Service-based games, on the other hand, operate on a rather different set of economic equations. "The audience for narrative-driven games may need to accept that all but the cream of the crop will be developed a bit more cheaply" Only a certain slice of the player base will buy the first DLC pack, and only a certain slice of those players will buy the second, and so on. Moreover, while single-player DLC can bring players back for a short while and provide a fresh injection of revenue, diminishing returns often kick in after a game launches. In general, though, single-player DLC is often subject to the same problem that the original game had - it's expensive to build and most players will run through it relatively quickly, which puts strict limits on what can reasonably be charged for it.Īs players' expectations of more flexibility in their single-player experiences have grown - a game that doesn't have branching narratives with choices to be made will now be roundly bashed for being too linear - this problem has only become more severe now developers are spending time, effort and money creating content that many players won't see at all. Considered in terms of cost per minute of player experience, or cost per dollar paid by a player, single-player content is unquestionably expensive, and that cost has grown hugely in the past couple of decades.ĭLC can help to alleviate that cost when players pay a chunk of cash for something that's relatively inexpensive to create, like a re-skin of a character or a bunch of new weapon models, it can help to push the game's ratio of development cost to revenue back towards a healthy figure. Making content, after all, is expensive building and animating models for players, enemies and other characters, constructing levels and environments, recording dialogue, scripting and lighting and rigging events in the game. However, the economics of making and selling single-player games has been getting tougher and tougher as the costs of creating content have increased. "The post-launch model for multiplayer games owes its fundamental logic to exactly the same notion that underpins free-to-play mobile gaming"Īfter all, it's not like single-player games don't sell major single-player titles still routinely sell several million copies. What is more questionable, however, is the kind of budgets those games can command, and whether publishers will be able to justify putting the same sort of development and marketing push behind them that multiplayer - or "service-based" - games now routinely receive. That's the caveat that hangs over everything else written in this article nothing I'm saying implies for a single second that there won't be single-player games released next year, or the next, or the next. In fact, that concern is unquestionably overblown the reality is that there is an enormous market for single-player experiences, and as long as that market exists there will be companies and creators who seek to provide for it.
That a handful of studios are moving away from self-contained single-player experiences is not, in and of itself, cause for major concern for this whole area of the industry's output. Destiny itself is another example of the same trend Bungie's roots are in single-player, but after transitioning more and more towards multiplayer experiences over the course of its work on the Halo franchise, Destiny and its anaemic afterthought of a narrative sealed the transition. Visceral's closure has been interpreted in some quarters as a vote of no confidence in what was thought to be a single-player focused Star Wars title it was working on EA fellow traveller Bioware, once a bastion of single-player, has focused its efforts on a Destiny-style multiplayer game. The reasons why people might feel the need to come to the defence of single-player are fairly clear, after all.
"The economics of making and selling single-player games has been getting tougher as the costs of creating content have increased" There's nothing wrong with the things being said it's the need to say them at all that's of some concern. Rumours of the death of single-player games have been greatly exaggerated but nonetheless, there's something a little concerning about the way creators and studios presently feel compelled to make statements about just how healthy single-player is right now.įrom Rockstar's insistence that it's still committed to single-player DLC in its games to the robust defences of single-player from ex-Visceral developer Zach Wilson and MachineGames developer Tommy Tordsson Björk, the message that comes across most strongly is that single-player as a concept and a category is something that needs defending.