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Bethesda: "We have to change the way we approach single player games"
- Thread starter ArkhamFantasy
- Start date
If you're going by that then you'd have to count NaughtyDogs MP stuff as well...
It's all about how profitable a game is. If Fallout 76 is super successful and banks them more money than any of their previous games, Bethesda might want to concentrate more on MP games.
didnt say fallout 4. hell i didnt even play fallout 4 fallout 3 and new vegas were great (i know NV is developed by obsidian but bethesda published it)
Concentrating more on MP games is not the same thing as only making MP games.
And now look at The Evil Within 2, Dishonored 2... People initially had interest in those games because they were new and had fresh settings, but that's not good enough in today's world.
You are joking, right? Right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrYvFKyXXPk&t=36m05s
Doom was kind of a surprise hit, but it also was discounted a lot. I doubt that Doom 2 will do similar numbers. And Rage 2 will probably flop, looks just too generic without an interesting story.
Absolutely. This seems completely lost on some.
Also lost is the fact that a multiplayer component doesn't automatically mean a garbage single player component, as evidenced by many games including ERA darlings like Bloodborne and Titanfall 2.
i didnt like fallout 4 at all so i never played it but i loved fallout 3 to be honest, and new vegas even more but that is developed by obsidian.
True the TES and fallout games are full with bugs but they are also much bigger in scale so they kinda get a free pass. fallout especially.
Its a shame that we have to deal with gamebreaking bugs in a full price game. I know not many people gave Prey a chance to begin with but when you have to read about gamebreaking bugs at launch..that is dealbreaker for many many potential buyers out there.They shoould have just delayed it abit more and iron the biggest bugs out.
Here is the original source and the original quote, it's better than what you put in the OP
https://amp.theguardian.com/games/2...odd-howard-pete-hines-elder-scrolls-starfield
OP
OP
TEW3 with co-op? HGGGNNNNN
Kidman and Sebastian searching for Joseph, with Sykes giving them tech support and talking to them? Yes, please.
It's their fault, like any other publisher's and gamer's, too. When I know a game gets quickly and easily discounted, why should I pay full price then? They shoud stop communicating 'our games aren't worth that much' by stopping to give them away so cheap.
And advertise them better. Wolfenstein 2 was a ninja release for me, and Prey only got my attention with news about that it has nothing to do with the original Prey, that there are issues with Steam, because it has/had the same folder name of the original one, and about the troubled development of Prey (2), and that it isn't Prey 2. I know that people praised it, but it wasn't advertised like a Deu Ex/Dishonored/BioShock-like game, which is totally my genre. I didn't even know it was Arkane Studios.
A bit more on topic: I'm still not sure about the Fallout, but I'm highly sceptical. I like the SP experience we got in recent years.
It is more a case of multiplayer gaas becoming the end all and be all that rankles. But supply and demand and all that.
I can fully see a time when all AAA game games that are not made by Nintendo or Sony are built around mult gaas, and the single player bits will be somewhat vestigial. Moreover, when a game has a successful multiP GaaS, it means the next instalment gets pushed back. We might go a whole generation without a new gta, for example.
Everyone here keeps claiming they need to market their games better. With Prey I'll agree but they marketed the fuck out of Wolfenstein 2.
Their just is not as much demand for linear AAA single player games like the ones they are releasing as their use to be. Even games like God of War went to a relstively open world for their game. Bethesda will innovate, I'm sure. But the days of linear FPS' selling gangbusters numbers without much of a multiplayer component or co-op feature are largely done. I'm sure their will be exceptions, but a game like Wolfenstein won't be released in the same form we saw 1 & 2 in.
Their just is not as much demand for linear AAA single player games like the ones they are releasing as their use to be. Even games like God of War went to a relstively open world for their game. Bethesda will innovate, I'm sure. But the days of linear FPS' selling gangbusters numbers without much of a multiplayer component or co-op feature are largely done. I'm sure their will be exceptions, but a game like Wolfenstein won't be released in the same form we saw 1 & 2 in.
Ok? Then why are you saying (or Bethesda in their marketing) that they're the only ones making that anymore when that's factually wrong? Now you're trying to move goal posts by saying "it's only one of their games", "it's exclusive to one platform", "yeah but..." as poor excuses to try to avoid going back to your original points. I could have used Sega (just like Capcom or others), but that's an example amongst others, that you yourself just used against your own argument.
Wolfenstein is one of the more middle-ground budget games that Bethesda is funding, like Evil Within or Arkane's games. Similar to Metro (or others, just took this one because it was comparable to Wolfenstein in terms of size and genre). They know how to budget their games, like any good publisher.
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Why would Doom have coop?
Implementing co-op means designing the game around it, typically then becoming a squad based game like Gears with NPC team mates when in single player. That works great for Gears.
But it doesn't really work for single player games like Prey and Doom where your isolation is a big part of the experience.
Some of the biggest games releasing at the end of the year are sequels
The idea that there's no audience for big budget single player only immersive sims or horror games is kind of hilarious considering like, Dying Light succeeded as well as Bethesda's past efforts in these genres
Maybe if they marketed their shit more beyond what they did for Dishonored 2/TEW2/DOOM, then it would see the success of, say, Dying Light
No plenty of games have co-op where everything is like single player, but you just have an extra person there now. Farcry and Dark Souls are great examples.
Dying Light is an open-world zombie game with co-op. Significantly more appealing to the mass market. It also released in January earlier in the generation before everybody was crowding Q1 and Q2.
I think Dishonored and Prey would have sold twice as much if they were 3rd person, seeing how 3rd person games are far more popular this gen. Just look at Fortnite. Free game, but I think less people would play it if it was 1st person, because then they wouldn't be able to see their character or what they're wearing. People love seeing their characters more than ever before now.
I think Prey and Dishonored 2 are two of the best single player games I've played this gen, so it does suck to see them not get a lot of attention.
I think Prey and Dishonored 2 are two of the best single player games I've played this gen, so it does suck to see them not get a lot of attention.
Hearing "oh prey/wolf/dishonored/etc failed because they weren't marketed and advertised enough" on here is fucking hilarious when I see weekly "games budgets are too bloated and they should cut marketing" threads.
So which is it, Era?
So which is it, Era?
I can't speak to the sales potential, but in terms of game quality: I'm glad those games were 1st person. Muuuch better for Immersive Sims.
A single player game with good marketing behind it sells properly, as proven by various other titles that don't have multiplayer, so there's no need to shove a multiplayer component onto games that don't need it.
You may be confusing a publisher dropping the price with the RETAILER dropping the price. In the eyes of retail their shelf space is worth more than anything you are selling and if you are preventing me from putting something on that shelf that will make me money, then eff you.
That and more diverse settings and narratives, most of their stuff has been dystopia, alternative realties or post apocalyptic.
I did! Albeit recently for $15 during a Steam sale, but I bought it. And finished it.
Meanwhile, the Souls games are third person and have a somewhat similar amount of options. So are the Metal Gear games. The only thing you can't really do in Metal Gear is talk your way out of everything, but you can't really avoid combat completely in the majority of actual "immersive sims" anyway. It might be better for immersion in general, but as for the actual genre (which never made any sense name wise to me), it's whatever. You might lose some immersion and potentially atmosphere (or not), but it would also likely improve the actual gameplay.
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One of the "singleplayer" games he lists is Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which is a co-op game.
The big Prey update he talks about is also adding multiplayer.
I imagine that's where a lot of that is coming from.
Just stop making single player FPS games, do better stories, better marketing and your reveal trailer needs to blow away everyone, first time seen it needs to be amazing!
I don't have cable but am on youtube/usually check out demo's on PS4.
Color me surprised.
The performance of the Prey demo on PS4 was better than the game at launch lmfao
If the games were perfectly fine as is, and marketing was the sole problem, you would expect it to be like Terraria where the game starts very slowly and then goes on to sell 20+ million copies.
We can see similar behaviors with other games that barely had marketing like PUBG or Muinecraft. People eventually found them and they took off.
This is also true with smaller scale products like Stardew Valley, Human Fall Flat, Hollow Knight, or Slay The Spire.
If we want to focus on AAA games, Borderlands 1 had a grand total of one week of TV ads, and went over 6 million copies on very strong word of mouth. Arkham Asylum, Dishonored 1, and BioShock 1 didn't exactly fly to their illustrious totals on day one either. If we want to focus on recent games, Nier and Persona weren't exactly carpet bombing the airwaves.
We've presumably hit a budget point where these games that aren't breaking out early are harder to justify. They might add features (online and/or service approaches) or focus on lowering costs (either developmentally or also to consumers) since those are all ways to try and align results and budgets or tailor more toward consumer tastes.
We can see similar behaviors with other games that barely had marketing like PUBG or Muinecraft. People eventually found them and they took off.
This is also true with smaller scale products like Stardew Valley, Human Fall Flat, Hollow Knight, or Slay The Spire.
If we want to focus on AAA games, Borderlands 1 had a grand total of one week of TV ads, and went over 6 million copies on very strong word of mouth. Arkham Asylum, Dishonored 1, and BioShock 1 didn't exactly fly to their illustrious totals on day one either. If we want to focus on recent games, Nier and Persona weren't exactly carpet bombing the airwaves.
We've presumably hit a budget point where these games that aren't breaking out early are harder to justify. They might add features (online and/or service approaches) or focus on lowering costs (either developmentally or also to consumers) since those are all ways to try and align results and budgets or tailor more toward consumer tastes.
Wolfenstein has a big budget compared to Metro, it's not even in the same league.
MachineGames is based in Sweden and Sweden is very expensive, 4A Games is based in Ukraine and they recently moved to Malta, these places are way more cheaper than Sweden.
Where was this solid prey marketing campaign lol, I don't remember anyone talking about it at all then, it was all lol mass effect botw horizon besides how they didn't like the demo. I honestly hear more about it now.
Edit: plus the extremely dumb "But human head prey 2 bethesda is evil, wheres the native american stuff" stuff didnt help yet was completely unnecessary
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I'm confused. You didn't like FO4 but you didn't even play it?
Evil Within 1 & 2 were both third-person and they sold even worse than Dishonored and Prey. The gameplay in Dishonored and Prey would be tricky to pull off in third-person. There's a heavy focus on precise aiming and interacting with objects in the environment. Third-person isn't especially good at either of those things. Immersive sims also involve a lot of small interior spaces, another thing third-person isn't good at.
Pretty sure it's a big factor. I know some people that didn't even know Prey was out until like a month later. One of them wasn't even aware that it had nothing to do with the first game. He didn't really keep up with the game and assumed it was either a sequel or a reboot.
Marketing was problematic as well. It's really hard to convey the strengths of an immersive sim in a 30 second TV spot. Instead, these generally focus on combat and Prey is unremarkable in that respect. This is why marketing loves cutscenes. If your game has cutscenes, they can just show those with brief snippets of gameplay. The average consumer doesn't follow games before release so in many cases, their only knowledge of a game comes from 30 second TV spots.
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I wonder if their policy on review copies has hurt them? Those games need all the coverage they can get early on.
The second dimension here is that consumers love open world games, which the industry has been trending towards for five or six or seven years at this point. Most of the big budget single player success stories have been open world titles over the last decade, and open world with RPG mechanics and/or looting is like the focus tested holy grail that games coming origionally from totally different genres have been converging on like Assassins Creed, Far Cry, The Witcher etc.