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Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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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.
I’m taking as their way of saying we can’t make a decent story. Like a kid taking his ball and going home with “nobody likes this game anyway”
Please explain how this is false
Baldur's Gate 3 was only last year. Metaphor just set records for Atlas' fastest selling game this year. Even amidst the tremendously troubled launch, Cyberpunk 2077 went on to be one of the best-selling video games of all time, and its DLC did very well too. God of War: Ragnarok sold at least 15 million copies. And these are just a few examples off of the top of my head that don't fall into gray areas like GTA where they're also a live service.
Those are are the exceptions not the normal case. Look at almost anything remedy has done. Great stories but bad sales. Alan Wake 2 was still not profitable in November.
Meanwhile candy crush has generated more than 20 billion in revenue
Alan Wake 2 took an upfront buyout in exchange for appearing on a less popular platform. That would be an exception to the normal use case. A thousand companies will go bankrupt trying to make Candy Crush even though someone already made Candy Crush. And you can replace Candy Crush with Call of Duty, World of WarCraft, Destiny, or whatever you like. Those games take up all of your time by design rather than allowing and encouraging you to move on to another game.
AW2 is epic exclusive...
Just look at most of the winners of Game of the Year. I’d argue most of them fit in the category of narrative driven story-rich games.
What doesn't sell are the games that don't have a well written story or well-written characters. Or the games that their developers themselves don't have any passion or interest in, games just made to please shareholders.... Or games that get preachy on issues without proper care...
Not everything is Elden Ring
It's not ridiculous, it's true, but it is sad. As always the public chooses the worst things.
That's not the sad part. It is companies going for maximising profit as aggressively as possible, meaning they don't care if they could earn 20 mil on this game, if they can get 50 on another.
Meh, if people didn't pay or play those it wouldn't make business sense to make em. Gaming is weird these days.
Everybody seems to have "the game" they play like OW or Valorant(?) or Fortnite, certain genres like racing and fighting games seem to have split up from mainstream gaming altogether where if you just check out what's the new Tekken like people assume you're like a "fighting game person" that goes to tournaments and builds your whole life around it and have since forever, back in my day it was just a game you played cuz the dudes on the cover looked cool and the game was fun.
'Core' games are all rip offs of souls or some other crap that I personally hate deeply, or straight up remakes of games where the original is just kinda better, consoles and GPUs cost way too much this gen and there are no real exclusives.
The trends in graphics are concerning too, everything is a TAA or AI upscale smearfest, PS5 can't run that new Star wars game at more than DVD resolution without the same bullshit 8th gen checkerboarding or some other dynamic resolution technique alongside god damned AI trash. MSAA and SSAA seem dead and with them clarity and good visuals, all that artwork gone to waste, the only pretty games are MSFS and CP2077 with Path Tracing on max, UE5 is built from the ground up around smear and unity is enshittified, devs are cutting costs and custom engines are out, so future looks bleak
The only thing that I love about gaming nowadays is indie and AA games, from Stray (barring the awful graphics) to Sea Power, Descenders to Teardown to Airport Sim, these are games I had the most fun with this year that aren't 5th-7th gen classics. That football game at TGA from Sifu devs seems fun tho. Tower networking looks cool too, reminds me of cozy weed shop 2 vibes with a WTTG2 style tech element and a game dev tycoon art style
Too much "back in my day" vibe in your comment.
Guilty as charged!
Fwiw I love gaming nowadays, things like itch and steam self-publishing just didn't exist nearly to the same extent back in the day, and this has allowed for niche titles I could only dream of back in the day and weird artsy games like Buckshot Roulette, Disco Elysium and Warframe finding success is awesome and was definitely not a thing in the past where gatekeeping was inherent to gaming.
Even hardware stuff like FBT trackers and steam deck and the crazy modding scene of today are things I love about modern gaming.
That doesn't mean it's not without things to critique, as every generation of games has, nor that nothing of value has been lost.
Agree