Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 dev Tim Willits explains why the game was able to achieve massive success when so many big budget games have failed lately.
Single player games with a good story and fun replayability are what I’m after. Or co-op. Occasionally, a fun multiplayer with a risky, innovative design like Lethal Company.
If a game requires me to collect 100 goddamn feathers, or press X 20 times to “survive” a heavily scripted encounter, you are doing your game wrong. Look at Black Mesa, look at Subnatica. Look at the games that took risks like Lethal Company or Elite Dangerous. You don’t have to appeal to everyone. You have to tell a story well, and the gameplay should be unique and interesting. Larian understood that with Divinity 2, and made improvements to both story and gameplay in BG3.
Unfortunately the good taste of people who actively comment about games often has only slight overlap with what makes money.
Three of the top ten US game earners in 2024 were yearly sports game rehashes. One of the top ten games was Call Of Duty. One was Fortnite.
These are money making machines. We can argue and beg and plead all we want. There is a huge mass of gamers out there was simply don’t care, and who will continue to buy formulaic rehashes and microtransaction infested treadmills.
The AAA publishers are not in it for the art. Look at AA and indie if you want games that are willing to appeal to a niche. I’m talking to you and everyone else reading this because this might actually have an effect. Saying what AAA publishers and developers should do is pointless, not like they will ever read it.
“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.
I would argue the market for every kind of game is expanding. There’s a bigger market for Tetris now than there was in 1987, in terms of actual economic resources that could go into making Tetris profitably.
The Tetris market is a smaller percentage share of the overall gaming market, but in absolute terms it’s more money than it was in 1987.
That’s my suspicion at least.
Then the challenge is connecting that market slice with the dev shop that wants to serve that market slice. Which isn’t trivial. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind.
Every market is getting bigger, based on at least these four factors:
More cultural acceptance of gaming
Higher percentage of humanity achieving economic status where leisure becomes relevant
Proliferation of technology to greater portion of humanity
Expansion of human population
All markets are growing.
Heck, the market for COBOL programmers is larger today than ever before. That’s really interesting if you think about it.
“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.
Season passes, microtransactions, and DLCs. Additionally creating brand recognition among the masses along with flashy trailers. These are all reasons that AAA behemoths are still banked on to make huge net profits.
Sometimes these massive games fail and lose money in spectacular ways, but it happens a lot less than us enlightened good taste gamers would like to imagine. Money gets shoveled into creatively safe massive games because they usually make a huge profit. I love say, Wasteland 2, but that game probably has made less money in its entire life than the newest Fifa game made in a week.
Good story and fun replayability (to me that means branching story paths and discoverability) is tough to combine. I’m hopeful for generative AI’s ability to make good stories that are also unique. Real, in depth dialogue that stays in character, AI directors for new story paths, that kind of thing.
Single player games with a good story and fun replayability are what I’m after. Or co-op. Occasionally, a fun multiplayer with a risky, innovative design like Lethal Company.
If a game requires me to collect 100 goddamn feathers, or press X 20 times to “survive” a heavily scripted encounter, you are doing your game wrong. Look at Black Mesa, look at Subnatica. Look at the games that took risks like Lethal Company or Elite Dangerous. You don’t have to appeal to everyone. You have to tell a story well, and the gameplay should be unique and interesting. Larian understood that with Divinity 2, and made improvements to both story and gameplay in BG3.
Unfortunately the good taste of people who actively comment about games often has only slight overlap with what makes money.
Three of the top ten US game earners in 2024 were yearly sports game rehashes. One of the top ten games was Call Of Duty. One was Fortnite.
These are money making machines. We can argue and beg and plead all we want. There is a huge mass of gamers out there was simply don’t care, and who will continue to buy formulaic rehashes and microtransaction infested treadmills.
The AAA publishers are not in it for the art. Look at AA and indie if you want games that are willing to appeal to a niche. I’m talking to you and everyone else reading this because this might actually have an effect. Saying what AAA publishers and developers should do is pointless, not like they will ever read it.
“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.
I would argue the market for every kind of game is expanding. There’s a bigger market for Tetris now than there was in 1987, in terms of actual economic resources that could go into making Tetris profitably.
The Tetris market is a smaller percentage share of the overall gaming market, but in absolute terms it’s more money than it was in 1987.
That’s my suspicion at least.
Then the challenge is connecting that market slice with the dev shop that wants to serve that market slice. Which isn’t trivial. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind.
Every market is getting bigger, based on at least these four factors:
All markets are growing.
Heck, the market for COBOL programmers is larger today than ever before. That’s really interesting if you think about it.
Season passes, microtransactions, and DLCs. Additionally creating brand recognition among the masses along with flashy trailers. These are all reasons that AAA behemoths are still banked on to make huge net profits.
Sometimes these massive games fail and lose money in spectacular ways, but it happens a lot less than us enlightened good taste gamers would like to imagine. Money gets shoveled into creatively safe massive games because they usually make a huge profit. I love say, Wasteland 2, but that game probably has made less money in its entire life than the newest Fifa game made in a week.
Lethal company is literally just old school d&d tho
You go into dungeons, try to avoid all the monsters because they can kill you in one hit, get the treasure they protect and gold is xp.
Good story and fun replayability (to me that means branching story paths and discoverability) is tough to combine. I’m hopeful for generative AI’s ability to make good stories that are also unique. Real, in depth dialogue that stays in character, AI directors for new story paths, that kind of thing.
Drag wonders what you think of the feather collecting in A Short Hike