Frank Gibeau Says EA Will No Longer Publish Entirely Single Player Games

Just when you thought that maybe BioWare might decide to go back to what it did best, single player games with deep, tightly written stories, Frank Gibeau says, hold on there. EA will not publish any solely single player games in the future.

Gibbeau's initial comment a couple days ago raised a pretty big storm so now he has clarified what he says he actually meant, as per EuroGamer's report, "EA's Gibeau claims it isn't neglecting single player games after all" . Here's the gist of Gibeau's clarification:

"You can have a very deep single-player game but it has to have an ongoing content plan for keeping customers engaged beyond what's on the initial disc.​

You'll find more details in the EuroGamer article, and numerous related articles. But I've just got to say this strikes me as a bad thing because it means that developers who rely on EA to publish their single player games will now have even less time to devote to building the single player game itself. Now they have to include additional ongoing content for the online community.

We've seen what short time limits have done to recent BioWare games. This development suggests things are only going to get worse. Either spend a portion of your time developing 24/7 online content or EA won't publish the game.

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Hmm not surprising if you consider what kind of money machine DLC-business is to EA. To make it even more profitable you have to make sure that everybody stays online. Obviously making pure singleplayer games isn't pushing that objective onward.

Second aspect behind this new doctrine is likely the buzz surrounding social gaming as a whole. Now all suddenly all the suits in the marketing departments have gotten this idea in their heads how gaming has to be a social experience and thus it must be advertised as such. No room left for antisocial gamers anymore I quess.

I do belive online games have their place and purpose (for example I really enjoy playing games like tribes ascend and counter strike), but what good does it do in the long run if every game has to have any kind of online component?

I'm sure in most cases it will take away valuable resources from building best singleplayer games. Also many times such component would likely feel like an after thought rather than something devs planned from day one. For example assasin creed games have this horrible forced online functionality, but I have very little intrest to become part of assasin creed community. In my opinion those games are great because of their singleplayer content not because of some last minute thrown multiplayer.

But I've just got to say this strikes me as a bad thing because it means that developers who rely on EA to publish their single player games will now have even less time to devote to building the single player game itself.

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I'm getting so sick of this argument. Its been repeated about 100 000 times so people start to act like its true. I for one prefer having options and one thing about MP games is they force the developer to systematic instead of "cheating" just to make it work. You can get a much better developed game in the long run and I for one think that MP adds to the experience.

Anyway, it comes down to this. Disney figured out a long time ago that a kids movie sells at least two tickets per family. That's why movies aimed strictly at young men don't do as well as say, chick flicks. You can't take a date to them.

I wish they would stop pushing DLC that jams into the middle of a game. It's punishment for playing it early. I just hate it so much

Bioware has already taken the turn by themselves. Even without the EA publication, they would not have turned back.

A game like The Sims is more likely to take that full face though, even though it might remain low online usage as if the second to last expansion.

Theoretically, this doesn't have to be a problem.

In reality, however, it will have a major impact on the design process and the vision for the game. If everything has to be designed for MP and a continuous flow of content - then it will be a challenge to make a truly wholesome singleplayer game where everything is tried together and the content feels complete.

Mass Effect 3 is a great example of what happens to a game when developers are forced into this mindset.

We've seen it with countless examples of DLC, where the content should clearly have been part of the full game. One of the worst examples - for me, personally - is the DLC for Deus Ex 3. The silenced sniper rifle in DLC was one thing, but to have an entire integral part of the story sold separately - AFTER you've already completed the game - is exactly the kind of reason I've been a strong opponent of DLC since I first heard about it. You can't even play The Missing Link in proper order and get the full experience. I guess they might claim they made it all after release - but I find it hard to believe it's not partially cut content that just didn't make it in. If you release something like that post-release - the least you can do is integrate it into the game properly.

What really bothers me is that people don't seem to mind it. Most are just shrugging it off and happily supporting this kind of thing. So, it's no wonder that EA expect to make a huge profit from that kind of mindset.

I guess, in a way, all EA games will be mini-MMOs from now on. Games that never end and which will constantly change. Maybe they're right - and that's what people want?

DLCs are becoming some kind of an "online service", too.
Plus, they are a neat tool to filter out pirates. A game becomes bound to an account, and only top that account DLCs are delivered or redeemed. An indirect kind of DRM. And EA must surely hate the EU because of this recent court decision.

Lucky Day said:

I'm getting so sick of this argument. Its been repeated about 100 000 times so people start to act like its true. I for one prefer having options and one thing about MP games is they force the developer to systematic instead of "cheating" just to make it work. You can get a much better developed game in the long run and I for one think that MP adds to the experience.

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No, personally, I don't believe this.

Because

a) an MP-based ghame just imho feels different than a solo game. Imagine how MP would affect the Ankh trilogy, for example ?

b) For MP, you just don't need AI. Or at least a weak one will do. Because people - in an MP game - rather tend to battle each other than AI-controlled units ("bots").

In an MMO you don't really need good AI at all. Because people just will overlook it. Imho.

In my opinion, the whole underlying design philosophy of SP games is entirely different to that of MP-based games.

In SP games, the world more or less centers around the player. The artwork, the textures, the world-building, the AI behaviour, the story - everything is centered round the player like planets are centered around the sun (sort of).

In an MP game, this whole "centeredness" isn't needed anymore. MP-based games center at least on two, if not more players. It would like having two or even more suns in an solar system. From a story-wise perspective, this makes things a bit more complicated. Just imagine that a second player would have different dialogues, different skill checks, different stories, and, perhaps, even different storylines based on the gender (in Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis, Sophia Hapgood is able to "charm" an elderly, male collector who wouldn't want to talk to Indy Jones himself at all).

Building around MP might be good for game mechanics, but not for stories. And MP games usually don't need much of a story at all, a) because it's just too complicated, b) because MP players usually don't require one.

This is how I see it.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

b) For MP, you just don't need AI. Or at least a weak one will do. Because people - in an MP game - rather tend to battle each other than AI-controlled units ("bots").

In an MMO you don't really need good AI at all. Because people just will overlook it. Imho.

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This is how I see it.

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In other words, making MP is cheaper as you don't need to develop any kind of AI. All you need is to script mobs to attack nearest player. And it's selling!
One can only ask if playing a MMO grinder is worth his time when AoE is plain stupid and not fun at all. And you play PvE part just to level or collect stuff that'll help you in PvP. No wonder moba games are so popular lately (dota, lol, hon).

I saw AOEO rather as an Settlers-like kind of game, or am I mistaken ?

I play one MMO, and that totally satisfies my online needs. Any other game that requires me to be online won't be bought. Thank goodness there are enough indie projects going to keep me happy for years and years to come!!


-Carn

AOEO is Age of Empires online? If it is, sorry, I've never tried it as one of local newspapers wrote it's fun, but also numbered these things:
- grinding
- unbelievably expensive new content
- many parts feel unfinished

Definetly not my kind of game.

joxer said:

In other words, making MP is cheaper as you don't need to develop any kind of AI. All you need is to script mobs to attack nearest player. And it's selling!

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Always a good solution to get the customer buy something they provide by themselves.

Another advantage: MU games'sessions are as good as the game or the players who play them are.

For SP bad game sessions, either the game sucks or the player sucks. Hard for a developper to tell the player sucks so most of the times, SP developpers have no escape route: the game sucks.

MU games offer the possibility to shift the focus on the communauty: a buyer can blame the co players instead of the game. It does not commit the developper.

Another advantage provided by the developpment of MU games: a game played by a poor communauty spoils it.

Lucky Day said:

I'm getting so sick of this argument. Its been repeated about 100 000 times so people start to act like its true. I for one prefer having options and one thing about MP games is they force the developer to systematic instead of "cheating" just to make it work. You can get a much better developed game in the long run and I for one think that MP adds to the experience.

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I don't agree with you.

First of all, I find there to be genres where multiplayer simply does not work. Adventure games, for an example, is a genre where, unless you make major changes to what we view as adventure games, multiplayer is a bad idea. It has been attempted, mind you (Cryo did a multiplayer adventure game), but it turned out to be a fundamentally flawed idea.
And imagine a game like Penumbra or Amnesia with shoehorned multiplayer.

And then it also limits what you can actually do with a game. Take a look at the recent game Spec Ops: The Line, a game with intentionally generic game mechanics (it was making a point through its game mechanics). And multiplayer was shoehorned into it. The multiplayer was unsatisfying at best, and if they would have wanted it to be something that people would actually care about, then they would have had to change the games mechanics. The multiplayer that was there turned out to basically just have been a waste of resources. It did not detract from the overall game for the end user (unlike what some review sites would want us to believe), but nor did it add anything, other than cost for the developer.

And then there are games where the player needs full control of everything for the game to actually be any fun. Imagine the X-series, but without the option to speed up time.


I do think that multiplayer works for a large portion of all games out there, but saying that every game should have multiplayer does limit what you can do, because in many cases the fundamental game mechanics are simply poorly suited for multiplayer, yet great for singleplayer.

Fnord said:

I don't agree with you.

First of all, I find there to be genres where multiplayer simply does not work. Adventure games, for an example, is a genre where, unless you make major changes to what we view as adventure games, multiplayer is a bad idea.

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I know only 1 adventure game which is multiplayer - or appears to be since I can't play it that way yet.

It's this : http://www.adventurearchiv.de/c/cleverreviewe.htm
And MP mode is in it insofar that you can (seemingly) direct both protagonists at the same time.

This way it *could* work, but it just isn't tried and tested enough yet.

URU: Ages Beyond Myst was another attempt at building a multiplayer adventure game. That was cancelled. But then Myst Online Uru Live was released but failed. Now it's released again and free to play.

There are still people buying EA games? I stopped long ago.

GothicGothicness said:

There are still people buying EA games? I stopped long ago.

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I actually finally bought Dragon Age 2 when it was down to $9.99, a decision I regret after this post popped up a week later and I discovered that the DLC's combined would go for almost $50...

JemyM said:

URU: Ages Beyond Myst was another attempt at building a multiplayer adventure game. That was cancelled. But then Myst Online Uru Live was released but failed. Now it's released again and free to play.

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URU was an interesting experiment, but the multiplayer part was more of a social thing, disconnected from the gameplay part. While you could in theory play the game and solve puzzles together, that was not how people did play it. Multiplayer advenuture games have one inherently rather big problem, and that is their lack of staying power. Once you have solved all the puzzles, you really don't have much of a reason to go back, and this means that the multiplayer service will quickly get de-populated. Unless you make it into a glorified chat room with 3d avatars, which was what URU was (a pretty chat room, with loots of places to explore, but still a chat room)

And I've never heard of Clever & Smart, but I like its art style. Was it ever released in English?

Fnord said:

And I've never heard of Clever & Smart, but I like its art style. Was it ever released in English?

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No, I think.

They have completely different names in English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_&_Phil but in Spain they appear to be very well known - much, much better even than here in Germany ... There also seem to be several games with them, but only the last one got translated into German ...