The Rise Of Double-A Video Games
2. Many AA Games FEEL AAA Anyway
Though the intricacies of games development are tough for outsiders to quantify, it's fair to say that many AA games have managed to punch far enough above their weight, enough to basically resemble AAA-caliber productions.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, for instance, is so polished, stylistic, and cinematic that if feels like little would be gained by injecting it with a AAA budget - save, perhaps, for Ninja Theory bloating out the game's play-time.
The same is basically true of the Plague Tale games, and most recently nobody's coming away from Helldivers 2 feeling like it's anything less than extremely well-crafted and laboured-over.
Smart designers are able to make the most of their AA resources to deliver an experience which can at least get close to what we see in the AAA arena, while so much of AAA development feels like it's straining to justify those massive upfront costs.
And even when the disparity between AA and AAA is totally noticeable, it often feels less like a chasm than a stepping stone between them - something that's rarely reflected in the huge price difference.