Great Games as we Know it Could be a Thing of the Past

I have always considered myself a traditional developer of sorts and have therefore not been big on online games in the past. I could just not get my head around the social angle and always preferred to create games that were a little more personal. What's more, I felt that when you added the social and online angle, you lost a certain warmth and immersion, much like the reason games like Witcher 3 and Skyrim have more immersion than World of Warcraft, because nothing puts you off your fantasy experience like a horde of characters jumping around, dancing randomly and screaming obscenities.

But it seems like the world of immersive single player gaming is fading away and online gaming is here to stay. It’s nice to have variety and if they existed side by side it would be great. But I don’t think that will happen and here’s why.

It Makes Money Sense to Create Online Games

Games like Skyrim require a huge amount of money, effort and time to create. Everything from the huge scope to the many complex storylines that weave together make this a drawn out process, while the use of top engines, huge teams, voice-over artists and grand marketing schemes ensure it is not cheap.

And then you have games like Clash of Clans, which are a lot cheaper, quicker and easier to throw together. Skyrim will win more awards and sell more copies, but at $50 to $60 a copy, it’s limited in how much profit it will generate. Games like Clash of Clans, however, attract huge sums of money. There are stories of single players spending thousands on that game, with the smaller ones spending hundreds. A handful of players on games like this can equate to thousands of players on games like Skyrim as far as profit goes. And when you factor in the decreased budget and time, it just makes more sense from developers.

In-Game Items

Games like Skyrim and The Witcher 3 are limited in terms of in-game purchases. Not only would they make little sense, but they would cause uproar with fans. However, this is becoming a huge earner for the industry. It drastically increases the amount of money that a game can generate from a single player and because these items are in-game and 100% virtual, they don’t cost anything. 

Think about it from a developer’s point of view. They spend hundreds of millions creating a game like Fallout 4 and then watch as they make no more than $60 per player. But at the same time, they see players of mobile games spending hundreds, if not thousands. It can’t be easier to take and financially, it makes more sense to create games that are geared towards accepting in-game purchases.

Of course, proper games can simply adapt to offer these items, but that ruins them and takes the heart and soul out of them. Mortal Kombat X was a good example of this. In the old days of Mortal Kombat you could fight your way to achievements and unlock fighters in the process. In Mortal Kombat X, you had to buy them and they weren’t cheap. The game just wasn’t as good as a result, there was no incentive to keep grinding away, and therein lies another major issue.

MMO

One of the ways that games like Skyrim are making the switch is to turn themselves into MMORPGs. This way they can take advantage of the in-game items, they can charge subscriptions and they can basically keep earning from single players that fall in love with the game. It means that they can maintain and improve rather than build from scratch and there is money in this.

But players like myself aren’t interested. I don’t have time to play these games or to get lost in them. Not only that, but the immersion is ruined. I like to immerse myself in a game and imagine I am there and big RPGs are perfect for this. One of my favorite things about these games is visiting a new city for the first time, listening to the NPCs talk about fellow NPCs, unearthing stories and letting you know about the city. It’s a small touch, but it makes you feel like you are there and it draws you in.

If you visit a new city for the first time on WoW, you’ll see a crowd of playable characters running, jumping, dancing and swearing at each other. You’ll see text bubbles above their head and hear nothing but a deathly silence punctuated by occasional fart noises that players make their characters perform. It’s not the same, but for developers it makes more sense to do this.

It’s the small things as well and you can’t enjoy these as much when there is a crowd of playable characters all trying to do the same. In a game like Skyrim you feel like the hero, the leader, the general if you like. In a game like WoW you just feel like another solider in the middle of a war, random military personnel charged with performing the same duties and doing the same thing as millions of others.