EA Says People Don’t Really Enjoy Linear Games as Much Today

Megalith

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EA CFO Blake Jorgensen has acknowledged that linear games are fading in popularity in the current market, and it is part of the reason why they canned Visceral’s Star Wars game and shuttered the studio. "As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a much more linear game [which] people don't like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago," he said.

EA ultimately decided to close Visceral and significantly shift the nature of the Star Wars game because "it was an economic decision at the end of the day." Jorgensen thought about how many copies the game would have to sell and he determined that EA "probably wouldn't be able to" reach that unspecified mark. "You gotta cut the bridge when you realize you can't make a lot of money on something," Jorgensen said, adding that he is a big believer in sunk costs.
 
In before someone posts the picture of level design in the 90's (Doom) versus level design today.
 
I am not so sure of this. I don't care much for 100% linearity but you certainly never feel that you can complete a game if it is open world like many are today.
 
Nothing wrong with linear games, as long as they're entertaining. In fact making a game too open can be detrimental to the storytelling. Like in bethesda games, where the main story always gets pushed on the backburner, no matter how good it is. I don't want games to be less linear than for example mass effect games, anything more and the thing starts to fall apart as a story driven adventure.
 
I'm more of a sandbox guy, but there a lot of great linear games. They shouldn't be wiped away from the industry.

Nice half story EA. I think linear games are harder to monetize since it makes less sense to buy loot boxes on linear games.
 
EA clearly knows what they're talking about, I mean just look at the flop that is every non-MMO Final Fantasy game, obviously people don't like linear games.

(Disclaimer: I haven't played FFXV yet so I don't know how linear that one is)
 
There are a ton of nice selling games out there that supposedly noone is interested in anymore.

Divinity original sin sold over 1 milion copies so far in the supposedly dead RPG genre.

You just need to let people who are passioned about a game make their game how they want it. Not every game sneeds 250 people working on it with 124 managers overseeing/falling over each other. Heartstone was made by 15 people orso and is a huge succes.
 
Translation: we wanted an open world game that was more receptive to microtransactions
 
With that said, he's not wrong about the economics of the game. When EA shut down production of the game, and Visceral, they likely judged that the game would be unable to recover the costs of the game. Nothing wrong in that. (Aside from fucking up the management of it in the first place)
 
That is why they fail. We just don't like being screwed over buying a game full of bugs that never get fixed and cost tons extra for years after buying it.
 
The Uncharted games have sold tons of copies and are among the highest rated games from the last decade.
EA just has trouble cobbling the same game together each year without making it a steaming pile.
 
EA stepping on toes again I see. What a bunch of horse crap.
 
"We writing are more bestester than ever is past, people must be hating stories what have gooder writing."

"It can't be that are righting are shit."
 
I think it's time for a little cleansing of the EA Hq. This is not the first time they release a statement that is either a pr nightmare or completely misses the point.
 
This guy is high as a kite.

What exactly is open world now, I'd say minecraft is open world but games like Dark souls, HZD, Gothic are all linear story lines with a set objective.

Open world endless games suck. Everything that has done well has had story to it.

I wouldn't even consider MGS V, HZD open world, there's a story and you are required to adhere to it to advance game along with areas needing to be unlocked.
Hell Zelda has a lot of go get this from here

Skyrim was about the best example of an open world adventure.

Or are we talking shooters on a rail, as all the games I like have some good substance Nioh, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, HZD, Zelda etc and I don't play for the ability to wander, I'm drawn into the game due to awesome cutscenes/lore/story
 
I think there is the other stuff that he didn't say.

based off interviews and news from the studio, they were very very far behind. Basically it wasn't even a good tech demo at this point.

Which would be his "sunk cost" comment. We have sunk a lot of money into this and it hasn't gotten to the point where it looks like a game yet. Lets see 10 times that to finish it means we have to sell how many copies to break even.....Yhea not happening.

my 2 cents.
 
Only because you did a shitty job with them. Make a good story, and people are willing to look past a linear game. Make a good game, and people are willing to look past alot actually.

Bioshock Infinte comes to mind.
 
I have an immediate visceral reaction to this because, well, EA. But, if I'm being honest, I don't think they are completely off-base. I do tend towards games that allow me some freedom to stray.

That said, I'm starting to think it might be a badge of honor for EA to get voted Worst Company in America.

EDIT: I should clarify, linear is acceptable with a quality story (i.e., Bioshock).
 
If Half Life 3 ever gets released it would nuke the world of gaming and I guarantee that would be a linear game....EA is delusional. There are plenty of linear games that would sell extremely well if they story and game play are done correctly. This is a publisher looking at numbers on a pie chart and not in touch with reality
 
Tbf, I heard Prey, and Dishonored II didn't do so hot.

I mean it's pretty simple, you make a linear Single-Player game, it's basically good for one shot. There's no getting past that, once you finish, most people are done with it.

In the PC market, there's a good size movement to wait until games are cheaper by the order of magnitude of years in order to buy them. In the console market we have physical used games to sell off.

In the case of PS4, Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted, Sony is employing a exclusive games strategy to sell consoles. Look at this list of Sony published games. Many of the big, acclaimed games are Sony published or developed. I'm not saying it's a loss-leader type of situation, I'm just saying that the Big Dog of Sony has a bigger goal than "make game for money", it's make game, sell that profitable console and PSN. (We will never see Sony give away their exclusives advantage while on top)

I mean it's pretty simple, as a AAA developer, you have the resources and teams to maintain things like years of multiplayer, yet also the costs of a AAA developer. Honestly, I think single-player games will shift to more AA studios and publishing, with the big money shifting to multiplayer games. No doubt EA screwed up with Visceral. End of the day, that screwup means the cost of making that game is no longer viable. If the game was a multiplayer game, maybe Visceral might still be here. Maybe not, Visceral itself apparently cost too much anyway.
 
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Anyone notice the linier nature of Battlefront II’s campaign. I call bs on this as the game was all the way to testing. So some money recovered is better the zero dollars.
 
Anyone notice the linier nature of Battlefront II’s campaign. I call bs on this as the game was all the way to testing. So some money recovered is better the zero dollars.

Different games, different budgets. Visceral was working on a entirely separate game from Battlefront. In fact, they took people intended to work on Ragtag (the project name of this Visceral game) to work on the SP portion of Battlefront.
 
"You gotta cut the bridge when you realize you can't make a lot of money on something,"

EA in a nutshell. That statement alone (like we needed it in writing) shows they care about nothing more than the bottom line, gotta throw everything else out the window. If you made games that were good and had any concern for your customer base, the money thing would handle itself, EA.
 
Uh....There are at least one million Divinity Original Sin 2 purchasers that would appear to disagree with this idiotic statement?
 
Translation:

It's significantly harder to monetize a linear game using abusive and over the top micro transactions. People love micro transactions, and for that reason, we decided to close the game.
 
Well, I agree with them. I have never liked linear heavily scripted games. Once you finish them there is no replay value.
 
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