I'd argue that The Sims 1 was an AAA game (in that it became the best selling PC game of all time) BECAUSE it ran on last year's hardware, used software rendering, and didn't require a 3D graphics accelerator, so a lot more people were able to play it (like little brothers and sisters who inherited their older sibling's computer when they got upgraded).

Sims 1 wasn't a great achievement in graphics, it was a great achievement in design and gameplay.

Very true. The simple graphics also made it possible for many players to create their own content with less complicated tools like Photoshop + Transmogrifier instead of advanced tools like Maya, which also contributed to its success.

Minecraft was also a great achievement in terms of game design and gameplay, yet had simple graphics, and consequently was easily moddable, which greatly contributed to its popularity and success. But is was considered "AAA" when it was released, and is it considered "AAA" now that Microsoft bought it (even though it's essentially the same game)?

So how important do you think fancy graphics are to the definition of an "AAA" title, versus accessibility (in terms of how many people can play it because of its lower hardware requirements, and how many people can mod it because of its graphical simplicity)? And how important are game design, gameplay, popularity, making money and other issues like moddability to the definition of an "AAA" title?

Another way for a game to achieve easy (but more limited) moddability without limiting its graphical complexity is to support advanced built-in tools for user created content (like Spore for example, which has advanced built-in specialized tools as opposed to supporting simple generic third party tools).

Subsequent versions of The Sims had much fancier graphics, and much more advanced built-in content creation tools (like create-a-sim), but that made it harder to create content outside of the game (because objects were 3D meshes instead of 2.5D sprites, and texture maps for character meshes were not nearly as simple).

The original Sims 1 team (which I worked on) only had four core programmers, but it was developed over many years before the point that EA bought Maxis and put more people on shipping it. So The Sims 2, 3 and 4 were much more typically AAA-ish, and had vastly larger teams working on them. (The Sims Studio became one of four major sub-divisions of EA.)

I think small indie teams would be better off focusing on game design and gameplay instead of fancy graphics.

AAA games are frequently one platform, generally either PC for UI reasons or locked into a particular console as an exclusive.

PC-only AAA games are incredibly rare these days. I'd say most AAA games are on as many platforms as possible to have as many sources of revenue as possible to recoup dev (and marketing) costs. The exceptions are games that get a large amount of funding to be single platform by the platform's owner and there's no real "owner" of the PC platform (arguably Microsoft, but their focus is on Xbox) to do that.

Are there any PC Only "AAA" titles anymore? I'd think stuff like the Witcher 3 and XCOM 2 are more in the AA range. It is such a murky definition.

The Witcher 3 is also available in last gen consoles, and although XCOM 2 has not been announced for consoles (it's still in development), the first XCOM was released even for iOS and Android.

Current-gen consoles (PS4 an Xbox One).

Oops, yeah, that's what I wanted to say. Brain-fart there.

Yeah, remove the multi-platform thing. It's frequently the case (Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, etc.) but it's certainly not required to be a AAA title.

One thing to add to that list is that an AAA game is also somewhat defined by the amount of marketing and promotion that goes along with it.

I haven't played a game in 10+ years. Kind of miss it. If you had to pick one console game I should play what would it be?

Pick up The Orange Box (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Box). It includes Half Life 2, (plus the two sequel episodes), and Portal. Portal is a fantastic game, with a surprising amount of story given the fact that it appears at first to be a fairly simple puzzle game. Half Life 2, is a great first person shooter, again with great story.

What I like about these games is that they're immersive, without being overly long or tedious. You can play through Portal in a few evenings, without feeling like you're missing out on hundreds of side quests. The gameplay is tight, fun and innovative.

The Orange Box is a fantastic collection of games. I can also recommend Portal 2.

However, if you have a friend who likes first person shooters, you could play through one or more of the Gears of War games in cooperative split-screen mode. I hate, HATE, HATE playing FPSs on consoles, but I had a blast playing Gears in coop. It was the first console FPS I'd ever played where

* the gunplay felt good

and

* I didn't find myself longing for a keyboard and mouse after two minutes of play.

Indeed, the combat works really, really well with a controller.

I don't know how the game has held up over the years, but it was lots of fun back in the day.

Gears of War is not a first-person shooter, though.

Bah, you're right. I lump FPSs and TPSs into the same bin in my head, even though they're a bit different, and that it appears that the latter is much less nausea inducing.

If you like, change FPS to "shooter" everywhere it appeared in that comment.

The Last of Us. Best game I've ever played.

It felt like I was playing Half Life 2 while watching a zombie movie. I guess it's hard to make a recommendation without knowing what this dude likes in games.