It's a great excuse to make an even shorter single-player campaign. Bravo !
They're looking for the perfect money-making recipe, the fine line between minimum work and maximum profit. They'll take all the data available on what the sheeple like to play, and they'll create their "art" accordingly.
What's the most profitable nowadays ? Multiplayer of course… with some tacked-on, symbolic single-player-yeah-aha-whateva campaign. So why should they waste time and resources making 30hrs+ games, when moronic on-rail shooters bring in a billion dollars with far less content ?
Publishers will perfect formulas for success so rigid, that all AAA titles will be the same crappola in a slightly different skin. Devs will have 18 months tops to finish a game, by following these gamer-approved instructions:
- multiplayer is a must;
- 4hrs of single-player is enough;
- as much sexy time as possible;
- lots of ego-inflating achievements for banal actions;
- anime violence, anime gear;
- it's fun to collect DLCs, so more of that;
- anything gimmicky (Kinect & the rest).
I have a feeling that at some point Dragon Age will become episodic. The first episode will contain the main base, a central hub, and every subsequent episode will add a new area and quest chain around it. The pricing will look attractive, but in the end you'll pay more for less (that's the whole point), and the experience will be totally fragmented and buggy. Deadlines will have to be met at the expense of polish. It'll be a huge cluster fuck, but hey, you'll get to admire blocky tough guys explore their sexuality in highly choreographed cinematic sequences.
