Are AAAA Titles Valid or is it Just a Creative Marketing Strategy

The term Quad-A (AAAA) is making headway as the newest buzzword in the games industry. The Initiative’s Perfect Dark and Striking Distance’s The Callisto Protocol are AAAA games, but most people don’t understand how any project could go beyond Triple-A status. When I first heard the term, AAAA, I thought it was an exaggerated description from the hyperbolic gaming audience, but that wasn’t the case. It’s an actual term that developers use to explain the budget and quality behind projects, however, it reeks of nonsensical Public Relations (PR) trickery. Over the past few years, the video game industry has been inundated with PR nonsense, creating buzzwords for an E3 season or marketing cycle. When the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X entered the scene, it seemed like a game presentation couldn’t finish without the words ray-tracing. Ray-tracing, meaning the rendering of real-life expressions of light such as reflections, was the hot new ability for the consoles, but, in reality, many PS5 and Xbox Series X games only offered ray-tracing at the expense of Frame rate quality. In the same vein, I wonder what AAAA means and if it will significantly impact the games we play, or if it is simply a marketing word to brew up excitement. First, let’s see what makes a game Triple-A and what it could mean to go beyond that expected quality. Triple-A can be closely associated with the term blockbuster movie and is what most people consider games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Call of Duty Vanguard, and The Last of Us Part 2. These games have huge teams and expensive development budgets, and they usually come from well-known developers. The budget for most Triple-A games can range from 60 million to 300 million (approximately), resulting in top-of-the-line graphics and performances. Triple-A doesn’t always mean good, but it does mean the backing of a major publisher like Sony, Microsoft, EA, or Epic Games. If Triple-A is the highest echelon of game development, then can anything exceed it? Gaming journalist, Jeff Grubb, thinks so.  “The Initiative is going to make big, expensive games. And they’re so big and so expensive that their scope may reach beyond the blockbusters we have had up to this point.”The quote implies that AAAA games will have budgets exceeding $300 million (Grand Theft Auto IV had a budget of $265 million) and they will use technology far superior to Triple-A games, which means better graphics, fewer glitches, and larger worlds. It’s difficult to tell what this will look like, but my guess is that it won’t be as profound as it sounds, and maybe, it’s not even realistic. The Triple-A studio, Naughty Dog already puts an incredible amount of polish on their games, accomplishing some difficult feats for small, almost unnoticeable details. For instance, several characters take off their shirts in The Last of Us Part 2, and the cloth physics are hyper-realistic as the shirts loosely fold over themselves. Cloth physics are notoriously difficult, therefore, only a Triple-A studio has the manpower and money to spend time on it. Could this be the meaning of AAAA, the inclusion of small, albeit immersive graphical details? That might be the only possible direction since Triple-A games already look and perform above expectations. In the case of Perfect Dark, I could see incredibly realistic first-person shooting and gun animations. The game’s animation details, such as the gun’s clip falling to the ground, will be praised, but casual gamers will be missing these details. The high peak of current Triple-A games and the constraints of consoles doesn’t bode well for any significant upgrades associated with AAAA jargon. Of course, that’s only if The Initiative delivers the so-called AAAA experience. In retrospect, the description seemed apt for The Initiative because it boasted big video game names, including Darrell Gallagher (Tomb Raider, Destiny 2), Naughty Dog talent, Rockstar talent, and Cyrstal Dynamics writers. Unfortunately, several of these folks have since departed the project along with the game’s director, Danel Neuburger. Overall, The Initiative lost 38 employees. The Initiative’s LinkedIn page lists 50 employees for the studio, which does not boast well of Perfect Darks AAAA status. Most Triple-A studios need a significant workforce of 120 (Probably Monsters) to 1,000 (Ubisoft) employees.It’s difficult to equate the Initiative with AAAA when its team barely reaches the quantity of a AAA developer. In addition, the words Quad-A or AAAA are nowhere on The Initiative’s official website, something that, if true, should be publicized. Some say the AAAA description initially came from a third-party job listing, but somehow got contorted as an official statement. I, for a matter of fact, could not find an official statement that Perfect Dark is an AAAA game. What I found instead was several journalistic articles stating Perfect Dark’s AAAA status without a linked source. The reality is The Initiative is trying its best to make the Perfect Dark reboot and couldn’t care less about its label. They’re trying to make the best game possible while everyone else is running around spouting AAAA from the mountain tops. Conversely, Krafton games (the studio backing Striking Distance) officially revealed that The Callisto Protocol will be an AAAA game. Although there is no information on what this means for the game, the development team looks better than that of The Initiative. The studio is comprised of about 195 employees, according to LinkedIn, and the team is led by former Dead Space and Call of Duty talent, Glen Schofield. However, without any actual information about the game, PR could have easily seen the AAAA murmur and slapped the term on the Callisto Protocol. I have no evidence of this, but it makes sense considering the little anyone knows or is telling about AAAA projects. If this were a true thing, a development process that exceeds the best games has to over (money and visibility wise), then the push and excitement from publishers would be much stronger than it currently is.At this point, it’s more likely that The Callisto Protocol, not Perfect Dark, will be an AAAA game, however, I wouldn’t put many stocks into the phrase. The Triple-A language is so broad with no distinct parameters that several non-indie games could fall under it. Adding another A won’t make too big of a difference besides giving the marketing team another talking point.