AAA Single Player Games are too expensive to make says Developer of Quantum Break

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, DarkBlade2117 said:

You don't see many multiplayer games being praised because most good ones are already out and don't require a sequel that squeezes $60 out of you ever year. Rocket League, CSGO, OW, LoL, OW, Dota, HOTS, StarCraft, PUBG, R6S ect are MP games that will be around for years. Meanwhile during the life span of some of these youve seen 2-3 SP games from the same franchise.

This topic isn't about lifespan though, it's about ROI, and nobody with even a modicum of decency can argue that SP games aren't popular and don't make money because there's a lot of very clear evidence that says the exact opposite is true.

 

Single Player games are every bit as popular as they always were, devs only dislike them because they can't force extra monetisation into them without players knowing exactly why they did it.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Divinity Original Sin 2 as well

Personally I'm a sucker for every Final Fantasy game and Square Enix doesn't seem to give a shit about burning literal mountains of money and time to make those, or changing console half way through development or changing game engine. They don't have any issues selling these games however the online components cancer is starting to creep in to the games which makes me worried.

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Single Player games are every bit as popular as they always were, devs only dislike them because they can't force extra monetisation into them without players knowing exactly why they did it.

I'd say starting to get a little bit more popular now considering how rare they are now days and people like me specifically seek them out.

[WereCat]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Personally I'm a sucker for every Final Fantasy game and Square Enix doesn't seem to give a shit about burning literal mountains of money and time to make those, or changing console half way through development or changing game engine. They don't have any issues selling these games however the online components cancer is starting to creep in to the games which makes me worried.

IDK about FF games as I never played those, I only watched the "movies" but I think that most games will slowly start and most likely are already incorporating this kind of mess into their MP side of things.

Unless there will be a huge backslash from players for all games that do this (which will not happen, ever...) then publishers will push to sqeeeze extra money from players.

 

I wonder what people think if the publishers did things the way Arma 3 does DLCs.

You still get the DLC content even if you dont buy the DLC but if you pick up the DLC item you will get semi-transparent ad covering your entire screen every couple of minutes to buy the DLC.

(You can't drive/pilot DLC vehicles, only use them as a passanger).

 

It is prety annoying thing to do especialy if the ad appears in a middle of firefight which either makes you not want to pick the items or just go and buy the DLC... but hey, at least you have the option to use the damn DLC content for free if you really want.

[Nena Trinity]

Oh memba when gaming was great? Oh I memba!

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, WereCat said:

IDK about FF games as I never played those, I only watched the "movies" but I think that most games will slowly start and most likely are already incorporating this kind of mess into their MP side of things.

What worries me about it is historically FF games had zero MP/Online anything in them, they were strictly single player. You know the two FF games I didn't play were? FF11 and FF14 both MMORPGs, I actually do own them too but I didn't play them for long (less than a few hours). Why? Because I want to just play a SP game, I'll pay more to keep it that way if I have to or get the option to.

[LAwLz]

35 minutes ago, Primefoxer said:

Although I like the idea of small development teams and releasing great software, it just does not work that way in the gaming industry in my experience.

Entirely depends on the company and people working there.

 

37 minutes ago, Primefoxer said:

You can have cookie-cutter games that are made within a year by a single person and sell well, but they likely use assets and software from others and the codebase may not be the prettiest. When looking at games from 10 years ago and now the main difference is in my opinion the new techniques and expectations. We did not use to have PBR and now nearly everyone expects every game to have it as it is the now the de facto standard. Increase in techniques, more complicated gameplay and higher expectations forces an increase in manpower and cost.

Is more complicated gameplay and higher graphics expectation really what people want, or do developers put those things in because they think people want it, and in an attempt to cover up bad parts of the game? I think it's a bit of both but mostly the latter.

I've never heard anyone say "the game was fun, but I would not recommend buying it because it doesn't have physically based rendering".

 

40 minutes ago, Primefoxer said:

Not everyone uses existing engines and wants to pay licensing fees. In addition some are not fit for the job and you will be forced to create your own, it is not as if Unity or Unreal Engine automatically fit your requirements. These engines may be versatile but can lack in certain areas that are important for specific genre's.

Not sure what your point is. I even brought up that "back in the old days", people created their own engines. It's just that now developers have the option to use an existing one if they so desire, and that option can end up being cheaper.

 

44 minutes ago, Primefoxer said:

Either have 100 people working on a game and have it released within 2 years, or have 10 and wait a lifetime just to see your game change overtime because it has aged.

It took the Unreal team three years to complete the game.

Diablo 1 was developed by 13 people over the course of ~2 years (while they were working on other things).

Diablo 2 was developed over the course of 3 years by 16 people (again, including everything such as musicians and writers).

 

There is nothing saying that a "small" team can't create a great game in a few years.

 

55 minutes ago, Primefoxer said:

I just think your opinion is far too one-sided, though I agree that 'business-people' force the release of a game too early just to pump out more games for the extra cash.

Ehm, I never said that.

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

 

Who played Xcom 2 for the multiplayer wtf? It should have been under SP games in your list.

 

Also some things that make a game  good or not depend much on opinion. There are for example some of the games you mention I do not consider that good. Also some of them didn't really sell that much compared to others.

[MyName13]

Great, indie developers might become even more popular.The development might not be too expensive if they decided to do something new.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, Primefoxer said:

. We did not use to have PBR and now nearly everyone expects every game to have it as it is the now the de facto standard.

What even is PBR? 

 

2 hours ago, DarkBlade2117 said:

You don't see many multiplayer games being praised because most good ones are already out and don't require a sequel that squeezes $60 out of you ever year. Rocket League, CSGO, OW, LoL, OW, Dota, HOTS, StarCraft, PUBG, R6S ect are MP games that will be around for years. Meanwhile during the life span of some of these youve seen 2-3 SP games from the same franchise.

Releasing a game every year under a certain brand is as much a business choice as everything else. Releasing a single player game doesn't require releasing a yearly version of it.

[Clanscorpia]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Well yes they did with GTA V Story.

 

But greed got the better of them and then they created GTAO to milk their customers dry of money cos making a profit wasn't good enough.

Well yes they are a buisness what do you expect them to do? Take a loss to please people? They arent the government...

[Clanscorpia]

2 hours ago, WereCat said:

 

I wonder what people think if the publishers did things the way Arma 3 does DLCs.

You still get the DLC content even if you dont buy the DLC but if you pick up the DLC item you will get semi-transparent ad covering your entire screen every couple of minutes to buy the DLC.

(You can't drive/pilot DLC vehicles, only use them as a passanger).

 

It is prety annoying thing to do especialy if the ad appears in a middle of firefight which either makes you not want to pick the items or just go and buy the DLC... but hey, at least you have the option to use the damn DLC content for free if you really want.

As long as I can go into the editor and force place myself as the driver of the new planes Im happy

[Sauron]

Doom (yes I know it has multiplayer but nobody cares), Wolfenstein TNO, Bioshock Infinite, The Witcher 3, Breath of the Wild and more are proof of the contrary. There is a large market for AAA single player games and all it takes is someone capable of producing good ones. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard if they focused a bit less on endless monetization and actually tried to make a good game.

[mynameisjuan]

I dont blame them for not making single player games. 

 

Multiplayer games have incentive to buy them with replay ability. See people are bitching enough about $60 cost of games and there are still a lot of people who justify time put into a game to the cost. So would you pay $60 for a game you get 10-20 hour in and then are done or $60 into a game you could easily get 60+ hours? 

 

 There are also a few games that people keep pointing out like Doom, Witcher 3, GTA.....All these games were successful because of their past. See they all had a great reputations for the series for years so the gamble of it flopping is very very minimal at best. How about look at the "non-successful titles"  that single player games have been released recently, its not too good. Only successful single player games have only been long lasting series just because players want more. Any new shot at SP games just die in a pit of failure. No wonder AAA games dont want to waste money developing them. 

 

Also single player games dont rake in money like multiplayer does. And dont argue with me about being greedy with money. These are businesses, businesses are there to make money, not donate their time and OWN money to take a loss or break even. 

[AlTech]

14 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

I dont blame them for not making single player games. 

 

Multiplayer games have incentive to buy them with replay ability. See people are bitching enough about $60 cost of games and there are still a lot of people who justify time put into a game to the cost. So would you pay $60 for a game you get 10-20 hour in and then are done or $60 into a game you could easily get 60+ hours? 

Honestly, these days I'd like a good Single Player game even if it lasts around 20 hours. I'd rather have 20 hours enjoying a game than 100 hours slaving away at a game I don't really want to play.

14 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Only successful single player games have only been long lasting series just because players want more. Any new shot at SP games just die in a pit of failure. No wonder AAA games dont want to waste money developing them. 

Umm no? 

 

Indie games are doing just fine. They're doing Great in fact. I've supported more indie games financially since 2017 than I have AAA games in the past 2 years. I guess that should say how much confidence I have in Indie games than AAA.

14 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Also single player games dont rake in money like multiplayer does

They do if the game is really good and has marketing behind it.

 

Really Good Game + No marketing  = Might as well have made a bad game. Most won't hear about it and sales won't be good.

 

Really Good Game + Marketing = Lots of users learn about it and people buy it if they're interested.

 

Truth be told, the majority of money spent "developing Call of Duty" is Marketing Dollars. That's just the fact of life for AAA games. They spend a large portion of their budget on marketing rather than the actual game itself.

14 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

. And dont argue with me about being greedy with money. These are businesses, businesses are there to make money, not donate their time and OWN money to take a loss or break even. 

A lot of these games make shit tons of money. They easily make profit. The problem is for EA and Activision etc, making a profit isn't good enough. They need to be swimming in money on top of their huge profits for it to be good investment for them.

 

Their expectations are too high and when they don't pan out, bad things happens to the studios behind those games.

[mynameisjuan]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

Honestly, these days I'd like a good Single Player game even if it lasts around 20 hours. I'd rather have 20 hours enjoying a game than 100 hours slaving away at a game I don't really want to play.

Why the hell would you play 100 hours when you dont want to play it? 

 

2 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Umm no? 

 

Indie games are doing just fine. They're doing Great in fact. I've supported more indie games financially since 2017 than I have AAA games in the past 2 years. I guess that should say how much confidence I have in Indie games than AAA.

I am not saying indie games are not doing well, I am saying non-series based AAA games do horrible. I didnt bring indie into this at all. This article is about AAA

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Really Good Game + No marketing  = Might as well have made a bad game. Most won't hear about it and sales won't be good.

 

Really Good Game + Marketing = Lots of users learn about it and people buy it if they're interested.

Yeah and the risk of dumping money into marketing is a huge HUGE risk, especially if the game flops. But you can never know if a game will be good or not until release. 

 

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

A lot of these games make shit tons of money. They easily make profit. The problem is for EA and Activision etc, making a profit isn't good enough. They need to be swimming in money on top of their huge profits for it to be good investment for them.

Ok they make a profit. So now what? Call it good and retire? No they dump that extra $60 million of profit and put it towards the budget of the next game. 

 

Why the fuck does everyone think these companies are pocketing this money? Witcher 3 cost $81 million dollars, where the fuck do people think they got it from....yeah profit from past games. 

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, Clanscorpia said:

Well yes they are a buisness what do you expect them to do? Take a loss to please people? They arent the government...

People on here seem to think that video game companies would make a loss if they didn't do online bullshit.

 

The reality is that they made shit tons of money and could have started working on their next game after the amazing sales of GTA V.

 

They made loads of profit. That is not making a loss. 

6 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Why the hell would you play 100 hours when you dont want to play it? 

Sometimes people play online games because they need to grind to progress. Not necessarily because they actually enjoy grinding. But because the game requires excessive grinding to be able to continue.

6 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Yeah and the risk of dumping money into marketing is a huge HUGE risk, especially if the game flops. But you can never know if a game will be good or not until release. 

Yeah, every business product is a risk.

6 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Ok they make a profit. So now what? Call it good and retire? 

They go and start work on their next game if they don't have any DLC(s) planned.

6 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

 

Why the fuck does everyone think these companies are pocketing this money? Witcher 3 cost $81 million dollars, where the fuck do people think they got it from....yeah profit from past games. 

Yeah and? this happens with every business.

 

When a company starts off they need to put in some upfront capital to work on a product. And then if the product is successful they pocket the profit and at some point work on a new product using their hard earned money.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

What even is PBR? 

Physically Based Rendering.

 

I'm not going to pretend I know a ton about it cos I don't so here's a definition from Wikipedia:

Quote

Physically based rendering or PBR is a model in computer graphics that seeks to render graphics in a way that more accurately models the flow of light in the real world. Many PBR pipelines (though not all) have the accurate simulation of photorealism as their goal, often in real time computing.

 

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Releasing a game every year under a certain brand is as much a business choice as everything else. Releasing a single player game doesn't require releasing a yearly version of it.

Yup. In fact, releasing too often can harm the market segment, genre, or even the products being sold.

 

COD is doing badly at the moment (compared to previous COD releases) partially because of the fatigue from the annual release nature of the franchise.

 

Battlefield and other annual franchises suffer from this as well.

 

Some of the better games out there don't have regular releases in their franchise.

[mynameisjuan]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Sometimes people play online games because they need to grind to progress. Not necessarily because they actually enjoy grinding. But because the game requires excessive grinding to be able to continue.

If you know a game is grindy and you dont like grinding then dont buy it. But there are plenty of SP games that have some grinding that add up their total hours. 

 

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Yeah, every business product is a risk.

Yeah and every risk is not worth taking. 

 

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Yeah and? this happens with every business.

 

When a company starts off they need to put in some upfront capital to work on a product. And then if the product is successful they pocket the profit and at some point work on a new product using their hard earned money.

Ok so you quote me and agree with what I am saying that proves my point against your own comment? what?

 

You basically say they are greedy and want money for them selves, but in reality that money is used to make the next game. People keep demanding more and more from games which increase dev cost and require more money to make it better for the next game. 

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

If you know a game is grindy and you dont like grinding then dont buy it. But there are plenty of SP games that have some grinding that add up their total hours. 

 

Yeah and every risk is not worth taking. 

 

Ok so you quote me and agree with what I am saying that proves my point against your own comment? what?

 

You basically say they are greedy and want money for them selves, but in reality that money is used to make the next game.

Not necessarily in the case of GTA V.

 

The devs of GTA V are not working on GTA 6 atm because they're too busy with Micro-transactions and GTAO.

4 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

People keep demanding more and more from games which increase dev cost and require more money to make it better for the next game. 

The only thing I'll ever truly demand from a game is to be fun and enjoyable.

 

I should not feel cheated, or punished for doing something the way I want to (with regard to single player games) .

 

I should not feel forced to pay extra money on top of what I already paid for. I should not feel that my enjoyment of the game has been compromised by corporate greed and I should not feel that the developers don't care about me as a customer. 

 

The customer is always right, even when the customer is wrong they are right. That's just how good business.

[Zodiark1593]

16 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Physically Based Rendering.

 

I'm not going to pretend I know a ton about it cos I don't so here's a definition from Wikipedia:

 

I've recommended games partially based on being non-PBR, Valkyria Chronicles being an example.

 

[yian88]

The new excuse in town "Cry cry sob sob ,our game sucks ass hence its too expensive to make AAA games cry cry"

Ofcourse its hard to make AAA games, and you shouldnt invest in it a dime unless you are sure its something that players want, thats why you start with a cheap production but good execution for the game if the gamers like it the next version in the franchise should have better quality it has always been like that, what they are doing is they have a game idea, untested, unverified that sounds cool, then they go full big budget, develop it and release for 60+$ just to realize that players dont really want a game like that.

Games like Elder scrolls, Uncharted, FarCry, GTA , Dark Souls, Assassins Cred, Witcher  these game franchises started small and non AAA with average graphics that they later refined drastically when they know player's will buy it.

[mynameisjuan]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Not necessarily in the case of GTA V.

 

The devs of GTA V are not working on GTA 6 atm because they're too busy with Micro-transactions and GTAO.

Or maybe they dont know what the fuck to do next? I mean back in 2016 they still couldnt decide where they even wanted the game to take place, years after GTA 5 release. 

Again you are just spewing garbage because you think literally every company including non-gaming companies are greedy bastard stealing your money. Im sorry, thats the way businesses work. Fucking deal with it or dont buy it. 

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

The only thing I'll ever truly demand from a game is to be fun and enjoyable.

 

I should not feel cheated, or punished for doing something the way I want to (with regard to single player games) .

 

I should not feel forced to pay extra money on top of what I already paid for. I should not feel that my enjoyment of the game has been compromised by corporate greed and I should not feel that the developers don't care about me as a customer. 

 

The customer is always right, even when the customer is wrong they are right. That's just how good business.

If you demand anything other than fun and enjoyable for a game then you got problems lol

 

As far a SP games, no you should not pay money on top of the base game unless its DLC (cheap, not full game price). I am not arguing SP games with microtransactions is good, its fucking horrible. 

[AlTech]

13 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I've recommended games partially based on being non-PBR, Valkyria Chronicles being an example.

 

Oh, why's that?

[Doobeedoo]

Funny. 

On the other hand if the game is amazing and effort is put into it it definitely pays off no. So like c'mon.