The term “Triple-A” refers to titles that are essentially the big blockbusters of gaming. But in recent years, this side of gaming has drawn ire from many audiences. Here, I want to try and figure out how these massive projects and publishers have been steadily losing their prestige.
Basically, when you hear the term “Triple-A,” the first things that should come to mind are big budgets, pristine graphics, and massive publishers. And even if you’re unsure of which games are Triple-A, you might have played some of them already. Triple-A games are most commonly put out by big-name publishers like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Activision, Bethesda, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and many, many more.
As for specific games, there are many out there. But some popular titles and franchises that instantly come to mind with the term “Triple-A” include Call of Duty, Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, and pretty much every EA or 2K sports game in the past two decades.
And what do all of these Triple-A titles have in common? Big budgets and massive marketing for one. These massive budgets should, on paper, allow these games to be released with the utmost quality. And they have huge marketing to spread the word to both casual and hardcore audiences.
But in recent years, it seems that in both quality and marketing, many Triple A releases are missing the mark. There has always been some friction between players and these big-name titles, due various reasons. But in this past decade, tensions have escalated to the point that not even these big name publishers are entirely safe from failure. But how did we reach this point?
Predatory Monetization: The Catalyst?
Players harboring dislike for Triple-A games and publishers is nothing new. If anything, current sentiment is just the result of the pre-existing tension taken to its logical extreme.
Gaming is an industry. And the goal of any big player in an industry is to make a profit. But for the gaming industry, it has gotten to the point where player and customer experience is directly hampered in favor of chasing profits.
In the late 2000’s the most gamers had to complain or worry about were overpriced season passes or DLC, and the occasional pre-order bonuses that preyed upon the fear of missing out (referred to by many as FOMO).
These practices of overpriced DLC or pre-order bonuses were argued by many gamers to be scummy or dubious practices. Yet nothing was done. Nobody acted on the issue beyond complaining about their gripes.
Once the advent of loot-boxes took off, and releases were made consistently broken, players began to catch on and speak their mind. Games jorunalists and YouTube personalities were both outspoken about instances of corporate greed.
The most egregious offenders facing a lot of public outcry were the many EA and 2K Sports games, and Star Wars Battlefront 2, among others. Once the practice of loot boxes became normalized in Triple-A gaming, many were quick to point out how loot box systems were essentially at-home gambling without the trouble of running a real casino.
Much of the outcry exploded into calls for government regulation. Only some nations would take it seriously though, namely those in Asia, Europe, and Australia. But loot boxes and DLC are now old news. Modern gaming has its own slew of issues.
Modern Triple A Monetization
There a whole array of reasons why people have either slowed down their Triple A gaming, or have quit altogether. And I fall into the latter camp myself.
One reason that many of us stepped away from these massive games is an extension of a previous reason. Monetization. Nowadays you would be hard-pressed to find any online multiplayer game that isn’t laced with cosmetic microtransactions, pay-to-win mechanics, or a “battle pass” popularized by free-to-play games like Fortnite.
Time and time again, we can see publishers preying on the same force that made pre-order bonuses so controversial: FOMO.
Limited-time skins and seasonal events hinge on the same thing. These things rely on “artificial scarcity” of some kind. Players are goaded into paying for in-game items before they’re “gone” for good.
But isn’t this just an issue with online games nowadays? Aren’t single-player games safe from this shlock? Short answer: no.
Long answer, take all the things that were frustrating about what I mentioned prior, and then shoehorn it into a solo experience where it has no right to be in.
In some games such as the Assassin’s Creed series have been putting “timesaver” microtransactions into their games. When in-game purchases are there solely to allow the player to play your game less then I think there’s an obvious problem.
And this is before even reaching the crux of the problem. Simply put, a lot of players do not wish to spend sixty (nowadays seventy), dollars on an often broken game, only to then be nickel-and-dimed for fear of missing exclusive items, or for the “privilege” of playing these games less.
A Second Job & Purposeful Problems
Tying back to that last point, why on Earth are games trying to get you to play less of them? In online games, this is especially common. Games where you have to grind for simple rewards or pointless items are the norm in the online Triple-A space. And the amount of grinding is often absurd.
One of the worst offenders of this was EA’s 2017 release, Star Wars: Battlefront II. You could get new characters and items in one of two ways. Either play for countless hours to grind or shell out cash for randomized loot-boxes. So pick your poison. Either hours wasted or money wasted.
And between, the amount of hours some games expect and things such as daily login rewards, games now feel more like a job than ever. Not a fun way to unwind after a hard day’s work. Instead, these publishers want their games to to feel like, no, be a scheduled obligation. With how these games operate, it’s almost like we should be getting paid! It is completely absurd.
I think games should be fun or at least thought-provoking. Not a second job without even the benefit of a paycheck. And, of course, if you pay up, you aren’t as bound to the obligations. Games are selling solutions to arbitrary and entirely intentional problems. They’re dangling this carrot of less time playing the game in front of players. All in the hopes that even just one bites that carrot and shells out their cash.
Release Now, Fix Later
Putting aside monetization and the job-like tedium, Triple A games still have some merit, right? For one, their graphical fidelity is usually on-point, portraying vibrant, lived-in worlds for the player to traverse.
That is if the game actually runs properly. Yeah, many Triple A games have had massive issues with stability and playability at launch. Some titles falling victim to this include, Starfield, Cyberpunk 2077, even Nintendo’s cash-cows aren’t safe from a stuttering, scuffed launch, as perfectly demonstrated with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Many videos online poke fun at all of these games and their lack of polish.
When even the leaders of the Triple-A industry are failing so hard at optimization, stability, and even basic playability, there has got to be something deeply wrong with the systems at play. Games often lag behind FPS (frames per second) targets, stutter, or outright break due to bugs.
Publishers are without a doubt, pushing games out too fast for them to even work properly. And as a result the entire Triple A market has devolved into a “release now and make it playable later” mindset.
This mentality is what wrecks consumer trust. But to these publishers it won’t matter as long as enough people don’t know any better than to buy the game with their favorite franchise on the box. But what happens if a Triple A game fails?
Recent Flops
In recent times, many Triple A games face severe backlash. But only sometimes, does a Triple A game utterly fail in all aspects. Financially and critically. Two examples I would call to mind would be Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones and Sony’s Concord.
While Ubisoft lauded Skull and Bones as the first “Quadruple A” game (a title met with lots of ridicule), the end product was a shabby and lazily thrown together game. This was somewhat striking given that the game had been in “development hell” for almost a decade before release.
Almost ten years in the oven ironically resulted in a half-baked experience according to many. People online would make fun of Ubisoft’s unfounded faith in the game. There are plenty of videos comparing the game unfavorably to Ubisoft’s most well-known sailing/pirate focused game, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag.
Ubisoft’s case is especially dire. This flop, Star Wars: Outlaw’s performance, and backlash for the next Assassin’s Creed may cause Ubisoft to be bought out by Tencent. As for Concord, that game completely bombed for a multitude of reasons. Oversaturation in the market of hero shooters, offering nothing new to its genre, and what is according to many players, an ugly and unappealing art style for the playable characters.
Of the two failures, Concord will possibly go down as the more infamous. But both are a stain on the gaming landscape, proving that Triple A games aren’t “too big to fail” by default anymore.
And there are plenty of other failures too in recent years. Marvel’s The Avengers, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, Anthem, and so many more. The corpses of these failed games litter the Triple-A market and make the future seem bleak.
My Wishes For The Future
And I personally think the only way for these games to survive and thrive is to return to what made these Triple-A publishers so acclaimed in the first place. Being to gaming, what a summer blockbuster is to film.
First, they should eradicate all of this tedium and their self-inflicted problems. Both on a creative and technical level. Then, they should get back to being on top of their game in graphics, playability, and most importantly, the fun factor.
The games industry is increasingly becoming a case of sink or swim. So either these studios need to learn to swim, or they will sink into their self-imposed ruts.
