Like for many other people, Valve single player experiences were one of my favorite of all time growing up. I considered both Half-Life and Portal to be masterpieces. It’s true they’ve always been distracted with multiplayer games as well, things like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress and I did play them for sure, because I was a kid and I had all the time in the world.
These days I’m not a kid anymore and so when I game I tend to look more for memorable experiences instead of mindless grinding. Obviously I remember Valve as the experts in creating memorable experiences and I would like them to keep fully exploring those talents. They don’t have that many employees, but they do have all the money in the world, no external pressure, no publisher to shit on them, it’s just their developers and artists and a vision. But then they use all that and create this. An Overwatch looking moba shooter, really? I’m sure people will like and play it, but is this the results of the vision and ambition of a company like Valve?
It doesn’t have to be Half-Life. I remember them saying that they dont want to do another one in the series because they are looking to innovate and make something truly original. My body is ready, give me anything. I can’t imagine a moba shooter really fits with this description. I’m wondering how such a low hanging concept even becomes a real product at a company as ambitious as Valve.
I hear people are having fun with the new game and I’m happy for them. I am no longer the target audience and I wish them good luck with it. In the mean time let me hear your thoughts on it. Would you like to see another single player experience from Valve?
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That’s true but it’s not because people aren’t playing single player games. The reason single player games are less profitable is because the non-subscription, non-microtransaction single player market is extremely saturated with indie games. That makes it very hard to sell AAA single player games. The standards are extremely high and the opportunities for extra monetization are not there.
I have been a single player gamer for most of my life, yet I haven’t bought a AAA single player game in decades. I have more indie single player games to play than I know what to do with, and frankly they appeal to me more than AAA titles. Expensive graphics and voice acting don’t have much draw for me these days. I am much more interested in roguelikes and retro games now. I think there are thousands of others like me out there, among all those who don’t go in for multiplayer games and haven’t purchased a console.
Both of your points are only partially correct.
Wrong, they just take less effort and have a more constant revenue stream.
Potential for profit means nothing, when so many attempts at milkable forever games end up like Suicide Squad or Concord.
Also you can come into them half baked and pull the plug if the game doesn’t sell (because it’s half baked) like they’re doing with SS and they did with the Avengers game.
They don’t, you can’t spend money you don’t have, whales are working adults.
Kids spend money for less. Better ROI, not higher payoff.
You make the 18302nd skin and troves of kids will badger their parents for fortnite bucks so they can buy it but not everyone will. The upside is that making a skin costs you single digits percent points of the profits, so even if one or two are a dud, you’re fine, the good ones will make up for it.
It’s a business model you can throw money at once the game’s got an audience base, which is very attractive to companies, because it’s uncomplicated and reliable.
There’s plenty of room to monetize single player games when it’s add-in content to games that you continually replay as opposed to add-on content for something that’s story driven. More systemic games like Civilization, roguelikes, simulators, etc.
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When your game isn’t live service multiplayer, your incentives change to putting out more sequels rather than iterating on the same game. So your revenue per game goes down, but there’s no reason it can’t necessarily be as lucrative overall.
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It’s not confusion. Your perspective is survivorship bias. For every Rocket League, there are 10 Concords. That’s why the entire industry is imploding right now. Everyone thinks their game will be Fortnite, but only so many games can be Fortnite, and a lot of that even comes down to luck, so you’ve got games like Avengers and Suicide Squad losing hundreds of millions of dollars each instead of making games for half or a quarter of their budgets that would have recouped their costs and then some.
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Well then I guess your recommendation would be to keep trying to be Rocket League, even though statistically you’re going to leave a crater in the ground formed by hundreds of millions of dollars and the better part of a decade of work? Keep in mind there are single player games that make more money than Rocket League too, if we’re going to cherry pick.
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