“...closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace.”
October 21, 2017 10:46 AM   Subscribe

Big-budget, single-player gaming isn’t dead (yet) [Ars Technica] “Yesterday's news that EA is shutting down Visceral Games is bad news for fans of franchises like Dead Space and for the studio's unnamed Star Wars project. But the abrupt shutdown has also caused a bit of an existential crisis to creep into the game industry chatter regarding the future of big-budget, single-player, story-driven gaming in general. [...] Looking around at the most popular games these days, it's not hard to see the market shift Söderlund is talking about. From Hearthstone and Overwatch, to Playerunknown's Battlegrounds and Rocket League, to Dota 2 and League of Legends, to Clash of Clans and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, and on and on, the games getting the most player attention (and money) today tend to be never-ending online competitions.”

• EA’s Star Wars ‘pivot’ is a vote of no confidence in single-player games [Polygon]
“Electronic Arts is second only to Activision among third-party game publishers in terms of market capitalization. The company holds the exclusive rights to the video game license for Star Wars, one of the most enduring, popular and valuable brands in all of entertainment. Multiple Star Wars titles are in development at EA — the publisher will release Star Wars Battlefront 2 in a month, while independent studio Respawn Entertainment is working on an unannounced game — but it sounds like the company felt it couldn’t make the economics work for Visceral’s project.”
In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.
• Why Visceral Games Closing Shouldn't Be a Surprise [Cinema Blend]
“In brief, the announcement explains that the Star Wars game Visceral was working on was going to be too focused and linear, with the main meat of the project being a narrative-driven campaign. Keep in mind that is exactly the game they originally wanted Visceral to develop, bringing on Amy Hennig to tell a compelling story within the Star Wars universe. In other words, there was no open world, no clear way to implement loot boxes or a steady stream of for-pay DLC. It doesn't sound like the kind of game where players will want to gamble on gear drops, skins, upgrade cards and the like. It wasn't going to be the sort of title where you could have three forms of currency for in-game purchases, one of which players needed to spend additional real-world money on. In short, EA has shifted to a model where they want to get as much money for as little additional effort as humanly possible. Visceral's game didn't fit that mold, so it was time to cut and run.”
• Does Visceral's closure prove AAA single-player games are dying? [Gamasutra]
“Okay so this is one of those weird places where the art of making games and the business of making games are colliding and because of that everyone says story-driven single player games are dead. Weird, didn’t I write about this like…last year? (And others a few years before that?) First off, I think Visceral’s demise really sucks. Mid-development market shifts happen, but the company seems to have been left hanging out to dry at the expense of getting an exclusive Star Wars license for the publisher as a whole. EA wants the development community and its players to not think of it as “the worst company in America” anymore, but this year it’s doing the same things that landed it on that Consumerist list. Murky microtransactions, studio shuttering…whatever was going on with Visceral’s Star Wars project, a full studio closure feels like a management crisis where the employees working on the project will suffer most. What we’re seeing this Fall isn’t the death of single-player games but once again companies grappling with that weird tipping point where producing a linear single-player game requires a level of polish and staff size that further mandates exorbitant game sales.”
• Today's Star Wars News Makes the Future of Single-Player Look Very Messy [Waypoint]
“EA's announcement comes at a time of great financial turmoil in video games, right as there's larger industry conversation happening about the ethics of including loot boxes. Loot boxes, for the unaware, are a gambling-inspired microtransaction that quickly jumped from free-to-play and mobile games into the big-budget projects folks are used to paying $60 for the main experience, with optional, substantive add-ons (i.e. season passes) down the line. The first response that many, including yours truly, had to EA's announcement was "Oh, they want their own Destiny." Granted, the EA-owned BioWare announced its own Destiny-like game at E3 this year, Anthem, but Anthem remains a risk. It's a new property with a new universe, and players might reject it. You can imagine how compelling the notion of a Destiny-like game with the Star Wars license would be to EA. It's an endless pit of money, one where even a mediocre attempt would have a higher potential to become a cash cow.”
• Bethesda remains committed to single-player AAA games, and most critics agree that Tango Gameworks' sequel is a big improvement [gamesindustry]
“Proclamations of the "death" of anything tend to be misguided, and that was certainly true of those reading the last rites to single-player AAA games. Not least because some of the year's best games are wonderfully realised examples of just that (Zelda, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Shadow of Mordor), but because Bethesda still exists and seems hell-bent on making as many of them as possible. This year it has already released both Prey and Dishonored: Death of the Outsider; this month alone it will release both Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and The Evil Within 2. Of course, one can question just how well any of those games has - or, in the case of Wolfenstein, will - performed commercially, but a lack of concrete sales figures tends to tell its own story.”
• If Single-Player Games Are “Dying” Then Explain Super Mario Odyssey [GameRevolution]
“Though I'm being slightly facetious by referencing Super Mario Odyssey given Nintendo's pedigree (obviously not every publisher can expect to draw in Mario numbers), in many respects triple-A publishers struggle to break even with single-player games because of a problem that they've helped to create, and one which Nintendo has never replicated — an unassailable level of over-expectation in regards to the numbers that single-player games should supposedly achieve. We're routinely told how games are so much more expensive to make now, hence the high rate of failure for single-player games that aren't conducive to the peddling of microtransactions and copious amounts of DLC. However, we'll then see yet another game in which photo-realistic visuals and dollar signs are pushed to the forefront of their presentation, perpetuating a belief that bloated budgets are a requirement for story-driven games. ”
• God of War Developer Chimes In On Single Player Games: “I Love Them”: And I think so do most of us. [Gaming Bolt]
“In spite of the success of games like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Persona 5, NieR Automata, Nioh, Resident Evil 7, and of course, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (without getting into the guaranteed impending success of the upcoming Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Assassin’s Creed Origins, and Super Mario Odyssey), there are many in the gaming industry who would have you believe that single player games are a thing of the past, and multiplayer titles are the way of the future. Of course, the success of the games I mentioned above alone is evidence that they are not necessarily right on this front- and it looks like game makers themselves don’t agree with them on this. Take Cory Barlog, the director of God of War 2, and the upcoming PS4 God of War. Speaking on Twitter to sound off on the issue, he admitted he loved single player games, even the linear cinematic ones, and that he is saddened when people use the word ‘linear’ as a criticism.”
@corybarlog I love linear single player games. Saddens me when the word linear is considered a bad thing. You can have agency in a linear story game. [3:11 PM - 18 Oct 2017]
posted by Fizz (76 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I know that we've had a few of these kinds of discussions recently. “Is this the end of video games?” But I do think that it's worth discussing again as there has been a shift in the industry. The way games are being designed and how players/consumers interact with them is different and its starting to show: the rise of loot boxes (previously), the way they've crept into AAA games like Shadow of War (previously). Hmm...
posted by Fizz at 10:58 AM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Well, it seems like the non-developer heads of game publishing syndicates have been trying to "pivot to multiplayer" for more than a decade, and you can understand why they think that is where the money is. But we get these articles every few years, and somehow traditional singer-player games continue to get made and also sell well. I don't know, maybe it seems the "death of single player games has been greatly exaggerated." Great FPP though, and I am looking forward to working my way through the many articles I have not already read!

For me and my gaming budget, which runs to thousands of dollars per year, I am still mostly interested in single player games. I am also 49 years old, but I see plenty of evidence among my younger gamer friends that some of them also enjoy single player games. I don't think publishers are going to be successful in convincing new generations of gamers that they only legitimate form of gaming is endless online grinding with loot crates and micro-transactions. We're dumb, but not that dumb.
posted by seasparrow at 11:02 AM on October 21, 2017 [15 favorites]


These people can shut the fuck up while I'm waiting for Cyberpunk 2077.

Seriously, The Witcher 3, for all it's problems of lack of diversity, showed how in depth and thoughtful a single-player campaign can be. It's even had amazing sales, despite the complete lack of DRM.

I think all the talk about "single player dying" is just the big name companies wanting to put in the least amount of money and extract the most amount of money, and loot crates... I'm sorry... GAMBLING is the easiest way to do it. They keep pushing this narrative because it's better for their bottom line.

Also, to be fair, since the first generation of video game kids has been adults for a few decades now, and often have their own kids, most have very little time for a full fledged single-player. I have a friend who wants to play The Witcher 3 so bad, but all he ever has time for is a few games of Rocket League here and there. That does mean there's a bigger market in general for games with an easier ability to jump in and out, but where does that leave games like Divinity: Original Sin 2, where you can have friends drop in and out easily. Does that count as single-player? For that matter, does Borderlands? Honestly, they seem majorly single-player to me, with a small co-operative component added.

I mean, weren't we just discussing how Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is such an important single player story-focused game because it allowed people to "experience" what it is like to have a mental illness. It seems to me that I keep running across what seem to be groundbreaking single player games, yet I'm being told they're dead.

Well, it seems like the non-developer heads of game publishing syndicates have been trying to "pivot to multiplayer" for more than a decade, and you can understand why they think that is where the money is.

Bingo. The people who keep pushing the idea that single player is dead are the fucking suits, not the people making or playing games.

(bango bongo I don't want to leave the congo, no no no no no.)
posted by deadaluspark at 11:06 AM on October 21, 2017 [19 favorites]


AAA Games have been priced at a flat $60 for, what, 15 years now? But budgets for those games have gone up 5x. They have to make the extra money somehow. EA is a particularly cynical actor in this world.

Shadow of War is a great example of a single player game with some sort of online component poorly shoehorned in as a way to motivate players to spend money. The much maligned loot boxes and XP boosts are easily ignored if you play single player, but there's a suspicion the single player experience was tuned to be a long grind if you don't buy any.

But SoW also has a multiplayer component. It's pretty thin; missions show up on your map that take you entirely out of your world and drop you into someone else's. You hunt down an Orc Captain getting vengeance for another player. Or you can assault other player's fortresses in a sort of Clash of Clans like metagame. As a multiplayer experience it's really pretty awful. You never interact with the other player, it might as well be randomly generated. OTOH it is a source of evergreen content. The gross thing is the loot rewards from multiplayer are coupled very closely into the microtransactions stuff, they all show up under the Market tab. I also suspect if you want to be competitive in the fortress-assaulting leaderboards you have to spend money to keep up. My conclusion is all this crap was added to the game just as a way to create demand for microtransaction purchases. Fuck that.

OTOH the single player game is pretty fun on its own, and you can just play the online part casually and ignore the payments. So the game isn't ruined or anything. Yet.
posted by Nelson at 11:07 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well, crap. And crap. I loved the Dead Space games (not the least because it deal with Lovecraftian issues, and madness, and had an engineer protagonist). And I knew at least one Visceral employee. Now I need to reach out to them and see how things are.
posted by Samizdata at 11:09 AM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Doom 2016 is my go-to for "Wait, you mean people prefer amazing singleplayer to mediocre multiplayer? As a games publisher, how were we to know?!"

I think all the talk about "single player dying" is just the big name companies wanting to put in the least amount of money and extract the most amount of money, and loot crates... I'm sorry... GAMBLING is the easiest way to do it. They keep pushing this narrative because it's better for their bottom line.

That bit about Valve considering Portal 2 a failure for selling only 4 million copies (because they could've made more money for less effort putting out stuff for TF2 and DOTA 2) is a prime example of this.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:09 AM on October 21, 2017 [10 favorites]


That bit about Valve considering Portal 2 a failure for selling only 4 million copies (because they could've made more money for less effort putting out stuff for TF2 and DOTA 2) is a prime example of this.

Holy shit I knew Valve had gotten bad but I didn't realize a game that many of their fans consider a pinnacle of single-player gaming was considered a failure internally over lack of sales.

I guess all that "flat management" shit did was make it like a bunch of greedy high schoolers with no scruples.

Seriously, they spearheaded this lootbox shit with CS:GO. They went from being one of my favorite companies to a "what the fuck is going on with these guys?" companies.

Another example is how they just decided that it would be a better solution to never, ever actually finish the Half-Life series, because it couldn't live up to hype and they'd rather just leave their customers hanging forever. They even just released another god damned card game, and they make a mint skimming a few cents off of every transaction on their site.

I was just saying yesterday I was wondering if Yanis Varoufakis' departure from Valve was more than just Varoufakis wanting to leave to save his home country from austerity, because he left in 2012, and that's really when Valve started to go downhill and become a bad game publisher with bad, anti-consumer practices. (Arguably, things like not having a way to get a refund was already anti-consume, but it's just gotten worse it seems).
posted by deadaluspark at 11:15 AM on October 21, 2017 [7 favorites]


AAA Games have been priced at a flat $60 for, what, 15 years now? But budgets for those games have gone up 5x. They have to make the extra money somehow.

The base price might still be $60. But most games come with a 'pay an extra $10--$20 and get some extra outfits/tat/maps' initial price. Then add on 2-5 pieces of DLC over the next year, each costing $5-$20. If you're a fan, you can put down over $100 easy to get the full game experience. See Dragon Age Inquisition's last story DLC, Trespasser, which many fans consider to be the 'real' ending of the game.

I gotta say I'm bummed about the prospect of never getting a Star Wars single player game. Now is the time to bring one out, guys! Multiplayer is boring and player chat is gross!
posted by lovecrafty at 11:36 AM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm repeating myself a lot on this these days, but at this point I'm just waiting for Congress to realize that the AAA gaming companies are morphing into unregulated (and not properly taxed) gambling operations. The reckoning is going to be unpleasant, probably moreso for consumers.

Fuck loot boxes.
posted by tocts at 11:46 AM on October 21, 2017 [20 favorites]


What if they made video games where you have to feed more money into them after every third time you die?

Nah, that'd never be popular.
posted by hippybear at 11:46 AM on October 21, 2017 [10 favorites]


What if they made video games where you have to feed more money into them after every third time you die?

It'd never work...
posted by Fizz at 11:52 AM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh, if they thought they could get away with bringing arcade-style monetization into home console gaming they would in a heartbeat.
posted by lovecrafty at 11:53 AM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


I *like* single player games. I mean, other humans are okay some of the time, but some of the time if I wanted to play with other people I wouldn't be alone in my house sitting around in my robe and snuggled down in a blanket.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:53 AM on October 21, 2017 [10 favorites]


It is no longer enough to merely sell a lot of copies, now that Amazon and Google and their ilk have redefined success as the monopolistic capture of entire market segments. Every film aims to start a franchise; every book strives to begin at least a trilogy. And every game wants to be more than a game, to instead be a platform that monopolizes its players' attention and spending. Something like Overwatch doesn't want to be a game, it wants to the the only game.
posted by Pyry at 11:57 AM on October 21, 2017 [15 favorites]


At least arcade-style monetization would be slightly more honest. Loot boxes are thinly veiled (and thinly justified) scratch tickets being sold to a player base that's often not old enough to enter a casino. Valve is probably making more money on gambling at this point than the various online poker sites ever did before the giant crackdown on them way back.
posted by tocts at 11:57 AM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


Aside from loot boxes, the other problem here is being forced to play with utter morons.

Loud, misogynist, racist, morons. The next time I hear some adenoidal teenager scream “suck it bitch!” I swear to god I’m going to go build my own cobalt nuke and use it.
posted by aramaic at 12:06 PM on October 21, 2017 [25 favorites]


Something like Overwatch doesn't want to be a game, it wants to the the only game.

Which is funny considering how much of the artistic presentation of that game was completely ripped off from Team Fortress 2 (from the cartoony style to the staggered release of short films with "backgrounds" for the characters, TF2's being more silly, and Overwatch being more serious), and the only real addition seems to be a slightly more serious "plot" and a lot of oversexualization of female bodies. (I mean TF2 had it's own problem with an all-male cast, but something has never set right with me about how super sexualized the women in Overwatch are.)

I guess that's how you capture the market and be the "only" game, just make it sexier.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:09 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Loud, misogynist, racist, morons. The next time I hear some adenoidal teenager scream “suck it bitch!” I swear to god I’m going to go build my own cobalt nuke and use it.

Thankfully, in some games you can turn off audio from other players and chat from other players entirely.

I play Rocket League on PC and it's cross platform, and I almost wish they'd just take away the ability to type text from PC players and make them like the PS/Xbox players where they only have a small list of pre-defined chats to choose from, which they can only annoy people by endlessly spamming.

It's still annoying, but far easier to cope with.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:11 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


As far as EA's sports games go, Ultimate Team seems to be where their focus is, and single-player modes seem an afterthought. I mean, I'm playing Madden 25 right now, and a lot of the stuff is exactly the same I had on Madden 08 (owner mode is just the old franchise mode with the business stuff souped up to make a whole mode) or Madden 11. Presentation is actually worse than it was on 2K5 - Nantz and Simms are (very realistically) a never-ending fountain of inanities with a very limited number of player names (can't even choose a commentary name) and very little content-aware commentary. I mean, if my 3rd year QB has broken the single season TD record and has two MVP awards, he's doesn't have "some experience" and Rodgers "2011 MVP" is completely irrelevant on a Green Bay team sliding to a third consecutive losing season streak in 2018.
They've recently added a story mode, but rather than being some sort of major innovation, it seems to me they're picking up where Fight Night Champion and N64 ISS 2000 stopped.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:13 PM on October 21, 2017


"...the games getting the most player attention (and money) today tend to be never-ending online competitions.”

Well, we have to acclimate our future cannon-fodder to the experience of the battlefield somehow.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:17 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I know that we've had a few of these kinds of discussions recently. “Is this the end of video games?”

Well the discussion is often more framed as ‘is this the end of the Games Industry, as it is in this post, to which I say I hope so, let’s bring it on! It’s like those scare-mongering ‘Home taping is killing the music industry’ ads from the 80s. I wish it had? It’s a darn shame it didn’t? Without an “industry” humans would still be making music, sure as humans made music as soon as they could bang two sticks together and raise their voices. Pretty sure the same goes for videos games, frankly. I mean look, you want single player games? The Nykra demo is out and it’s incredible.
posted by Jimbob at 12:19 PM on October 21, 2017 [17 favorites]


Fucking excellent analogy, Jimbob. And agreed entirely, it's really the industry, the big business, that is the problem. Independent artists continue to pump out beauty regardless.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:21 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


I know that we've had a few of these kinds of discussions recently. “Is this the end of video games?”

Well the discussion is often more framed as ‘is this the end of the Games Industry,


The end of video games...the beginning of game service subscription DLC loot-boxes $$$
posted by Fizz at 12:25 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Indie games and their developers will fill the single player void, and then some.

AAA single-player development will become more rare, more expensive, and more appreciated as a result. I look forward to shared experience titles, as well, but single-player titles are the cozy books on a rainy day of the industry. Getting lost versus being found and having to communicate in a way that breaks the fourth wall. For me, the presence of being in it, versus being aware of the artifice and giving into the language of the player community is just one of the factors that goes into 'wanting to play something.'

Loot boxes are gambling. I have yet to buy an Overwatch lootbox, but I am finally tempted after the year and a half to plunk down 20 bucks for Halloween skins. I buy single-player DLC with a pretty hardass ratio of prior enjoyment versus expected continuation of enjoyment/developer support.

I have been playing a lot of Overwatch but I've been playing a lot more Stardew Valley, Zelda, XCOM2, Persona 5, Dishonoreds and Yakuzas. I think the Fortnite Battle Royale is a lovely free experience, that is itching to get its in-game economy going. Team Fortress 2 had its first significant update in forever, and word is good. I am curious to see if Valve goes in on the Island Murder Party genre themselves, or is content to take their tithe.

EA is going all in on the loot box, as Star Wars Battlefront 2 is 60 dollar all things inclusive, with the understanding if you want the bling, you gotta drop big bucks in a blind. But, that gets the purchaser a big budget single-player, expanded multi-player suite with space combat highlights, and free DLC for two or so years.

I just hope Nintendo doesn't go the way of the loot box. Animal Crossing Switch with such a system would be depressing.
posted by chainlinkspiral at 12:44 PM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


AAA Games have been priced at a flat $60 for, what, 15 years now? But budgets for those games have gone up 5x. They have to make the extra money somehow.

The Sixty Dollar Myth (The Jimquisition).
posted by Pendragon at 1:00 PM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


The only solution then is to make Borderlands 3 the biggest seller of the year (whenever it comes out, sigh) in order to send a message.

: )

PS, In all seriousness, PVP is a non starter for the rapidly aging first generation of electronic gamers.
posted by Beholder at 1:29 PM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


AAA development is a tough industry, and it was even in the heyday. However increasing expectations of the AAA experience has also ballooned costs. In 1999 full voice acting would be astounding, and now it's mandatory. I think that expectation leads to a lot of "me-too" that's expensive and sometimes diluted key mechanical elements (Fallout 4 comes to mind).

Theorists have also suggested that the risk adversity of the industry has lead to a feedback loop with the toxic elements of the market, and a tendency to cater to their power fantasies.

So... I dunno. I like AAA games, but increasingly I like independently developed stuff on free to cheap engines even more. So maybe the fading (or transition) of single player AAA games is not so bad.
posted by codacorolla at 1:39 PM on October 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


Jim Sterling also called the shutdown of Visceral games. Visceral's shutdown may not be indicative of a larger trend in the industry, and more a sign that EA kills everything good it touches. This list from Kotaku was written when they killed Maxis. If you've been playing games for any length of time, EA has probably destroyed a studio that made something you loved.

As for the idea of a larger trend away from single player AAA games, well, fine. Any time there's a huge trend in any industry, there's almost always someone who decides not to follow it. Not always, but often, they do pretty well, just because they're suddenly occupying a space the competition has abandoned. As for the competition, they've piled into a market that can quickly get over-saturated.

In this case, it's not clear how many more lootbox centric hero shooters the market can really support long term. Hell, who here remembers "Battleborn"?
posted by Grimgrin at 1:51 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


In this case, it's not clear how many more lootbox centric hero shooters the market can really support long term.

Indeed, look at what happened with Lawbreakers. Which is a game I thought was really fun in its gameplay but boring in its character design. It felt like it was released 2 years too late. And it's unfortunate because it brought some really interesting ideas to the arena-shooter genre. But the market is crowded and welp, see for yourself.
posted by Fizz at 1:54 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I imagine that there will be a phase of VR development where it's reasonably cheap for consumers and the technology works really well for 1-4 people locally but network lag or some other technical hurdle will mean that multiplayer doesn't work very well so the focus will be on single player experiences with some local multiplayer.
posted by VTX at 2:41 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


If you've been playing games for any length of time, EA has probably destroyed a studio that made something you loved.

Truth be told, while EA are the worst offenders, they weren't the ones that shut off Gremlin, Psygnosis, Sega Technical Institute, Lionhead, and so on.

At this point, everyone lowered the axe on someone they shouldn't have at least once.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:58 PM on October 21, 2017


In this case, it's not clear how many more lootbox centric hero shooters the market can really support long term. Hell, who here remembers "Battleborn"?

Overwatch cast a long shadow. A miscalculation that Gearbox will regret pretty much forever. In the meantime, 5 years after Borderlands 2, probably (optimistically) 2 more years of development for Borderlands 3, which will make a 7 year gap. That's crazy for a franchise that put them on the map.
posted by Beholder at 3:11 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


Fuck EA. I worked for a game company that was bought by EA. The suits promised nothing would change, plans were the same, blah blah. A few weeks before Christmas they sent the pink slips out.

I haven't bought an EA game since then. Fuck EA. They can die in a fire that is made of fires that are also on fire.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 3:13 PM on October 21, 2017 [25 favorites]


Not to get too derailed on the subject of FPS games. I personally feel that Battleborn failed because their characters were pretty much forgettable. I mean I love the world of Borderlands but outside of Claptrap there's not any one I could really name off, umm...assassin guy, bad guy who owns planet of guns, ummm medic person?

I love that universe but it was always about finding guns and loot and shooting, the characters were very secondary. That world had a lot of flare to it but the characters felt very hollow. With Overwatch, you had the comics and tumblr and fans on twitter filling in the gaps and creating a much more flushed out group of heroes. They found a way of making the forgettable un.
posted by Fizz at 3:18 PM on October 21, 2017


And the power of those animated shorts. Fuck, I just want a Star Wars Rebels style Overwatch animated series. JUST TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY BLIZZARD?! !
posted by Fizz at 3:20 PM on October 21, 2017


I imagine that there will be a phase of VR development where it's reasonably cheap for consumers and the technology works really well for 1-4 people locally

Just a couple things:

- Four people in a room wearing blindfolds reacting to imaginary things is dangerous. Seriously, I think people will die. I'm surprised there isn't already a list of fatalities since the Rift came out. Tripped on a cable, fell out the window, didn't notice the room filling with smoke, stepped on a cobra, use your imagination. Now multiply by four.

- Sharing the headset is gross. You can't pass it around to give everyone a turn because it gets sweaty and disgusting. Possible disease vector right there. You know that slightly icky feeling about sitting on someone's seat and it's still warm from their bum? This is the same except it's your face and the chair is sweaty.

VR gaming is not for parties. It's a lonely experience, for now at least. Big potential for single-player though, because multi may never be a good fit for VR.
posted by adept256 at 3:26 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


I have to adjust the camera bob and field of vision so much just to play FPS games on my tv without puking. I can't even imagine the kind of motion-sickness nausea I'd get from a VR headset.
posted by lovecrafty at 3:31 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


In the meantime, 5 years after Borderlands 2, probably (optimistically) 2 more years of development for Borderlands 3, which will make a 7 year gap. That's crazy for a franchise that put them on the map.

That poor forgotten presequel...

I mean I love the world of Borderlands but outside of Claptrap there's not any one I could really name off

Oh man could not disagree more. Handsome Jack and General Knoxx are great villains. Scooter, Tiny Tina, Ellie, Moxxi, even Janie Springs are good NPCs. TO SAY NOTHING OF MR. TORGUE FLEXINGTON! Even the original PCs turned into NPCs for Borderlands 2 were pretty good, or at least Roland and Lilith were.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:37 PM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Not to get too derailed on the subject of FPS games. I personally feel that Battleborn failed because their characters were pretty much forgettable. I mean I love the world of Borderlands but outside of Claptrap there's not any one I could really name off, umm...assassin guy, bad guy who owns planet of guns, ummm medic person?

Did you play the 4th DLC, Dragonkeep? The story caps off the entire series in a heart wrenching conclusion.

But to answer your point, Moxxi, Tiny Tina, Scooter, Ellie, Zed, Marcus, Crazy Earl, plenty of others.
posted by Beholder at 3:42 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Point taken Beholder, GCUSaFoG. I guess I just failed to connect on a story level with those characters. But I'm glad that someone else did. I also need to go back and replay those games. Because I think maybe my mind just wasn't in that game and so I just ignored story that I shouldn't have. Now I feel like I've missed out.
posted by Fizz at 3:50 PM on October 21, 2017


Scooter

Catch a riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide!
posted by Groundhog Week at 3:54 PM on October 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


> I mean, weren't we just discussing how Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is such an important single player story-focused game because it allowed people to "experience" what it is like to have a mental illness. It seems to me that I keep running across what seem to be groundbreaking single player games, yet I'm being told they're dead.

Speaking of which: Games like Hellblade are eroding the border between indie and triple-A: Standardized technology and collaboration are blurring the line between indie and big-budget games, and Senua's eyes are the proof.
posted by homunculus at 4:08 PM on October 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


This year has actually been pretty good for single player games with good campaigns:
• Resident Evil VII
• Prey
• Nier Automata
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Outlast 2
• Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• Echo
• Night in the Woods
• Sonic Mania
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
• Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
• Middle Earth: Shadow of War
• The Evil Within 2
• Assassins Creed: Origins
I'm missing a ton but there are some solid single player focused games that have campaigns to sink your teeth into.
posted by Fizz at 4:16 PM on October 21, 2017 [7 favorites]


• Hob
• >observer_
• What Remains of Edith Finch
posted by homunculus at 4:38 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


As a coda of sorts to the waypoint article about this, it’s worth checking out the latest episode of waypoint radio where Manveer Heir gives his thoughts on it.

IMO we may see a thinner time for linear SP in the AAA space, but it’ll come back around eventually because if everyone piles into one relatively expensive subgenre (ie destiny-likes) the increased level of competition is going to make for some costly misses, and even your big publishers are going to want to round out their portfolios with less risky propositions.
posted by juv3nal at 4:42 PM on October 21, 2017


This year has actually been pretty good for single player games with good campaigns:

Divinity: Original Sin 2, a huge fully-voiced rpg
posted by Pyry at 4:53 PM on October 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yeah, the FPP didn't quite make clear there's a vast gulf between 'single-player games are dying' (which they aren't) and 'you can't afford to make a AAA game that's entirely single-player' (a long time coming). We're at the point where small-ish teams can make small games at AAA polish like Hellblade, or full size games that aren't photorealistic like Psychonauts 2, and find sometimes astonishing success.

Also re: Borderlands: Tales from the Borderlands is a super good story game set in the Borderlands universe that fill in some of the characters from the FPS games. I fully expect Fiona and Rhys to turn up in Borderlands 3 in some capacity.
posted by Merus at 5:58 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I have to adjust the camera bob and field of vision so much just to play FPS games on my tv without puking. I can't even imagine the kind of motion-sickness nausea I'd get from a VR headset.

You'd be surprised, VR games are super aware of motion sickness. It's the fundamental problem of VR, around which they design the whole game. Most VR games don't even allow you to "walk" for this reason -- you can generally take a few steps forward or back, and if you want to move farther they'll have you teleport somehow, to avoid getting sick.

From what I've heard, a lot of VR devs actually get motion sick so it's something they really do care about, not an afterthought. (There's suggestive studies that it could just be genetic.)

As someone who doesn't get motion sickness, I kind of wish I could go into like "extreme" mode or something sometimes, or strafe around with the sticks like in an FPS. But I get why it's usually not an option -- you'd almost have to make two games.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:22 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


IMO we may see a thinner time for linear SP in the AAA space, but it’ll come back around eventually because if everyone piles into one relatively expensive subgenre (ie destiny-likes) the increased level of competition is going to make for some costly misses, and even your big publishers are going to want to round out their portfolios with less risky propositions.

If we're stuck with games as capitalist enterprises we should at least have some financial engineers come in and slice and dice the risk, so that the publishers can focus on having devs do what they're best at while simultaneously getting the market and risk exposure they want.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:24 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I love single-player games, but you know--it's been awhile since I was even reasonably tempted by the AAA offerings in that sphere. I bought Fallout 4 and regretted it. I didn't play Andromeda, but my ex did, same deal. I almost feel like we're coming to a sort of geek-jock kind of split again: Not that everybody who plays is like this, but the multiplayer sphere's reputation is that it's full of hypercompetitive assholes, and they get all the resources while the thoughtful people who prefer to keep to themselves get the short end of the stick. But... the space we call "indie" now is exactly where video games got great in the first place, isn't it? Not projects that cost millions of dollars, but a handful of people working on stuff they loved.

I haven't gotten to Final Fantasy 15 yet but I'm looking forward to it. At the same time, the recent RPG that I've enjoyed the most? West of Loathing. I'm kind of put out by all these resources going to things I don't like, but then I look at my list of games that I've bought and not yet played and I'm still backed up for like another year worth of gameplay. I haven't had any point recently where I've sat down and thought, god, I have nothing to play. Video games got super popular and I think a lot of us kind of felt like hey, we were coming into our own--but no, we're just still into these really niche hobbies and they just started making video games for the people we didn't want to hang out with in high school.
posted by Sequence at 6:39 PM on October 21, 2017 [8 favorites]


I can't say what sequence said any better because they nailed it. I had a friend like the hyper-competitive asshole they mention and guess what: he likes MAGA hat skins.
posted by adept256 at 6:59 PM on October 21, 2017


I say I had a friend because he got violent at a party and we had to kick him out and call the police. That's the type of person we're talking about.
posted by adept256 at 7:02 PM on October 21, 2017


Most VR games don't even allow you to "walk" for this reason -- you can generally take a few steps forward or back, and if you want to move farther they'll have you teleport somehow, to avoid getting sick.

Wait. So wait just a minute... You can't even walk around in VR Skyrim? The game a lot of people purposefully choose to play with 'no fast travel' for greater immersion? I might not play it for nausea-related reasons, but if you can't walk around in the world, I'm having a hard time seeing why anyone else would want to play it either. There's already motion-sensing and voice controls for shooting stuff with gadgets like the Kinect camera.
posted by lovecrafty at 7:12 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


In a typical 'room scale' VR game you can physically walk around in as large a space as you have actual room (so normally like 3m x 3m) and if you want to move a larger distance you do it through teleporting. Virtually moving while staying still in real life is a big source of nausea, so most games avoid in favor of short-range teleports.
posted by Pyry at 7:20 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


If AAA games all move to multiplayer-only then I guess I'm done with AAA games. I have absolutely no interest in competing in some kind of e-sport full of people who care about things like "winning" and have a lot more time to spend learning every trick available in the game and using it on me within five seconds of me starting the level.

I'd probably get more comics made if that happens. I know I was generally more productive during the years when I didn't have a console in the house – and kind of a bit happier, too.

But first I gotta finish Horizon Zero Dawn, which is this year's "escape from winter" game for me. I am so damn glad to have a sprawling adventure that takes place largely in deserts and jungles for once.
posted by egypturnash at 8:08 PM on October 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


In existing tech demos for VR Skyrim you can’t walk around, you teleport a short distance at a time. I agree it’s not great, for Skyrim. This sort of thing works better when the game is designed for it.
posted by vogon_poet at 8:19 PM on October 21, 2017


I also remember Battleborn. Got in on the beta. Spent FOREVER downloading it on my 3mbit DSL. Launched it. It crashed so hard I had to reboot.

Also, the transition of hybrid titles sucks. I like Awesomenauts, which is a silly, cartoony, side view platformer take on MOBAs. Sometimes I would just fire it up to waste time waiting for things to download and such, just playing Botmatch. One guess what happened. Multiplayer ONLY now.
posted by Samizdata at 8:47 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Honestly, AAA PC shops shutting down isn't new, as that Kotaku article points out. Owners of these companies sold for a reason, and it's not because they were raking it in hand over fist. It's kind of a major problem for the industry: if you have monthly salaries, you eventually need monthly revenues. $60 single player titles need a massive stable of releases not just to even out the cash flow, but to reduce the risk of one title's poor numbers wrecking the company.

P.S. Borderlands is full of character.
posted by pwnguin at 11:18 PM on October 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Plus services like Steam and Origin don't help much. Then you end up autoupdating your game to offer new features YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT and there is no way to reinstall the version you want.
posted by Samizdata at 12:32 AM on October 22, 2017


That's the thing. Giant companies like EA are perfectly capable of supporting that kind of investment. That's the only goddamned thing they're good for. Like literally the economic purpose of allowing gigantic companies to exist in the first place is so that the large accumulation of capital allows large investments of the sort modern AAA games require to be made without risking the whole company going bust if one product of many fails.(Among many other projects that require large sums of money, of course)
posted by wierdo at 2:03 AM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've been done with EA for years now. The only AAA development they support is murder simulators or sports games. oh yeah, and they have that friendship sim with microtransactions. What a winning company.
posted by BYiro at 3:47 AM on October 22, 2017


For me playerunknown's battlegrounds is essentially a single player game. I only play solo and disable all mic related settings. It's all the fun of a single player game but with the best AI possible.

I know PUBG has micro transactions and crates but if you don't care about pointless skins you can actually sell your crates back to the marketplace for steam money which you can spend on anything on steam. In 1 week of average 10 hour gaming I can make about $8.
posted by laptolain at 5:31 AM on October 22, 2017


P.S. Borderlands is full of character

I thought for sure you were going to link to Shooty McFace. I was wrong but recognize your choice as also valid.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:22 AM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Single player is the only gaming I do. If I wanted to interact with other people, I'd put some pants on and go outside.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 8:14 AM on October 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


I have very little interest in multi-player games; gaming is my way of getting away from other people for a while.
posted by octothorpe at 10:42 AM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Rocket League is a fun game and I was having fun playing it with my immediate family. Late one night when they weren't around I decided to play some randos, and the person I was teamed with sent a constant barrage of insults about my playstyle. It brought back really negative memories of a degree program I did with a narcissistic asshole as the department chair. I tried again another night and got the same thing from a totally different random player. It really felt like the worst part of playing club soccer in high school and was why I stopped.

This is all to say I was having fun playing Rocket League until I went online, and I haven't played since.
posted by Bistle at 12:39 PM on October 22, 2017


For me playerunknown's battlegrounds is essentially a single player game. I only play solo and disable all mic related settings. It's all the fun of a single player game but with the best AI possible.

posted by laptolain


Pretty much this. I enjoy multiplayer games not because I like people - we can all admit that people are generally terrible, right? Plus, the typical stereotype of gamers tending towards introversion. I enjoy multiplayer games because computer AI is so terrible you pretty much need another human to control your opponents for it to be a good experience. In many games they just give the AI "cheats" like more resources, which is unsatisfying.

There's a difference between a boss fight like in Dark Souls where you fight an enemy with 50x your HP where you just have to repeatedly dodge some pre-determined and telegraphed lines of attack, versus fighting a "boss" fight against an enemy with exactly the same resources you have, but with a mind just as cunning and intelligent - it feels more "fair".

Well, computers have conquered Go, so the rise of Skynet or the Matrix isn't far behind and we won't need other humans anymore =P
posted by xdvesper at 4:54 PM on October 22, 2017


Well, computers have conquered Go, so the rise of Skynet or the Matrix isn't far behind and we won't need other humans anymore =P

Starcraft II is the next grand challenge in game-playing AI. Blizzard has actually provided APIs to interface with it, Google Deepmind, FAIR, and others have adapted them to their own systems. It's totally conceivable that in the near future, as reinforcement learning techniques advance, developers of multiplayer games will train very sophisticated AI opponents to play against humans over the network.
posted by vogon_poet at 5:24 PM on October 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Rocket League is a fun game and I was having fun playing it with my immediate family. Late one night when they weren't around I decided to play some randos, and the person I was teamed with sent a constant barrage of insults about my playstyle. It brought back really negative memories of a degree program I did with a narcissistic asshole as the department chair. I tried again another night and got the same thing from a totally different random player. It really felt like the worst part of playing club soccer in high school and was why I stopped.

I gave up on it when I played against a very rude opponent whose username was "GrandWizard" (if you aren't aware, that's the title held by the head of the Ku Klux Klan).
posted by vogon_poet at 5:24 PM on October 22, 2017


OK, anyone who's seen me comment on a game thread probably already knows how obsessed with Mass Effect I am, and how dismayed I was at the reception of Andromeda, but I'm still kind of amazed at a thread which repeatedly discusses EA, and mentions Bioware and Anthem, without mentioning that Mass Effect: Andromeda will not be getting any single-player DLC, with even a sequel being highly in doubt with the studio that created it being absorbed by another EA studio, but with the multiplayer portion of the game--which isn't just an option on the main game screen, but repeatedly referenced within the game itself--receiving updates for the foreseeable future. And that's on top of the revelation that Anthem's development team was basically raided from the original ME development team. That's how much EA is banking on the idea that loot shooters are the future.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:18 PM on October 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


"I've seen people literally spend $15,000 on Mass Effect multiplayer cards". EuroGamer writeup up Manveer Heir's Waypoint podcast.
I can tell you that when Mass Effect 3 multiplayer came out, those card packs we were selling, the amount of money we made just off those card packs was so significant that's the reason Dragon Age has multiplayer, that's the reason other EA products started getting multiplayer that hadn't really had them before, because we nailed it and brought in a ton of money. It's repeatable income versus one-time income.
posted by Nelson at 3:40 PM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


I love indie games and we live in a bountiful period. I was adding Steam keys of my Humble games after the IGN takeover and there were 60 great to fantastic games there. Yet, I'm sceptical that indie studios could cover the potential death of AAA studios and create the next Zelda or even the next Pillars of Eternity. Many AAA offerings leave me cold, but sometimes bigger studios can deliver experiences independent creators or smaller teams may not be able to. I'm unhappy with the fall from grace of Fallout and Dragon Age, but as long as a Divinity OS 2 and a Nier Automata pop up in place, there is a lot to be looking forward to.

PS Will Chasm release please
posted by ersatz at 7:40 AM on October 24, 2017


For me playerunknown's battlegrounds is essentially a single player game. I only play solo and disable all mic related settings. It's all the fun of a single player game but with the best AI possible.

I'm guessing I'm mostly the same way. I don't really have a problem with all the violence of the games. But holy smokes is there a HUGE chunk of players that, at least while they're playing the game, are deplorable assholes.

But I do often have more fun playing with people, as long as they're people that I like and respect as human beings. Those people are out there, they're playing the games you play. But it takes work to find them and even then I've found myself forming a smaller group of non-assholes within another larger group because not everyone comes down as hard on racism and hate as I'd like. I push for change and make it clear that I'm not okay with certain behaviors. As a last resort, I could leave, but usually the other players in my smaller group won't all come with or something. So I can keep gaming with people I like within a larger group that I just put up with because that's easier than starting over.

But now I've started playing PUBG and I really like it. If I'm by myself, I can drop solo and have fun. But a lot of members of MeFightClub play it too and I'm confident that I can drop with other MeFighter and not have to worry about much. Those who want to chit-chat and engage socially do so but otherwise we just stay focused on the game and enjoying it with each other.

It's exactly the kind of guild/unit/faction/platoon I've been trying to join, form, or build the entire time I've been gaming. It makes me think I've been doing things backwards by finding a game I like and then seeking out people with the right attitude to play it with. I should have been finding people with the right attitude and then figured out which game to play from there.

Just jump on our discord server, join a voice chat channel if you want, and just ask in a chat channel if anyone is down for PUBG.

In a sense, it's like playing a single player game with both really good AI enemies and really good AI allies.
posted by VTX at 9:17 AM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]








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