sold off their largest western IP (Tomb Raider) in order to invest in blockchain.
 * Atari (ex-Infogrames) - Forced their employees to rush their games. The company went bankrupt in 2013, following an acquisition spree that went disastrous, so they sold almost everything off. Nowadays Atari is focusing heavily on the blockchain and NFT markets.
 * Microsoft - Becoming very greedy by charging for Xbox Live, pay walling free-to-play games, overpricing their games or putting Microtransactions and Loot Boxes into them. Nowadays, they're currently milking the Halo, Gears and Forza series. Their purchase of Activision Blizzard might make them a near-monopoly and drive gamers away from other consoles.
 * Bethesda Softworks - Betrayed the gamers by giving in to EA's single player game death claims and microtransactions abuse.
 * Activision Blizzard
 * Activision - Milking the Call of Duty franchise to death, with one new installment each year. They have also forced all their studios to develop or support Call of Duty.
 * Blizzard Entertainment - Bans people due to their political and social views, rushed their game Warcraft III: Reforged, made their game Diablo Immortal extremely pay to win, and was exposed for having a horrendous work environment.
 * Valve Corporation - Prior of the announcement of mh:awesomegames:Half-Life: Alyx in October 2019, used to betray the gamers throughout the 2010s by not giving any third game sequel to their famous franchises and were in favor to milk Dota 2 or CS:GO, as well as mh:awesomegames:Steam revenue.
 * Konami - Milking their IPs through pachinko machines and treated Hideo Kojima like trash. The Metal Gear and Contra franchises died out with the releases of Metal Gear Survive and Contra: Hard Corps. In 2015, Konami was exposed for having a horrible work environment.
 * Capcom (2011 - 2018) - Rushing some of their games out and making you pay for lots of pre-loaded DLCs.
 * Sega - Used to milk the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise to death and rushed many of their games, most notoriously Sonic 06 and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, as well as ignoring their other franchises. Nowadays, they're playing too safe and trying way too hard to pander towards their fans (especially Classic era fans).
 * Atlus - Milking the Shin Megami Tensei franchise to death and refusing to make other games. They have also begun pandering to SJWs, as the new heads of their localization team are users of the SJW forum ResetERA.
 * Take-Two Interactive - Being extremely greedy, forcing their studios to milk their games to death, being very mod-unfriendly, being the pioneer of paid next gen upgrades. T2 is one of the few companies arguably worse than Electronic Arts (alongside Activision and Konami).
 * Rockstar Games - They have milked the online counterparts of GTA V and RDR II to death, mistreated their employees, and have been bluntly ignoring their other franchises.
 * 2K Games - Shoving loot boxes, microtransactions and ads into their sports games.
 * Tencent - Copying other studio's ideas and released a lot of copy-pasted games with little to no originality, as well as abusing their close ties with the CCP to held a near monopoly on the Chinese gaming market.
 * Epic Games - Opened their own online game store with restrictive DRM and unfair "exclusive" deals.
 * Riot Games - Milking the League of Legends franchise to the point that they have released dozens of LoL spin-offs in a decade while releasing only one non-LoL games. They have also pandered SJWs after the gender discrimination controversy in 2018.
 * Vivendi - Acquiring many game studios and forcing them to make them more profit, even if they’re let go.
 * Ubisoft - Falsely advertise their games (mostly graphics-wise), release some sequels or prequels with fewer features, and overpricing their microtransactions. They were accused of having a toxic workplace, and their NFT marketplace was a flop.
 * Ubisoft Quebec - Known to release weaker ports of games and weaker entries of many franchises including Assassin's Creed.
 * Gearbox Software - Ruined games like Duke Nukem Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines after years of development hell. They've also started pandering to SJWs with their Borderlands series.
 * Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment - Forcing microtransactions into the Mortal Kombat games (worst offender being Mortal Kombat 11) and implemented loot boxes into Middle-earth: Shadow Of War (until they later removed them). They also released 6 retail exclusive pre-order bonuses for LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham and filed a patent for Middle-earth's nemesis system to prevent other companies from imitating on the idea.
 * Paradox Interactive - Exploits and milks their games with DLCs and Season Passes.
 * Koei Tecmo - Exploits DLCs into their franchises and milks its franchises to death.
 * Deep Silver - Poorly handling their games and sometimes heavily rushing them out to death.
 * Telltale Games - Known for having a toxic workplace environment, terrible mismanagement, milked The Walking Dead series, and rushed out games. The latter leading to an eventual shut down of the original company until it was succeeded by LCG Entertainment.
 * Naughty Dog (2020-present) - Neil Druckmann, ruined their reputation with The Last of Us Part II and put the developers through crunch. They also corrupted The Game Awards 2020.
 * Nintendo - Recently became more greedy, overprotective of their IPs and followed the Games as a service model
 * Sony Interactive Entertainment - They have too much pride in their consoles, and raised the prices on the PlayStation 5 while the console was still being scalped.

Good Examples

 * mh:awesomegames:CD Projekt - Caring about fans and are openly against microtransactions, for the most part.
 * Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic AB) - They took in many franchises from defunct companies, especially from THQ. They have released two good quality remakes of their loved games by the community, such as mh:awesomegames:Destroy All Humans! and mh:awesomegames:SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom.
 * In May 2022, Embracer launched a video game preservation archive, the Embracer Games Archive.
 * Free Radical Design - Made an iconic FPS franchise, which is TimeSplitters. Deep Silver, which is owned by Embracer, revived the label in 2021 after it was folded into Crysis.
 * Sony Interactive Entertainment:
 * mh:awesomegames:Insomniac Games - Believe that trust and honest communication are essential to game development, and they views game design as a social process. The company also understands why new intellectual properties are important. Insomniac still honors their past games such as Ratchet & Clank and Spyro.
 * mh:awesomegames:Guerrilla Games - refused to add microtransactions or loot boxes to mh:awesomegames:Horizon: Zero Dawn, and even chose to forego giving the game a season pass; instead, they created an expansion to the base game later on down the line, all despite the temptation to add them in, and even removing them from Killzone Shadow Fall with the Valor update.
 * mh:awesomegames:Polyphony Digital - Not only do they specialize in racing games, but they are also involved in several other projects outside of gaming, such as the development of the Nissan GT-R (R35).
 * mh:awesomegames:Sucker Punch Productions - They don't rush out games, and instead take their time to develop them. Because of this, they've only made eight games so far, even though they've existed for more than two decades, with an 9th currently in development.
 * mh:awesomegames:Naughty Dog (1984-2020) - Used to care about their IPs and the quality of their games.
 * mh:awesomegames:Bluepoint Games - Takes great care when making remasters and remakes.
 * Nintendo:
 * mh:awesomegames:Retro Studios - They rose to prominence developing the Metroid Prime trilogy from 2002 to 2007, successfully bringing the popular Metroid franchise into 3D.
 * mh:awesomegames:Next Level Games - They care about the work-life balance of their employees.
 * mh:awesomegames:Remedy Entertainment - Take great care of their games and made mh:awesomegames:Max Payne, which incorporated bullet time into gaming.
 * Playground Games - This Microsoft-owned developer created the Forza Horizon racing series, which is praised for its gameplay and breathtaking graphics.
 * ZeniMax:
 * mh:awesomegames:id Software- Helped popularized the modding community, invented online multiplayer with mh:awesomegames:Quake, invented and pioneered First-Person Shooters, and brought the DOOM franchise back to its roots.
 * MachineGames - Brought the Wolfenstein franchise back.
 * Activision Blizzard:
 * mh:awesomegames:Vicarious Visions - Made excellent ports for games and did an amazing job with the mh:awesomegames:Crash N. Sane Trilogy and remake of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2. Unfortunately, the company was folded into Blizzard.
 * Toys for Bob - Is responsible for the remake of first three Spyro games titled Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and for making a proper sequel to mh:awesomegames:Crash Bandicoot: Warped named mh:awesomegames:Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time.
 * mh:awesomegames:Capcom - Despite their downfall, they are now getting better and learned their mistakes. They are now making better games like mh:awesomegames:Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, mh:awesomegames:Devil May Cry 5 and mh:awesomegames:Mega Man 11.
 * mh:awesomegames:SNK - Shifted from pachinko machines back to video gaming after the success of The King of Fighters XIII. They don't ignore high anticipated series and tries to release games at a finished state at times. They (mostly) also don’t locked up content behind paywalls and DLCs
 * DICE - They still hold up their legacy today, even though they make nothing but Battlefield.
 * mh:awesomegames:Taito Corporation- Revolutionized the arcade games to the world and are still going strong with arcade games.
 * mh:awesomegames:PlatinumGames - Make high-quality action games (again, mostly), are willing to take their time with their products, are against NFTs, and usually don't lock content behind paywalls.
 * mh:awesomegames:Bandai Namco Entertainment - Both have a good relationship and a good gameplay to each game.
 * Ubisoft:
 * Red Storm Entertainment - Is responsible for the Tom Clancy's franchises, also founded by Clancy himself.
 * Ubisoft Montpellier - One of the few subsidiaries of Ubisoft that take good care of their games and constantly release quality titles.

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