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[Felessan]

I’m so glad this shit is a dying trend. Make innovative single player games again

This delusional bubble based on negative news blown out of proportion (and following rage and hate) is really big

We got more successful new gaas in 2024 than in previous years and probably will get even more in 2025. At least on gacha side there is a really strong lineup of coming games

Neat. Well, at least there are still smaller devs (indie, A and AA) who still remain focused on doing sharp, reasonably scope SP games.

They have no money, expertise and capacity for live service games.
Live service games always include infrastructure layer and several times more complex project than small SP game

 

[PeteBull]

To any dev studio/pub making gaas game:

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I mean people could say what they want, But I think a lot of people on here are scared to see the reality regarding a lot of this I can't even say this is the future of the medium, it literally is the current as of right now the vast majority of gaming by in ridiculous degree is online we literally have Call of Duty online mobile with over 600 plus million people...

We could only get to GTAV getting 200 million and clearly this was because it's online portion....

Call of Duty Mobile has ‘topped 650 million downloads’ | VGC

Number of players last year almost matched total amount of console and PC users…

www.videogameschronicle.com

https://sensortower.com/blog/mario-kart-tour-200-million-downloads
https://venturebeat.com/games/among-us-surpasses-500m-mobile-downloads-since-launch/

People playing together is not a future idea, that is happening right now as the majority and i think hardcore gamers are either clueless about this or having a hard fucking time with reality and please note, I don't play any of those games, I think the only online IP I even play is Battlefield series.

When something like a online game, live service, GAAS or what ever someone wants to fucking call it like Fortnite has over 650 million users and monthly 100 plus million visits, I think its time to put that horseshit idea to bed about this just being some one off, random thing or something.

That is that majority. I don't know how many times someone needs to hear some fucking game doing 300 million downloads to realize single player games are not the majority.

When I say future of the medium, I mean to suggest the current split between SP and MP today, will be viewed favorably by places like NeoGAF. Lot's of people here thinking that the GAAS advancement is halting or receding and it's anything but. Think car vs horse sales in the early 1920's.

 

[Hypereides]

(...)

They have no money, expertise and capacity for live service games.
Live service games always include infrastructure layer and several times more complex project than small SP game

I'll give you a hint: I have some notion how much such a infrastructure would cost, which makes it the more ridiculous you're actively encouraging and promoting developers/the industry to go down that route.

Those devs (indie, A, and AA) are working within reasonable estimates, budgets and, hopefully, realistic expectations while catering to what you deem to be "niche" audiences. Meanwhile, live services/GaaS are a huge gamble which can consequently rock a studio's operation severely. Its a high risk/high reward which very, very few achieve.

Your metric for a "good game" seems to be how much money it nets. That says it all really.

 

[Felessan]

Those devs (indie, A, and AA) are working within reasonable estimates, budgets and, hopefully, realistic expectations while catering to what you deem to be "niche" audiences. Meanwhile, live services/GaaS are a huge gamble which can consequently rock a studio's operation severely. Its a high risk/high reward which very, very few achieve.

Your metric for a "good game" seems to be how much money it nets. That says it all really.

Those who do gaas professionally also works within framework of realistic expectations and not just random gamble.
There are a huge difference between wanna-be that just find out lucrativity of service model and those who have years of experience in this field. Latter (Riot, CyGames, Mihoyo and others) have no problem with consequently delivery of successfull products, some (CyGames/NetEase/Tencent) even provide service of work-for-hire to convert IP into service model.

Just because haters blow news of another wannabe service game failure way out of proportion doesn't mean that the whole service games market struggles.

And to put into perspective - in terms of big games we certainly have more successes than failures in 2024, and number of successes in a ballpark of number AAA SP games released in 2024. So much about risky business where few succed

My metric of successful game is money. My metric of good game (those always very subjective) is that game is interesting to play, regardless where it SP or service. I play both for 25+ years so I pretty used to each world specifics and I enjoy Stellar Blade equally to ZZZ, without constant whining on forums.

 

[MALpractice311]

Cut to next year: "1/3 of AAA studios have closed their doors and there are thousands of devs out of work."

Also, "you're not a real gamer if you celebrate these facts".

 

[Zacfoldor]

So 2/3's of the industry are doing real work and the other 1/3 is out there building the next get rich quick scheme.

I'll be honest, those numbers are probably better than any other industry.

That said, it was probably more like 1/2 last year. Sony just shut down a shit ton of them. No way in hell it was less. We are winning bros.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

It's been good while it lasted.

I don't see myself getting back into gaming again.

 

[Felessan]

We are winning bros.

I only see delusions getting worse.

 

[Edgelord79]

Good. AAA can have them. Indies are better quality most of the time.

 

[Guilhermegrg]

 

[Wulfer]

you mean the publisher that's been doing more singleplayer releases than most publishers?
You guys should start looking inwards, you know, what Rare has been regulated to, what ABK puts its studios on, what Bethesda Game Studios mostly is now, where Square makes most its money while people gloat about its single player failures, what Konami makes its most profits on, that sort of thing.

I think you missed my point by a mile! I was saying this change has to start with Sony or there is no movement. They are the current market share leader!

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

It's been good while it lasted.

I don't see myself getting back into gaming again.

You've already been replaced by two 12 year old kids who asked for, and got, VBucks for Christmas.

 

[Astray]

you mean the publisher that's been doing more singleplayer releases than most publishers?
You guys should start looking inwards, you know, what Rare has been regulated to, what ABK puts its studios on, what Bethesda Game Studios mostly is now, where Square makes most its money while people gloat about its single player failures, what Konami makes its most profits on, that sort of thing.

Bethesda has largely been turning back to singleplayer fare tbh.

The GAAS initiative they had was clearly about fattening up the company for a prospective suitor than anything else.

 

[Felessan]

Bethesda has largely been turning back to singleplayer fare tbh.

The GAAS initiative they had was clearly about fattening up the company for a prospective suitor than anything else.

They closed TESO and F76? When?

 

[Three]

I think you missed my point by a mile! I was saying this change has to start with Sony or there is no movement. They are the current market share leader!

Still makes no sense. Sony are not a big part of the GaaS pie for them to influence some movement away from it. Epic would still be raking in Fortnite money, MS/ABK would still be raking in CoD/Candy crush money, Valve would still be making Deadlock and raking in CS and Dota money. Sony hasn't even entered GaaS like they have for them to influence some movement. Most of their game releases are still singleplayer too.

Bethesda has largely been turning back to singleplayer fare tbh.

The GAAS initiative they had was clearly about fattening up the company for a prospective suitor than anything else.

Softworks have to an extent but Bethesda game studios have been living off Fallout 76 and a Elder Scrolls f2p mobile game, starfield is pseudo gaas now too. Elder scrolls online also apparently rakes in $15M per month.

 

[Astray]

They closed TESO and F76? When?

Both Machine Games and Arkane were put on live-service fare (Wolfenstein Youngblood and Redfall).

Now Arkane and Machine Games are releasing singleplayer games again.

(Sadly Arkane Austin didn't survive Redfall, MS management should have canned that shit asap).

 

[Astray]

Softworks have to an extent but Bethesda game studios have been living off Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls f2p mobile game. Elder scrolls online also apparently rakes in $15M per month.

They found their gaas revenue and are backing off (for now).

Sony is still finding theirs, and in my opinion their biggest fault has been trying to do it at warp speed instead of playing it slowly through working with partners they know (it's no coincidence Arrowhead has been the shining success of their GAAS initiative so far, even if the game wasn't actually conceived as part of the plan).

 

[Three]

They found their gaas revenue and are backing off (for now).

I disagree that they're backing off, they even added a GaaS element to their biggest single player launch last year. They might be using GaaS to fund other projects but they've not backed off it in the slightest.

Sony is still finding theirs, and in my opinion their biggest fault has been trying to do it at warp speed instead of playing it slowly through working with partners they know (it's no coincidence Arrowhead has been the shining success of their GAAS initiative so far, even if the game wasn't actually conceived as part of the plan).

It wasn't really at warp speed, it's been slow and the one that released and failed was with a partner they acquired (with Bungie too) and much like MS who acquired Minecraft, ABK and Zenimax due to their GaaS revenue/potential. They were trying to build it internally rather than buy it with most of their GaaS but a lot of them have been cancelled now anyway.

 

[Felessan]

Both Machine Games and Arkane were put on live-service fare (Wolfenstein Youngblood and Redfall).

Now Arkane and Machine Games are releasing singleplayer games again.

(Sadly Arkane Austin didn't survive Redfall, MS management should have canned that shit asap).

Arkane responsible for live service just died. At the same time as one of their SP studio died. Machine Games went back to SP while Roundhouse was incorporated into online game support.
So ratio didn't really moved back to SP games, just some shifting around

Sony is still finding theirs, and in my opinion their biggest fault has been trying to do it at warp speed instead of playing it slowly through working with partners they know (it's no coincidence Arrowhead has been the shining success of their GAAS initiative so far, even if the game wasn't actually conceived as part of the plan).

It might be way too late if move slowly. They lack expertise and losing market share in this rapidly growing market to those who have

So to speed up things Sony did a reasonable things - get experts (Bungie) and allocate several teams to try, while also divesting some to external projects.
It's a venture capitalism approach ,and some projects are bound to fail, it's expected at inception (Ryan literally told so), but expertise gain and results will be much faster and Sony will be in much better position afterwards

 

[Astray]

It wasn't really at warp speed, it's been slow and the one that released and failed was with a partner they acquired (with Bungie too) and much like MS who acquired Minecraft, ABK and Zenimax due to their GaaS revenue/potential. They were trying to build it internally rather than buy it with most of their GaaS but a lot of them have been cancelled now anyway.

It was almost certainly warp-speed.

No one clears 12 projects within less than a year unless they want to burn money in order to accelerate their execution time.

 

[Astray]

It wasn't really at warp speed, it's been slow and the one that released and failed was with a partner they acquired (with Bungie too) and much like MS who acquired Minecraft, ABK and Zenimax due to their GaaS revenue/potential. They were trying to build it internally rather than buy it with most of their GaaS but a lot of them have been cancelled now anyway.

It was almost certainly warp-speed.

No one clears 12 projects within less than a year unless they want to burn money in order to accelerate their execution time.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

or they won't come out with Helldivers 3 and they'll be thankful Helldivers 2 is a success! Microsoft's in the same boat with Minecraft! Scared to do anything because it might damage the brand!

Also, huh i didn't know Naughtily Dog was considered C Tier? You learn something new every day I guess.

Helldivers is absolutely going to come out and probably sooner rather than later. The game is running on a terrible engine that is no longer supported. I can see them moving to Decima or Unreal Engine and putting out Helldivers 3 in 2028, probably around the time when the movie comes out. It'll be cross-platform with PS5 and PS6 and release on PC and probably and mobile as well.

Naughty Dog is the only A-Tier team with a project that was well established was canceled. They've shifted their focus back to SP games. Insomniac canceled a spider-man online project, but nothing tells us it was ever far along. The next biggest project would have been Bend's and Bend was a handheld dev team up until Day's Gone... People pretending like this is some big loss for PlayStation is pretty laughable.

Sony is now doing what they should have from the start and better scrutinizing these games. The games need to hit Sony's standards and studio standards otherwise you can end up with toxic ground like Concord (though that wasn't necessarily due to the quality of the game). I think they're retooling games like Fairgames and that's why we haven't seen them. There was the survey that went out, but I'm sure when we see the actual game it'll look different from the original reveal. I still think Bungie should have absorbed Firewalk and focused on a SP Marathon campaign along with anyone at Bungie who wanted to do work on that.

I think Sony's biggest problem was greenlighting projects that made no sense from the jump when so many projects could have had merit. They've given up on their IP from the PS3 despite some of it being really popular at the time relative to the success of the PS3. Killzone, Resistance, and SOCOM should all be prioritized given that they can now release on PC. They all have easily made single player campaigns because you can just remake the original games that never came out on PC, while the multiplayer modes are live service akin to Helldivers.

Best way to respond to this is to simply not buy it en masse. We don't want this shit. Sure, 14-year olds and insufferable YTs and Streamers will buy any garbage; but the vast majority couldn't care less about GaaS content. Marvel Rivals is one of the very, very few exceptions to the rule.

The problem is that AAA studios all think that they are too.

When I heard that Warner Bros was thinking of making Hogwarts Legacy GaaS shite, I was aghast with disgust... this better not be the future of the industry otherwise I'm out and many others are too.

Unless that's what these corporate buffoons wanted all along

It wasn't you buying the games to begin with. I don't know why it is so hard for some gamers to understand that they don't have the power they think they have.

They found their gaas revenue and are backing off (for now).

Sony is still finding theirs, and in my opinion their biggest fault has been trying to do it at warp speed instead of playing it slowly through working with partners they know (it's no coincidence Arrowhead has been the shining success of their GAAS initiative so far, even if the game wasn't actually conceived as part of the plan).

I'm really surprised that Sony stumbled out of the gates so hard when they had a pretty straightforward blueprint in bringing SOCOM, Killzone, and Resistance to PC. It seems like those are the obvious franchises to focus on. They also missed the boat on Everquest, PlanetSide, and Star Wars Galaxies. All of these things are obvious to me in terms of trying to establish new GaaS games. A modern Star Wars Galaxies could be the equivalent of Marvel Rivals for example. It makes way more sense than a God of War GaaS game...

 

[Astray]

I'm really surprised that Sony stumbled out of the gates so hard when they had a pretty straightforward blueprint in bringing SOCOM, Killzone, and Resistance to PC. It seems like those are the obvious franchises to focus on. They also missed the boat on Everquest, PlanetSide, and Star Wars Galaxies. All of these things are obvious to me in terms of trying to establish new GaaS games. A modern Star Wars Galaxies could be the equivalent of Marvel Rivals for example. It makes way more sense than a God of War GaaS game...

I think the management team was far too unimaginative and far too unappreciative of these older IPs (especially Jim Ryan). Helldivers 2 proves that a "niche" title can explode in popularity with the right development, no reason why a new Resistance or a new Motorstorm-like game can't succeed with a multiplayer component.

I don't know if Hulst is the man to manage the turnaround either. He's been remarkably uncommunicative when it comes to what the future of PS Studios is, and that's never a good sign.

 

[Hypereides]

Those who do gaas professionally also works within framework of realistic expectations and not just random gamble.
There are a huge difference between wanna-be that just find out lucrativity of service model and those who have years of experience in this field. Latter (Riot, CyGames, Mihoyo and others) have no problem with consequently delivery of successfull products, some (CyGames/NetEase/Tencent) even provide service of work-for-hire to convert IP into service model.

Just because haters blow news of another wannabe service game failure way out of proportion doesn't mean that the whole service games market struggles.

And to put into perspective - in terms of big games we certainly have more successes than failures in 2024, and number of successes in a ballpark of number AAA SP games released in 2024. So much about risky business where few succed

I'm going to make a hard claim as to why those AAA SP didn't manage to perform well: Its their own fault.

Western, in particular American, AAA developers have largely become disconnected from their actual buying audience. Many SP titles of 2024, and some in the prior few years, floundered because they were products that did not resonate with the gaming community nor were designed and built to do as such. On the contrary, it seems like they did their darnest to alienate and deconstruct their actual primary target demographic.

As such, they underperformed. Meanwhile, you had SP games like Baldur's gate 3 and BMW that blew expectations. Those games had their odds against them. I reckon we're about to see more AAA asian games, such as Phantom blade 0, perform very well.

Western AAA developers turned AAA SP games into an unintended "risky business" and they brought it on themselves. They need retrace where they went wrong, course correct and take it from there.

My metric of successful game is money. My metric of good game (those always very subjective) is that game is interesting to play, regardless where it SP or service. I play both for 25+ years so I pretty used to each world specifics and I enjoy Stellar Blade equally to ZZZ, without constant whining on forums.

Not the least bit surprised. I'll grant you this business is not a charity. Not one bit. Money comes in, money has to come out. But, its most importantly a creatively lead industry where visions and ideas have far deeper meaning and weight than how much some arbitrary live service generates.

Ergo, indie, A and AA will be the actual torch bearers of this industry. If that makes them of lesser importance to you then so be it.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

As a general rule, the man who broke it is never the man to fix it. Hermen must go or else PS Studios will never recover.

Bungie was a rotten apple saved only because Sony overpaid for it. Likewise, you don't ask for the advice of guys who can't even manage their own company. Besides, there's an obvious conflict of interest, asking Bungie about Naughty Dog's projects. We know they are dishonest bastards, so they disapproved of the project, as anyone with a functioning brain would have predicted.

However, they advised the purchase of Firewalk, comprised of EX-BUNGIES (just thinking of this is mind-boggling). The money that Sony didn't invest in Factions was redirected to this massive bomb. Decision blessed by Bungie.

This alone would suffice to get people fired straight away, but the rot is deep in PS Studios and in 2-3 years they might end up shutting down half of them.

 

[MMaRsu]

Idiots

 

[Felessan]

I'm going to make a hard claim as to why those AAA SP didn't manage to perform well: Its their own fault.

It's also true for western gaas games where we see a lot of crashes. They don't know what to do to attract and retain players. They used to, but not anymore, they chase clouds and copy-paste themselves, their agenda replaced their creativity.
Eastern devs are fine in gaas and mostly in SP, their biggest problem is that except few exception they don't really welcomed home (where it is a total gaas land)

Not the least bit surprised. I'll grant you this business is not a charity. Not one bit. Money comes in, money has to come out. But, its most importantly a creatively lead industry where visions and ideas have far deeper meaning and weight than how much some arbitrary live service generates.

No. ~Industry~ should always be money first, creativity second. And all those idiots whining "give us money and go away" should be fired and banned from industry until they know value of money.

No matter how bright and visionary creator is, it should be backed by a rigid business plan where costs, projected profits and risks properly evaluated before project starts. Business is not a gamble, though complete elimination of chances is impossible, it should be robust and healthy, all things should be economically viable for it to continue. Otherwise wide adoption of unprofitable ideas will kill companies and we will see huge industry crash as no sane person will invest in it, reducing games to a garage level.

Creativity over money is not an industry, it's amateur work. Anyone can do it any time they want. Just don't come and ask to give you money to fund your hobby, you are amateur, you do it at your own expense

Ergo, indie, A and AA will be the actual torch bearers of this industry. If that makes them of lesser importance to you then so be it.

They will generate new ideas, yes. Like always - most new born from amateur and low budget works. AAA is about quality, not some random ideas, they take working idea rough stone and make a candy of it. And it not sustainable to support random idea because it will, for sure, kill the industry.
You know what? Steam has like 20k various bug/fish/poop simulators, every one of them think that they might be the next big one. Probably less than 10 have significant success. All others are just "discarded dud idea" that would lead to huge losses if financed.

It's same as companies grow - startups with new ideas self-funded (bottom of indie), only when they get to concept stage they get seed financing (A game) and normally only when company have proven track record, clear financial result and prospects, institutional money (AAA games) came in.

 

[Hypereides]

(...)

No. ~Industry~ should always be money first, creativity second. And all those idiots whining "give us money and go away" should be fired and banned from industry until they know value of money.

No matter how bright and visionary creator is, it should be backed by a rigid business plan where costs, projected profits and risks properly evaluated before project starts. Business is not a gamble, though complete elimination of chances is impossible, it should be robust and healthy, all things should be economically viable for it to continue. Otherwise wide adoption of unprofitable ideas will kill companies and we will see huge industry crash as no sane person will invest in it, reducing games to a garage level.

Creativity over money is not an industry, it's amateur work. Anyone can do it any time they want. Just don't come and ask to give you money to fund your hobby, you are amateur, you do it at your own expense

(...)

Spoken like a true bean counter moneybag vulture. Strongly disagree. In this particular industry, creativity is primero uno. Its everything. Without it you have nothing. No creators. No ideas. No visions. No products.

The money is essentially worthless without creative minds to convert them into something appealing. You can sob all you like about how creatives value providing quality work are "amateurs" when ironically you want AAA to leech off successful "amateurs". One might even go as to far as to say the western AAA developers themselves have adversely become the "amateurs" in this space while those with pure creativity and lesser ressources manage to upstage them.

If you don't like it, take a hike. You can take your money elsewhere if that's how you view to drive a creative industry. There's plenty of "amateurs" to pick up the slack with plenty of tools at their disposal. Driving it with a money first mindset means:

a.) You're clearly unfit to participate in it and don't have well-meaning intentions behind pursuing a venture there.
b.) You'll eventually begin to repel buyers since your intent will eventually shine through the product.

If your business won't collapse, then you'll eventually dilute it then conveniently scatter away from it like a drained corpse. Going by your logic, EA's annual FC games are "top of the crop", by the amount of revenue they generate, even though they lack many features that were common place circa 20 years ago.

 

[PatientGamer]

It wasn't you buying the games to begin with. I don't know why it is so hard for some gamers to understand that they don't have the power they think they have.

I don't follow. If consumers don't buy the product, then why or how can more unwanted product continue to be made? The studios will close.

 

[Felessan]

Spoken like a true bean counter moneybag vulture. Strongly disagree. In this particular industry, creativity is primero uno. Its everything. Without it you have nothing. No creators. No ideas. No visions. No products.

You just have no fucking idea how this world works even with creative industry (industry, not some hobby stuff).

It really very simple - I go with money first, you go with creativity first. My projects always profitable and yours... It depends on luck. And luck as in casino tends to run out.
Do you know what happen next? You go bankrupt and I will pickup the most bright of your ideas cheap and put them to work. And you will be next Jaffe who whine on internet all the time about non-creative industry, but haven't done decent game for 20 years.

It part of the reason why western industry in shambles - because they put creativity over money, choose ideas randomly by "feeling", oppose metrics "we are creators" and then cry when they fucked up. Even go so far as "they are nice guys, give them second chance" after a huge fuck-up.
Games are a business, if you can't make financially viable game, you are out, no matter how "creative and innovative" your idea is, if it's not popular and not selling (enough for the size of game), it's a shitty idea (for this size).

This is a difference to eastern devs where ability to make money is a key, so games made with idea that they should be popular (because profitability very dependant on popularity), people should like them and want to spend money on/in them, not on self-glorification "we are smart and creative, be proud to play our game" bullshit

Market economy works this way - good ideas are popular and bring money, while bad ideas unpopular with no money and no future. Visioners grow while trash weeded out of the market

 

[MagnesD3]

This is what happens when the masses are allowed to touch your artform.