Popularity of linear games declining - EA
CFO Blake Jorgensen says cancelled Star Wars project was a type of game "people don't like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago"
After Electronic Arts announced the closure of Visceral Games and the cancellation of its Star Wars project, EA CEO Andrew Wilson cautioned people not to see it as a referendum on single-player games. That said, it may have been a referendum on linear games.
Speaking at the Credit Suisse 21st Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference yesterday, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen explained the company's reasons for closing Visceral and axing the game.
"Over the last five or six years, [Visceral Games] had shrunk in size," Jorgensen said. "It was down to about 80 people, which is sub-scale in our business. And the game they were making was actually being supported by a team in Vancouver and a team in Montreal because of that sub-scale nature. And we were trying to build a game that really pushed gameplay to the next level, and as we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a style of gaming, a much more linear game, that people don't like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago."
It was about three and a half years ago when EA hired Amy Hennig to be the creative director on Visceral's Star Wars game. Hennig is best known for her work at her previous employer, Naughty Dog, where she was creative director for the studio's acclaimed series of linear action games, Uncharted.
EA may not have much interest in publishing linear games, but Jorgensen said he's still looking to salvage what he can from the Visceral project.
"[W]e made the tough decision to shut down that game team and take the parts of that game, and today we're looking at what we're going to do with those," Jorgensen said. "Will me make the game in a different style at a different studio? Will we use parts of the game in other games? We're trying to go through that today."
Jorgensen said the company has been redeploying Visceral developers throughout the company, and is attempting to retain as many of them as possible.
"We haven't had to do this very often," he said. "We try to do it as early as possible in game design, and we probably let this go a little further. But I'm a believer in sunk costs. You've got to cut the bridge when you realize you can't really make a lot of money on something, so that's the decision we made."
Fixed.
By all means, make the game you want, but be honest and don't crap over all the other companies who still want to do big linear single player games.
We're already seeing many games pick a target audience (either linear OR multiplayer) so that split in the market is likely to grow, leaving linear fans with shorter games and multiplayer fans with minimal story content.
Either that or some new tech will make production cheaper...
Linear single player games are not in decline and are not less fun.
It is all about money, expectations, how you treat your customers and your development process. Sure, if you want to serve a huge Triple-A game things are different compared to A/AA games with linear story telling. But these games are profitable too thus it is working.
Talking down an entire segment of games to justify your desire for micro-transactions and questionable schemes is not ok.
Uncharted 4 is the definition of a linear game and it sold 8.7 million copies in 2016 on a single platform. Lost Legacy sold 600K in the first week alone, also on a single platform.
Stuff like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed: Origins are open but still have a linear story progression, how are they doing?
I think the real point here is that the popularity of EA games is declining, not that linear games are declining.
Lock up online functionality until you beat the single player. Done.
Forza 3 locks it up until 4-6 hours into single player. Great example.
Reality-check: Revenue generated from titles such as those mentioned above is DWARFED by MOBAs and Battle Royales and Star Wars'es and Robloxes and other giga IP from China that you likely have never heard of, and all those loot crates that inevitable comes with the territory of successfully building real money printing machines are here to stay. On a side note, would regulating loot boxes as gambling result in every game company of the world moving their HQs to, say, Malta? Because I don’t the EAs or ActiBlizzes or Tencents of this world are going to roll over and die anytime soon.
Macro: States are competing with giga-corporations too now, for potential tax revenue obviously. So it's not only the indies AAA's or III's that are being dwarfed by the new Khans.
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/2016_top_sellers/
And then there's Bioshock Infinite, proving that a good linear single player game can even surpass that mythical 10 million sales number (and that was before the 8th gen console re-release).
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Guy on 10th December 2017 12:38pm
Can't say I agree, nor that I get where those perceptions come from with tittles like Wolfenstein or the Walking Dead saga being so popular. I wish they developed more.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Axel Cushing on 1st December 2017 5:47pm
So all they are saying is that for them, for EA, it doesn't work. The rest of us can do whatever makes business sense for us.
On the other hand, if more such large publishers stop making these games, it sounds like space is opening for indies to write wonderful story based little gems for those who love this style of gaming.
And there are plenty already.