Not long before joining Rock Paper Shotgun, I wrote a feature for Edge magazine about the origins of the very silly term “AAA game”. The overall conclusion I came to is that “AAA game” is possibly a boardroom-level borrowing from the credit rating industry and Hollywood, and that it has little meaning beyond “most expensive/biggest”.
It’s a bauble casually excreted by pinstriped cats wallowing in jacuzzis sometime in the mid-90s, for the benefit of the investor class. But in much the same way that any fleck of dust can become a pearl, or at least a larger clump of dust, so the term has attracted additional meanings and significance over the ensuing years, partly because game journalists like myself keep taking it seriously.
My interviewees talked about triple-A’s association with the shift to polygonal 3D graphics, with certain genres such as the open world, with games like Shenmue 3 and Final Fantasy VII, and with exclusive hiring practices that require “triple-A experience” and thus have an unavoidable bias, given that “triple-A” studios have often been staffed predominantly by people of a certain race, gender and background.
These more specific developments aside, triple-A has shed an A to produce the retrospectively beloved genre of “AA games”, aka grainy noughties shooters with a gimmick, and also sprouted additional As. Concluding the Edge write-up, I touched briefly and humorously on Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot’s coining of “AAAA game” in a brazen attempt to mindfuck people complaining about the delayed release and pricing of Skull and Bones.
As sure as the sparrows fly south for winter, another executive has now gazumped Guillemot. Speaking to Ian Games (thanks Percy Gamer for spotting) about the dark art of competing with other publishers for release dates, Devolver co-founder Nigel Lowrie has described GTA 6 as an “AAAAA game”. Here’s the complete sentence:
“I mean, there are AAA games and then there’s AAAA games and I’d argue that Grand Theft Auto is potentially the AAAAA game, it’s just bigger than anything else both in the scope and scale of the game and the kind of cultural impact that it has and the attention it demands.”
Lowrie isn’t the first to try this, admittedly. CD Projekt Red’s investor relations VP Karolina Gnaś has already been there and bought the T-shirt. But Gnaś was poking fun at Ubisoft’s “AAAA game” claim at the time, whereas Lowrie seems to be in earnest.
Moreover, he seems to think that “AAAA game” is everyday parlance now. I, for one, was not consulted about this, but I can see why The Industry might be in a hurry to leave AAAA behind. To my knowledge, the only card-carrying AAAA games besides the ailing Skull and Bones are Beyond Good & Evil 2, the current record-holder for longest-serving vapourware, and Microsoft’s Perfect Dark reboot, which was recently cancelled. If AAA means “most expensive/biggest”, AAAA basically seems to mean “doomed”.
The whole circus is worth following inasmuch as it’s a crude illustration of the continuing drive to appease investors who are not content with the “maturation” of returns, and are always looking for the next Level Up. Still, I realise the advanced financial language may be confusing to ordinary humans, so I’ve put together this quick-and-dirty cheatsheet for both existing A-based videogame lifeforms and those likely to emerge the next time an executive joins an earnings call. Here you go:
AAA – GTA 3
AAAA – Skull and Bones
AAAAA – GTA 6
AAAAAA – GTA 6 on max settings
AAAAAAA – GTA 6 + Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
AAAAAAAA – GTA 6 + GTA 3
AAAAAAAAA – GTA 6 + Skull and Bones
AAAAAAAAAA – GTA 6: Ultimate Whale’s Edition with fully operational Quantum Field simulation and digital rights management supplied by orbital self-guided “Blundershut & Custard” Clockwork Plasma Cannon array
AAAAAAAAAAA – GTA 6 + gravitational implosion of known universe
A – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Gabe, and the Word was Gabe. The same was in the beginning with Gabe. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
AA – [DESYNCHRONIZED]
AAA – GTA 3 again
PS. I’ve just noticed that Edge feature is on Gamesradar now, if you fancy a read.