EA has shut down Visceral Games

[isiolia]

It really all comes back to how readily you can be "done" with a game - the sooner that happens, the sooner your copy is traded into Gamestop (or on Facebook, or whatever) removing you as a potential DLC buyer, and moving profits to the secondary market where the publisher isn't seeing a dime. Streaming can preempt all of that for, as mentioned, linear narrative games because if the whole point of playing is to experience the story. If you can do that for free, then the reason to buy the game is diminished. The better titles for that tend to be ones where streaming just gives potential players ideas of what they can do.

From a business standpoint, the focus EA (and others) have makes total sense for the current market and distribution model.

[dsheinem]

I think my 15-year old stepson is a good example of where the market is focused - he typically watches entire play-throughs of the campaigns of single player games (including ones that we have in the house which he could actually play) on YouTube or Twitch instead of playing through them himself. He says he likes the commentary and what not and the fact that he can do other things while it is on (like play some other multiplayer-focused game). Single player is not much of a selling point for him, though he does typically play through FPS campaigns in a half-dozen series that he enjoys (Far Cry, COD, Battlefield, etc.). I am pretty sure some of those series could completely drop the campaign, though, and he wouldn't care.

[dsheinem]

To add another angle: video game writing is traditionally pretty bad compared to other media, requires more time investment from players compared to film/TV, and in most genres has historically been a secondary concern (at best) during development.

For every game that breaks that trend, there are scores of games where the story is filled with character cliches, plot holes, poor voice acting, etc. Given the option, why invest so much time/money in something where I enjoy the gameplay only to find out the story I am playing through sucks? If I can get the same gameplay experience without the story...and instead have built-in economies that reward my performance and DLC that sustains the longevity of the gameplay...isn't that giving more of what's good about the game (how it plays) and less of what's bad (the typically bad story)?

[BogusMeatFactory]

). Single player is not much of a selling point for him, though he does typically play through FPS campaigns in a half-dozen series that he enjoys (Far Cry, COD, Battlefield, etc.). I am pretty sure some of those series could completely drop the campaign, though, and he wouldn't care.

Exactly, for a lot of people the single player campaign is either gravy or inconsequential. The outlier is the person who wants the game solely for the single player.

and you bring up a good point about the single player aspect being plagued with some negative element, be it voice acting, animation etc. These elements cost a lot of money, because it means more investment in actors, motion capture and elements of a game that many people completely ignore.

You can honestly make a comparison of EA and Nintendo here. Nintendo has a huge focus on multiplayer in almost all of their games, even if that multiplayer is local couch co-op. Look at the games that have come out for switch. Outside of Zelda, everything has been multiplayer and even then, Zelda is such an enormous game, the content is there to last people a long time.

The single player experiences are all about discovery and large worlds and their multiplayer experiences are about communicating with others or a fast frenetic experience.

If it ain't sandbox, it's gotta be multiplayer. That is where the market is for triple a games.

[Gunstar Green]

I think there's a schism largely because you have people who prefer multiplayer games and people who prefer a single player experience, and I think people want both but maybe not games that try to be both and fail at one or the other.

Doom 2016 was largely focused on its single player with multiplayer as an afterthought but it was able to coast to popularity on the strength of its campaign alone.

But single player experiences like that don't quite give companies like EA what they want. Player retention. Games aren't a one-and-done affair anymore. They want you to keep playing and they want you to keep paying so that they keep making money until the sequel or next big game can replace it.

The AAA model is going to probably keep trending towards mutliplayer excepting sweeping open world games which still sell and are easy to plug DLC into. And that's fine, we have indies for a reason and their tools are improving and starting to compare to AAA quality titles anyway.

[Tanooki]

That kind of is almost exclusively the EA model more than any other of the old guard companies -- pay in full, then pay repeatedly for more left out or truly later added content to double or even triple the price of the original product. DOOM which was following the insane popularity and sales of reborn Wolfenstein sold itself on a badass larger campaign with a great narrative to drive it and it proved there's a large stable market of people who want that. iD Games playing off their best namesakes and decades of popularity knew they could sell and sustain doing it and it paid off. EA could do this, but they won't. They could even do it like DOOM profitably making a wicked big 1P game and then tack on a good MP game too and sell DLC packages of an added 1P campaign to those types and a lot of skin, map and other jargon the 2+P players like, but they won't. It would bridge the problem but they're all about a moderate or even barebones experience and milking to death anything that's meant for a group. Hell even Sony did a good job with Uncharted for awhile with insane story insane sales, and then tacking on some MP stuff on the side for the fans and it worked fairly well there too.

[Blu]

Quality shitpost incoming:

[noiseredux]

EA included a single-player story mode in Madden for the first time ever... in 2017. And it was good.

Oh, and I've spent many hours playing Madden 18's single player franchise mode this year. I'm in my third season. Of a single player EA game.

Maybe sports games "don't count" in this discussion - but that would be a good example of a genre that can work really well as a one-and-done single player experience, or a 100's-of-hours multiplayer service, depending how the player wishes to play it.

[BogusMeatFactory]

EA included a single-player story mode in Madden for the first time ever... in 2017. And it was good.

Oh, and I've spent many hours playing Madden 18's single player franchise mode this year. I'm in my third season. Of a single player EA game.

Maybe sports games "don't count" in this discussion - but that would be a good example of a genre that can work really well as a one-and-done single player experience, or a 100's-of-hours multiplayer service, depending how the player wishes to play it.

I think that the sports argument is the best argument. They went from being almost explicitly multiplayer to now having a single player campaign story mode. It goes avainstbthe narrative so therefor must be expunged!!!!!

[dsheinem]

Um, if I look at the list of games that EA has released this year and last (and ever, actually), almost all of them have single player campaigns, offline modes, etc.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_E ... Arts_games