While It Will Never Die, Single-Player Will Always Be Expensive
The debate around single-player games was sparked the moment EA shut down Visceral Game Studios for crafting a “linear” Star Wars experience. According to Xbox’s Shannon Loftis, it’s not single-player games that are complicated but their economics. While they’ll never stop being made, publishers are worried about the revenue they generate.
As the Xbox boss of first-party publishing, Loftis shared some valuable insight into what affects the greenlighting of a linear story campaign.
“Game development, in general, is about a couple of things,” she said in an interview with GameSpot. “It’s about delivering an experience and it’s about telling stories. Storytelling is as central to game development as it ever has been.”
While the format will never go out of style, the demand for a quality single-player games comes with a hiking price tag. Gamers want better resolution, a better story, and a high-fidelity experience. All these things, Loftis explains, come with a budget that makes publishers second-guess their returns:
“I don’t think that it’s dead per se. I do think the economics of taking a single-player game and telling a very high fidelity multi-hour story get a little more complicated. Gamers want higher fidelity and they want higher resolution graphics.”
Of course, many single-player story games have proven to be financially successful. Among those mentioned by Loftis are Bethesda’s Fallout 4, Sony’s Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Microsoft’s own Ori and the Blind Forest. Nevertheless, publishers are always looking for ways to increase their returns from games. As a result, it’s becoming rare to not see microtransactions in triple-A franchises. The recently released Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is one example while the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Origins is another.
Visceral notwithstanding, Loftis believes the industry will never stop cranking out compelling single-player story adventures; they might simply become a little more scarce:
“I don’t think that there is ever going to be a time when there aren’t single-player, story-based games,” she said. “I do love the idea of building a community around the experience of these games.”
There’s more than communities built around single-player experiences, however. Companies are constantly looking for ways to finance single-player-only games, and Loftis mentions one in the form of Xbox Game Pass. Retail sales alongside subscription revenue “helps us put games like that in the market over time,” she explained.
Do you think single-player story games are going anywhere? What are your thoughts on the market? Let us know in the comments below.