Are there any AAA games made with Unity?

Some people says that Unity is not for AAA games. But I'm sure that is not true. Far as I know "Wasteland 2" is AAA game..

I want to make people interested in Unity and assure them that Unity is not indie games only.

I wonder, how many AAA games made with Unity?

Is there a list of these games (AAA only)? Could you help me to get that list?

P.S. I searched in the google but there is no markers that game is AAA. Just popular unity games. popular games in Unity != AAA games made with Unity. So I want to know which games is really have AAA type

 

Hearthstone is probably the biggest game made with Unity.
I dont know if you would call it AAA. Is it gigantic obviously, but probably wasnt all that expensive to make.

Wasteland 2 doesnt look like a AAA game at all.

But i dont understand why AAA matters in the first place. Do you intend to make a game where 100 people work on it for a couple of years?

Other large games made with Unity are, for example, Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program and with very nice visuals, currently in alpha, Escape from Tarkov.

If you want a detailed answers about AAA games made with Unity, you'd have to define what you mean with "AAA".

 

Threads of this nature always remind me of that snippet from the Sam and Max Hit the Road Hint booklet.



For a topic like this a Google search of the Unity forums - specifically threads started by @Arowx - usually works.

 

Run......

 

AAA games are made by AAA companies that make their own AAA engines.

For what it's worth, The Elder Scrolls: Legends was made with Unity.

 

Fallout Shelter too.

 

Are you sure about that?

Ah, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_Shelter

 

Ori and the Blind Forest, and Homeworld Deserts of Kharak as well

 

I think the AAA concept is a bit floaty, just like Indie is, so you might object to some of these.

Pillars of Eternity and the upcoming Torment, too. Max & the Magic Marker by the late PressPlay. Hitman GO, Deus Ex GO and Lara Croft GO also. Might & Magic X was Unity.

I'll add Inside and Limbo, although PlayDead techically speaking is an Indie Studio.

 

A decent number of large-scale developers and publishers frequently use their own in-house engines. This is usually so that they have sole control over their own technology, and have the freedom to customize that technology as needed, without having to rely on outside sources for changes. There is definitely merit to this approach, and certain advantages. However, this approach also relies heavily on having significant and permanent in-house programmers to work on the maintaining and improving the in-house engine.

Engines like Unity are frequently used when projects are low to mid-scale, even by major developers and publishers. (see the Hearthstone and Fallout: Shelter examples) For smaller-scale projects with mobile platforms as the target, the need for a proprietary in-house engine is considerably lower. Even major developers will forego their in-house efforts for such projects, and stick to Unity instead. Many of the advantages that Unity provides make it a good choice for such efforts.

Unity's place in the market is more defined by market pressures than technical limitations. Unity can and has been used for larger-scale projects. It's just a matter of who is using it and what is driving their choices.

 

I guess it depends on what your understanding of AAA is.

The definition of AAA (video game industry) is:

However, the term triple-A is also used by a lot of people to describe the quality of a video game.

I believe it's hard to find information how much budget various Unity games had. Finding information what games were received positively, should be simple though, e.g. check Made with Unity and look titles up on Metacritic.

 

How would you define a game as 'AAA'? Quality of visuals? Size of team? Scale of the game?

To me, the labels of 'Indie' and 'AAA' are just a fuzzy blur. You now have big 'AAA' studios making relatively smaller experiences to what they usually output (Ubisoft's Eagle Flight, Nintendo's Super Mario Run, Blizzard's Hearthstone etc) and smaller 'Indie' teams making very ambitious, beautiful and thematically bigger games (Campo Santo's Firewatch, Moon Studio's Ori And The Blind Forest, Rain Games' World To The West, Bossa Studio's World's Adrift, Facepunch's Rust, etc)

And then you have Play Dead's 'Inside'; which is, in my opinion, by far one of the most beautiful, incredibly polished, atmospherically consistent and utterly absorbing games to come out in a very long while.

By the assumed definition of AAA, id say quite a lot of games (Majority of which ive mentioned in this post) are AAA. And all of which are Made With Unity!

 

AAA to me means it cost a maximum amount with the intention profits will make a maximum amount. It's just weird everyone wants to muddy the waters.

Cos if you're gonna muddy the waters then what's the term for the replacement to whatever sits at the toppest of the top end? AAAA+ ?

Indie isn't a shame, it's a privilege.

 

This. AAA is large scale production with a huge budget and marketing effort. They have a massive investment from the get go. The equivalent of a summer blockbuster, like a Star Wars movie or Michael bay flick. While they usually have high production value, it doesn't speak necessarily to the final quality.

The better question is, are there any truly amazing games that were made with Unity? The answer is an unqualified "YES!" Some are listed above, and there are many, many more. Ghost of a Tale is one of my favorites.

When you have budget, resources and staff of AAA production, the engine isn't really the biggest factor, in fact most build their own because they can tailor it to fit their production needs. A much better reflection of what a tool like Unity can do, is what one person or a small team can do with it. Forget AAA, quality and awesomeness is a better measuring stick. https://unity3d.com/showcase/gallery

 

Maybe AAA should be added to the auto-censor wordlist like F*** or S***? Off the top of my head I can't think of a single discussion we had here that was improved by mention of AAA somewhere. And it would make these threads a lot more entertaining when people are asking the usual things like "what assets would you pick to make a game in A** quality?".

 

By the number of AAA discussion threads it is mentioned in.

 

I second the idea of adding AAA to the auto censor. Aside from being fun, maybe it'll help people focus less on what games are categorised as and more on actually making games.

 

Hello everyone, I have arrived!

To me, AAA means any game that fits the stereotype of what sits on the New Release shelf of my local EB Games store. This is convenient for me since in the absence of anything except the box, I can only judge the graphics of the game, so therefore beautyful graphics = AAA.

OK but seriously, I think there's some 'knowing confusion' about what AAA means in terms of how it's used on the forums. These discussions all devolve into some semantic argument, where the property of AAA-ness has an ability to retroactively cross time and space in a quantum fashion. When all people mean (far as I can tell) are "is it possible for Unity to be used to make something on the level of what typically comes out of Ubisoft, Activision, Bethesda, Bungie, Naughty Dog etc".

I think it's fairly obvious a couple of reasons why not, but I'm not going to go into them here. But Unity's getting better and better, and I think for many reasons it's worth staying with Unity until you have some chance of taking advantage of what it does not have, because much of what it does have is really well done.

PS came here to find a reference to Hearthstone, and was not disappointed...

 

Here is the list, and Assassin Creed is among it:
https://madewith.unity.com/en/games/assassins-creed-identity

 

Anecdotal, but it might be worth noting that Unity is potentially used for fast prototyping of concepts at some AAA-studios with in-house engines. Not something I can back up with anything, but it seemed to be the consensus a few years ago.

 

That's a mobile only game, not a "regular" Assassins Creed like (ironically) Assassins Creed Unity.

 

Some people say the moon is made of cheese.
Some people say the earth is flat.
Some people say there is a super secret organization controlling all your lives.
Some people say some really stupid things.
Why do you listen to some people?
Cite up or shut up.

 

Many people throw the phrase 'Triple A' around like it actually MEANS something, when it actually has very little weight onto itself.

Having said that. triple A titles are normally viewed as games with an actually budget and a team of dedicated developers from visual artists, composers, developers of game play mechanics, FX artists, etc. to work on it for X amount of time; compared to (fictional example) David and Tommy with their grouped together IOU of $3,700 on their game project. They also spend about 2.5 years developing their game which they release and it generates grand total of about $20,000 after 3 full years and gets about a 50% approval in the end.

Compare that to a a triple A studio that sets aside 4 million dollar budget with 19 people working for 3 years to release a game that generates 20-35 million in sales (hopefully) with, again, hopefully a 80%+ approval.

That too me is what Triple A is when I think of it, in relation to me or any thing else in game development.

Triple A
A fully budgeted and dedicated project with a team of experienced and talented developers.

Indie
A small (1+) team of dedicated developer(s), with passion and whatever amount of funds they can make use of to support the project.

 

Because some people, and I'm sure there is a term for this but I can't seem to find it, feel the need to justify their choices by referring to individuals or organizations with a higher social status or presence that have made the same choice.

 

I always have to add The Long Dark to these threads.

 

The question is why some ask the question about the ability of Unity to do an AAA. Do they intend to make one?
There are other ways to torture herself.

 

I can confirm this.
Not just concept prototypes, but also feature exploration, pipeline tools/tooling and user facing tests.

 

Honestly, I can only speak for myself (but I think others here will agree). If you are aspiring to make a AAA game, your primary limitations will be your own skills and abilities, not whatever theoretical ceiling Unity has.

 

I honestly don't even know what "AAA" means in today's games industry. I think it's a term that people should just stop using.

 

It does seem kind of irrelevant today doesn't it? Especially since so many huge budget games are just endless repeats of past games and not really that fun anymore.

 

Second picture doesn't have enough zombies.....and lightsabers............and Disney

 

judging an engine based on it's AAA compability, seems to be wrong approach to me :/ I mean alot of big AAA studios have the funds to actually make their own game engine or they already have an house own game engine, but that doesn't mean that AAA studios could not use unity. It just means people choose something, anything and stick to it and tbh, when thinking about it, if an AAA studio is gonna use unity, why would they make a big deal about it? an engine is an engine, you don't need to show everyone what engine your game is made with, unless you have personal interest in getting that engine more publicity. And if you have the money like AAA studios to pay for unities pro version, you don't need to show any unity splashscreen etc.

just think about cars as example....the guy who sells cars, might know what engine is in a specific car he is wanting to sell, but unless the customer is a professional racecardriver, the customer wouldn't need to know what's underneath the hood.
and considering that unity doesn't have the best reputation among gamers (cause for some weird reason people make crappy graphics and bad gameplay and such, fault of the engine, which is just ridiculous) I could even understand if companies would want to not reveal that their game is made with unity engine.

I'm honestly surprised though, when I first time heard, that heartstone was made with it.

 

Well clearly the problem is people coming here comparing apples to oranges so to speak. The simple answer would be "yes". If a AAA company put all of their resources into making a game with Unity then they'd make a AAA game with Unity.

Nobody here will make a AAA game on their own. AAA games are basically all about having tremendous resources to focus on a game... from development team size, experience & skill level to marketing power, connections and so on.

It's a game that is very well funded in all areas with all of the necessary infrastructure required in place to not only develop the game but also maximize awareness of the game and so forth. Great development resources. Large scale of time. Industry contacts. Huge marketing power compared to any indie. And so forth.

It's all something that makes no sense for any solo or even small team Indie to even think about.

 

I think the thing is - the reason the AAA question keeps coming up.

If you want maximum visual quality. Would you consider Unity for a non mobile project?

Right now, the answer is no. You don't pick Unity when you have massive funding aiming for bleeding edge graphics on top end hardware.

Unity has been working hard to up their game. A lot of the new stuff they're doing is targeted at competing in the top end visual space.

Currently, the most visually demanding game made with Unity up to now is probably Escape from Tarkov

It's not quite up to the absolute cutting edge - but it's close. If the game is good, it will do a lot to help Unity's reputation.

Right now though, if your main concern is top end quality on high end hardware, you don't pick Unity.

That might change soon if Unity keeps improving.

 

OK so here's how it goes.

Unity has a really great interface, neat API and code architecture (imo), documentation and manual is great. Making it really approachable for beginners.

However graphics is not so great, mainly because Unity has been focused on mobile games for a long time (which it is really good at).

So it's no surprise of course that a) games that don't rely on great lighting end effects such as the never-ending amount of AAA card games that pop up on these threads and b) games aimed at mobile, such as the Assassin's creed mobile game mentioned here, are made in Unity by AAA companies.

Nor is it a surprise either that despite having the ability and know-how to craft anything they want 'in-house' it seems AAA companies use Unity a lot for prototyping tools and workflows (which would logically then be used to make the game, if all else was equal, since why only prototype in something that is already ready for what you want?).

Which makes it also not surprising that graphics-heavy games (i.e., almost all console and PC games in this day and age) by AAA companies do not use Unity, because traditionally Unity has lagged way behind in the graphics department. It's starting to catch up now, but not quite there yet.

So there you go, it's as simple as that. Not sure why anyone would have a hard time dealing with it.

 

what would prevent anyone from writing their own shaders etc.? or their own solutions for object pooling etc.? yes it's true, right out of the box there is no "make awesome graphics button", but neither have unreal or any of the other engines, the main difference is in how accessable certain features are and which way engines are focused.
Unitys focus is to cover a wide range of possible games, while unreal and cryengine need huge workarounds if you want to make anything else than a shooter.

 

Resources... or rather a lack of.

That's why I guess I view AAA differently than some here do. If a AAA company decided to make a game in Unity they'd allocate the money & time needed to maximize the graphics which yes would likely result in writing their own stuff for certain areas. I don't think they'd just complain about "bad Unity graphics" and instead would put the effort & money needed to get it done.

 

I'm not dogging Unity. A lot of their new stuff is obviously aimed at making those top quality visuals.

In most cases, the absolute most visually demanding games made are generally first/third person. The very top end console games: Uncharted, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, etc.

I don't know enough about bleeding edge graphics to tell you if Unity can actually compete at the absolute top end right now. My use of Unity literally the opposite end of the spectrum: "what is the best that can be done with absolutely zero budget" (and no skilled artist).

 

that's my point XD if an AAA company would want to make a game with unity, they would have the resources to pull it off

 

Agreed mine too.

 

The problem is that an engine is literally a rendering platform with an API (and physics perhaps). So if such companies spent the resources to turn unity into what they wanted graphically, is it really possibly to still call it 'Unity'?

 

agreed, and i was not trying to accuse you of anything It is just fact, that unity had less of a focus on visuals, but in the end all those tools do is making it easier for artists to integrate their art into the engine. I was having some projects with cryengine and unreal and yes, they do have some things alot more accessable for when I wanted to have art stuff inside the engine, since most of it was already "ready" to just fill in the slots (as example for using several different types of textures on one object). There were things like day and night cycle already integrated into the engine...which colors sunrise would have, ocean displacement shader with adjustable waves etc. those things came all right out of the box.
But I have to say the interface and how everything was working together, was feeling like it is very easy to get lost in those same details.
Unity has in my opinion a very clean interface, focusing on everything that is important to build a games main components at first and then can be expanded upon. And the "expansion" is limited to the skills of the one making the game

 

The funny thing is even though people say Unity is not the problem its the budget to make the game look AAA that is the problem, I cannot find any game Made in Unity that could come close to best AAA game made in UE4 or Cry Engine.

It has to have something to do with the Engine, for example UE4 has baked lighting.

 

Also, the filter is broken on the made in unity showcase page. The platform filter doesn't work. I tried searching only for ps4 games, still showing me mobile only releases.

 

This is because no AAA game company is using Unity to make their latest and greatest FPS or whatever game. They are almost certainly building on top of their last release as needed for the new game. Probably an in-house engine.

And no solo or small team Indie has the resources to make a AAA game.

I don't understand why people aren't making the connection.

Who here can hire Patrick Stewart or whoever else of the same calibre to do the voice acting in their games?
Who can afford to make 30 minutes maybe even a few hours of movie-like cut scenes?
Who has a team of many dedicated artists to work on characters alone?
And more dedicated to GUI?
And more dedicated to level environment?

And yes who has the AAA resources to do all of this PLUS focus on cutting edge graphics which means rewriting parts of Unity to update their graphics instead of rewriting parts of their in-house engine to update graphics?

 

Yep, this, right here. I'm always puzzled by people complaining about the limitations of Unity. Scaling back your own expectations and scope is one of the first things you learn to do in game development. My biggest issue isn't struggling with Unity's limitations, but my own.

 

That's because it simply lacks some things that other engines have.

I really like Unity, for me as a use-friendly software tool it comes somewhere close to perfection, and I am very hard-pressed to find a good reason to move away from it.

But it doesn't have some stuff, it's as simple as that. Not sure why it's so hard to understand for some people. Not sure why some feel that it's wrong to critique a piece of software that you use and like. It can only help it to get better.

But for some reason there's a widespread belief that somehow by applying 'skillz' to artistry you can make Unity look like Destiny. There's no excuse for this - considering the fact that professionally-made material libraries are in widespread use amongst indies such as Substance Source and Quixel, and that most environmental geometry (at least hardurface stuff) is extremely simple (i.e., there's no 'missing ingredient' hiding anywhere).

All you have to do is go to Polycount and have a look at "What are you working on" and almost every image is better than anything I've seen in Unity, even though the skill level varies wildly.

PS the idea that Unity is fine because you can just 'modify it' to make AAA graphics is incredible. As I recall, Unity took over a year to finish their cinematic image effects, and who knows how long SonicEther has been working on SEGI. These things take a huge amount of time and effort.

 

A couple of things. Firstly, Unity has baked lighting, and has had for some time now.

Secondly, Unity is the youngest of the three engines, and has only recently started to license source code access to studios. While nowadays both CryEngine and UE4 can be licensed by indies, historically only larger game studios could afford the source access, and thus were better funded to produce larger scale games with larger teams.

A lot of the big, AAA franchised games you see advertised as being developed with these engines are (for the most part) created inside a heavily customized, practically proprietary version of the engine suited to the needs of project.

So yes, for the most part, it does come down to budget, rather than engine capability.

 

This all is mostly true but that is exactly what the AAA companies are doing. They are updating these game engines (whether their own in-house or whatever) as needed to keep graphics, etc cutting edge. Basically just as @MrArcher just stated.

And the question wasn't "Are there any games that LOOK Graphically like AAA games made in Unity?". If that was the question then sure the focus should be on graphics alone.

AAA is more than just graphics quality. It is SCOPE it is basically the best of the best in all areas of presentation and polish meaning hiring pro voice actors & actresses instead of your friends, maybe hiring a dedicated sound studio or orchestra to create epic audio instead of downloading free audio you find online, having a number of dedicated artists creating all of the characters, more to create the background / environment scenery, maybe even more focusing just on the GUI, more focusing on the cut scenes, etc. And then having a huge marketing muscle to do something with it all at the end. That IS AAA.

 

Okay... but then not so many AAA games actually have been made with UE4 or Cry Engine.

Because most AAA studios actually have their own engine to use, get one assigned /are forced to use one from their publisher.
Soooo technically speaking, all of these, Unity, UE4, Cry Engine have been used for AAA games. Neither of them is the first and foremost the engine of choice for AAA studios unless these are newcomer studios without a publisher owning rights to an engine (and then, are these really AAA games? Or rather AA given the most probably more modest budget?), or the dev deciding against using their own engine for very different reason (like Unity being engine of choice for AAA mobile and cross platform dev for some bigger studios, most probably because their own AAA engine is a PC / Console only thing).

Actually Cry Engine has almost never really been used stock by AAA studios, most used a customized version, which does not surprise once you had a look at the tools. IMO good runtime Engine, bad editor.
UE4 seems to be engine of choice for PC AA upstart studios and devs, and the Indies that think they need to chase them. Same could be said about Unity and Mobile AA / AAA dev. Which, while certainly cheaper than PC AAA dev, still is developing AAA games on their respective platforms.


Soooo... does anybody here say Unity > Unreal? No. But the other way is also not exactly correct. Different tools for different problems, really. The fact both have gotten so close should be reason for joy, not hatred against one or the other. We KNOW by now Unity can be used for very similar results as UE4 or Cry Engine. There WILL be differences in the actual look and performance of the games, depending on how much custom stuff you integrate into the engine (at the moment, Unity more or less trades visuals more akin to the other engines for worse performance because many tweaks have to be done on a high level, instead of inside the engine belly's... the fact Unity is working on amending that is giving me hope though).
But again, is this really so important? How about being happy you have a hammer, screw driver and knive which excel at different things, instead of three hammers that do exactly the same thing, but nothing else?
How about using UE4 for your AAA visuals if you think you cannot recreate them in Unity... and come back to Unity once you need to create a 2D mobile game?