The cancellation of Amy Hennig’s single player Star Wars title last year caused controversy regarding the state of story-driven, single player games. Many hardcore gamers argued that they’re starting to feel left behind, as multiplayer releases become increasingly prominent. The climate even prompted Bethesda to put out a trailer, pointing out that most of its games feature top-tier single player campaigns.
The problem with that Bethesda commercial is that the entirety of the publisher’s lineup was discounted at the time – and some titles like The Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus were only a few weeks old. It raises the point: are gamers willing to put their money where their mouth is? Uncharted creator Amy Hennig isn’t overly convinced.
“There is a real problem: the rising cost of development, and the desires, or the demands even, of players in terms of hours of gameplay, fidelity, production values, additional modes, all these things,” she said as part of a Polygon discussion. “Those pressures end up very real internally. If it costs you, say, $100 million or more to make a game, how are you making that money back, and making a profit?”
She continued: “And the $60 price point can’t change, right? There’s a lot of negative press around monetisation, loot boxes, games as a service, but these things are trending now in the industry, especially for larger publishers, as an answer to the problem of rising development costs. Budgets keep going up, the bar keeps getting raised, and it starts making less sense to make these games.”
Hennig concluded that while fans may be demanding single player games, they’re not the ones that are dominating the sales charts. “There is also this trend now that, as much as people protest and say, ‘Why are you cancelling a linear, story-based game? This is the kind of game we want,’ people aren’t necessarily buying them. They’re watching somebody else play them online.”
We don’t fully agree that YouTube and Twitch are significantly hampering the sales of single player, story-based games, but it’s true that they’re having a tough time at retail. Yes, the likes of Horizon: Zero Dawn may have hit last year, but there are countless examples of titles that didn’t. It’s certainly an interesting read on the situation from someone in the know, but what’s the solution?
[source polygon.com]
Comments 92
I actually do think that YouTube and Twitch has negatively impacted linear single-player games. Just in my own circle of close friends, they've started buying fewer single-player games and watching them online. I've noticed their buying habits have altered significantly since they started watching Let's Play-type videos. And they have plenty of money to buy them, they just don't anymore.
Interestingly, the one game they did buy was Persona 5, and I remember one of them saying it was because some of the content was blocked for viewing online. Although, obviously, I realise this is a small sample of people near me and might not be indicative of the wider gaming community, but I think it's interesting to note.
I can really see her point. I don’t like it, but I think she is right. I have noticed the top sales charts littered with the multiplayer and service games and many of the best single player ones never crack the top 20. It worries me some. However, I think there will always be some demand for the SP experience, and hopefully this year we’ll see a boost in sales.
lol what a load of bullcrap.
i buy only SP games,and i have bought something like 20 games in 2017...
@oryo23 Do you reflect the market at large, though? There's a good chance you're a statistical outlier at this point.
They need to start blocking their games from being viewed online, like how Atlus did with Persona 5. These games are like big picture movies now, so they should treat them the same way.
This sounds like someone is looking for an excuse to go all Microtransactions and Loot Box galore.
There are so many examples out there, where you easily could tag "...no one asked for" onto the game. AC Origins is THE AC game everyone was asking for, for such a long time. But no, they had to do the exact same s*** year after year. Everyone complained about the lame combat system in the old AC games, but nothing ever changed. They could have easily left out the MP part of the AC games and instead but more effort towards game play. I didn't ask for this tagged on MP in AC games, but I had to buy them nonetheless, if I wanted to play the SP part. So, yeah I wait for a discount on such games, so that I can tell my self, that I only paid for what I wanted.
@Jake3103 Interesting. I don't "get" that, personally. If I'm going to watch something, I'll watch a movie or good TV show because it's not like games have particularly great stories even when they're at their best.
It's like people who watch FIFA tournaments. Like, why wouldn't you just watch a REAL football match at that point with actual athletes?
The mind boggles.
I don't really know how much money goes into making these games, but I assume it's a lot. I would also guess they cost a lot more than yearly releases like CoD and 2K. Perhaps this is why they 'don't sell well' to the developers. They put all this time and money into a new experience that will still sell far less copies than a slightly refreshed version of a previous game.
It's probably all relative. Did any of the above games LOSE money? I wouldn't think so. As long as you can make the games you want and pay the bills, isn't that a good thing?
All in all, I wonder if merch can be part of the solution. I tend to look for a lot of merch for the games I love, but rarely find any.
@JoeBlogs While it's a good point, The Lost Legacy couldn't have existed without the initial investment in Uncharted 4. That game recycled tons of mechanics and assets that needed to be built in order to be used.
@get2sammyb Yeah, I agree. I honestly don't understand how watching a game online replaces the gameplay experience, but I think a lot of people like the social aspect of YouTube and Twitch. Watching a good Let's Play video is a bit like hanging out with a friend.
When I think about it, though, I used to do a similar thing as a kid. Me and my dad used to play the old PSOne Tomb Raider games together; I say "play", but one of us would be playing while the other directed and helped verbally. The experience on Twitch and YouTube isn't entirely dissimilar to this.
Tow the company line...
Ok I like single player offline games they still work in 20 years
Did eat said the same thing this person must work for them
I feel like the “we need more single player games” are the vocal minority here, and I’m sure that’s been proven over the last year. I’m apart of that group, and I haven’t played Multiplayer in a game for years, but I’m also not blind to the fact that they are where the money is for Publishers. The general Gamer (who picks up FIFA and COD every year) doesn’t care enough to post about this on an online forum, but they are the majority. Less vocal, but definitely the customer that the publishers prefer.
I've been saying this for years. Every.Single.Point.She.Made.
Yet people acted like costs are going down and that companies make huge profits citing just a few cases and ignoring the rest.
But despite this, I expect even more denial since gamers tend to ignore facts and simply demand things that are unreasonable. After all, it's not their money that will be lost if they're wrong.
If you're making a single player game with little to no multiplayer focus, then you have to budget your game accordingly.
The $100 million Amy Henning uses as an example is ridiculous (possibly the budget for her Star Wars game)- that's how much Jumanji 2017 cost.
Horizon cost €45 mil if I remember correctly (+another 20mil for marketing) & that's been a massive success.
Got massive respect for Amy Henning, but there is still a very healthy & viable market for single player games. Uncharted proves it. Persona 5 proves it. Horizon Zero Dawn proves it & guess what the likes of GoW, Spider-Man, LOU2 & Death Stranding will prove it.
Make a good game & people will buy it.
@get2sammyb where i live,many buy something like a cod game a year and everything else... single player i guess.
based on many friends and people i know from the internet,yeah
@naruball Depends which companies you look at.
@NathanUC The thing is, a lot of them actually don't make profit. Remember that Sony guy saying that only like 4/10 are profitable? The rest need to be profitable enough to cover the money they lost from the ones that failed.
@Flaming_Kaiser Yes, if you look at Activision and EA, you most certainly get the wrong impression about the video game industry.
@Fight_Teza_Fight
"Make a good game & people will buy it"
Couldn't be further from the truth.
Puppeteer was great. People didn't buy it.
Tearaway was great. People didn't buy it.
Gravity Rush 2 was great. People didn't buy it.
Bethesda games are great. People buy some of them.
And the list goes on.
A lot of people here, myself included, may not like her answer but she has a point. We as gamers as a whole, heck even as just humans, are naturally selfish creatures. So yeah the demands are up. Imo not every game needs to be 30+ long. Back in the day you paid more for games and often they weren’t even 3 hours long.
@JoeBlogs Oh don't get me wrong, I agree. Give me a tight eight hour experience over a boring 50 hour one every single time.
@LaNooch1978 Perhaps salaries of game developers are going up?
Demands by gamers are going up?
@WebHead Some of those NES games took less than an hour to beat. They were just insanely difficult to make you play longer.
@Jake3103 Depends. Watching a walking sim or visual novel on youtube isn't a terribly different experience from actually playing it most of the time due to the lack of interactivity.
Anyway, I'm tired of hearing these people complain about out-of-control budgets in their games. If budgets are ballooning too much, then cap the budget at something reasonable. AAA Western game development culture is practically cancerous at this point.
There's a number of problems.
Problem the first is that games are too cheap. Whether you want to pay more or not - who would? - video games haven't risen in price along with inflation like many other things have. When I was a kid I could go to the movies on the bus with £10 in my pocket, buy some sweets, and still come home with change. Now I need to remortgage my house every time we go to see a Star War. Video games? They're actually cheaper now than they were when I was a kid. And once you take inflation into account they're cheaper still.
Problem the second is that predominantly single player games have a tougher time justifying the investment, not necessarily through any fault of the developer. Take a game like Overwatch. It offers hundreds of hours of competitive gaming, whereas something like Wolfenstein II is a twelve hour experience. But they cost the same amount of money.
For the multiplayer game, they can frequently offset potential losses by adding micro-transactions, loot-boxes, new maps as DLC, and whatnot. All these things add up. But the single player game not only looks expensive in terms of hours/cost, but then struggles to shoe horn these extra monetisation options in without being deemed a rip-off.
Basically, single player games should cost more than they do, but publishers can't increase the cost because people will think it's a rip off, even though it isn't.
The day that single player linear games stop getting made (whether they're 8 hours or 50 hours long), is the day I stop buying new videogames. It will take another 10 years before I stop playing videogames altogether, as that's how long it will take to clear my backlog!
Does a game really have to cost $100 million to make though? Recent Japanese and indie success stories have suggested not. If everything becomes an always online service driven game then gaming in general may well become a lot more boring. There is still room in the market for a spectrum of experiences.
@YummyHappyPills I actually feel that an increase would be preferable to loot boxes and all the rest of it. I remember paying £50 for Sonic and Knuckles in 1995. According to one inflation calculator that is £90 today. Relative to wage growth (which has been stagnant in the UK for many years) and general cost of living, I'm not sure how well the UK market could tolerate a large increase in game prices though.
@naruball Even if 4/10 are profitable, how many break even vs lose money? In the above mentioned games, I would have a very hard time believing any weren't profitable (with POSSIBLY the exception of The Evil Within 2). The 4/10 probably refers to all published games. This includes Indie games and smaller titles.
I'm not saying they are wrong or the opinion of Amy is wrong, but I wonder how much is based on expected numbers in relation to other games.
Trending. I bloody hate that word.
I think her points have some validity, but are largely exaggerated. BOTW, HZD, SMO, Nier Automata, Cuphead and many other games did great saleswise. BETHESDA has had bad luck because of poor management, pitting Dishonored 2 against CoD, BF1 and the other big holiday releases. Same with Wolfenstein and TEW2. They seem to think their brand is strong enough to compete in the holidays. It's not.
Secondly, I'll say that we're guaranteed to see God of War, Spider-Man and some Switch single player game be amongst the top selling games of the year once it's over.
There are some flops of course, but they're also present on the multiplayer scene like Battleborn, Lawbreakers, Titanfall 2 (shame), Evolve, etc.
THE SINGLE PLAYER GAME NOT BEING A WORTHY VENTURE IS A LARGELY EXAGGERATED NARRATIVE.
That's because most games have crap stories. 99% of single player campaign stories for triple A games are just utter trash, most of them don't even stand up to straight to DVD b movies.
@johncalmc That's wrong way to think about investment Sp when you invest 30 mil in Sp that's it.
While in Mp you have to invest over and over and over again by adding new characters new maps etc etc.
@naruball you can't sell games if you don't bother marketing them properly, nobody asked for gravity rush 2 just like nobody asked for knack 2, just more daft decisions by Sony at times.
@naruball Lack of multiplayer didn't hurt those games.
GR2 bombed, because Sony ignored the core fanbase which was on Vita.
The Bethesda games bombed because of Bethesda's marketing strategy. They released those games in the crowded holiday period. In addition everyone knows Bethesda drops the price within weeks. They were asking for their games to get killed. There was no visibility.
Can't speak of Puppeteer.
Crash, a PS4 exclusive outsold Destiny 2- a multiplat. What do you make of that?
Crash properly cost less than 1/10 of what Destiny 2 cost to develop.
Make a great game, budget it accordingly & market it appropriately=€$¥£.
I much prefer to buy a Single Player game and in fact bought H:ZD, Evil Within 2, ME:A, Wolfenstein 2, Lost Legacy and Assassins Creed Origins last year - ALL DAY 1 purchases!!
People may be less inclined to buy an 8hr game that doesn't offer replayability or additional modes - certainly not at a $60 price point but then that's where games are at and the standard the competition is delivering. You have to really stand out and make people want to play that game instead of spending their $60 on a game that could potentially deliver 1,000's of hours as well as a 'decent' SP game and/or some co-op mode.
Spending $60 on a game that by tomorrow is done with - something they can take back to the shop and trade in against a game that's still going strong months later isn't going to do well. Not only could you end not getting the sales because people see better value elsewhere or they end up buying the 2nd hand version because its cheaper and only 8hrs long.
I know some may compare the price to a day out at the cinema or something but you could buy a load of Blurays and watch them for more than 8hrs for less - both 'home entertainment'. There are also much cheaper games offering 8hrs of 'quality' entertainment - Hellblade, Lost Legacy, etc let alone some 'Indies' that may have equally as good stories, offer more fun and/or longevity. Point is, there are a LOT of competition for that $60 so its up to the Developers to give something that makes people really want to part with that money on their game over others. All of the best selling Sony Exclusives are predominantly SP games - I know some have MP components (like U4 for example) but ALL are known for their SP experience. All of those also were sold on just one Platform yet her 'Star Wars' game would have sold across most (doubt the Switch would of but maybe could). It would probably of sold more than Star Wars Battlefront 2 and maybe Titanfall 2 as well.
Granted it may not of exceeded games like CoD and Fifa - although both do offer SP too. Games may have rising costs but that doesn't mean they aren't profitable either. Like I said though, they do need to stand-out more if all they offer is a short campaign and replayability is almost a must.
She would say that. It was her game that got cancelled, so of course she blames external forces. Can't be that she wrote a naff story.
How true is this? According to VGchartz half of the top 10 selling games worldwide in 2017 were single player. The reality is that if you ignore the yearly sports and COD, the charts aren't dominated by online games at all with plenty of single player efforts from the last couple of years. Looking ahead both Sony and Nintendo don't seem concerned given their respective line ups this year and beyond and Capcom are more than happy to give us a new Mega Man game and a remake of Resident Evil 2.
I realise we are becoming the minority but I do feel some of these people coming out with such statements want it to happen or are just trying to justify why their games sold poorly. Let's not forget the unfortunate truth that plenty of online only games also sell very badly and many of the hits don't sell as well as some would have you believe, the difference being they make extra cash from those that bought in on a continuous basis.
Single player will be around for a long time yet
Increasing the base price will only make people wait more for the price drop. Story does not need to be good to sell, as Odyssey proves.
And price lower tier games/IPs accordingly. Asking $60 for GR2 was dumb.
@sinalefa Could not disagree more Gravity Rush is worth the price of the game.
@NathanUC 4/10 out of the games that Sony makes. Not all games, so no indies.
@DLB3 Oh, don't get me wrong, I totally get that. What I specifically argue against is the common misconception (and general statement) that if a game is good, it will sell well. It may sell well.
@JoeBlogs amen to that brother
I say marketing is part of the problem, Bethesda games are ace but are very poorly marketed.
@Fight_Teza_Fight "Make a great game, budget it accordingly & market it appropriately=€$¥£"
That's not what you said, though.
Again, if a game fails and you have to find reasons why it failed, you will.
But the same things working against x title may work against z title, yet z ends up doing well.
There will always be excuses. Point is, a good game doesn't necessarily sell well.
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi you really can't speak for everyone. Plenty of people asked for Gravity Rush 2. Many people also asked for Knack 2.
Uncharted 1 wasn't a big success yet Uncharted 2 made the franchise to what it is today. They probably thought they could turn things around with the sequels of Knack and Gravity Rush.
As for marketing, it's the most common excuse used, ever.
You can market "properly"/the hell out of something. If there isn't a big enough audience for it, it will fail.
@Bread-Not-Toast I disagree, I firmly believe the games Bethesda are making are not what anyone wants bar their big openworld stuff. Regardless of the scores Prey and Wolfenstein got they are just short action experiences that dont live long in the mind and we have all played a thousand times over. Prey is on sale now (£12) and I literally cant be bothered with it although I have money banked on the store.
@naruball True about good games not always selling. Its the bad games selling loads that I take issue with lol.
@get2sammyb My son was watching a Fifa match online and I thought the same. However factor in thats what he does (sit on fifa) he wants tips to improve, he can understand the small alterations that maybe I would miss, what skills he needs to get passed opponents etc and its exactly the same reason you start watching any sport.
But lets be honest the esports sector currently is lowest common denominator stuff like Coronation Street or Made in Chelsea for the younger generation. Its not rewarding at all.
Anyway my main point in all of this; the whole situation is a self fulfilling prophecy. All of the biggest games publishers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision) are focusing on online games. Its not what we want to play rather than what the publishers want us to play.
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi absolutely this. I love Odin Sphere but the story is awful really. Destiny has good underlying lore which you explained to me a few weeks ago, but the actual story in game is awful as well. Only a handful of games stack up, maybe tlou, la noire, persona, yakuza, mass effect 1-3, bioshock and most telltale games.
@johncalmc @Fight_Teza_Fight @mookysam As for game costs compared to the past. It was estimated 2 million people had a copy of Lemmings yet only 70,000 copies were actually sold. Piracy was rife. You could copy tapes and cds at home with negligible effort and the attachments for the megadrive and snes were everywhere as well. People in markets offered chipping and what not with 100 games.
You cant compare paying £50 for sonic and knuckles as today is not the same as the underground gaming scene of the 90s when you bought games from John Menzies and 5 other people got it knock off. We had one bricks and mortar computer game shop near to where I used to live, there are now 4 with stocks in the 3 supermarkets also. Its completely crazy to compare the prices from a niche market to what gaming is now. Just my two pence but I constantly hear how expensive gaming used to be when nearly every game was pirated. Groups of hackers used to introduce themselves with self loading screens etc and it was the few who payed for the many.
How many examples are there of games with great stories that haven’t done well? And I mean great stories, not stories that are great FOR A VIDEO GAME. Two different things. I think this “good for a video game” attitude is part of the problem. If it’s a great story regardless of the medium, it will find an audience.
I love single player games but often there is little to make you buy them straight away and there will be a big price drop soon, which eats into margins. Sometimes it's like a game needs to be so big that you don't want to miss the hype at release to buy it day 1. Otherwise buy it cheap at discount when its patched!
@YummyHappyPills
Look dude, not everyone lives in countries where yearly salary is tens of thousands of dollars. In my homeland minimal monthly salary is about 1000$. I am not poor nor rich and I can afford gaming as my hobby, but a lot of people that can afford games at this price couldn't if the price will raise. I say a lot of people.
She must be on drugs.PlayStation owners buy single players game.maybe she was talking about Xbox owners.i always play single players games.multiplayer sucks word up son
She's 50/50 right & wrong. Is the general gist I gathered here. Despite all their flaws, Nintendo is pushing SP games. In addition to Sony (2018 lineup) and Bethseda. But some games bomb, some don't.
@naruball @Bad-MuthaAdebisi
And no one was serious in asking for Knack 2, No one (maybe Knack himself is the GOAT 👍👍👍). You could only make that point for GR2.
I think most gamers with money are simply casual, and looking for titles, which are easy to just pick up and play. I keep wanting to play more SP games personally, but haven't actually finished one in ages. Because life, and I haven't even got kids. When I get time to play for 1hr before bed, I am tired after a day of work, I just want to chill and have an easier time. Easier on the tired mind, if that makes sense.
I am considering buying the Switch, if only because the majority of my play time could be when I am travelling/on holiday (with the option to play on the TV on occasion for a sit-down session, and that is appealing). That could be a way for me to play more SP titles, paradoxically.
Like I said it before, if the future of gaming is multiplayer only, no single-player experiences and narrative, also e-sports still being a thing, I will leave gaming for good, or at least be a retro gamer.
Single-player games and titles focused on narrative will always be my favorite genre. Amy Hennig has a point and she knows what's going on inside the industry. Many people on the gaming industry want to move with multiplayer games only, even the so called gaming journalists are pushing this agenda, praising unfinished and shallow experiences like Pubg, even nominating this game for awards.
I think uncharted series does it best, great 9-15 hours single player experience and multiplayer mode with micro-transaction, with fraction of the mtx profit used for updating the multiplayer mode.
The other option is to make open world game since people will get bored watching 50 hour gameplay on youtube lol.
Multiplayer/microtransaction games are always going to make more money than singleplayer games, especially with the whole "graphics-first, gameplay-second" movement. Thing is, the market will eventually become smaller and all of the EA's or Ubisoft's will have less customers to market to. With rising 4K/mo-cap costs, good luck Ms. Hennig.
As it stands, they're already tearing their hair out trying to copy Overwatch and PUBG.
The big problem with story based single player games is that once they are completed they get sold. Multi-player games people tend to keep them and will continue to play. It would make a lot more sense for story based games to go digital with limited run of physical copies.
I said years ago that streams harm sales and people kept saying the free advertising was worth it. Nice to hear my sentiments echoed.
Thing is, there are plenty of examples where on-line only, multiplayer loot infested DLC ridden games have also failed miserably. The market is only so big and some of these games consume so much time there isn't time for others, which is another reason why single player games are so important.
Sure, single player games have taken a beaten but the industry couldn't survive without them. Thankfully Sony and Nintendo know how to make and sell single player games.
Something no one else has mentioned and that we don't hear much is that THERE ARE TOO MANY GAMES BEING MADE. There is at least one title per week that piques my interest, sometimes several. I have a good income and buy a lot of titles, but I don't want to buy absolutely everything that looks interesting — I certainly couldn't find the time for all of it, even if i did purchase them. Because of this, there are LOADS of AAA games that I cannot support, or which I choose not to support until they are substantially discounted. Point being, there is too much competition for the dollar, and some games will therefore suffer.
I do fear the development trend may be to move away from single player gaming, but I think we may have one ace up our sleeves — indie games. Some of the best games I played in the past couple years have been indie titles, and they do not have to justify excessive development costs. Here's hoping that indie development continues to grow and excel.
@YummyHappyPills Most games are already €70 digital. Started with Zelda this year, the rest of the AAA industry followed.
The issue I have with Hennig's point is that she uses the rise in development costs as a way to defend micro-transactions. Because you cannot raise the price... Who ever said that? If publisher thinks it's worth €80, then ask €80 for it.
Here's another few things: Don't lower the price after two months. If you keep doing that, there's no incentive to buy the games day one. And include everything on the disc first. No micro-transactions crap if you're also raising the price. Because that's what's currently happening. The big games that are now €70 in the digital store, are also the same games that are filled with micro-transactions; Battlefront II, Call of Duty. Don't care if it's cosmetic or not, if you're asking more than €60, include everything in the same package.
I don't know, in a way there's so many things wrong with the industry that needs to be fixed before I feel comfortable paying any more than €60 for a single game. And whilst I have seen the price increase over the years, from €40 in the 90s, to €50 in the 00s, €60 a bit later and now €70 for some games, most publishers seem to favour micro-transactions over another price hike.
That being said, there's no transparency whatsoever. We don't even know how much it costs to make a game, and how many they earn back from sales. So while it's easy to say that development costs have risen, statistics say otherwise. EA spends less every year on actual development, but their profits rise... So I have no idea anymore, developers say one thing, but their sales figures say another. And considering the bollocks that comes out of corporate mouths, I am more inclined to believe the latter.
Hmm... Then zelda and Mario must be seriously struggling on switch (not true)! Whilst Horizon Zero Dawn (4 million on only one console), Uncharted 4 (9 million) and Persona 5 (2 million) must be hurting their respective companies bottomline - I don't think so! What about games like divinity souls or xcom 2, these companies like what they're doing and making a living? And what happened to Lawbreakers, battleborn or Prey as these are pure multiplayer games yet they sold poorly at retail?oh and sadly driveclub a promoted MULTIPLAYER game didn't sell too well did it? Seems at the end of a day if a single or multiplayer game is made excellently and gets good reviews it will sell. If it's average or garbage it won't. Been like this since the 80s... As fallout 4 (ooh! Also a huge single player bestseller 12million copies) says 'war never changes.'
I'm glad I don't make video games. It would be terrible choosing between making the kind of games I love vs. the kinds of games that are most profitable.
@themcnoisy @naruball https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qq6HcKj59Q
Great video @Octane shared some time ago.
People are being brainwashed into thinking games are too expensive to make.
Publishers are just trying to raise their profit margins.
@MrOso Great comment. Agree 100%.
Making money is important, but when you start building your game around monetization, you aren't making a game anymore.
God of War is going to sell like gangbusters & that will be a game with no loot boxes, no microtransactions and no season passes.
@johncalmc yeah but the bulk games now are sold online no carts etc. Take SNES you needed to pay for cart any extras inside the cart. Pay money to nintendo shipping costs. etc etc. Now you pay server costs. So actually games cost more now than ever before.
Story based games aren't going anywhere. It's possible there'll be less of them and that less people will buy them, but there'll always be a market for single player games.
I don't agree with her conclusion.
The single-player crowd hasn't gotten smaller, it's the pool of gamers that has gotten bigger, and with this comes different tastes.
Today, people interested in single-player will not only buy AAA games, but also Indie games. We have more genres and sub-genres than ever before when it comes to single-player games. So single-player gaming is far from dead, it has actually expanded [from the traditional AAA stuff]. With both AAA and Indie games to choose from, most people simply can't afford to buy every single-player game that gets released.
We have a whole category of gamer today who only plays multiplayer games. They constitute the largest influx of gamers in the last 10 years or so. With eSports taking hold they will grow even bigger. What they look for in a game is vastly different from what a single-player wants. It's like comparing apples to oranges, ... which certain developers and publishers seem to be doing unfortunately.
If anything, making a successful multiplayer game must surely be much riskier than making a single-player game, even if the costs are lower. The multiplayer crowd is very fickle to me, whether a multiplayer game gets popular or not feels completely random.
Even a successful single-player game will pale in comparison to a successful multiplayer one. GTA V is not topping the lists today for its single-player stuff, but for the multiplayer. Developers interested in making single-player games need to understand this, it's a completely different consumer group.
Maybe it's just me, but the gamers who favour multiplayer over single-player tend to be the most vocal in the gaming communities. This has also influenced our gaming media. Today a game can be scolded in reviews simply for not having a multiplayer mode. You don't notice single-player gamers to the same extent.
In the Steam racing game community, which I used to be part of, a racing game is considered 'dead' and not worth buying if there are not enough online gamers for the game, regardless of how much single-player content there is. This idea seems to be quite common among the younger demographic of gamers.
She is right...and what a shame. I personally only play Rocket League consistently as a MP title. I prefer the intimacy of single player games. MY game. MY experience...im also 32...i grew up on SP experiences and couch co-op. AAA SP experiences will just be less common. They wont go away completely but will fall to the wayside. Loving lets plays??? Really wtf is wrong with these younger kids.
I do feel like there's something wrong when I can buy RPGs like The Witcher for £50 and they give me hundreds of hours of enjoyment and games that are far shorter and not necessarily as entertaining cost the same.
Titanfall 2 for instance had a great campaign but I never bothered with the multiplayer so the amount of time I played the game for was pretty short. In that case I feel like I should have paid less or only for the campaign somehow.
Something like The Witcher or Persona I'd have been okay paying extra for because I got so much out of them.
I agree, actually! I love SP games, but I rarely shell out the cash for them upfront. Here's why:
TIME:
I personally don't have a lot of time to play games, and scooping up a 40-100 hour story-driven immersive open world masterpiece like HZD or TW3 just doesn't fit into my schedule anymore. Don't get me wrong...I LOOOOVE those games, and I've definitely tried squeezing them in for just an hour at a time each day, but that just doesn't do the game justice and breaks up the experience to the point where I say, "I'll just buy it for cheap later and then save it for a rainy day or when I retire from working in 30 years"
MULTIPLAYER GAMES:
Since a lot of multiplayer games just die out mere months after release, I usually prioritize these types of games. I mean...a single-player game isn't going anywhere, so why rush? More importantly, I can play these types of games for as little or long as I want, so they generally fit perfectly into my day. Lastly, they help me keep up with IRL relationships by giving some time to friends I might otherwise be too busy to hang out with.
SPOILERS:
I personally hate spoilers, and when the internet ruins a game's ending for me, I end up losing a ton of interest in that game. Like I was gonna buy PREY but in the process of deciding to get it or not, I came upon a spoiler for a huge plot twist. That game has since dropped to as low as $15 and I still haven't gotten it. Oppositely, I've bought SP games at launch specifically to avoid spoilers, only to have the game spoiled mid-game while looking up something as innocent as the OST online (i.e. Mass Effect 3, Lightning Returns, etc). So buying an SP game to avoid spoilers is much less of a priority based on my past bad luck.
@Nyne11Tyme Mind the language please.
i for one would be fine with a price increase in games and i too also think the increase in live streaming and lets plays have had an impact in the single player gaming market, for a lot of people they play single player for the story but if they can experience that for free by watching someone else play then a lot of people will
either livestreaming sites should charge viewers OR games should be limited to how much of it's single player content you can stream
Agreed completely. I know gamers like me are the minority. I love my SP story-driven games, and don't care about the PUBG's, Battlefront's and Overwatches, yet these are what sell, while many story-focused games lag in sales, being discounted heavily soon after release. RE7 was a huge improvement over 6, yet it hasn't sold as well, and it's probably due to lack of multiplayer.
As with most things, people talk big, but when it comes time to pay, they get cold feet and run.
I’ll make an assumption that games like Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge did not cost $100 million to make. Maybe these giant studios need to stop overextending themselves, trying to make every game the equivalent of a Ferrari or Lamborghini, and then blaming it on consumers when their product doesn’t sell likethey want it to. No chance in heck it costs as much to make a broken, janky, game like PUBG.
Great. Now that the PS4 has been hacked and piracy is on the horizon it will get even worse.
All the games I buy have some single player component to them, and most are story driven. I back up the talk about wanting these kind of games, but I do realize the majority is in the big online shooters, and to a lesser degree sports and fighters.
Talk like this from one of the former industry leaders when it comes to creating single player games does concern me as did the talk from MS earlier in the year. But even if companies like MS, Sony, EA, Activision, etc all went down the multiplayer only route, there's at least still Nintendo who prove single player games can be made on a reasonable budget, sell extremely well and don't even need 'serious' stories to pull it off.
I really have absolutely NO problem paying for loot boxes or DLCs or any other type of transaction, AS LONG as it is not some greedy "in-your-face" kind of thing. The "in-your-face" thing may be fine for free-to-play games, but not for games you already pay 60-100$.
EA is a very good example of how NOT to do it. Blizzard is a very good example of how it can be done.
And I really like to support developers by paying money for loot boxes or whatever, as long as the game has quality.
For example Destiny 2 I am simply disappointed. I really liked the story arc, but once that was done, everything went the same way as Destiny 1. I think people generally don't really have a problem with such systems, as long as the game itself doesn't feel like some unfinished money-grabbing-only kind of thing.
@blourf Doubtful, since you need to be on firmware 4.05 and we're far past that now. Only a small handful will be able to pirate anything.
@Onion_Knight a good point.
I think one of the main reasons is younger people having shorter attention spans. This can be seen across all entertainment mediums. Nowadays the younger generation prefer reading short news on social media rather than lengthy ones in newspapers, whether digital or on print; they prefer watching anime rather than reading manga, which is part of the "not interested in reading books" trend due to wanting more passive and quicker forms of entertainment; playing short multiplayer matches rather than long story-based SP games; the rapid shift towards mobile gaming over PC and Console gaming and the proliferation of spending on microtransactions over grinding due to wanting instant gratification.
Older gamers like myself still remember spending hours reading the thick game manuals that come in those huge game boxes, but the younger gamers nowadays don't even read the short tutorials in games and just jump right in without knowing anything. Then they go online to read guides for a quick solution instead of trying harder to overcome an obstacle on their own.
These "Lets Play" Youtubers and Streamers also have to be blamed. Because many of them play games as a job, they have to get through games as quickly as possible, also they get games free from the developers so they don't have as much of an incentive to play it properly and fully and just rush through the game. People who only watch single player games through these Lets Plays lose interest or don't develop an interest because they think SP games are boring since these steamers only do the bare minimum to get through the game ASAP then move on to other games, hence not being able to show off many of the game mechanics and features outside of the main story line.
Ironically, even though people are less busy nowadays and having more time for themselves due to increased AI capability taking over repetitive labor in the workplace, people are having shorter tolerances for entertainement that is not quick, simple and offer relatively faster reward gains.
@Orpheus79V 5.00 seems to be on it's way. Once the news spread everyone who cares more about stealing games than online multiplay will stop updating their PS4 now. It's only a matter of time now. Less time than the recent breakthroughs took. Just my amateur opinion, and I hope I'm wrong.
Lol at game costs not increasing with inflation, C64 used to be £2.99 - £5.99 a game from WHSmiths
Mega drive was 14.99 to 29.99 typically
But after that Saturn, Dreamcast, Xbox etc. launched at the £39.99 price point with PS4 being £49.99 RRP, for pc gaming it was even more severe since moving away from retail stores.
Amy sounds VERY EA now lol I only really buy SP as well.
@DLB3 Those who only get news through reading posts on social media are easily manipulated, no wonder the problem with fake news having huge impact these recent years. If people did more research or get their info from reliable sources instead of just from people reposting news on each other's feeds (which tends to get distorted over time) then fake news wouldn't have become as much of an issue.
There is also the problem of people jumping onto bandwagons nowadays when it comes to gaming. Look at how when a certain game becomes popular, it gets a massive surge in population due to the herd mentality where "my friends all play it, so I must play it too". And then developers join the party too by making clone games to cash in on the new gaming fads.
After a while, when certain popular streamers start playing a different game, and that game then becomes popular, everyone goes to that other game and the cycle repeats.
@Punished_Boss_84 You can keep claiming that "no one" was seriously asking for it, it doesn't make it true. It's just your confirmation bias at work.
I liked it and so did other people, especially those who played it with their children and had a blast.
I'm well aware that some comments were sarcastic. It's not that hard to spot them. Many others, including myself, were actually interested in the sequel. Just not enough to make it profitable.
@Bagshot a good point, many tend to forget.
@Ashyne Is it really a fact that people have more time nowadays? I thought it'd be the opposite. I'd be interested in reading a reliable source on that, if you have one.
Single player games will never go away, but it's probably inevitable that AAA publishers will gradually move away from them in favor of multiplayer service games they can continually monetize for years and years.
I have mixed feelings about that. I'm no fan of multiplayer and would be sad to see less AAA single player games coming out, but honestly indie developers are probably the future of single-player. They don't take their orders from big companies and are willing and able to take chances and do interesting things you'd never see in a big publisher's games.
She's talking rubbish
@naruball
No one =/= "Just not enough to make it profitable"
🤔🤔🤔. Promptly concludes any further conversation.
You can make a claim that anyone asks for a sequel (As I sit here waiting a Red Faction Guerrilla, Sleeping Dogs & Timesplitters sequel) and you'd be factually right. But you can't claim there is a huge demand and sales potential for any of it. That's what I mean by no one.
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