thats a shitty excuse if i ever heard one
Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell
Submitted 1 day ago by simple@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
Comments
DankDingleberry@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
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.
Bronzebeard@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Did we already forget that BG3 existed like once year later…?
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 day ago
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.
Grangle1@lemm.ee 1 day ago
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.
idyllic_optimism@lemmy.today 1 day ago
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…
ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Dragon Age Veilguard was actually a success
They finally confirmed or denied this claim?
Vipsu@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
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 copilotWhile 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.
MajorHavoc@programming.dev 4 hours ago
Oof.
“The COVID-19 pandemic made team stability difficult,”
Makes me suspect they were woefully behind the rest of the field in development practices. My team, and many others, gained productivity when all the wasteful manager ego stroking in-person meetings stopped.
Alternately, it tells us they rely on a weird dev kit with a lot of esoteric hardware. Though I would still call that out as being super out of date. Nothing is particularly hard to emulate today, for teams that prioritize having rebuildable test environmenta.
Just wild.
Bummer about the layoffs. Probably won’t fix their agility problem, though.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
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.
makyo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
And ignoring all the attempts at a game-as-a-service that fail
2pt_perversion@lemmy.world 1 day ago
“That guy just made millions of dollars playing the lottery. We should quit our jobs and play the lottery too!”
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
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”
dustyData@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
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!”
Kbobabob@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Maybe the people are just out of touch? I’m sure that’s it.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 5 hours ago
No it’s the gamers who are wrong
Opisek@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Narrative-driven games made Valve into Valve. But ok, you do you.
Kerred@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A better way to put it is story driven games sell. Mobile and MTX games sell better.
xavier666@lemm.ee 20 hours ago
Mobile and MTX games
sell bettermake more moneyWomble@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
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.
filcuk@lemmy.zip 20 hours ago
Yeah it’s depressing, I’m amazed we’re getting anything good at all by this point
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Half life is far from Planescape Torment…
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 20 hours ago
2d isometric vs 3d first person. One format clearly lets stories breathe better, but that doesn’t mean half life isn’t story driven.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Halflife was 25 years ago, but ok you do you.
2pt_perversion@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You didn’t have to hurt all of us olds that bad.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 22 hours ago
If Frostpunk is their idea of a “narrative-driven, story-rich game”, I can see why they have concerns.
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
That’s not how anyone describes that game, and if they did, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been canceled. Frostpunk did pretty well.
Nastybutler@lemmy.world 1 day ago
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
To be fair, BG3 is like bottled lightning, and I think it’s unreasonable to expect many (if any) other studios to produce something like that.
Lesrid@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
Shit I loved Divinity Original Sin and the sequel, but even I don’t think Larian could match or exceed BG3
Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I’m going to guess they mean “narrative driven games” like Hellblade or Indika, which were all narrative and almost no game.
pyre@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
even so they both were extremely well received
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Honestly I can’t think of a recent game I enjoyed that wasn’t a narrative-driven story rich game.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 22 hours ago
They’re the only games I enjoy. And I could’ve sworn I’ve seen people lamenting the loss of story-driven single player games in this era of GTA online all over the internet. These people are either 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.
MITM0@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Doom eternal comes to mind
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 17 hours ago
It had a bit of narrative (killing the corrupted son of the traitor out of mercy and to save the world, killing the corrupted angel like beings because they are a threat to humanity), but you’re right, what really drives you is the fun gameplay loop and the challenge of escalating difficulty.
SweatyFireBalls@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
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.
Fades@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Son has been screaming the exact opposite of this and it continues to garner them a fuck ton of cash.
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
Bosht@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
This is exactly it. They don’t like their profit margin.
bizza@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Did these developers completely miss Baldurs Gate 3
warmaster@lemmy.world 1 day ago
We could spend all day and night listing successful SP games, I bet they canceled it because the game was just bad.
Katana314@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I think highlighting the success story is kind of missing both the great circumstances Larian built that game under, and the giant mountain of singleplayer games that are pretty good, but hit no success at all.
hperrin@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Bad ones, sure. Wait, no, even bad ones sell. They’re just wrong.
socsa@piefed.social 1 day ago
Really? It feels like every other AAA game is an interactive movie these days.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
This was barely true like 10 years ago. Now everything is mobile games and live services.
quixotic120@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Every yakuza game, baldurs gate, every fromsoft game, the insomniac games like spiderman, Sony stuff in general like horizon, god of war, last of us, etc, black myth wukong, the endless remake games (some of which are very solid) like ff7, silent hill 2, persona 3 reload, etc, rockstar games even (rdr2 was 2018 and gta6 is supposed to come out this year, maybe). The sea of jrpgs like shin megami tensei v vengeance, trails through daybreak, granblue fantasy, unicorn overlord, etc. And that’s literally off the top of my head
Mobile games and live services dominate for sure bc they shit money and are easy to develop but decent games still exist (though tbf a lot of them are starting to pull serious bullshit too. Love yakuza but sega locking new game+ behind a $15 dlc. First yakuza game I didnt do a new game+ run on and the lamest one to platinum because you don’t have to beat the hardest boss or run it on legendary)
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 1 day ago
Narrative, story-driven MTX and Battlepasses.
BertramDitore@lemm.ee 1 day ago
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.
turddle@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
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”
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
It’s not ridiculous, it’s true, but it is sad. As always the public chooses the worst things.
themurphy@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
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.
ExcursionInversion@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Please explain how this is false
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
BertramDitore@lemm.ee 1 day ago
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.
idyllic_optimism@lemmy.today 1 day ago
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…
Montagge@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Not everything is Elden Ring
Mandy@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
Thats the studio head talking bullahit.
Not the actual creatorskryptonidas@lemmings.world 12 hours ago
I liked Frostpunk and would have loved a story driven game in that universe.
yesman@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
shani66@ani.social 17 hours ago
Because that’s literally what it is. Business courses are much closer to church sermons than actual classes. They don’t apply logic to things, they simply consult their already established beliefs for the path forward.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 1 day ago
because it’s made up. The stock has value because we think it does. Clap your hands if you believe!
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 16 hours ago
Ah, so managerial problems again who would have thought but that’s OK we that make the things can suffer a little more
NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
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
Lauchs@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I thought the game awards were like the Oscars in that they are supposed to ignore the commercial success of the nominations? (Never follow that stuff so I could be completely wrong.)
MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org 16 hours ago
Ok guys valid points from everyone here. But who here has bought the latest 11bit Studios games? And I’m not talking about Frostpunk 2. I’m taking about Indika, The alters, The Traumathurge,… all of these games seemed like really cool things to me, sadly I could not afford them.
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
The Alters isn’t out yet. Expected release Q1 2025. It’s on my wish list because I love the demo.
Indika they were just the publisher. On top of which, maybe has a story that not everyone is interested in. I watched these guys play it, youtu.be/MuiHtAYOqgI and while it’s creative and it’s overall a fantastic game, is not one I’m going to play myself.
The Thaumaturge, again they are just the publisher. I hadn’t even heard of this one which means as the publisher they did a terrible job marketing it.
MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org 13 hours ago
Thank you for the correction. The alters is indeed not out yet.
ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
If I could get some official/quality Umbrella/Shinra/Arasaka/Faro corporation mugs, phone covers etc I’d be all over it.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
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.
ExcursionInversion@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Exactly
Evotech@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They also take a lot longer to develop
idyllic_optimism@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I think the title of the article is misleading a bit. According to the article, the game has been in development since 2018 and they’ve been having issues they cannot seem to be able to fix to their satisfaction and it sounds like it’s more viable for the studio to abandon the project than try to fix it by throwing more money and time at it. And it’s a console game, so that limits their market, too.To me, reading the article, “narrative driven games don’t sell anymore” is not the main problem.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
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… What gives?
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
Typical RPS.
PushButton@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
random_character_a@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
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.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
NGL the title always seemed like it wanted to be a mobile game so the studio saying this doesn’t surprise me.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Sad but I can see their point, considering that most customer attention spans are limited to memes now.
HerrVorragend@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Just put some digital boobs in the game. It WILL sell
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
man who normally buys “narrative-driven, story-rich games” forced to put his endless supply of money back into his wallet
viking@infosec.pub 11 hours ago
Anything good you can recommend? Haven’t seen much good since Witcher 3… And before that, maybe Gothic 2 or Oblivion.
Earflap@reddthat.com 1 hour ago
If you liked the story driven elements of TW3 you might like Cyberpunk 2077. Its very similar story and eigime wise since they’re both made by CDPR, but obviously very different thematically. God of War is another story driven narrative driven game I enjoyed.
logos@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Baldurs gate 3? One of the best games I ever played.
Ashtear@lemm.ee 7 hours ago
Since The Witcher 3 came out, my favorite video game stories have been Disco Elysium, Cyberpunk 2077, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Citizen Sleeper, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. I also really liked Death Stranding, but Kojima’s not for everyone.
Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
You know, maybe i dont know enough about games as i am a casual these days, aside from baldurs gate 3 which is a fucking masterpiece, i really like the 2 (soon to be 3) star wars jedi games outcast and survivour. They are like a much easier souls mixed with the 3d prince of persia (sands of time, warrior within, two thrones) games but are very story driven. I am very excited to see what will happen in the final game in the trilogy qhen it comes out.
ICastFist@programming.dev 8 hours ago
Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, if you haven’t played already. Think of them as the stepping stones for BG3.
Spec Ops: The Line is a 3rd person shooter with an incredible story, I think it takes 4-6 hours to go through the campaign. Short when compared to RPGs, but worth the time. People also talk about Titanfall 2’s campaign being great, I haven’t played it yet.
Mass Effect trilogy is also very good, mainly the 2nd game. The first game is the jankiest of the bunch and the 3rd is much better after all the DLC, though I still don’t like how the optional Paragon/Renegade prompts from 2 became obligatory QTE in 3.
KnowledgeableNip@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
I’ve been loving Metaphor recently
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
…Yakuza
Ellvix@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Currently sucked into Kingdom Come Deliverance, which is similar to TW3 in that it’s a first person story driven game, but set in IRL 1403 Bohemia instead of the fantasy setting. Very good historical storytelling, I think.
GelatinGeorge@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I’ve a love/hate relationship with Rogue Trader 40k. I fucking love it, literally everything about it, but I also hate it because it will end at some point.