I’m going to guess they mean narrative-driven “games” like Hellblade or Indika, which were all narrative and almost no game.
Thats the studio head talking bullahit.
Not the actual creatorsIf Frostpunk is their idea of a “narrative-driven, story-rich game”, I can see why they have concerns.
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.
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Not agreeing, but if I look at my own purchases for the last few years, there aren’t many story driven games there. God of War and Starfield. Didn’t play much either one.
Larian rn:
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.
Bad ones, sure. Wait, no, even bad ones sell. They’re just wrong.
Honestly I can’t think of a recent game I enjoyed that wasn’t a narrative-driven story rich game.
Doom eternal comes to mind
They’re the only games I enjoy. And I could’ve sworn I’ve seen people all over the internet lamenting the loss of story-driven single player games in this era of GTA online. These douchebags are either salivating looking at GTA online profitability and talking bullshit or they’re so goddamn deluded with their head so far up their own ass that they can’t tell their colon from their pancreas.
On the topic, anyway: my favorite games are RDR2, Cyberpunk, and Alan Wake 2. I wasn’t always a gamer, but the graphics have gotten so good and the stories so involved (in these here specifically) that I became one later in life. But now I’ve played all three of those games to death. Do you have any recs for similar games I might enjoy? I was just looking around the PS store and felt like I was swimming through nonsense. I really wanted to play Stalker 2, but it’s not out for PS5 yet. The next game I’m eyeing is a silent Hill 2 remake. Not a big fantasy person, either. I like stories with their feet in the real world. Don’t mean to single you out to give me advice, but figured I’d ask in case you had something you really liked.
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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.
A small number of mobile games sell better make obscene money, the vast majority make a pittance or lose money. But corporate types cant stop salivating at the thought of being the ones to own the next candy crush, so they’d rather take a shot at that than produce something with merit that will likely make a reasonable return.
Mobile and MTX games
sell bettermake more moneyYeah it’s depressing, I’m amazed we’re getting anything good at all by this point
Half life is far from Planescape Torment…
2d isometric vs 3d first person. One format clearly lets stories breathe better, but that doesn’t mean half life isn’t story driven.
Halflife was 25 years ago, but ok you do you.
You didn’t have to hurt all of us olds that bad.
LOL when Halflife came out I worked at World Opponent Network - which Valve acquired a few years later, long after I was gone.
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.
More expensive and less profit
Like the other person pointed out with GaaS you don’t even need to finish the game before you start making money
However BG3 had a big already established IP and successful Divinity games beforehand
I will give you some advice that I was given “you need a hit before you can have a hit”
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!”
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.
I only see that in some communities. Most of the people that hate on veilguard, from what I’ve seen, either haven’t played the game or are clipping parts out of context.
The complaints I’ve seen that aren’t “dur hur, binary qunari” talk about the shaky dialogue in the beginning, where things felt awkward and clunky, like a new team forming. I’ll give credence to the complaints about some depth being lost in the characters versus other games in the series, but I think those people feel that way because Inquisituon was a bloated mess (that I love) and they’ve played 1 and 2 so many times in different ways they’re meshing all the dialogue into one. Playing through veilguard a second time, and watching my partner take different choices than me, made the characters on par with Mass Effect 2 allies. Which, I’d say isn’t an accomplishment so much as a mild chastisement that it hasn’t improved since then.
Haven’t played, but I found this (negative) review compelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF-Kd2BBpx8
He did play through the whole game.
But, to drive home in case it isn’t clear, I love Dragon Age and I think this one ranks higher than Inquisition (but not trespasser DLC), on par with 2, and above 1 for me. I do not think it’s a Pinnacle of modern writing, it definitely suffered from some development struggles and that comes through in the final act as things get a little rushed and content feels more like a drip than a faucet. But then it wraps up well, or I thought it did.
It can use improvements, but I feel about it as i felt about 2 when it came out. “This is a change, and I’m not sure it’s what i wanted, but I do like the universe and the combat is a lot of fun and the characters as a whole are interesting”.
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…
It’s not the customers like stories or not; it’s customers want good stories.
If that guy’s aiming is that bad at reading the market, it might be just a good thing he is not going the story path.
It sucks for the people being layoff though.
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?
