{"id":132,"date":"2026-07-25T18:24:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T18:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/?p=132"},"modified":"2026-07-25T19:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T19:20:07","slug":"double-a-saves-the-day-via-eurogamer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/double-a-saves-the-day-via-eurogamer\/","title":{"rendered":"Double A Saves The Day (via Eurogamer)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have to be careful these days because reading Eurogamer can result in some terrible brain aches with just one click. Every now and then they still run a gem like the recent piece on ladders<\/a> in videogames (I have not learned to love them, they are wicked things) but mainly, I\u2019m likely to end up on someone business talking at me and it\u2019s pretty awful to stumble upon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cand not for the first time\u201d, this time it\u2019s Shawn Layden\u2019s turn<\/a> to suggest the solution to videogames woes is \u2026 erm \u2026 the return of the double A videogame. Good one Shawn, that will surely fix everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good thing about asking for the return of the double A videogame is that nobody knows exactly what these things are so diagnosing it as one solution can sound really good because people will think things like \u201cyeah, I loved God Hand<\/a>, I\u2019d love more of that\u201d or whatever their fave game from the crushed middle of videogames at a different period in time is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite rightly you should love God Hand too! It is the correct way to live.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cDouble-A is the tier of gaming below triple-A, and above the tier I’ve never heard anyone call “single-A” but refer to as “indie”. It’s the tier of game made by a team of fewer than, say, 70 people – it’s not clearly defined – and working within more apparent budgetary constraints. They’re games that can’t be everything to everyone, in other words, so they’re usually shorter and more focused, and arguably more fun.\u201d
<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Even Eurogamer themselves are wrestling with explaining what Double A is in the piece there \u2026 it\u2019s not indie, it\u2019s not the industry, it\u2019s sort of just like an indie studio, making an indie game, but it also isn\u2019t that, it\u2019s something else. It\u2019s a magical inbetween state where none of the current pressures that studios already trying to exist in this space have even exist. Or the studios for that matter. Which is lucky because it wouldn\u2019t be much of a solution if they did exist, eh? You know, with the industry being a bit fucked and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shawn introduces his logic by reminding everyone that there are still people alive in twenty twenty and a six who subscribe to the \u201cVideogames are at the exact same time, the dominant superior medium and also somehow subordinate to anything else they can think of \u2026 for reasons\u201d school of thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201dIf you walk into Tesco right now, almost everybody in Tesco has a favorite song, but they won’t have a favorite game, so the impact of music is everywhere, the impact of toasters is everywhere, but gaming is still, we make a lot of money but in this very prescribed set of users.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Toasters? Bit desperate, mate. I don\u2019t have a favourite toaster\u2026 to be honest, at the moment I don\u2019t even have a toaster at all. I can\u2019t say I\u2019ve been seriously effected by this but sure, go off Shawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst I\u2019m not going to complain if someone is going to route more funding into studios to enable them to make games, this is really only a fluffy way round saying you\u2019re only interested in funding \u2018triple I\u2019 games, which also only exist in the same nebulous state of I know what it is when I see it, mate. It just has the bonus of fewer people looking at you a bit funny when you say \u2018Double A\u2019 out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pressing material reality at hand is that there are already a lot of people working in this space currently. Some of them have been around a very long time (Rebellion spring to mind but mainly because I really love the stuff Rebellion manage to put out, even when it\u2019s not entirely to my taste), some only cropped up in the past decade, but there are plenty of these costs plenty to make, aren\u2019t AAA open world games<\/em>, already out there.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yes, they are struggling to find funding just like everyone else so by all means, fund them! Just don\u2019t expect this to somehow roll back the past forty odd years of crushing capitalism or even to put a dent into the problems the industry faces now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worry more that this is one more thing where the folks who have lived and breathed the line go up forever times show how truly out of touch they have become and their only plans are \u201cif we pretend it\u2019s 2013 again, we are going to be fine\u201d so back to the world of Double A when those pesky upstart indies weren\u2019t the middle ground, that was taken up by \u2026 pesky upstart indie studios trying desperately to stay open instead, and exclusives and whatever else reminds people of 2013 and being A Capital G Gamer that springs to mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It won\u2019t work but hey, it might buy us a few more years of not facing up to the shitshow that is today, whatever day you\u2019re reading this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to be careful these days because reading Eurogamer can result in some terrible brain aches with just one click. Every now and then they still run a gem like the recent piece on ladders in videogames (I have not learned to love them, they are wicked things) but mainly, I\u2019m likely to end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,26],"tags":[48,54,51,52,50,53,47,49],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","category-videogames","tag-double-a","tag-eurogamer","tag-funding","tag-god-hand","tag-industry","tag-ladders","tag-shawn-layden","tag-triple-i"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spooky.punchingrobots.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}