It's a tale as old as time. Though in 2025 my current version of this is "Make more games that aren't a roguelike, soulslike, card game, or homage to pokemon" ✌️
I crave novelty. Two of my favorite games from this year were Pacific Drive and Sand Land primarily because they were both sufficiently unlike anything I had played before. It helped that they were both very well done.
Oh absolutely true, I mean I don't mind multiplayers and battle royales, but give me a good single player campaign and a good and a good story, give me game that has a beginning, a middle and an end.
I used to enjoy playing single player games (like Zelda) then talk to friends next day about how you were getting on, problems overcome etc.
Social but you still got to play a good story. Then the late 90s happened and it all went a bit down hill.
Loved Quake LAN parties though :-)
Yeah, I don't feel like dealing with 12 year old voices screeching about how they fucked my mom last night and using every slur known to man (and several known to monkeys) while systematically killing any fun the online match may have yielded.
Unfortunately, single player games aren't that profitable, compared to multiplayer. MP games are more engaging in terms of short sessions and bigger playerbase. Also people are more willing to spend money on micro transactions such as cosmetics or booster bundles. It's stupid to imply that in SP.
Au contraire, they are very profitable provided that the feature creep is curbed, the graphical budget isn't bloated, and there's a rock solid writing team
Mass Effect being well written has sold more merch for Bioware than Anthem's monetisation made them post-launch
Didn't thought about merch or any other things tbh. I have taken to consideration only game or in-game purchases. Some game's success comes more like exception that the rule. Balatro is a great example of that.
As the only gamer with my family and barely any friends I can reach out who'd want to actually play my games library with me I relate to this statement
I used to love gaming, but I rarely play now. I just got fed up of buying a game and realising they hadn't actually sold me a complete game. Or basically being forced to do multilayer. There are still a few good single player, complete games out there. They're getting rarer.
Exactly. While I understand developers wanting people to interact with others online, there are people who prefer to play alone for a reason.
As for me, it's cause I can't afford internet service where I live and due to my income restrictions.
I love this. I love story-focused stuff so much I actually started a podcast about it. Nothing against multiplayer but a good narrative can satisfy for years and years and years.
I seem to remember a time when game journalists all seemed to be saying the future is online multiplayer and nobody wants single player anymore. Probably around the same time they said JPEG’s are naff and life systems are archaic.
One of my favourite experiences was playing ATLAS with friends, there was so many fun systems and a huge world to explore, but the devs put all their effort into PvP so we quickly ran out of activities. The game is on life support now because turns out PvP suuuuuuuuuuucks to play. Constant griefing.
It's a total missed opportunity, the boating and traversal in general is so damn fun. But they had to be another ARK: Survival Evolved, another Rust, the intended game design was to play with random internet assholes and fuck that.
Comments
Change my mind.
Buy single-player games. Support their devs. And keep pushing back against the "single player games are dead" narrative.
Good thing you had to also complete challenges in those games and Hand-Cannons were NOT supported in the meta at the time...
Social but you still got to play a good story. Then the late 90s happened and it all went a bit down hill.
Loved Quake LAN parties though :-)
Fuck, if only Infinite had couch co-op or MP I'd try to get the band back together. Play some firefight with low latency.
Here’s our (small indie studio) game page: @virballs.bsky.social
It’s sparse right now, because… small team, but I did a bunch of level design stuff over the holidays days.
Mass Effect being well written has sold more merch for Bioware than Anthem's monetisation made them post-launch
That's the uncomfortable truth
Bioware lost sight of their power.
You get people invested and you can sell a lot of body pillows and jackets and a $500 trenchcoat:
https://gear.bioware.com/products/mass-effect-n7-trench-coat
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ieopmlgv3clwqw66egibqdje/post/3le3qn3thpc2l
As for me, it's cause I can't afford internet service where I live and due to my income restrictions.
https://www.podserve.fm/w/sagasandstories
What games do you think have the best stories?