Personally I would not call Immortals of Aveum an AAA game. 😅
And I mean, that’s maybe where the problems lie. This game is all jank and all generics, with no specific thing to present except “OMG LOOK AT OUR GRAPHICS!!!”. Which are also pretty unoptimized, so you end up with:
- Only a tiny tiny fraction of players can even play it.
- Then, the game is utterly generic. Despite how it might look to someone not knowing about it, DOOM 2016 and Eternal are quite unique games and have a very well-designed gameplay flow that even differs divisively between the two.
- The writing is horrible and would make even an MCU movie/series writer question their decisions in life.
- The magic is still just guns with replaced graphics. They didn’t lean into the very premise of the game at all. And all they had to do is play Lichdom Battlemage from 2014 to get some ideas and that game already struggled with the concept. But at least it pulled it off.
Can’t really say I’m surprised the game flopped hard. But unlike the dev I would call the underlying idea solid, just not anything about the execution.
Big “no one understands my art” vibes coming off that dev. You made a mediocre game for an outrageous amount and released it in one of the heaviest gaming release years in recent memory. Sorry, this year a new IP with a 74% on metacritic doesn’t cut it. They say EA dropped 40mil on the advertising for it, but this is litterally the first I’ve heard about it, and frankly I’m the target audience for this game. I bet this shit was shoved down the throats of Fortnight and Valorant players via tiktok.
I had never heard of it either until this post.
This is the first time for me as well, and it sounds likely to be the last.
Same. Those 40mil probably went into someones pocket, not surprising noone is playing the game
I heard about it when Skill Up, whose YouTube channel I have notifications turned on for, posted his review of it. Before that, I’d seen absolutely nothing about it, and I heard very little about it after that, too. I was shocked to find out it was an EA game - partly because it didn’t look (visually) polished enough to be an EA game, and partly because of the complete lack of marketing I’d seen for a major publisher game.
Finding out it was an expensive flop and not just a smaller AA game they decided to put out on the side is a surprise, too.
Trying to act like it flopped because it’s single player… What a joke.
I think BG3 showed conclusively that no one will ever play single player games no matter how great they are. /s
but that was like 6 whole months ago. the market is totally different now. /s
I get what you’re saying
but FPS specifically are mostly played competitively, so a single player game in THAT specific genre in 2023 sounds like a very bad idea.Every
othergenrethan FPSneeds more games where you’re allowed to only play single player and use tons of mods if you want to without risking being locked out of playing, though.Fallout New Vegas, Baldurs Gate 3, Skyrim, The Outer Worlds and the older Bioware games are where it’s at for my favorite genre, to name a few examples.
Edit: crossed out mistaken assumption
Yep, nobody enjoyed playing through Half Life 1/2, or FEAR or Deus Ex, or the early Medal of Honor or Call of Duty campaigns, or the Doom series or Battlefield Bad Company or the Wolfenstein Series.
Just because most modern popular FPSs are basically cartoony tf2/overwatch clones/derivatives and there are a lot of highly competitive multiplayer FPSs filled with screaming, racist misosynist babies and manbabies alike doesnt mean theres no market for a single player FPS.
It means that making a single player FPS game these days is apparently too hard for modern game devs to figure out how to do.
I’m not sure that’s really true what you’re saying about single player FPS games being mostly competitive or that it’s a bad idea. See: Doom, Metro, Ghostwire, Dying Light, System Shock, people seem stoked for Space Marine, etc.
Fair enough, I’ll retract that part heh
Props to you for using strikethrough instead of deleting in your edit so the context still makes sense. I think you bring up an interesting point about competitive fps games. I imagine companies structure their development similar to games-as-a-service because they are essentially two flavors of the same thing, right? I had never really considered whether the growth of the competitive scene was part of the drive towards GaaS and away from tight single player experiences.
I think underlying all of this is that publishers want a guaranteed profit margin. That doesn’t exist in art, of course, but they still want it. And if that means choosing what they think is a safe bet, they’ll choose it. I think Bungie made GaaS look way easier than it actually is, and maybe the competitive scene contributed to that too. “Look at all the money these hero shooters are making, let’s get a piece of that pie.” Formulas just never quite work out that simply in real life.
The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution.
Apparently, $40 million doesn’t buy you much in today’s market, because I’ve literally never heard of this game until now.
Probably spent it all on cable TV ads, where their audience ain’t at.
Or just blow and hookers.
“I’m telling you, the cocaine and hooker market is ripe for a AAA single player FPS game.”
It was actually quite fun! I rented it off Gamefly and enjoyed it for about 30-40 hours. It’s basically an action-adventure shooter like Metroid. It’s a decent game, not groundbreaking, but definitely doesn’t deserve the hate people give it.
but definitely doesn’t deserve the hate people give it.
I don’t think it’s getting hate. I think it’s getting indifference because no one knows what it is.
Nah, I’ve seen hate. But mostly from people who hate Wesdon-Like quip writting and, well, women-haters who can’t handle the characters being ugly (and they are ugly, admittedly), so I just dismissed the hate.
It has Denuvo, and runs like crap even on $1500 hardware.
I don’t know what kind of sales they expected when they don’t test it on lower spec PCs.
We should expect more of that with the upcoming UE5 titles. The devs that have devoted to releasing those seem to have very hard time optimising - they’ll likely expect us all to just own 4090s and still run their game with DLSS ultra performance or other fake frames.
STALKER 2 will have the janky soul we expect from the series, but this mostly, mostly due to engine choice and apparent attempts to visually impress the player. Or the investors.
I saw one YouTuber that I follow play it. It looked kinda interesting from his video, but he also has the same criticisms.
The issue is not the genre “single player (shooter)” itself, but that these big companies just churn out the same generic bullshit and then act surprised when no-one plays it.
AAA studios just don’t have the balls anymore to take a risk and develop something unique. And this is their downfall.
Titanfall 2, Metro Exodus, Ghostwire Tokyo, Doom (to name a few) are all excellent first person shooters. All of them have something unique about them that makes them worthwhile.
Goes to show that making a good game is still more art than science.
Hell, make a broken or buggy game, if it has the special something it’ll still likely become a classic.
Eg. Fallout New Vegas or Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
Titanfall 2
Titanfall 2 had one of the most acclaimed single-player campaigns, with it being only a few hours long and mostly a showcase to get people on multiplayer, and it was still enough.
Quite seriously I am actually looking to attempt to solo indie dev a sort of fps/tactics/management hybrid FPS that would at least start out as single player, and titanfall 2’s gameplay is something I am drawing inspiration from.
My basic idea is: What if you had the squad management and mission planning depth of basically Xenonauts, but you actually played out the missions in first person, with combat systems and load outs and player (and enemy) capabilities that resembled titanfall2’s mix of athletecism and gunplay?
Im in very early stages, but yeah basically titanfall2/xenonauts hybrid with (this is likely the hard part) procedurally generated, 3d levels, strung together with a kind of narrative generation engine, something sort of like rimworld’s system that simulates world conditions and then generates certain events based off of them, but also responds to certain specific things you do or do not do in mission, or what missions you choose to embark on over others.
Probably Im gonna focus on core gameplay systems and not really worry about graphics or assets at all until I can get any of this to an actual working concept level.
So like Rainbow Six 1-3’s mission planning mode?
Probably similar in many ways, but ideally I would like to make it as or more in depth with other features from something like xenonauts.
Youve got resources such as vehicles of differing kinds you may choose to deploy or not, but you have to store them somewhere and also be able to repair them. All this comes from pools of funding from at first probably just completing a mission according to guidelines, but some things take maybe an R&D program or just outright raiding a rival faction or something.
Maybe you want to go a more special forces type route and have a few exceptionally well trained / equipped soldiers and leverage things like helicopters to do infil and exfil and leverage the element of surprise.
Maybe you want to act more like a conventional military and go with larger numbers with decent equipment and a wider array of possible vehicles and support systems.
Maybe you want to focus as much as possible on gathering intel before missions, maybe you want a more intelligent active battlefield info you can access in mission via various sensors.
So… what I am aiming for is something that eventually allows for a more broad array of mission profiles and sort of map archetypes, which, depending on many factors, will have surprises that may occur, like an enemy force having the ability to call for reinforcements that maybe you did not know about, and might force you to withdraw.
Or maybe some missions will take place with a relatively high number of civillian AI running around and your org you work for/run will suffer massively if you just go scorched earth.
I dunno, these are all ambitions at this point, and Im going to focus on at the very least getting a functional combat prototype done first, and then testing out how well that and what I can make combat AI actually do actually works.
Its possible I’ll find some kind of thing that really works well, or really doesn’t work, and change scope significantly.
So far all I have really figured out is that a near future setting would seem to work best with the scope of either my minimal working concept, or a more extended version of it.
???
Best of luck. But yes, there’s a good chance your scope is too large, so definitely start small.
Oh hey Im surprised that all even posted, my connection crapped out right as I hit send.
But uh haha yeah.
My one saving grace is I have a lot of time on my hands.
But I expect it to take probably at least 6 months before I even have what Id consider a working combat prototype with a variety of different weapons and Ai routines, and maybe a barebones model of a procedural map generator.
Im guessing that me soloing a whole project like this could take 3 years, but if I can get a prototype working, I might have enough money to pay for some 3D assets to speed up dev time a bit.
Almost certainly not enough money to hire anyone lol, and I really really do not want to do kickstarter or early access and deal with the community and possible total failure.
Im the exact opposite of a PR person.
Titanfall 2 also bombed, even a good game can flop if your marketing sucks or if you release it next to other massive hits.
I would eat up a single player story driven fps no problem.
Doom (2016) and Wolfenstein TNO both proved that AAA single player story-driven fps can be hugely successful.
They just need to, y’know, not be shit.
Doom eternal was amazing.
I never even heard of this, but I wouldn’t buy it anyways because EA.
These studios can’t quite wrap their heads around that last part.
But… The Formula!
Thanks!
exactly. maybe you guys just made a shitty game and can’t accept that.
Cyberpunk 2077 exists, though it may not be the best example.
I enjoyed that one
Eventually
It’s excellent. Seriously a great RPG after 2.0.
I guess Cyberpunk was a truly awful idea. Who knew?
I’ma just go back and play through Mass Effect series again
I play a lot of games but Ive never heard of this game before this post
“Nobody bought our game we didn’t market. Guess we’ll stop making an entire genre of games.”
I mean, it’s my favorite genre, so if EA can stay the fuck away from it, that’s not a bad outcome
I mean, it’s my favorite genre, so if EA can stay the fuck away from it, that’s not a bad outcome
Had you heard of it?
I’ve literally never heard of it, but not my genre.
I think they mean single player shooter is their favorite genre, and would be happy for EA to stay away from them. Not the ‘game nobody heard of’
I’m not the person you replied to but I’ve been a first person shooter fan since Wolfenstein 3D and original doom. I had NEVER heard of it til today. First person and tower defense games are basically all I play.
They claim to have spent 40 million usd marketing it, I saw some people on twitch playing it when it first came out but it looked meh and was priced way too high so I didn’t watch much
There are many genres EA needs to stop making, but I doubt they’ll take the right lesson from this
They did market it. A lot.
It’s just that the game’s trailers were wildly forgettable.
I mean im on my ps5 every day, browse a ton of game related content on lemmy and such, and share a lot of game news with my friend group, and Ive literally never heard of or seen marketing for this game.
From the article:
“At a high level, Immortals was massively overscoped for a studio’s debut project,” the former employee said. "The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution…
They must have done extremely bad marketing even though they spent so much on marketing because I’ve never heard of this game
The what of what now?
Literally the first I’ve heard about it as well. Maybe should have tossed a bit of that money at the marketing department.
They did, 40million of the budget went to marketing
Oh. Oh dear.
What did they do with the two bags of chips after someone pocketed 39,999,990 dollars?
Disagree. The fact that I’m only hearing about it now that it’s flopped is a good thing because I might have given it attention before. Well, probably not because it’s EA.
I just hope that companies that aren’t EA don’t take what they say about single player games at face value. EA games probably need friend group hype to succeed at this point. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking that there are many others like me who want to avoid anything from that company and thus would only play when pressured by friends.
But if EA does fail, there likely will be a period where they try to talk about it like experts and will just say, “oh, gamers must not like x genre anymore”, when gamers really just don’t like overproduced garbage games that are clearly tuned to sell MTX rather than be fun.
Peak player count was less than 800 players on steam… Flop is an understatement.
Those 100 workers EA laid off dont deserve to be thrown in the trash; why dont the execs take a nice paycut instead?
I think companies that make profits should not be allowed to lay off people. You‘re welcome.
Edit: without cause
Single player shooter’s aren’t bad or even unpopular right now. But I think people are beginning to realize that anything that has EA’s name attached to it is trash and just avoid it on principal.
Everyone in the single player fps demo is replaying the old good games, or seeking out like custom doom wads or the occasional actually good indie fps single player game, having at this point long given up on large studios being able to make a compelling single player fps.
Sure, a lot of us enjoy lots of other kinds of games too, but good lord is there an unscratchable itch for a new, compelling FPS campaign thats actually interesting and challenging.
It’s boomer shooters or nothing in that space right now. We’re starving out here. On my radar in the coming year or two are Mouse, Core Decay, and Agent 64, but no one knows what kind of quality we’ll get out of those. Also, is it a crime to just throw in some competitive multiplayer that’s meant to be played a handful of times with friends instead of being the next e-sport?
Orrrr it was a mid game with almost no marketing.
“a AAA single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea”
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2009100/Immortals_of_Aveum/
1.1k reviews 75% positive
https://store.steampowered.com/app/379720/DOOM/ (2016)
125k reviews 95%
Git gud, EA, and make an actually competing product.
Yeah exactly, my first thought was “Doom is still in the public discourse.”
Not to mention, oh what’s that game that broke earnings numbers on steam, oh yeah, Cyberpunk 2077? Rough launch aside, the game literally printed money, and is a great RPG and a great FPS.
Of course, Doom doesn’t exist right
Yeah, but you see… Doom was a rare unicorn. It came with refreshing ideas, looked visually attractive, played good, and was fun.
That’s a tall ask from EA.
It was also an established IP with name recognition.
Is this a single player shooter? I thought it was multi player? And theres nothing wrong with single player shooters “in todays market” look at jedi fallen order great game and singlr player. But a shit game is a shit game single or multi.
It’s worse than shit, it’s mediocre.
At least people talk about shit games, which means some people buy a copy just because they’re curious.
Mediocre stuff? No one’s interested.
I’ll go counter-current here and say that it was a fun game. IGN review sells it really well, and I had fun while playing it. I’d say the main problem of the game was releasing in a year already full of big-name releases, and a marketing campaign that was too quiet - I’m honestly surprised it cost $40 million, because I only heard of the game by pure chance.
Yeah I will say, it’s painfully generic and I hate the MCU-style humor, but it’s not a bad game per se. It’s just in no way shape or form triple-A, except for looking rather snazzy.
The worst offense to me though is how there’s no magic in the game. Just guns with weird graphics. They managed to not make the magic feel like, well, magic. That’s the big flaw of it to me. Everything else is minor by comparison. Still, not a bad game, just not a good one either. At least for me.
Just FYI, the term triple-A doesn’t refer directly to the quality of the game. It simply means it was made by a larger, well-established company.
The terms have changed a bit over time, but generally “AAA” now means (in the industry) a large studio makes a game with a large marketing budget. If you think of those games that are published by EA, but made by one of their smaller studios and has a smaller marketing budget, that’s “AA”.
Much like “alpha” and “beta”, the meanings are changing so quickly it’s hard to keep up with what the industry means and what players mean.
I’m so old when I started in games “alpha” meant a feature complete game with a few crash bugs, and beta meant no (25% repro, or whatever the studio chose) crash bugs and all assets added and working.
Now it’s basically “alpha” means a demo, and “beta” means they’re buying time for GM release.
Regarding the alpha/beta point, increase in internet availability and rolling updates probably made all the work in that shift. In the old days if you published a raw product it would take a hell of an effort to amend it. Now it’s just a matter of a user not plugging the internet off for some time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This started happening when studios got bigger and marketing controlled release dates. By the 2010s or so, the actual devs had zero say. So some idiot owner would promise a game in 18 months, half the ideas would be removed due to time, and a rushed product went out.
“Games as a service” was just corporate speak for how to streamline putting out a game with less components and then adding them over time.
Unfortunately it worked, and players bought in.
I agree 100%. The magic was not magic. It was just different looking guns. Which made the game seem more dull to me. Even if it was an okay shooter.
Is there “ammo”? I know there’s like a reload/recharge system isn’t there?
I tried the demo, it has a lot of problems outside of it being a AAA single player shooter. The “magic” system is just reskinned guns, the story is nonsensical at times, and the movement is stiff and slow. It’s like they never play tested the game and just said it was done one day. That’s not even mentioning the almost ten minute walk around the city at the beginning doing nothing but following what I will assume is a non critical character to the plot.
They cleaned a lot of that up, at least on the console version I played. And that character ends up being quite critical to the plot. You also revisit that city later in the game, so that intro serves to establish the setting and starts the plot.
My God they cleaned it up?! I can’t imagine it being a longer intro. The fact that you revisit the city later is just disappointing, that city was terrible in it’s design.
I remember Half-Life 2 opening with a walk around a city, and it was so memorable to me. I guess in part because it was reliant on its own atmosphere, and still let the player be an interactive part of it rather than bound to a tight track.
“a AAA single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea”
Fucking what? Why? What in the actual fuck?
You have to remember that they mentally block out the idea that their game was a bag of wank.
