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man who normally buys "narrative-driven, story-rich games" forced to put his money back into his wallet
thats a shitty excuse if i ever heard one
More like it’s a shitty headline. The article shows there’s a little more to it, specifically that it was going to go over budget and they hadn’t figured out what they were gonna do.
Did we already forget that BG3 existed like once year later...?
Cyberpunk 2077, RDR2 still wasn't that long ago, Dragon Age Veilguard was actually a success convincing even EA, Star Wars Jedi series, the list goes on. It just has to be a good story, you can't just slap some boring ass story in there.
Odd to say Veilguard was a success when from what I can tell, one of the few things uniting the very fractured and divided gaming community this year was that the writing in Veilguard was horrible. And you know that's true when the various members of that community can give their own varied reasons why the writing was horrible and they would all be valid.
Veilguard is far from success, and it's because it's the worst-written DA game to date. And that is on EA. They had every chance to make it a good game (as the art book they published shows just what a good story it was shaping up to be before EA forced them to start over for a live service version) but they chose to waste everyone's time for 10 years by changing their mind mid development multiple times, firing the veteran team members right in the middle of development....
They sell fine. Look at BG3.
What they don't do is make money hand over fist without the need to design more product, as happens with subscription-based, game-as-a-service multiplayer titles. Some companies don't want to make good games. They just want to make good money.
And ignoring all the attempts at a game-as-a-service that fail
"That guy just made millions of dollars playing the lottery. We should quit our jobs and play the lottery too!"
Narrative-driven games made Valve into Valve. But ok, you do you.
A better way to put it is story driven games sell. Mobile and MTX games sell better.
Mobile and MTX games ~~sell better~~ make more money
Honestly I can't think of a recent game I enjoyed that wasn't a narrative-driven story rich game.
If Frostpunk is their idea of a "narrative-driven, story-rich game", I can see why they have concerns.
Did these developers completely miss Baldurs Gate 3
We could spend all day and night listing successful SP games, I bet they canceled it because the game was just bad.
Sony has been screaming the exact opposite of this and it continues to garner them a fuck ton of cash. You don’t even need Sony money to do it, as per Baldurs gate that many are also referencing here in the comments.
There’s no way they actually believe that, the C-suite simply can’t stop salivating over the potential money a live service game can potentially provide
This is exactly it. They don't like their profit margin.
The title is a bit missleading considering that the actual article mentions a lot other problems that plagued the development.
Project 8 faced both progress and challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult, but some quality improvements were achieved. However, critical issues persisted, causing delays and budget increases. The latest review revealed unresolved problems needing more time and money, along with revised sales forecasts, raising doubts about the project's profitability.
-- TLDR by Microsoft copilot
While there's still demand for "narrative-driven story-rich games" one should keep realistic expectations. For this genre I feel smaller scope and indie developers work much better.
Typical infantile C-suite logic “I didn't do X well, therefore X is impossible and no one can do X! It's not my fault, I swear!”
I'm going to guess they mean narrative-driven "games" like Hellblade or Indika, which were all narrative and almost no game.
Bad ones, sure. Wait, no, even bad ones sell. They’re just wrong.
Really? It feels like every other AAA game is an interactive movie these days.
The Last of Us is still selling.
Which one? The original? The Remaster or the Remake? Or the 2nd or the Remaster of the 2nd?
If they actually believe something so patently ridiculous, then it’s probably best that they cancelled it. So I guess this is good news. Those are the only kinds of games I want to play. FFS.
Why does capitalist reasoning always sound like a prayer to an angry god?
We consulted the oracle and it seems that the dragon is tired of corn. So we've hedged our portfolio with wheat and virgins.
Obviously this is just me, but here is a list of the last 5 games I purchased that were not smaller indie titles:
Stalker 2, Elden ring, remnant 2, bg3, dragon's dogma 2
You could argue that remnant is intended for multiplayer and you could argue that maybe only bg3 and stalker and really narrative driven but the truth is, anymore I tend to buy single player and stream to my friends than I do actually play mp games. The only mp game i was tempted by was Helldivers and I was just too busy at the time.
Anything else are steam deck friendly indie games. I buy a lot of those, and bought a lot even before I had a deck.
In my anecdotal experience, when I see x game is multiplayer, or live service, or just not an experience I can enjoy on my own time I tune it out. For example, I always bought Diablo games but I don't own 4.
I also immediately think of some other big ones that I opted out of, like Wukong. People fucking love single player games when they are good games. I think the real issue is developing a good game is hard. Developing a game with dark practices and otherwise addicting (but not necessarily fun) gameplay is a much easier way to make uninspired games made by committee.
It's just easier to point the blame at the market than actually admit that upon self reflection you realized it is best to avoid the hard part of game development.
Thats the studio head talking bullahit.
Not the actual creators
Yeah, if you ignore like ALL of the nominations and winners at The Game Awards for the last 10 years and take a look at checks notes Fortnite
Narrative driven, story rich games don't sell?
How many video game franchises are making the leap to tv/movies these days? Hint, it's the ones with narrative driven, story rich games.
Go ahead and make pay to win mobile games, I don't play them and they rake in millions so it makes perfect business sense.
But the idea that gamers don't pay for good narrative driven, story rich games is laughable.
I think the biggest problem with a lot of game franchises have is they only sell the game. So much money is being left on the table with the best efforts being a screengrab lazily printed on a cheap shirt that sells maybe one or two.
If I could get some official, quality, Umbrella/Shinra/Arasaka/Faro corporation mugs, phone covers, meme tier shirts etc I'd be all over it.
They don't sell enough. These companies want endless growth and endless sales so they can milk the whales for endless revenue. Narrative rich, story driven games don't sell as much as pay to win or gacha trash.
Ah, so managerial problems again who would have thought but that's OK we that make the things can suffer a little more
The Journalist writes "I'm predictably both intrigued and worried that 11 bit think there's less interest now in games with a pronounced narrative component." But then does not detail any attempt at getting a comment from the studio on that... What gives?
