Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell
Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell
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.
And ignoring all the attempts at a game-as-a-service that fail
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”
man who normally buys "narrative-driven, story-rich games" forced to put his money back into his wallet
Anything good you can recommend? Haven't seen much good since Witcher 3... And before that, maybe Gothic 2 or Oblivion.
Baldurs gate 3? One of the best games I ever played.
Since The Witcher 3 came out, my favorite video game stories have been Disco Elysium, Cyberpunk 2077, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Alan Wake 2, Citizen Sleeper, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. I also really liked Death Stranding, but Kojima's not for everyone.
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.
If you liked the story driven elements of TW3 you might like Cyberpunk 2077. Its very similar story and engine 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.
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.
....Yakuza
Bros being bros forever.
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.
I've been loving Metaphor recently
Control? Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.
I've been playing Outer Worlds lately. It's made by Obsidian so it's gameplay is similar to F:NV.
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.
The new Indiana Jones game is really fun.
Narrative-driven games made Valve into Valve. But ok, you do you.
A better way to put it is story driven games sell. Mobile and MTX games sell better.
Mobile and MTX games sell better make more money
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.
Yeah it's depressing, I'm amazed we're getting anything good at all by this point
Honestly I can't think of a recent game I enjoyed that wasn't a narrative-driven story rich game.
They’re the only games I enjoy. And I could’ve sworn I’ve seen people all over the internet lamenting the loss of story-driven single player games in this era of GTA online. These douchebags are either salivating 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.
Doom eternal comes to mind
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.
Really? It feels like every other AAA game is an interactive movie these days.
This was barely true like 10 years ago. Now everything is mobile games and live services.
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)
Narrative-driven, story-rich MTX and Battlepasses.
thats a shitty excuse if i ever heard one
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.
Larian rn:
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.
Even the Divinity games were way above par, with a much more lukewarm (but not unsuccessful, I guess?) reception.
Shit I loved Divinity Original Sin and the sequel, but even I don't think Larian could match or exceed BG3
Did these developers completely miss Baldurs Gate 3
We could spend all day and night listing successful SP games, I bet they canceled it because the game was just bad.
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.
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.
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
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.
because it's made up. The stock has value because we think it does. Clap your hands if you believe!
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.
If Frostpunk is their idea of a "narrative-driven, story-rich game", I can see why they have concerns.
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.
Bad ones, sure. Wait, no, even bad ones sell. They’re just wrong.
Sony has been screaming the exact opposite of this and it continues to garner them a fuck ton of cash. You don’t even need Sony money to do it, as per Baldurs gate that many are also referencing here in the comments.
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
This is exactly it. They don't like their profit margin.
I'm going to guess they mean narrative-driven "games" like Hellblade or Indika, which were all narrative and almost no game.
even so they both were extremely well received
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
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.)
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!”
Maybe the people are just out of touch? I'm sure that's it.
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 that sells maybe one or two.
If I could get some official, quality, Umbrella/Shinra/Arasaka/Faro corporation mugs, phone covers, meme tier shirts etc I'd be all over it.
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.
Exactly
They also take a lot longer to develop
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.
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 copilot
While 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.
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.
I think it's probably true though. I pitched my game to them and they graciously responded and said they are looking into publishing narrative driven games but rather mechanically complex games.
Thats the studio head talking bullahit.
Not the actual creators
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.
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 on that... What gives?
Typical RPS.
Ah, so managerial problems again who would have thought but that's OK we that make the things can suffer a little more
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.
The Last of Us is still selling.
Which one? The original? The Remaster or the Remake? Or the 2nd or the Remaster of the 2nd?
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 (not out yet, my bad) , The Traumathurge, Creatures of Ava ,... all of these games seemed like really cool things to me, sadly I could not afford them.
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, https://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.
Thank you for the correction. The alters is indeed not out yet.
In my opinion for the other I doesn't matter whether they are just publishing or actually developing. The games are not bar but apparently don't sell well. Maybe their not the greatest at marketing but I enjoy the vibes they are going for
I liked Frostpunk and would have loved a story driven game in that universe.
NGL the title always seemed like it wanted to be a mobile game so the studio saying this doesn't surprise me.
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.
Sad but I can see their point, considering that most customer attention spans are limited to memes now.
You're not wrong at all.
Baldurs Gate 3 was a surprise success. But then again, it took them many years and many Divinity games.
Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk also are narrative darlings. But CD Projekt took a lot of chances over the years to get here.
A bunch of my favorite heavy-story games are sitting at under 2000 steam reviews. While Meme game for Twitch Streamer hits 10k-100k reviews.
I'm currently playing Shadows of Loathing right now, and I can't believe it took me this long. Next up is Beyond Shadowgate.
Boy those are some memories! My comment was actually just a cheeky response to "you do you" - which always triggers me for some reason. I can understand the douchevotes it's getting lol.
I'm in there. I see "story rich" and it reads as a crutch for no gameplay, or a premise for a book without the responsibility of pacing.
I know that's far from true, and there are loads of great story-rich games that are fun and engaging. But when that's the main tag, it turns me away.
jizzpunk
Just put some digital boobs in the game. It WILL sell
Did we already forget that BG3 existed like once year later...?
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.
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.
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....
They finally confirmed or denied this claim?