AAA vs Indie Games — Scale, Funding, and Creative Approach
How do AAA and indie games differ? We compare team size, funding, creative approach, and distribution, plus indie hits and the AA games in between.
When picking a game, people often say "this one's a blockbuster, that one's indie." But the difference between the two isn't simply about whether the graphics are good or bad. Who pays for the game, how many people make it, and what they prioritize are fundamentally different.
In this post, we compare AAA and indie games across four criteria: scale, funding, creative approach, and distribution. We also look at representative indie games that small teams turned into huge successes, as well as the AA (double-A) games that sit between the two worlds.
Definitions First: Neither Has an Official Standard
AAA games is an industry term for big-budget titles made by major publishers who invest heavily in development and marketing. The term came into use in the game retail industry in the late 1990s and is thought to borrow its name from the AAA rating in bond credit ratings.
Indie game is short for "independent" game and refers to a game made by an individual or small team without the financial or technical backing of a major publisher. The term comes from indie culture in film and music. English Wikipedia notes that there is no single agreed-upon definition of an indie game, and its scope varies depending on whether financial independence or creative independence is used as the criterion.
So neither category can be divided with a clean cut. That said, their typical forms are quite distinct.
Scale: Hundreds to Thousands vs One to a Few Dozen
The most noticeable difference is team size.
- AAA: Ubisoft's open-world games are described as being made by 400 to 600 people across studios in multiple countries, and Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2 involved about 2,000 people over more than eight years.
- Indie: Stardew Valley was made entirely by one person, Eric Barone (ConcernedApe), over about five years, including the graphics, music, and sound effects. Undertale was also developed almost single-handedly by Toby Fox. Supergiant Games, the maker of Hades, was a studio of about 20 people during development.
A large team can deliver vast content and high graphical quality, but that also means more layers of decision-making and harder schedule management. A small team is limited in how much it can produce, but one person's taste and vision come through intact across the whole game.
Funding: Publisher Investment vs Self-Funding, Crowdfunding, and Early Access
AAA games follow a model where the publisher pays for development and recoups it through sales. According to 2023 data from the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the average development budget for AAA games targeting a 2024–2025 release was over $200 million. With that much money at stake, failure is hard to absorb, so investment decisions tend to be conservative.
Indie games have far more varied sources of funding.
- Self-funding: Developers use personal savings or money earned from other work.
- Crowdfunding: Developers raise backing before release on platforms like Kickstarter. In 2013, Undertale set a $5,000 goal on Kickstarter and raised $51,124 from 2,398 backers.
- Early access: Selling an unfinished version first brings in both development funds and feedback. Minecraft began as a public alpha in 2009 and was fully released in 2011, and Hades also launched first in early access in December 2018.
- Indie publishers and grants: Some developers sign with small publishers or get help from national cultural support agencies and indie-focused investment funds.
Creative Approach: Proven Fun vs New Experiments
Budget size also shapes what gets made.
Because the cost of failure is so high, AAA favors series with existing fan bases and genres proven in the market. In return, these games reach a level of presentation, graphics, content volume, and polish that other games struggle to match. Most large-scale multiplayer services that huge numbers of people play at once also come from AAA-scale production.
Indies, thanks to their small budgets, can actually take risks. Wikipedia explains that risk aversion on the AAA side and stagnation in new gameplay concepts were part of why indie games drew attention in the early 2010s. Ideas like Undertale's RPG that "you can finish without killing a single enemy" and Hades' roguelike that uses repeated death itself as a storytelling device are often cited as concepts that only a small team could have attempted.
Distribution: How Digital Stores Changed the Game
In the past, selling a game meant pressing discs and getting them onto store shelves, which in practice only major publishers could do. From the mid-2000s, as PC digital stores like Steam and console download services like Xbox Live Arcade began accepting indie games, the landscape shifted. Braid, released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, drew major attention, and World of Goo, which had been unable to find a publisher, received release offers after winning at the Independent Games Festival (IGF). In 2012, the documentary Indie Game: The Movie, about indie developers, was released.
Today, thanks to Steam, console stores, and mobile app marketplaces, even a game made by one person can launch worldwide immediately. The flip side is that standing out among the flood of new games released every day has become the biggest challenge for indie developers.
Notable Indie Hits from Small Teams
| Game | Release | Developer | Known Achievements |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minecraft | Full release 2011 (alpha 2009) | Markus Persson, Mojang | Over 400 million copies sold, the best-selling game of all time. Microsoft acquired Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014 |
| Stardew Valley | 2016 | Eric Barone, solo developer | 50 million copies sold as of February 2026 |
| Undertale | 2015 | Toby Fox | Over 5 million copies sold, made with GameMaker Studio |
| Hades | 2020 (early access 2018) | Supergiant Games | BAFTA Games Award for Best Game, first video game to win a Hugo Award |
| Hollow Knight | 2017 | Team Cherry (Australia) | A defining Metroidvania from a small team |
(Sales figures are based on each game's English Wikipedia entry.)
Minecraft started as an indie and was eventually acquired by a major company, showing just how big an indie can grow. Stardew Valley and Undertale proved that a game made by one person can reach millions, even tens of millions, of players. Hades showed that an indie game can take the top prize on the same awards stage as AAA titles.
In Between: AA (Double-A) Games
Between AAA and indie are AA (double-A) games. These are mid-sized games made by professional developers that, while not a major publisher's first-party studios, receive publisher backing. Wikipedia generally cites studios of around 50 to 100 people as examples. They must follow the publisher's goals and schedules, but they have more room to experiment than AAA and tend to be priced lower.
Examples include PUBG: Battlegrounds, DayZ, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) by French studio Sandfall Interactive. Games made with indie funding but aiming for AAA quality are sometimes separately called III (triple-I).
Pros and Cons at a Glance
| Criterion | AAA Games | Indie Games |
|---|---|---|
| Team size | Hundreds to thousands | One to a few dozen |
| Funding | Major publisher investment, budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars | Self-funding, crowdfunding, early access, small publishers |
| Development time | Usually several years; blockbusters 5+ years | Months to years, varying widely by team |
| Strengths | Graphics, presentation, content volume, polish, large-scale marketing | Original ideas, distinct personality, fast decisions |
| Weaknesses | Similar games repeated due to risk aversion, crunch | Limited resources, difficulty with promotion, heavy burden on individual developers |
| Price | Generally high full price | Generally affordable |
| Examples | GTA, Call of Duty, The Legend of Zelda | Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Undertale, Hades |
It's hard to say one is better than the other. AAA is a good fit when you want a massive world polished by hundreds of people, and indie suits you when you want to experience fresh ideas and the voice of the people who made the game. In fact, many people enjoy both, switching back and forth.
What a Small Studio Can Do
The history of indie games shows that the idea that "small teams only make small games" is wrong. Of course, not every indie game succeeds, but the biggest appeal of indie is that it can compete on ideas and focus instead of scale.
KEKE STUDIO is also a small indie studio making games for mobile and PC. Instead of a big budget, we polish a single kind of fun all the way through, making games in genres like puzzle and defense.