Board 8 > Dragon Age 4 now "allowed" to be single player after Anthem's failure

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1365005940739743745

Wow it's almost like people enjoy games that prioritize being fun, complete experiences over design-by-committee money printing skinner boxes.

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Xiahou Shake posted...

design-by-committee money printing skinner boxes.

Well, they wouldn't print money if people didn't like them

The problem isn't with the companies, the problem is with the consumers for gravitating towards those skinner boxes. Anthem didn't fail because it was a cash grab, it was because it was a BAD cash grab

Regardless, glad DA4 is single-player even though I have 0 expectations for it being good

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There are plenty of fun, complete live games and multiplayer games. They just arent the ones that you tack on to a game developed by a studio with no experience developing live games.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Anthem didn't fail because it was a cash grab, it was because it was a BAD cash grab

I want to believe we're seeing a trend of these types of games losing traction considering we also have Avengers' spectacular failure, though by all accounts that was also a bad cash grab.

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Your optimism is enviable!

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KamikazePotato posted...

Well, they wouldn't print money if people didn't like them

So if a product is addictive it's enjoyable? Those two things are interchangable in your mind?

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Imagine how many more copies of Anthem they would have sold if they packaged it with some meth.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

There are plenty of fun, complete live games and multiplayer games. They just arent the ones that you tack on to a game developed by a studio with no experience developing live games.

I can agree with this. Even I've had plenty of fun with stuff like Fall Guys, Dota, Warframe, etc. The cases I really take exception to are when the service aspect is stapled onto - or entirely supplants - a game that really shouldn't be anywhere near that model because the publisher is seeing dollar signs.

I'd also argue there's something fundamentally different between these fun, complete live games and the ones that are clearly designed to psychologically manipulate people into spending money above all else.

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Am I wrong that them revealing this is just going to be a single player game is the first time it has been revealed that it was GOING to be a live service game??

Avengers was a bad cash grab, however its chances of recovery are much higher than Anthems.

With that said, not all trends are natural, some are mandated on high. EAs attitude towards single player games is chief among them. You may remember the infamous people dont want single player games anymore quote from a few years ago - this was of course the same year you had gigantic single player sales hits like Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Horizon and Nier Automata, and two years before EA would release one of their most successful non-sports titles of recent years, Jedi: Fallen Order, a single player game. Obviously that quote was not accurate. It was just EA trying to push what they wanted to do to make more money.

This also wasnt the first time that EA had done this either. In 2010, the same year that EA published Mass Effect 2, they referred to the single player model as finished, and would go on to force multiplayer into their single player games like Dead Space 2. Needless to say, single player games were not finished. They werent responding to the market, they were trying to shape the market.

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I guess this means Mass Effect 4 will also be allowed to be single player

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That game is unlikely to come out, and from the sounds of things Dragon Age 4 is either a good way off or in trouble.

Honestly Ive made my peace, there were some great Bioware games in the past and we can move on now. If their new one are great, thats awesome, but Im not putting any expectation or hope on them.

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Leonhart4 posted...

I guess this means Mass Effect 4 will also be allowed to be single player

what if DA4 is a bad game though, I mean andromeda was not received well either and that was single player. Maybe they should hold off on the single player just in case

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Dragonair posted...

what if DA4 is a bad game though, I mean andromeda was not received well either and that was single player. Maybe they should hold off on the single player just in case

Andromeda was multiplayer.
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