AA is such a broad stroke in that it’s began as a definition for “not AAA nor Indie”. It’s as well defined as AAAA (like that terrible Ubisoft pirate game). It doesn’t address the differences in development cycle, production value and most of all: quality. Kepler is not a co-op in our sense (it’s not worker owned), but it’s definitely comprised of actual indie developers. If the money you’re getting is funded by a dozen indie publishers pooling their money together, does that disqualify you from being “indie”? I’d say sort of, not really, but kind of. Furthermore, flagship games from big companies have their low effort titles also described as AA. “Final Fantasy XXIX: Final-er”, “Kingdom Hearts IV: Revenge of the Goof”, “Hearthstone II: Moneysink”. But those would be completely different. It’s not a meaningful category, outside of pricing tiers at checkout.

Like, yeah, they had funding from a publisher, which I get makes it not a true “indie” game in the spiritual sense, but it’s far from “Call of Duty XXII: Current Year Warfare” or “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The Game” or whatever they’re coming up with next.

If your funding comes from a syndicate of indie studios pooling their resources together, I don’t think it’s the same as having your funding come from Microsoft or Sony shareholders even if the $ amount works out to be the same, because the strings attached aren’t the same. Which is why I think there should be a separate term. Larian developed and self published Baldur’s Gate III, and it feels weird to call that an indie game.

Something like Vampyr or Disco Elysium or E33 also don’t feel like an indie game, nor really have the vibes of AA. Which is why I’m saying there should be a different term for it. Am I making sense? Or did I categorize things differently based purely off vibes?