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Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

The only way to make a "AAA" game on a low budget now, competing with the massive asset libraries AAA games build up, is to create some kind of easily modded game, where players can build their own assets.

Minecraft does this, in a way. Instead of a villiage-sized Barbie / GI Joe playset (with everything perfectly designed), you get a giant bucket of lego bricks.

Not that Minecraft / df style games have done much better on Kickstarter.

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Minecraft is in no way a "AAA" game.

Yes, it's a hugely popular game, but it is the archetype of "indie game done good".

Calling the number 5 selling game of 2014 "not AAA" is pretty much semantic.

I agree, it's not AAA, in terms of assets, but I'm saying a "box of lego bricks" (or something like that - copying Minecraft won't work now) is the only way to compete with AAA on assets. PCG looks like a holy grail, but I doubt it (unless you can get it good enough to sell to AAA, then why wouldn't you just license the tool?).

Minecraft is AAA success. Your big-box retailer probably has Minecraft guide-books for sale. There's nothing that touches it. Papers, Please is an "indie game done good", and it sold maybe 5% of Minecraft.

Angry birds, and all merchandise around it, also sold really well.... is that an AAA game too? CandyCrush? Farmsville back in the day?

"AAA" doesn't mean "very successful." It is a category for the games with the very highest development and advertising budgets. Minecraft was built and released with near-zero budget and is, therefore, not a AAA game.

If I just said "it's semantic", and then I'm saying "I meant AAA success on a low budget", why do you feel the need to debate the meaning of words?

For what it's worth, "semantic" means "related to definition of words". The argument we're having is still semantic. And semantic arguments are usually pointless. Just in case you didn't know.

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