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Yet for all its power, it’s one we take for granted.
But when was that, exactly, and where did it come from?
So, is there a solid definition of ‘triple-A’ to be found today?
“The game had done phenomenally well, particularly on PlayStation,” Cecil recalls.
“And Martin Alper was their CEO, and he very kindly took me out for lunch.
And he talked about ‘triple-A games’.
Cecil says this dismissiveness was typical of publisher executives at the time.
“They had a contempt for the medium.
And they thought that actually what people really wanted to do was watch movies interactively.”
This feature originally appeared inEdge magazine#396.
He quickly came to associate the concept with arrogance and corruption.
“In the late ’90s, there were some terrible things going on,” he says.
“It’s a stupid term.
“And the way it was said to me was in the negative.
And I remember it distinctly because I was like, ‘What’s a triple-A game?'”
“It’s a squishy term to nail down and define,” he says.
He once again points to the term’s origins in the credit industry.
“And somehow, that became our word.
But it was all about money.”
And it felt like they put the triple-A label on themselves to reflect that they were big business.”
For Hutchinson, as for many young devs at that time, ‘triple-A’ was a career ambition.
“It was a marker of everything that we weren’t at the time.
And, you know, presumably high quality?”
“[Shenmue] was just monstrously large.
And it seemed kind of inconceivable for us.”
“It was just monstrously large.
And it seemed kind of inconceivable for us.
These are the days before thirdparty engines were very good, and so everything was bespoke.
“For me, triple-A referred almost explicitly to Japanese games at the time,” he says.
“Capcom, Nintendo, Sega.”
Its ascendancy goes hand in hand with the wave of console gaming that followedSony’s entry to the market.
“I actually think that the terminology causes more confusion to developers than is healthy right now.”
“We’ve had so many conversations around that term,” Dobrowski says.
And you’d get entirely different answers across the team, including in our management groups.”
And is it still triple-A?
From a budget and a scale of team perspective, yes, 100 per cent.
And the quality bar was at the top of what was being released within the MMO genre.”
But, of course, it’s all a matter of perspective.
Still, what counts as a high budget can vary enormously according to region and format.
The same thing happened, he says, with VR.
Because that was associated with what a console triple-A budget would be."
And what about length does it matter?
“Which is a bit strange.”
Victoria Emma Tyrer has worked in the space since 2017, at PlayStation, Firesprite and now Wushu Studios.
Is it time we let go of ‘triple-A’ altogether?
“Those are the launches that end up on the evening news.”
“The latest Battlefield failed as well.
You see it more and more often.”
“The industry is so spread out now,” he says.
“The game world is so spread out now.
“Those are the launches that end up on the evening news.”
Which is a shame.
Just because of that one word in a job description, we’ve missed out on that talent.”
“We talk about the games to fans like they’re developers,” he says.
Nonetheless, many publisher executives continue to deal in ‘A’s.
“When it first came in, it meant ‘quality’, and then it became ‘scale’.
And now, I think, it almost means ‘bloat’,” he says.
It made me think, ‘Too much’."
What’s next on the gaming calendar?
