The Rise Of Double-A Video Games
6. Better Community Engagement
An aspect of AAA development that isn't really discussed much is how difficult it becomes for the human aspect of their creation to permeate through.
The average AAA game is such a gargantuan beast, usually produced at the behest of a large company, that the voices of those people spearheading the project can easily get lost in the shuffle.
This is most noticeable when something goes wrong and a publisher bigwig or community manager makes a tone-deaf statement because they're simply too detached from the process of game-making and the people playing said game.
AA development is generally less likely to nudge the creatives to the periphery in favour of cold PR spokespeople, and so it's easier to feel like these games aren't so much uncaring corporate Products as actual pieces of art crafted with a human hand from start to finish.
Take Helldivers 2, which suffered server outages upon launch due to the game's wildly unexpected success.
The dev team was in regular communication with players about the server issues and approached the situation with a genuine humility so often lacking in the generic, lawyer-drafted apologies sent out by so many beleaguered AAA games.
Given that the connection between players and the people making games is more important than ever in the era of "live service" software, AA touts a personal touch that AAA generally has a much harder time of forging in a genuine way.