Re: Single Player FTW

On Fri, 11 Oct 2024 08:57:08 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 09/10/2024 04:16, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Still, for years publishers parroted the line that multiplayer was the
only way to profitablity, and strictly single-player games (or even
single-player modes) were often given short-shrift. There have been
numerous reports of attempts by developers to push forward
single-player games that have been shot down by publishers, who told
the devs that single-player games 'just don't sell'.  And why not?
Multiplayer games sold tremendously well, and you could attach all
sorts of live-service features onto the games to rake in even more
money

>
I'm not sure it's that they don't sell but instead the really big bucks
are to be had in multiple-player games that are far more amenable to
having MTX shoved in them providing a healthy income stream possibly for
years to come.
>

Except the study showed that you _aren't_ necessarily promised massive
revenue just because you make a multiplayer game. Or rather, it isn't
simply the fact that the game is multiplayer that guarantees that
money. It's that wildly unpredictible, "is it a good/popular game"
factor that brings in the big bugs. All the more so since there's a
glut of online-only titles all vying for the same audience.

The take-away of the study was that there's a huge audience that's
underserved, and you're more likely as a game publisher now to make
profit with a single-player game because the numbers are advantageous
and there's less competition in that market. And while it's possible
that Fortnite-profits are only achievable with online-only games, very
very few games are Fornite. Games like Fortnite are an anomaly and
hard to replicate (much less depend upon to build up a business).

Personally the problem I have with multi-player games in general is they
don't offer that type of narrative game experience which i now prefer.
Saying that World of Tanks is my most played game by far but even with
that I think a lot of it ended up as I was playing just because that's
something I did and not because I was particularly enjoying it.

Sadly, a lot of games suffer from this; they've found the perfect
balance of effort and reward that gives you _just_ enough seratonin to
keep playing even though the actual gameplay isn't that exciting. This
tends to work better in online games, because there's no expectation
of a climax. You just need to keep everything at _just_ interesting
enough to keep them playing. But with single-player games, there's
usually a definitive ending, and you need to slowly ramp up to that,
making each instance just a bit more exciting on the way to the big
finish.

There's a very brutal science to a lot of game-development these days
which relies on psychological manipulation of the player. It's not
that earlier games weren't trying to achieve the same thing (I mean,
look at Pac-Man) but they weren't so... industrial about it. If they
were successful, it was more because they happened to luck onto the
formula. Nowadays, it's all pre-calculated intent.