Duxxy3
Member
BC2 has multiplayer?
I played through the campaign a few times, but never touched the multiplayer.
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CliffyB: FPS Campaigns cost 75% of the budget
- Thread starter Renekton
- Start date
BC2 has multiplayer?
I played through the campaign a few times, but never touched the multiplayer.
Right. If the campaign costs 75%, battlefront should have cost less. Instead, it cost full price +.
YuriLowell
Member
So MP only games should be 75% cheaper.
Battlefront and siege both were in the top 10 yearly NPD chart. So i'd guess they are doing fine saleswise.
hooijdonk17
Member
You're doing it wrong. If it actually had a campaign it would have cost 240$ + 240$ season pass.
Haunted
Member
Bad Company 1 had the best campaign in any Battlefield game. Characters that had actual personalities and personal motivations instead of gruff military tropes walking around and saving the world was such a breath of fresh air when the competition got all too stale.
edit: I know it's tempting, but expecting the price to correlate to the production budget is a logical fallacy.
By that logic, Assassin's Creed games should probably be around 300 and not the 80 + microtransactions they are now.
edit: I know it's tempting, but expecting the price to correlate to the production budget is a logical fallacy.
By that logic, Assassin's Creed games should probably be around 300 and not the 80 + microtransactions they are now.
L4DANathan
Member
I don't have a problem with the concept of MP-only games, but I'm just gonna say that's a misleading as hell comment. Probably 50% or more of the costs are things like models, textures, environmental assets, etc, that are used in both modes. He's sending an inaccurate message that implies the cost of making a MP-only game is only 25% of making a game with both, which is laughably wrong. Good talk otherwise.
Gamer @ Heart
Member
A QTE Cutscene where the player has little control and is entirely directed is a hell of a lot cheaper to design/create/test than something actually interactive.
What you want, a rich and deep mechanics/feature driven experience where things interact and play with each other with high visual and audio production to boot, is an expensive nightmare to make. Either you pay 400+ people to make and test that game in order to ship it in a reasonable time, or you go the Bethesda route and give 100 people 4 years to make something.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Been seeing a lot of terrible misconceptions spewed lately. Equating price to the production budget? I don't think some of you realize how much more expensive that would make all triple A games these days. Seriously.
I definitely agree. It is two out of very few examples. However, I do think it serves as a warning that publishers can do these things and it wouldn't surprise me if they could, they would be more than happy to make sure you couldn't play your older games so you would buy their latest one.
And yeah, you have discs, but do you disagree that it is the general development of the game industry moving towards digital more and more?
I'm not quite sure what I can say here other than 'Yes'. Or rather - to be a bit more precise - to make the same game as you made last generation to a PS4/XBO level of quality will cost more.
The market is straining to accommodate the costs of developing the games the market is demanding; something of a catch-22!
Betting the farm is getting priced out, because - correct or otherwise - you feel you need to spend that much to compete, but can't afford to fail. Screwed by a publisher is getting priced out, because they aren't signing up to fund things that they don't feel will make a profit that justifies the opportunity cost.
They're all different ways the budgetary push manifests itself, I would argue.
And one of the ways they're doing that is reducing the scope of what's on offer. It's an option they hadn't explored that much in the past - but that's exactly what they're trying here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to paint them as in need of charity - just trying to highlight what I believe are the thought processes that led to this. It may well be woefully incorrect, of course it might. But we're here now, and it's worth exploring how we got here.
Well, no, I'd bet on the latter - because just trying to break even is really dumb business. It means you're always balancing on a knife-edge.
Can I suggest the following, and this may possibly be tainted by my own perception of things: If there wasn't a rise in budgets as we entered this generation, why are we now seeing a particular rise in MP-focussed titles? There were exceptions, of course, one or two last gen that spring to mind, but the ones that are being bandied around in this discussion are rather more high-profile.
I would suggest that it's not a particularly new idea, but it's being done now because - for now - it may be perceived to be a necessary idea.
That's absolutely fair. I'm on the same boat with most of the Call of Duty games I've played, though I'll admit I'm in the minority. The point in all of this being I think there is room for full priced games that exclusively offer single player or multiplayer.
Blackleg-sanji1
Banned
I mean i wont suggest that games without an campaign be 75% cheaper..but you have to wonder than why games like battlefront,evolve,titanfall etc need $30-$50 season passss too than!!
As well as being barebones(eh titanfall not so much in this regard, would have loved more mechs tho)
As well as being barebones(eh titanfall not so much in this regard, would have loved more mechs tho)
Gamezone
Gold Member
It doesn`t hurt him to say stuff like this at all because he is working on a F2P game. He also hates physical games and offline games, and probably single player campaigns too.
N
Noray
Unconfirmed Member
R6 Siege absolutely does that, so I don't know what you're talking about. It's a deeper multiplayer FPS than anything I've ever seen, between the oprator abilities, destructibility, graphics, large maps (with free maps being added post-launch).
Also why are people contesting the "no one replays games" charge? Most people don't even FINISH games, let alone replay them. I don't have access to stats right now but it's true. GAF is NOT representative of the majority, and a lot of people here often make the fallacious assumption that it is.
I would get behind this.
Darkstorne
Member
A Star Wars game selling insanely well during the launch of a Star Wars film? You don't say.
You think CoD would still sell as well as it does if Activision removed the SP component? And to clarify (because I know it's a hot topic) I don't think MP only games are bad and wrong. They're not for me, and I'm absolutely okay with that. I believe that SP components help sell shooters more than people realize though, not just for the gameplay appeal to those of us who don't have the time or the interest for MP, but also for the marketing opportunities in cinema and on TV that "cinematic" campaigns provide (the voice acting, the characters, the set pieces, etc).
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
I still play unreal tournament 2004, quake 3, Starcraft, street fighter and battlefield.
I don't mind paying full price for a game that I still play a decade later. Not sure where that mp only games should be cheaper thing came from.
I don't mind paying full price for a game that I still play a decade later. Not sure where that mp only games should be cheaper thing came from.
Fair enough, sure, of course it is. But it hasn't done yet, I still largely buy all my games physically (as do most of the console market), and I can't see that changing this gen. Agree that you have a valid point going forward a few years, just not right now.
BattleMonkey
Member
SP campaigns cost alot for a ton of reasons. Voice acting and making cutscenes takes a good amount of time to do right. Actual AI does require alot of work well. Unlike MP where you make content for others to use, with SP you have to make a presentation that works for several hours without problem. Each few minutes of a campaign has to be tested, tested, tested, and programmed till it works right. To do several hours of scripted SP content is a whole lot of more work. Just a 5 min sequence of a battle in a FPS battle could take days/weeks to get all together and working fine. Also for hours of content you have to keep producing new content via assets the players will be seeing. It's not just having assets and making several small arena MP like maps, in a SP campaign players are always moving forward and presented with new stuff. Look at a typical CoD campaign, and even if it seems short, realize how much you actually go through and see as you play? You go through an area in a few seconds of gameplay, but all those assets to populate that area take a long time to make.
Whompa02
Member
Disagree about Titanfall doing the campaign right...I thought they completely sold that game as one with a campaign, yet it just felt totally tacked on and cheap. I expected a lot more at least. Shouldn't sell a campaign and then full price it.
Rainbow Six should be 40 dollars at most. Same situation, but at least they were upfront about it.
R6 is just as much an offender as all the other titles. With how many maps did it ship? Sure you get some for free but the new operator you probably rather want to buy with real money because everything else is a grind.
N
Noray
Unconfirmed Member
11, what's the problem here? They all have several different objective locations too. You don't like the game, fine. But it feels every bit a fully-featured game. Also I have easily enough cash from playing the game normally, which is... like, that's what you do? That's not a grind. If you like the game enough that you want those operators it's likely you're playing it enough to unlock them for free, no problem. Anything else is academic.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Maybe because an mp only can still be fun to play 5 years later.
single player is usually just taking up space after the campaign is finished.
Should games that have sp and mp be a 100 dollars?
I get your point, but some SP-only games are fun to play and replay them over and over again. This is what I value the most of a sp campain. I guess that, 60 dlls is a standard, regardless of what the budget for developing a game is. This doesn't mean is the best standard but as so, it drives decisions on what is packed as the main game and what as dlc.
I don't get all this budget talk. Who cares? That's up to the publisher and what they think will be the most profitable, and as a consumer if you feel it is worth that value. If it's a crap value, don't buy it. If it still sells, then good on the publisher (but expect DLC to trail off as people drop, excess titles in used market, etc.). If it's going to be a tacked-on campaign that is beyond forgettable, why bother? Reverse is also true (TR'13). It ultimately comes down to "will this game that cost $X give me enough entertainment to justify it?"
Shang
Member
That's the thing for me. On a conceptual level, I am fine with games coming out multiplayer only, but, just like single-player only games, it better do it right. Many multiplayer only games are coming out with a small amount of content, which is especially noticeable when you attach that to a $60 price tag.
There's also the issues that come with multiplayer, like having to pay a subscription on consoles, and the game being playable depending on the people who want to play it, if they exist.
You've got that backwards. Single player games will always be playable again, but multiplayer games can become unplayable for a multitude of reasons. Specifically, players deserting it and servers going down.
???
do you mean like coming in the next day for a snail whatever? Also Splatoon has a single player mode. also what what what
N
Noray
Unconfirmed Member
If you think you can quantify how "much" is in a game, or how good it is/what it's worth by counting maps, or levels, or weapons, or whatever, sure!
WrenchNinja
Member
As much as I dislike Call of Duty, they always go for broke with their offerings of single player, co-op, and competitive muliplayer. Not every game can be Call of Duty, but it doesn't feel like these mp only games are even trying to give more than CoD on that specofoc front.
80s Bad Guy
Banned
Making a hamburger, the meat is like 75% of the budget. Why can't you guys just eat the bun and be happy?
To me, I value a game as in how many hours I'm going to put into it. I don't care what was the budget/price, really. I payed 6 bucks for L4D2 and would've paid 60 for it. I paid a 100 for Battlefield 4 premium and have played more than 400 hrs. Same goes for Bloodborne. Isn't everything reduced to this? Having fun for what you pay? Maybe I'm the only one feeling like this I don't know...
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
This. There is no objective metric. Only personal feelings of value. I am 43 hours in on Battlefront, still not 50, still have not unlocked even close to everything, and still having fun every single time I play it. They are also having free monthly content updates with the patches and balancing. Worth every penny to me.
Alpha Phoenix
Member
+1
Duxxy3
Member
That would be the end of gaming for me.
entremet
Member
Chaos2Frozen
Member
If anything i think GTAV should be 3 times the price.
We're basically robbing Rockstar by only paying $60
We're basically robbing Rockstar by only paying $60
Alpha Phoenix
Member
I seem to recall reading somewhere that Titanfall 2 will have a campaign.
I would imagine most people don't justify what they're willing to pay on launch based on what they expect to be available in 2020.
D
Deleted member 325805
Unconfirmed Member
I've never played a CoD campaign, it's just not why I buy the game. I'd be all for a multiplayer only CoD if it were cheaper.
Suzushiiro
Banned
I remember hearing somewhere that Respawn's people did a survey on why people didn't buy Titanfall. The top two reasons were that it wasn't on PS4 and that it had no single-player. I would imagine that for some MP games there are a lot of people who may be interested in the game's setting/mechanics/etc. but don't really like competitive multiplayer.
Beyond that, for long-running MP-based games like CoD in particular the primary reason why the campaign is a thing is because the evolution on the MP side gets to the point where there's not many interesting things to say about it, so the campaign is basically there so marketing has something interesting to talk about.
Beyond that, for long-running MP-based games like CoD in particular the primary reason why the campaign is a thing is because the evolution on the MP side gets to the point where there's not many interesting things to say about it, so the campaign is basically there so marketing has something interesting to talk about.
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