Steam - Game Player Counts

BoboTheMighty said:

Well, the renaissance is over, boys. Will be interesting where crpgs go from now.
Some downscaling but that may not be a bad thing.

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Traditional model Single-player games is fading, and the rise of the GaaS Model.

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“There was quite a dilemma a few months ago about EA and this question of whether single-player games are “dead.” What do you think about that?”

“To be fair, they didn’t actually say that. I think that, like everything in our world today, the bad versions get around the world before the truth can get its pants on. Did Churchill say that? I think so. It’s really tough. Shawn talked about that in relation to Sony. God bless Sony for supporting these kinds of games, because they’re terrifying to make. They’re very expensive, and it doesn’t suit the model of having a massive open world or hours and hours of gameplay or running a live service, which is what everybody is shooting for these days.”

“It’s not that we’re looking at the death of single-player games, or that players don’t want that. Some publishers are going to fall on one end of that spectrum or another based on their business plan. Fair enough. It’s just that the traditional ways we’ve done that are getting harder and harder to support. That’s why I’ve talked in the past about feeling like we’re in an inflection point in the industry. We’ve talked about this for a long time. How do we keep on making games like this when they’re getting prohibitively expensive? We don’t want to break the single-player experience, but there’s pressure to provide more and more at the same price point games have always been.”

“That isn’t sustainable, I believe. I think it breaks the purpose of a single-player game. I was saying to some people here, I play games because I want to finish them. I want to see the story. I like the arc of a story. I don’t see the ends of most games. How crazy is it that we say it’s about narrative, but we make games where a fraction of the audience sees the end of the game? That’s heartbreaking.

I hope that we see more shakeup in the industry. We’ll open up the portfolios — maybe with a subscription model — so we can see that there can be story games that are four hours long at an appropriate price point. We have digital distribution. That should be possible. We shouldn’t be stuck at this brick and mortar price point and trying to make more and more content, breaking the spirit of these games.”

“I don’t fault EA for that decision, as hard as it was personally for me. I understand the challenge. We have to come at this in different ways. I think it’s about portfolios of games at different price points that allow us to do more than just PUBGs and Fortnites and Destiny clones.”

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I think it breaks the purpose of a single-player game. I was saying to some people here, I play games because I want to finish them. I want to see the story. I like the arc of a story. I don’t see the ends of most games.

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Archangel said:

PoE2 only 200k LOL. So pathetic, but that is to be expected by that pathetic company.
#IamwithAvellone

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ChienAboyeur said:

They do as they wish, the decline in numbers exists and is steep.

The various moves to seduce a non RTwP audience did not deliver.

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Silver said:

Where will CRPGs go?

The standout CRPGs will become more simulationist in their design and prioritize a reactive world, if D:OS is any indication on what sells.

XCOM like games will continue to take off as these are selling quite well on average. Maybe CRPG developers should be paying attention because I think Phoenix Point and Phantom Doctrine are looking like next gen RPGs in terms of story design innovations and they will sell heaps.

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BlackVoid said:

One of the reason i didn't get PoE2 was that I hate RTwP and was sick and tired of it after PoE1, DoS2 and Tyranny. I only finished Tyranny out of those.

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BlackVoid said:

What did they do differently from PoE1?

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