Larian Do you Consider Larian an AAA game Studio?

[bkrueger]

Fair enough, although I find it odd that you would assume he isn't talking about present time.

I assume he means that making one AAA game doesn't imply that future games need to be. For example if we consider Fallout:New Vegas a AAA game for the sake of this discussion, this doesn't make Obsidian an AAA studio.
By the way I would like if somebody could give a good definition of AAA, because I have the suspicion, that it doesn't have much connection to "making better games".

 

[Stingray]

Fair enough, although I find it odd that you would assume he isn't talking about present time.

It's not about past vs present. I have a hard time seeing them as an "AAA studio" in the present, despite the fact they're working on an AAA game at the moment.

This is kind of like asking "Do you consider Larian a Baldur's Gate's studio"? Not yet, but 10 years from now, if the only games they've released are BG3, BG4, and BG5, and they're working on BG6, then ask me again

 

[Stingray]

I assume he means that making one AAA game doesn't imply that future games need to be. For example if we consider Fallout:New Vegas a AAA game for the sake of this discussion, this doesn't make Obsidian an AAA studio.

Yeah, this is a good analogy. Obsidian will probably become an AAA studio now since it got bought by Microsoft, but I didn't see see Obsidian as an AAA studio just before Microsoft bought them, nor did I see them as one while they were working on FO:NV (although they were much closer to one at that time than they were just before being bought).

By the way I would like if somebody could give a good definition of AAA, because I have the suspicion, that it doesn't have much connection to "making better games".

Generally it's defined as having a budget above a certain level. There's no precise definition of the level, but Larian themselves said that BG3 has an AAA budget.

 

[JDR13]

It's not about past vs present. I have a hard time seeing them as an "AAA studio" in the present, despite the fact they're working on an AAA game at the moment.

This is kind of like asking "Do you consider Larian a Baldur's Gate's studio"? Not yet, but 10 years from now, if the only games they've released are BG3, BG4, and BG5, and they're working on BG6, then ask me again

No, actually it's not like asking that at all.

A studio is literally defined by the games they make or at least that's the way it's always been in regards to AA, AAA or whatever. They're only involved in 1 project right now, and it's clearly AAA. They're a AAA studio right now any way you choose to spin it.

 

[JDR13]

I assume he means that making one AAA game doesn't imply that future games need to be. For example if we consider Fallout:New Vegas a AAA game for the sake of this discussion, this doesn't make Obsidian an AAA studio.

Right, but that's completely different. I wouldn't define Obsidian by a game they made more than a decade ago. I'd define them by what they're doing now.

 

[bkrueger]

Right, but that's completely different. I wouldn't define Obsidian by a game they made more than a decade ago. I'd define them by what they're doing now.

In the end it is a question of the underlying definitions. Besides the question, what AAA means at all, you could have another definition of a AAA studio besides yours.

You say simplified: A AAA studio is a studio, which is currently working on a AAA game.
I would say: A AAA studio is a studio, which has the power (economically and with respect to quality) to consistently produce AAA games. And that can only be judged after a time of watching several games.

Otherwise a studio, who are payed by a rich publisher to make one AAA game in a franchise belonging to the publisher would be an AAA studio for the time working on that game and that would not be plausible for me.

 

[Silver]

I wouldn't be shocked if Larian decided to produce an AA game or two in-between a big release to tide things over. But would Swen consider this a backwards step? We did see the Divinity franchise farmed out to Logic Artists for an unreleased game. Maybe that is something he would produce in-house now given the number of studios Larian owns.

 

[JDR13]

In the end it is a question of the underlying definitions. Besides the question, what AAA means at all, you could have another definition of a AAA studio besides yours.

You say simplified: A AAA studio is a studio, which is currently working on a AAA game.
I would say: A AAA studio is a studio, which has the power (economically and with respect to quality) to consistently produce AAA games. And that can only be judged after a time of watching several games.

Otherwise a studio, who are payed by a rich publisher to make one AAA game in a franchise belonging to the publisher would be an AAA studio for the time working on that game and that would not be plausible for me.

I think it's more a matter of context than definition.

When someone asks me "What do you think of this"?, I'm going to assume they mean the present state of the thing in question not what it was at any given point in the past.

 

[Kordanor]

In the end it comes down to your definition.

What is a AAA Studio?

Defined by employees and money spent per year?​

Does that make a Studio like KING or Zyga AAA Studios?​

or

Is a AAA Studio defined by making AAA games, which again are definied via Budget,Manhours & campaigning?​

Let's have a look at a few companies.

-Is Firaxis AAA? With Civilization and XCom. With just about 200 employees they are actually relatively small. My guess their budget for games is rather high though.​

-Is Amplitude AAA? It's actually extremely similar to Firaxis in terms of employees. My guess is that their budget mit be lower than from Firaxis, but thats just my guess.​

-I think the majority will agree on Piranha Bytes Elex not being AAA. They just have 33 Employees. But they certainly have much more budget, using external companies for cutscenes and utilizing resources of their owner Embracer Group. Maybe even if the game would be called AAA, the tiny amount of just 33 employees would probably disqualify them as AAA company?​

-Is CD Project Red AAA? I guess after Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk everyone would say so. Apparently Cyberpunk costed 263 Million USD and they have 1111 Employees.​

​

So here we cot completely wild dimensions and magnitudes already. Firaxis and Aplitude are more than 5 times as big as Piranha bytes. And companies for "real" AAA titles are about more than 5 times more than that looking at CD Project Red, but also Productions like COD or Assassins Creed.

Larian's 400 employes (stated by Sven in march 2022) working on BG3 already surpass Firaxis and Amplitude (or are on par, their numbers are more outdated). And of course surpass Piranha Bytes by a lot. And apparently their budget does as well.
Even the producer calls it AAA:

“I would call it a triple-A game. It has a triple-A budget, has a triple-A team by now, and I think that is our aspiration.”

Overall, I guess BG3 and Larian can rather be called AAA rather than not. While its still not quite at the level at CD Project Red or "the big ones", especially in terms of RPGs they are probably as AAA as it gets.

 

[bjon045]

Put me down for AAA as well. The game is costing over 100 mil so that makes it a AAA game and it takes a AAA studio to make a AAA game!

It may not have everything that I wanted from BG3 but I have no doubt it is going to be a massive success and I will enjoy playing it (some day).

 

[Redglyph]

You say simplified: A AAA studio is a studio, which is currently working on a AAA game.
I would say: A AAA studio is a studio, which has the power (economically and with respect to quality) to consistently produce AAA games. And that can only be judged after a time of watching several games.

I would agree if there was any doubt and if it was a first game, but they have a good history and I think it's fair to say that there's no doubt the game will be released and will be a major success. More to the point, the game is already on the market, they had already sold 1 million units 2.5 years ago even if it was - and still is - Early Access.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 was more modest but already in the AA range, they've geared up and have had all the requirements to be called a AAA studio for a while now.

 

[Redglyph]

A funny question would be: "Is Roberts Space Industries a AAA studio?"

 

[bkrueger]

I would agree if there was any doubt and if it was a first game, but they have a good history and I think it's fair to say that there's no doubt the game will be released and will be a major success. More to the point, the game is already on the market, they had already sold 1 million units 2.5 years ago even if it was - and still is - Early Access.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 was more modest but already in the AA range, they've geared up and have had all the requirements to be called a AAA studio for a while now.

Probably you are right. My discussion with @JDR13 was more for the sake of clarifying the definitions. After all that I voted "Yes" in this poll. I could also formulate my position like this:
Do I wish and believe that they are going to be a stable AAA studio? Yes!
Would I claim in a scientific publication that they are an AAA studio? No, I don't have enough evidence right now.

 

[Redglyph]

Probably you are right. My discussion with @JDR13 was more for the sake of clarifying the definitions.

I have the impression that it's not a scientific criterion, that there's margin for interpretation. There is no precise definition of the "A" ranges, nor exactly what is considered in the budget... or even if that's only about budget. So my post is only an attempt to clarify that too. That's why I added the bit about RSI; their budget would deserve a new "AAAA" category, but was there even a single stable and finished game release? It would be harder for me to say they're in any category until then, except "#1 scope creep GOAT".

I think that historically publishers started to use those terms to set the ballpark cost of making the game, as an advertised indication of the final quality and scope, but I saw no official definition (I don't consider Wikipedia to be official or even anything reliable).

 

[bkrueger]

I have the impression that it's not a scientific criterion, that there's margin for interpretation. There is no precise definition of the "A" ranges, nor exactly what is considered in the budget... or even if that's only about budget. So my post is only an attempt to clarify that too. That's why I added the bit about RSI; their budget would deserve a new "AAAA" category, but was there even a single stable and finished game release? It would be harder for me to say they're in any category until then, except "#1 scope creep GOAT".

I think that historically publishers started to use those terms to set the ballpark cost of making the game, as an advertised indication of the final quality and scope, but I saw no official definition (I don't consider Wikipedia to be official or even anything reliable).

Agree, probably there is no precise definition. I always thought that the categorization was used in the movie industry area before used for video games , but that doesn't seem to be the case. The only extensive and systematic use seems to be in the credit rating business.

 

[Vitirr]

I see most people here think that BG3 is AAA but are you sure of that?

I think most AAA games have humongous developer teams and budgets. If I recall correctly Swen said BG3 peaked at ~600 people working on it while what I read from major AAA games it is in the thousands.

I have no idea about the budget but I'm quite sure that games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Read Dead Redemption 2 multiply it by a few times. For starters I don't think Larian spends nearly as much as AAA studios in marketing.

In any case I would say is AAA in the low tier.

All based on none factual information so I could be completely wrong.

 

[bjon045]

I see most people here think that BG3 is AAA but are you sure of that?

I think most AAA games have humongous developer teams and budgets. If I recall correctly Swen said BG3 peaked at ~600 people working on it while what I read from major AAA games it is in the thousands.

I have no idea about the budget but I'm quite sure that games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Read Dead Redemption 2 multiply it by a few times. For starters I don't think Larian spends nearly as much as AAA studios in marketing.

In any case I would say is AAA in the low tier.

All based on none factual information so I could be completely wrong.

Sorry what games have thousands of people in their development teams? RDR2 technically yes. What else? CP2077 was about 500. Witcher 3 was about 250. The number of people gets really large if you include every man and their dog and different companies report these numbers differently. For example, Witcher 3, had a core team of 250 but if you including marketing and all the supporting cast you could say there was over 1000 people working on it. But outside of that core team of 250 they did basically nothing to contribute to the game - you can tell that by looking at the credits. The number also increases a lot the more countries the game gets localised into as it typically gets retested with seperate localised test teams as well - now these teams are only involved for a very short period but get included in the total size. RDR2 for instance launched with 10 different languages and if you look at the credits there is roughly 60-70 people for each region. These teams would have only been involved for a small portion of the development cycle.

When Larian says they now have 400 employees they are actually referring to the main team. There still have external localisation teams, external marketing/promotion companies etc etc. If you add them all up I imagine it will come to close to 1000 as well. I will have to check the credits tomorrow when I play it for the first time!

 

[Redglyph]

I see most people here think that BG3 is AAA but are you sure of that?

I think most AAA games have humongous developer teams and budgets. If I recall correctly Swen said BG3 peaked at ~600 people working on it while what I read from major AAA games it is in the thousands.

I have no idea about the budget but I'm quite sure that games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Read Dead Redemption 2 multiply it by a few times. For starters I don't think Larian spends nearly as much as AAA studios in marketing.

In any case I would say is AAA in the low tier.

All based on none factual information so I could be completely wrong.

I suppose we'll have to see the game first, and whether it's a success or not.

There's no clear definition, except it comes from qualitative risk assessment grades, and the usage is all over the place so I wouldn't go as far as considering tiers in the classification.

We can consider that it's a huge budget: roughly 400 people for 6 years in one of the most heavily taxed countries (perhaps fewer at the beginning), and apparently a lot of consultancy. We can also consider it has already sold more than 2 million units in EA alone and that the projection based on that is about 5 times what D:OS 2 sold, which was "many millions" (ref). If you look at the Steam reviews, you'll see that 1/6th of the reviews were made in the last 30 days, which indicates yet more sales than the figures above.

I'm not sure the marketing is entirely relevant, but I'm pretty sure there's enough coverage since Larian's Community Updates and the last Panel from Hell to make us all see why we want to play the game. "Ad nauseam" is the term that springs to mind.

There's also the perception of the game and the reviews, but again, it's best to wait a little while after its release. There are many clues that indicate the level of quality, though, like journalists and content creators having played an early build for one or two days and reported about it.

I have little doubt, but that needs to be confirmed. And in the end, the classification remains subjective.

 

[Vitirr]

Sorry what games have thousands of people in their development teams?

Games like the following I suppose? Red Dead Redemption, Cyberpunk 2077, Diablo 4, any Call of Duty or Battlefield games, the Uncharted series, The Last of Us, GTA, Overwatch, Destiny, last Tomb Raider games, Final Fantasy games, Assasin's Guild...

My feeling is that those are on another level both in terms of both team size and budget.

When Larian says they now have 400 employees they are actually referring to the main team. There still have external localisation teams, external marketing/promotion companies etc etc. If you add them all up I imagine it will come to close to 1000 as well. I will have to check the credits tomorrow when I play it for the first time!

What I vaguely recall is Swen saying the peak was ~600 persons.

When I refer to AAA is it mainly budget wise, since that seems to be what the industry seem to look at as well. Quality is not a measure here because it is subjective and then even some small indy games might be considered AAA.

We can consider that it's a huge budget: roughly 400 people for 6 years in one of the most heavily taxed countries (perhaps fewer at the beginning), and apparently a lot of consultancy.

Just for the record only the main studio is based in Gent. They have now two or three more locations. If I'm not mistaken one in Canada, another one in east Europe (Russia?, I wonder if that is still the case with the ongoing war), and another somewhere in Asia. The latter two specially might have sensibly lower costs. I don't know the distribution of their employees per location is though.

I'm not sure the marketing is entirely relevant, but I'm pretty sure there's enough coverage since Larian's Community Updates and the last Panel from Hell to make us all see why we want to play the game. "Ad nauseam" is the term that springs to mind.

Well it is in consideration to the budget since it seems to represent a noticeable percentage in the big games. Larian as you point out relies more in early access and creating their own marketing letting the fans spread the hype. I have never seen publicity in the streets or in television for BG3 unlike other games that I've cited at the begining of this post, so I assume the costs here are significantly smaller.

 

[Redglyph]

Just for the record only the main studio is based in Gent. They have now two or three more locations. If I'm not mistaken one in Canada, another one in east Europe (Russia?, I wonder if that is still the case with the ongoing war), and another somewhere in Asia. The latter two specially might have sensibly lower costs. I don't know the distribution of their employees per location is though.

I know; I live not very far from there. The current sites are Gent, Barcelona, Dublin, Guildford, Kuala Lumpur, and Quebec, but I don't know the exact distribution of employees either. I suppose I could dig that out in the annual reports but I don't think it would make a huge difference anyway.

Those sites are not only to maintain a presence and for distribution; there are indeed developers and managers too (and quite a few, as we can see on the photos). Perhaps life is cheaper in Malaysia, indeed.

Well it is in consideration to the budget since it seems to represent a noticeable percentage in the big games. Larian as you point out relies more in early access and creating their own marketing letting the fans spread the hype. I have never seen publicity in the streets or in television for BG3 unlike other games that I've cited at the begining of this post, so I assume the costs here are significantly smaller.

I haven't either. They do seem to have kept an indie approach, don't they? But they have a special budget for Swen's armours, let's not forget that. I wouldn't be surprised if we had to pay an annual tax for those, here.