How do you make an innovative, single player new IP sell in 2017?

How do you make an innovative, single player new IP sell in 2017?

Set your sales expectations accordingly. There's no reason we can't have another RE7, or Dead Space in 2017, apart from unreasonable expectations from woefully deluded publishers. The single player game can still work - and work well - for sensibly scaled development teams, budgeted realistically.

I arrived on page 2 and thought this was a stealth Cal, "everyone please stop playing just multiplayer shooters" thread.

I far prefer single player games to multiplayer games.

I imagine that it might be quite important for publishers looking at singleplayer games to not meddle in them until they become a great bloody mess that needs to be canned or restarted.

Publishers shouldn't be dictating the type of games developers make, they should take more risks and allow developers to push boundaries otherwise every other AAA game will be a a multiplayer shooter with microtransactions and lootboxes.

When was the last time we saw something unique, strange or slightly mental like Earthworm Jim, Grim Fandango or the Oddworld games from a big name developer?

Tbf, I'd be happy for things to stay as they are. We've currently got a great mix of service games and more traditional ones. The best of the lot of the service games seems to be GTA 5 and that has very little controversy surrounding it, and hopefully devs will learn from their lootbox mistakes as they go whilst still making massive bank. Of course I'd wish lootboxes away if I could but that genie isn't going back in the bottle. I on the other hand will carry on playing my SP centric games. SP going the way of the dodo? (Hyperbole much?) Tell that to my many 2017 GotY contenders: Yakuza 0, Nier:A, HZD, Persona 5, Ys Origin, Ys VIII and Pyre. And a load more to come yet, I hope.

Innovation? Eh, gimme solid gameplay and a well worn hook and I'm more than happy.

Weren’t they meant to be doing singleplayer DLC for GTA5 that got pushed aside when they realised how much money they could make from milking the online side of things, though? Another singleplayer title suffering because multiplayer is the popular thing at the moment.

That's what everyone says about GTA5 SP DLC, yes. Whilst it would be nice to have it's not as though we're anywhere near short on other SP games to occupy our time with. And as much as MP may not be our thing, it clearly is very popular (and no doubt many of the people playing it also enjoyed the SP game) and continues to fill the coffers of a dev/pub who makes some very popular games. So while we may lose out on GTA5 SP DLC, that money will hopefully help make their other SP centric games that much better. Of course I understand that the fear is we see fewer and fewer of those releases if GTA:O, etc continue to rake in crazy money. If that happens then hopefully someone will see the sense to fill the gap left by those games.

Unfortunately, like pretty much all aspects of gaming it seems, Valve were ahead of the curve on this. They consciously put aside SP games after Portal 2, forgoing what would no doubt have been one of the best selling SP games ever in HL3, to concentrate entirely on online games and marketplace creation. Everyone else has been playing catchup since, although mainly on the latter. Now it seems everyone's catching up on the former too.

Cal wrote:How do you make an innovative, single player new IP sell in 2017?

Set your sales expectations accordingly. There's no reason we can't have another RE7, or Dead Space in 2017, apart from unreasonable expectations from woefully deluded publishers. The single player game can still work - and work well - for sensibly scaled development teams, budgeted realistically.

I agree with this.

The focus on big multiplayer experiences is not that exciting to me, but a lot people view gaming as communal now. For me personally, I don't think I will ever manage embrace it. Gaming has always been something I do on my own to release stress.

The problem is not that they don't sell to the public. So long as you don't have an insane budget and the product is good it will make money. If they are very good they will make a lot of money. The problem is that single player games are harder to monetise so it's harder to sell them to investors.

Of course, ignoring the genre completely makes no financial sense either. A lot of people want to play that type of game, even if it is not as profitable, so failing to produce a good number of goods ones is basically leaving money on table because you can't be bothered picking it up. Just because product X is more profitable doesn't mean you shoudln't also make product Y.

The multiplayer scene is very crowded and very competitive so there is a great argument for producing a game that has less inherent money-making potential but is less likely to be crowded out.

How do you make an innovative, single player new IP sell in 2017?

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