Slashdot pointed out that one of the talks at E3 discusses how to build a Triple-A title. One of the questions that came up on Slashdot was what, exactly, the definition of AAA was. The short, snarky answer is any game with a ginormous budget that reaps ginormous rewards. World of Warcraft is a AAA title. Katamari Damacy is not.

The real problem with AAA titles is, of course, that they’re essentially giant games of chicken. You can always spend money and time to improve a game, but at what point do you hit diminishing returns? At what point does the content tail wag the gameplay dog?

Anyway, I thought that this quote from Tom Willits of id was interesting:

“‘My biggest failure was Quake 3,’ Willits said. ‘The game offered perfect multiplayer for hardcore players. In fact, they’re still playing it. But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible.’”

This is interesting, because when Quake 3 came out, I hated it because it felt too mass market. Big, colorful icons, cartoony physics, much simpler maps, platformy bounce pads.

Me, I played Quake 2 (particularly LMCTF) until my fingers bled. In particular, I got to the point where I could use the off-hand grapple with ridiculous ease, flying through the air like Spiderman, picking off targets with a railgun mid-trajectory. It was god-like. It was also, admittedly, very hardcore. Newcomers breaking into the LMCTF community had a rough time, since those of us who had mastered the grapple were akin to gods by then.

The makers of Quake 3 had the opportunity to include the grapple in Quake 3 but chose not to, for fear of making the game too hard for newbies to get into. Eventually, my clan reverted to good ol’ Quake 2, or jumped ship to Unreal Tournament, which was much more hardcore-friendly.

The answer, of course, is double-coding, which is to ensure you have portions of the game which are newbie accessible, but ensure you have other maps or areas which are better suited for the hardcore. Triple AAA titles work best when they capture a hardcore base that extends to a more casual audience. Attempts to bypass the hardcore and go straight to the casual is usually hard, since the casual take cues from the hardcore as to where to go and what to do.