Current Events > Amy Hennig: People ask for story based games but aren't buying them

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't really get LP watchers, tbh. I've watched some before, sure, but it's been because it was a game I had already played and wanted to know more about. You're missing the whole point if you just go for the story. A good game gives you elements to play with in order to set up a series of meaningful choices. This even applies to gsmes thst are sometimes considered mindless, like Call of Duty or whatever. You still choose which enemy to kill first, how to kill it, which direction to move to dodge attacks, etc. And if it's particularly story-based, it works the other way around, too, where the choices you made become a part of the story experience. Not even in terms of branching story, necessarily, but just by knowing that the things that shape the story are things that you, the player, contributed to.

100% of which is lost on people who watch the cutscenes without playing the game.
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Banjo2553 posted...

Edit: I do feel like these super linear story games should have stricter rules on being recorded for Let's Plays though, if that really does hurt their sales. The alternative is to not make movie-like games though. You can have a good story in a game while it still largely being a game.

As I mentioned earlier in the topic, some visual novels do, usually like "don't stream past the common route" but if they enforce it too heavily, there'd be a backlash about their "draconian" handling of the situation. That's why it's more of a gentle suggestion, which people will obviously ignore.
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I will say one thing. I'll take a good story driven game over a multiplayer one any day. But I can see where devs are coming from in a way. The only games I will buy on launch for $60 are open world games and RPGs. Spending $60 on a game you'll be done with in 10 hours or less and never touch again is just woke ridiculous bullshit. I won't do it, and will wait for a deep sale. You can see 6 two hour movies for that much money and it's still more time than the game would take to beat. It's just not economically viable.

I really do subscribe to rhe idea that we are ever approaching another gaming crash, and have been since games hit $60.

They're spending way too much to make games, from development to advertising. The AAA industry is massively creatively bankrupt. The few new IPs and interesting games that do get made get almost no advertising at all typically, so of course they don't sell well. The ones that do make it big are flukes made popular by word of mouth alone.

The AAA industry is just completely unsustainable.
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oh, sweet child, Amy, bless your heart

I get it, you're so excited about the story you have to tell that you forget to build a game around it. People get the full experience merely watching someone else plod through your mediocre interactive movie, and despite the gigantic free advertisement youre getting, nobody is buying because you didnt give them a reason to do so.

But no, clearly linear story-focused games are dying out as people just watch them instead. Uncharted didnt get massive sales despite every cinematic in the games being readily available right on YouTube. Nor did TLoU, RE7, and plenty of other games Im too lazy to recollect. What a genius, Amy. Its a wonder you got shitcanned.
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Darmik posted...

EverDownward posted...

That's because two of those games are made by a dev that clearly has love for cult classics from the past, and all three of them are published by Bethesda which has a pretty s***ty record when it comes to what they're developing or producing. The paid mods scandal, the Creation Club fiasco, their reputation is tainted and people don't want to trust them. It's a damn shame Arkane is under their umbrella, because you can tell they have a lot of love for the Looking Glass games of the past, and Prey, especially, is pretty damn good.

Those controversies only impact Bethesda Game Studio titles and they have no issues selling at all.

dave_is_slick posted...

Except for Dishonored 2 (which I think was a fluke sales-wise considering many loved the first) they were barely advertised. Hell, I don't remember seeing any ads for Evil Within.

Bethesda marketed Evil Within 2 pretty hard.

I don't think it's a coincidence that all of the immersive sim games in the last few years bombed. They've been hit the worst.

Most casual players dont have the patience for immersive sim nowadays. They just want games thats easy on the brain where they can spend some time till they get bored and continued playing.

Immersive sim and (real) rpg needs dedication, effort, and thinking to play. Learning AI behavior, the system, tools, level up system, etc are just too taxing for people who dont love videogames that much.

Thats why popukar games today are brain dead clicker with instant gratification dopamine pumper with flashy shit on screen.

I would kill for another game like arx fatalis by arkane (at least we got underworld ascendant and consortium : the tower this year) and all it need is to be successful withon this fairly large niche because they dont need as big of a sales compared to dishonored or prey because their budget are considerably lower
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Hmm
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pres_madagascar posted...

I really do subscribe to the idea that we are ever approaching another gaming crash, and have been since games hit $60.

So for over 20 years you've been believing such a thing?
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You realize games are cheaper than ever now because their prices haven't risen, right

I used to disagree when people called gamers entitled but jfc
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Evidence of the younger generation ruining gaming.

Remember when every game wasn't sandbox?
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This makes me glad that there are not any AAA games that I really like, unless you want to count some of Nintendo's bigger franchises (Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Smash), but I hardly ever see anyone refer to those as AAA.
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Solar_Crimson posted...

This makes me glad that there are not any AAA games that I really like, unless you want to count some of Nintendo's bigger franchises (Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Smash), but I hardly ever see anyone refer to those as AAA.

Those are definitely AAA
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Darmik posted...

SatanicHalibut posted...

Darmik posted...

A $60 single player shooter that could be beaten in under 10 hours?

The Order 1886

And how did that go?

Poorly, but the devs had a PR shitstorm around the game killing any chance of success

So you really can't use as an example for your point
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