Titanfall Team Decides Against Single-Player Campaign

[RJ 17]

Snip.

Risk-taking is part of being in business. You can either go for the gold knowing there's a chance you can fail, or you can play it safe for a guaranteed, but much smaller, return. By most people's accounts, CoD is getting old. It's reign at the top isn't going to last much longer, how are we going to find "the next big thing" if developers are too afraid to try and make "the next big thing"? Sure, there's a good chance the game could flop if you go all-in on Multiplayer Only, but by pooling your resources and focusing your efforts on multiplayer, you're given a better chance to create something truly special.

Maybe it was a bit much for me to say "ALL FPS's should be multiplayer only", but you cannot deny that the guy has a point. Going back to the genre leader: how many CoD players actually care about the story? I'm sure there's a percentage of'em, but it's heavily outmatch by the percentage of players that just want to play the multiplayer. Putting a story in just seems like it's more tradition now than anything. Months of development spent on the single player only to come with a campaign that can be breezed through in a few hours because most of the game's resources were spent on multiplayer anyways. Why not just skip the single player and do everything you can to make a damn fine multiplayer experience?

Look at Team Fortress 2: no single player campaign to be found, and people absolutely love it.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Snip.

Risk-taking is part of being in business. You can either go for the gold knowing there's a chance you can fail, or you can play it safe for a guaranteed, but much smaller, return. By most people's accounts, CoD is getting old. It's reign at the top isn't going to last much longer, how are we going to find "the next big thing" if developers are too afraid to try and make "the next big thing"? Sure, there's a good chance the game could flop if you go all-in on Multiplayer Only, but by pooling your resources and focusing your efforts on multiplayer, you're given a better chance to create something truly special.

Maybe it was a bit much for me to say "ALL FPS's should be multiplayer only", but you cannot deny that the guy has a point. Going back to the genre leader: how many CoD players actually care about the story? I'm sure there's a percentage of'em, but it's heavily outmatch by the percentage of players that just want to play the multiplayer. Putting a story in just seems like it's more tradition now than anything. Months of development spent on the single player only to come with a campaign that can be breezed through in a few hours because most of the game's resources were spent on multiplayer anyways. Why not just skip the single player and do everything you can to make a damn fine multiplayer experience?

Look at Team Fortress 2: no single player campaign to be found, and people absolutely love it.

Taking *smart* risks is a part of being in business. There's a point in time where you just need to recognize when there are more fertile portions of the market to go after. You also need to be able to subsidize the potential losses from risky products with more stable revenue streams, which requires you to not break the bank on them. We've seen companies put out products that need to sell as many copies as the market leader in order to turn a profit, and it never turns out well. Meanwhile, the biggest new successes tend to come from companies that found an unexploited market and exploded in popularity. CoD-style shooters weren't leading sales until CoD came along. And the neat thing about unexploited markets is that there's a lower cost of entry.

EA has been trying the "force a hit by spending extroardinary amounts of money" strategy and it's resulted in such flawless successes as MOD:Warfighter and TOR.

 

[hooksashands]

As a matter of fact, I'll go ahead and say it: I think all FPS's might as well be Multiplayer Only...seems like that's what the majority of FPS players get them for anyways. And by focusing all their resources on developing a quality multiplayer experience, we might just see some truly memorable multiplayer games. That still leaves plenty of genres to which single player is more applicable (puzzle, action/adventure, RPG just to name a few).

Agreed. It would also cut down on the workload. I always thought it was a kinda sad that multiplayer-centric games are required to have a campaign/story when the average gamer only plays through it once. Someone put lots of time and effort into that single player portion; All the characters, environments, storyboards, vehicles, voice-acting, etc. And they're never revisited. I almost feels like they serve as little more than padded out tutorials now, or just an excuse to get famous actors on-board for voice work.

 

[RJ 17]

CoD-style shooters weren't leading sales until CoD came along. And the neat thing about unexploited markets is that there's a lower cost of entry.

My point exactly, Respawn is still a small company at this point and has to be careful how it uses its resources. Edit(kinda forgot an important sentence or two in here) Respawn is trying to come up with a new idea and experience to see if it'll be a hit, because just like you said: "CoD-style shooters weren't leading sales until CoD came along." Again: risk taking, "how can we find the next big thing if we don't go looking for it?" Respawn is taking a chance with this new game and hoping that it takes off, so they want to put it together as well as they can.End Edit They can either divvy their resources up between a story campaign and a multiplayer and likely end up with a bland, mediocre-at-best game because they spread themselves too thin, or they can focus their efforts in one or the other. There's countless singleplayer-only games out there, and when those games suddenly show up with multiplayer the gaming community starts moaning "Ohhhhh that multiplayer is just shoehorned in! It's completely unnecessary! Yadda-yadda-yadda!" Mass Effect 3 is a perfect example of this.

Isn't it a bit hypocritical then to look at a game that's declaring itself multiplayer-only and get pissed off because they DON'T want to shoehorn in a completely unnecessary singleplayer campaign? Again I point to the popularity of games like Team Fortress 2. That game is multiplayer-only and no one bitches about there being no campaign to it. My point is that just like how there's no reason to force multiplayer into a game that's primarily designed as singleplayer, there's also no reason to force singpleplayer into a game that's being primarily designed as a multiplayer.

 

[EvilRoy]

Maybe it was a bit much for me to say "ALL FPS's should be multiplayer only", but you cannot deny that the guy has a point. Going back to the genre leader: how many CoD players actually care about the story? I'm sure there's a percentage of'em, but it's heavily outmatch by the percentage of players that just want to play the multiplayer. Putting a story in just seems like it's more tradition now than anything. Months of development spent on the single player only to come with a campaign that can be breezed through in a few hours because most of the game's resources were spent on multiplayer anyways. Why not just skip the single player and do everything you can to make a damn fine multiplayer experience?

Look at Team Fortress 2: no single player campaign to be found, and people absolutely love it.

Fair, and I certainly support developers tightening their focus to create a superior product, but there are dangers in producing multiplayer only FPS games. They suffer from the exact same thing as MMORPGs do, every single one must inevitably be compared to WOW and they must effectively fight WOW for playerbase.

If you make an online only FPS you open yourself up to being compared to TF2 and COD for team based FPS, and L4D, ZombieCOD and Day Z if its a zombieshooter. And unfortunately you have to have a pretty amazing showing to do well, because you are fighting well established franchises with large to massive player bases and competing on price point with a F2P and a mod in the PC market. Just look at what happened to Brink, admittedly the game had issues but it got chewed up and spit out so fast the developers didn't have a chance to try to fix it.

Edit:
Unfucked some quotes.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

Perfectly good points, but that goes back to what I was talking about with risk-taking. Indeed, you've got to fight the current king of the hill before you can become the king of the hill yourself. But does that mean you should just give up and not even bother trying because "Damnit, we'll NEVER make an MMO that's better than WoW. It's the end-all-be-all of MMO's and there really is no point in putting in the effort to try and dethrone it" or saying the same thing about shooters and CoD? Like I said, we're never going to find "the next big thing" unless people are willing to challenge the current big thing. Is there a chance this could be a bust? Certainly, and it wouldn't be the first one to fall short of CoD's throne. But it's worth the effort if you honestly believe you've got a shot at pulling it off, and by pooling your resources into multiplayer-only rather than trying to slap in a singleplayer campaign that will likely go neglected by most players, I'd argue that you're giving yourself the best possible chance. We all know that the majority of CoD players play it primarily for the multiplayer, so that's the arena in which the battle will be decided. By putting all your resources into a multiplayer game, you're putting all your effort into creating a multiplayer experience that you hope will be able to finally knock the king from his multiplayer throne.

 

[vashthblackseed]

As long as there is a decent SP tutorial I can accept this. I still won't buy it, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

To clarify, the point of the TF2 comparison wasn't to say that this game is going to be as big of a hit as TF2. Indeed, it is going to be primarily on consoles and as such has to deal with console shooters as competitors. The point of bringing up TF2 was to show that there's other multiplayer-only games out there and people don't complain about them...so why are they complaining about this one declaring itself as multiplayer-only?

And I'd argue the very fact that they ARE making this a console shooter and thus inevitably putting it up against CoD is risk-taking. For that matter, they're taking an even bigger risk by going all-in on multiplayer. As I said to EvilRoy: whether or not a shooter is better than CoD will be decided with it's multiplayer, as that's why the majority of CoD players play CoD in the first place. You could come up with a wonderful campaign and indepth story and sell some units, but you'll never be as big as the multiplayer fanbase for CoD unless you take the challenge to the realm of multiplayer. By putting all your effort and resources into creating your multiplayer experience, I'd argue that you're giving yourself the best possible chance to come up with a multiplayer that surpasses CoD. It could very easily fall flat on it's face and fail, becoming the next Warfighter. But once again I'll ask: just because CoD is the current king of the mountain and other games have failed at knocking it down, does that mean that no one should even bother trying? We'll never know if something turns out better than CoD unless people are willing to make games to challenge it's superiority. There in lies the risk: you know you're going up against the champ, you can either put the best foot forward that you possibly can knowing that there's a fair chance you'll come out a loser like all the other contenders while there's also a chance you might actually pull it off, or you can give up and go home without even trying.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Again: risk taking, "how can we find the next big thing if we don't go looking for it?"

See, you're going straight to "How can we?" and skipping "Should we?".

There's a point where the risks of trying to break into a certain market outweigh the potential benefits from succeeding. It's like asking how you'll ever headbutt your way through a concrete wall if you don't try. You won't, but maybe that's not as bad as what will happen in you do try.

Unless Titanfall is much lower budget than being a high-profile "buy our console" exclusive would suggest then the changes of it making back its money are slim.

Firstly, it's not a risk to compete with CoD by offering a similar experience. There are lots of companies that do the same thing. That's playing it safe, NOT risk-taking.

Trying to compete directly with an entrenched franchise is absolutely risky. Just because you make a game that's similar to CoD does not mean that you will get similar-to CoD sales. Tons of companies go under playing 'follow the leader' when the leader just takes everything and doesn't leave anything for the all of the competitors looking for scraps.

Take a look at the most played Xbox live games;

http://majornelson.com/2013/04/06/live-activity-for-week-of-april-1st/

CoD, Halo, Gears, and Battlefield basically own the multiplayer shooter market. CoD has four of the top 20 slots alone. Gears and Halo take up another four. Of those four series, only Gears of War is new to this generation, and it was very early in this generation.

This is a market that has regularly repulsed would-be newcomers.

 

[EvilRoy]

Snip

Perfectly good points, but that goes back to what I was talking about with risk-taking. Indeed, you've got to fight the current king of the hill before you can become the king of the hill yourself. But does that mean you should just give up and not even bother trying because "Damnit, we'll NEVER make an MMO that's better than WoW. It's the end-all-be-all of MMO's and there really is no point in putting in the effort to try and dethrone it" or saying the same thing about shooters and CoD? Like I said, we're never going to find "the next big thing" unless people are willing to challenge the current big thing. Is there a chance this could be a bust? Certainly, and it wouldn't be the first one to fall short of CoD's throne. But it's worth the effort if you honestly believe you've got a shot at pulling it off, and by pooling your resources into multiplayer-only rather than trying to slap in a singleplayer campaign that will likely go neglected by most players, I'd argue that you're giving yourself the best possible chance. We all know that the majority of CoD players play it primarily for the multiplayer, so that's the arena in which the battle will be decided. By putting all your resources into a multiplayer game, you're putting all your effort into creating a multiplayer experience that you hope will be able to finally knock the king from his multiplayer throne.

It is reasonable to want to have the best possible chance when competing in that kind of market, but the important thing to remember is that your best possible chance still isn't very good. Better to put your nose on the chopping block rather than your neck if the best case gives you odds lower than midnight on a craps table.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

Er, that doesn't mean it's risky. That means it's exactly the OPPOSITE of risky.

You must be using a very non-standard definition of "risky" here. Something which has a high chance of being heavily detrimental to you is what most people mean when they use the word "risky".

Case-in-point: CoD is clearly the top game, yet as you point out, there's three other major shooters competing with it by using similar mechanics. And that's not even diving into the vast number of clones and ripoffs that exist, all of which generally make their money back. Why? Because they took an existing framework and stole it almost wholesale. It cuts down significantly on production, and it means they don't have to make a multi-million copy game to make a profit.

Thing is, no, they aren't making their money back. One or two million copies sold doesn't cut it when you spend the kind of money that AAA games cost now. Those four are soaking up too many of the sales, and have been for a long time. That's why Medal of Honor has been put out to pasture- it couldn't break any market share away from those four games. And it already had name recognition going in.

And- if that isn't bad enough- two of those four are Xbox 360 exclusives. On other platforms it's pretty much CoD and Battlefield.

WoW clones use the same logic: they don't sell as much as WoW, but they never intended to.

That's just not true. TOR was budgeted such that it required more subscribers than any game except WoW was maintaining to turn a profit. Take a look at ToR's subscribers- they were pulling in numbers that were good compared to any subscription-based game that wasn't WoW, but still had to emergency shift to F2P because they stupidly thought that just by spending enough money they could get 10 million subscribers.

Copying what already sells is always cheaper than creating something new.

That's impossibly wrong.

Copying what already sells requires you to match their production values, which (since they're selling well), are usually in the stratosphere. Creating something new means that you can skimp on all of the high-cost graphics since you don't have to compete directly with any established market. Creativity is cheap compared extensive voice action, highly detailed 3D environments, and motion cap animations.

You can't copy CoD for 50 times what Minecraft cost to develop.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

Ummmm...where has it ever been said that TitanFall is going to be a CoD rip-off? That seems to be the core of your argument, which isn't even addressing the core of my argument.

To my knowledge, TitanFall is going to be more of a Mech Warrior rip-off than a CoD rip-off. Sooooooo how are they copying their competition? By making a game that has multiplayer? Just so you know, there's a lot of games out there that have multiplayer. What I've been saying is that in the shooter business (which TitanFall is supposed to be a shooter, that doesn't make it a CoD clone any more than Boarderlands is a CoD clone) if you want to have a successful competitive multiplayer game, you're going to be contending with CoD's competitive multiplayer which is already quite well established. The risk being taken isn't that they're copying CoD. If that were the case you'd be 100% right. The risk is that they're NOT copying CoD, they're trying something new.

So like I've been saying from the beginning: it's a GOOD thing that they're not wasting their time by forcing in a singpleplayer campaign when they're just wanting to make a multiplayer game. Again, by focusing their resources into multiplayer, they're giving themselves the best chance of creating something that will - if the risk pays off - pull gamers away from the yearly installments of CoD and instead get them to enjoy a completely new experience.

It is reasonable to want to have the best possible chance when competing in that kind of market, but the important thing to remember is that your best possible chance still isn't very good. Better to put your nose on the chopping block rather than your neck if the best case gives you odds lower than midnight on a craps table.

Again, a perfectly valid point, which is why it most certainly is risky to be going all-in on this project. They'll either come out alright or fall flat on their face. But that's their decision.

Look, somehow this went from me trying to say that people shouldn't get pissed off about a game being announced as multiplayer only to discussing the pros and cons of taking risks in the gaming business. All I was trying to do is point out that it's a bit hypocritical for us gamers to get upset when multiplayer is forced into a traditionally singleplayer game but then demand that singleplayer campaigns be added to games that are specifically being designed to be multiplayer. This gets back to the point that the guy in the article was trying to make: the majority of people get CoD games for the multiplayer while the singleplayer just feels tacked-on. As such, can you really blame them for saying "We're just going to skip the singleplayer that the majority of people won't even care about so we can deliver the best possible multiplayer experience"?

See, you're going straight to "How can we?" and skipping "Should we?".

There's a point where the risks of trying to break into a certain market outweigh the potential benefits from succeeding. It's like asking how you'll ever headbutt your way through a concrete wall if you don't try. You won't, but maybe that's not as bad as what will happen in you do try.

Unless Titanfall is much lower budget than being a high-profile "buy our console" exclusive would suggest then the changes of it making back its money are slim.

See my above response to EvilRoy, I don't know how we got on the subject of wise business practices, it's just a strange tangent that has come from what I was originally trying to say. My main point is that in games that are clearly designed with a multiplayer emphasis (i.e. CoD), the singleplayer seems like it's really just been tacked-on, the same way the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 (which was designed to be a singleplayer game) felt tacked-on. You shouldn't hold it against a gaming company for saying "We're just gonna skip the bit that very few people care about in the first place."

Respawn wants to develop a multiplayer game, that's what it boils down to. They can either spread out their resources and make a singleplayer campaign that they never wanted to make in the first place, or they can focus their resources to offer the best possible multiplayer experience that they can. There's nothing in the rulebook that says they have to tack on a singleplayer campaign, just as there's nothing in the rulebook that says that all games must have multiplayer. Just to be clear, this "rulebook" is simply a metaphor.

 

[EvilRoy]

It is reasonable to want to have the best possible chance when competing in that kind of market, but the important thing to remember is that your best possible chance still isn't very good. Better to put your nose on the chopping block rather than your neck if the best case gives you odds lower than midnight on a craps table.

Again, a perfectly valid point, which is why it most certainly is risky to be going all-in on this project. They'll either come out alright or fall flat on their face. But that's their decision.

Look, somehow this went from me trying to say that people shouldn't get pissed off about a game being announced as multiplayer only to discussing the pros and cons of taking risks in the gaming business. All I was trying to do is point out that it's a bit hypocritical for us gamers to get upset when multiplayer is forced into a traditionally singleplayer game but then demand that singleplayer campaigns be added to games that are specifically being designed to be multiplayer. This gets back to the point that the guy in the article was trying to make: the majority of people get CoD games for the multiplayer while the singleplayer just feels tacked-on. As such, can you really blame them for saying "We're just going to skip the singleplayer that the majority of people won't even care about so we can deliver the best possible multiplayer experience"?

Oh yeah, I definitely understand. I was just musing on the idea of most FPS games going multiplayer only when I responded. I understand why Titanfall wouldn't want to have a singleplayer campaign of course, after all if you don't have a story to tell then what use is there in having offline play beyond bots anyway.

 

[RJ 17]

Oh yeah, I definitely understand. I was just musing on the idea of most FPS games going multiplayer only when I responded. I understand why Titanfall wouldn't want to have a singleplayer campaign of course, after all if you don't have a story to tell then what use is there in having offline play beyond bots anyway.

Yeah, and in my first response to BloodSquirrel I pulled back from the statement of "all FPS's should be multiplayer."

Perhaps a better way to put it is "All FPS's should pick singleplayer or multiplayer and focus their resources entirely on the one they chose while not even bothering with the other." That way we could get good multiplayer games that don't have some tacked-on singleplayer campaign and truly enjoyable singleplayer games/stories that aren't just tacked onto a game that's really just wanting you to play the multiplayer. Kinda like you said: if you've got a story to tell, go for it. Put all your heart and effort into making a great singleplayer campaign while not even worrying about multiplayer. While if you really just want to make a kick-ass multiplayer game, you shouldn't feel like you have to stick some trumped-up singleplayer story onto it just to sell copies.