AA, AAA and indie games: how do they differ?

There are many games out there.

Well, that's no secret to anyone.

But did you know that they are all divided into subcategories? Read on to find out what AA, AAA and Indie games are, and get a little bonus at the end.

By the way, if you are a game developer, you will find a lot of useful content on our hub. For example, various 2D and 3D assets for Unity and Unreal Engine 4/5 in different settings: from sci-fi to fantasy. Good or full-blown music compositions that can breathe life into your game.

All this can be downloaded for free and without registration.

AA

AA games were not the first to appear, as it may seem.

They appeared when there was a serious need to diversify AAA from simpler games.

AAs try to reach the same level as AAA games, but usually fail in some aspect of balance, graphics, or level design. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but it's usually about money.

More specifically, it's a trivial lack of budget.

But it can also be a lack of desire to compete with the mastodons of the industry.

AA games have a right to exist, but as a rule, they are rarely of interest to a wide audience - unlike indie and AAA games, which we'll talk about next.

AAA

AAA is a class of projects in the video game industry that are developed by a large studio and funded with huge budgets. These games are designed for the masses. They are considered to be the highest class because of their elaboration, scale and high quality graphics.

But that doesn't mean that AAA games are always good. Lately, it's more the opposite. A lot of companies are just chasing money, and therefore they leave their game series on the conveyor belt. The best example of this is the Assassins Creed series. There are more than 20 games in this universe and Ubisoft doesn't even plan to stop!

Yes, in each of the new projects they try to bring something new, but it is obvious that all of them are made in a hurry without offering any unique game elements.

And... That's not a good thing.

Or we can remember the monster scandal connected with Cyberpunk 2077. This game cost CDPR $330 million to produce, but the release was a disaster due to a number of serious bugs and performance issues. The release of the unfinished version caused such a backlash that Sony had to pull the game from sale for the first time. After a few months, however, the studio managed to rehabilitate the project by releasing regular patches and updates.

Indie games

Indie games are projects created by independent authors. That is, people who are not working for big publishers, but for themselves. Indie studios usually consist of only a few people (rarely more than ten).

There are also lone developers.

You know, we believe that such games are the future. The reason is that they offer something really unique.

Indie games are the main source of experimental projects in the game industry. Big publishers are carefully weighing every move and figuring out which concepts will make them as much money as possible. Independent developers make the games they want and are not afraid to explore crazy ideas.

And that's the real engine of progress!

Yes, there is a lot of garbage in indie games, but we believe that this is a necessary sacrifice.

Bonus: III games

III is all the same indie games that claim to be AAA.

Overall, in terms of quality, budgets, and (especially) ambition, they can really be mistaken for AAA at times. They're not the most common type yet, but the rise of digital distribution platforms, crowdfunding platforms, and independent publishers is expanding the opportunities for indie blockbusters to emerge.