No, I'm specifying how to spot the indicators I mentioned several times already. Don't tell me you've forgotten already?
I'll try again, then.
1. Development budget
2. Marketing budget
3. Expectation of a big return
Are you with me this time, old friend?
Those are three IN-DI-CA-TORS
Get it?
With me?
By your own admission, you cannot know the first two. As to the third, if you can find me a developer that goes into a project intending to move no more than 5 units, I'll immediately concede the point. Thus, you have exactly zero ability to directly identify/quantify/qualify your IN-DI-CA-TORS. So, you're defining the term with things that are undefined. Ain't gonna fly, my friend. JemyM will bury us both in Latin for the mere thought. I propose we call them "Bob" going forward to avoid terminology problems and differentiate your definitive (as in, defining) indicators from the indirect indicators you're actually forced to use, which I hereby dub "Rufus".
Let's go over this one more time. You don't know Bob. You can't know Bob. Thus, it is completely impossible for you to describe anything in terms of Bob. Can't be done. No way to get there from here. No room at the inn, so sorry.
Enter Rufus. Rufus isn't Bob, but he hangs around Bob quite a bit and tends to act quite a lot like Bob. We can get an indirect eye on Bob by looking at Rufus, yes? So, tell me about Rufus and we can speculate on Bob, with the goal of knowing whether we have a AAA title or not.
So, how do we go about describing Rufus, with the goal of inferring things about Bob so we can determine whether any given game is AAA? Tell me what he looks like, what he sounds like, how big/tall he is, whether he has an interesting personality. Just so we don't get lost in the metaphor, that's graphics, sound, content, and story...
Because if Rufus looks like Kate Moss and sounds like Oleta Adams and converses like Stephen Hawking, we can guess that Bob's a pretty serious dude to bring it all together in a single package, yes? Similarly, if Rufus looks like Mike Ricci, sounds like breaking glass, and argues like Thrasher, we can assume that Bob just ain't that impressive. Now, occasionally our first Bob with the gorgeous Rufus will somehow screw the pooch and the second Bob with the Leatherface Rufus might catch lightning in the bottle, but generally speaking we can rely on Rufus to give us a fairly good feel about Bob, who, remember, we do not and cannot know directly.
I doubt it - as the team is one person, which means you can spend 50 years and still not invest all that much money. Beyond that, it doesn't seem to have a single example of any of the other ways to spot an AAA indicator.
See, your supposed direct knowledge is flawed, as recent reports show that Cleve has outsourced a few parts of his baby, by his own admission. So, how can you possibly define Grimoire as AAA or not when you don't actually know the team size, the team budget, and Cleve's sales forecast? You know it because of Rufus!
Every single game with the following indicators:
Graphics
Sound
Has a good chance of being an AAA game.
That's what you're saying, right?
Not at all. I'm saying we can, generally speaking, differentiate a AAA game based on the
quality of the graphics and sound. Actually, you're saying that and I'm agreeing with you, but you seem terribly upset about it.
No, because "very good graphics", "good sound" and "lots of content" can be done without expensive production values and they don't even need to have marketing or investors expecting a huge return on their investment.
No, you said it takes a big team with a big budget and extensive marketing to create that sort of game. It's supposedly the definition of a AAA release. Can't change your argument now.