FPS Campaigns Often Cost “75% Of The Budget”

Megalith

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Here’s a shocker—Cliff Bleszinski suggests that you don’t see campaign modes as often because nobody wants to spend the money. Too bad publishers don’t even blink when they charge $60 for an MP-only game.

Lawbreakers wasn’t actually available to demo at PAX South this year, but we still managed to catch up with Cliff Bleszinski to ask him how the game is going. I also asked about some current trends we’re seeing in the shooter genre, like the lack of single-player campaigns. Bleszinski said the trend away from shooter campaigns is because "campaigns cost the most money."
 
In other news author claims too much time is spent "writing" during book development. Looks for alternative.
 
Who is this supposed to shock?

Thought this was pretty common knowledge and one of the reason i hate the inclusion of single player campaigns in a game like Battlefield, the full and equal budget should focus entirely on the MP portion of the game, they should not only budget the multiplayer portion but as if they were including a single player campaign but just skip it.

Most games would be far better off without any story mucking it up.

There are a few games tho that require a story, mainly a new IP that is supposed to have rich lore (Star Citizen for example and a conflict between the Vanduul and UEE needs to be explained) or a game with RPG elements of progression where multi player is not a focus tho i still feel most of those games lack of co-op is a huge mistake.
 
Bullshit. They don't do it, because people will buy it without it. Why spend money when you can skip that part of the game and people will still buy? Also calling bullshit on the too expensive part. When according to EA's Rich Hilleman, they spend 2-3 times as much marketing a game as they do making it. These guys don't work for EA, but I doubt they are much different.
 
Most games would be far better off without any story mucking it up.

There are a few games tho that require a story, mainly a new IP that is supposed to have rich lore (Star Citizen for example and a conflict between the Vanduul and UEE needs to be explained) or a game with RPG elements of progression where multi player is not a focus tho i still feel most of those games lack of co-op is a huge mistake.
Most games? Not sure I quite agree with that.

There are definitely games that are meant to be multiplayer, something for people to mindless queue into a game and hopefully they aren't stuck with too many annoying twats,and hopefully the game developers actually balanced the game so that some sniper can't pick you off all day long from the other side of the playfield or...etc...

Now for me, I don't desire to play multiplayer games, I don't have the fast click keyboard spaz skills like Starcraft players seem to have, and I like to "stop and smell the roses" on FPS games to actually see what's going on rather than mindless heading into a fight.

One thing I dislike the most about MP games is something I learned 2 decades earlier playing laser tag in a mall once, first time I played so I was hiding behind cover, taking shots as I could, and here was my friend just running into everyone shooting around corners, and at the end of the game he had 16 kills and was killed 10 times, me I had 7 kills and wasn't killed once. The penalty for getting killed was that it disabled your gun for 15 seconds or something. And that's the one biggest bug in my ass about multiplayer games, the ability to respawn. While I totally get the need for it, I think it adds too much recklessness to a game in that you staying alive isn't a priority as long as you do enough damage because you'll come right back. So most all multiplayer games whether it's a FPS or DOTA, there's just that something missing, that in a single player game if you die, it's game over or if you do respawn everything you did was for naught, all those guys you killed they respawn as well and you have to do everything again, where as in an MP game the rest of your team can advance, and it's ok you'll join again them in 30 seconds.
 
Who cares not many people actually play single player campaigns fully unless they get multiplayer perks from it even then it's low. It does save money on writing, and additional campaign only assets.
 
Most games are better suited to either SP or MP but rarely for both ... I don't have any problems with MP games (Battlefield, CoD, etc) that have gradually eliminated their SP campaigns since I don't play MP games so it just cleared the field for me to concentrate on other titles ... SP games like Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Titan Quest, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, etc would actually become failures if they tried to arbitrarily change their materials to accommodate MP ... Games like Starcraft, Diablo, and Far Cry are able to effectively bridge both worlds

Ultimately it comes down to a developer understanding their audience and tailoring their game to suit that audience ... if your audience requires a fast paced MP environment then you should put your resources there instead of into a story that doesn't serve the environment ... if your audience requires a complex SP experience with open world or multi-threaded storylines then that is where you should spend a lot of resources ... know your company's needs, know your audience's desires, and deliver accordingly
 
No single player means no sale. I have no desire to play online only.
 
No one cares about a retarded story with voice acting and set pieces.

Just do procedurally generated levels, xp, and "rogue-lite" concepts.

Easy single player campaign for the amount of investment of what essentially amounts to a few mutliplayer maps with bots.
 
Would you rather have a great MP game without a SP component, or a mediocre MP game with bad SP component?
 
Would you rather have a great MP game without a SP component, or a mediocre MP game with bad SP component?
Trick question, you don't get either, you get a mediocre MP game with a season pass.
 
No one cares about a retarded story with voice acting and set pieces.

Just do procedurally generated levels, xp, and "rogue-lite" concepts.

Easy single player campaign for the amount of investment of what essentially amounts to a few mutliplayer maps with bots.

I agree 100%.

I have 0 interest in any single player.

BUT, if I could play every MP map with bots just to learn the map and./or practice that'd be great.
 
BUT, if I could play every MP map with bots just to learn the map and./or practice that'd be great.

That would be great, especially for trying out new configs\hardware and just want to play offline. As for the topic, I don't see the need for SP campaigns if game is MP focused. Maybe developers can allow custom goals\mission briefings so players can add their own story, probably be as bad as crowd played Zelda though.
 
Realistically, if the company is licensing an engine they can license the SP versions of the game to other developers to make and market (and collect their royalties) ... if they have created their own engine then they can license both the engine and their IP and again let other companies make the SP version while they rake in the royalties ... you could do the reverse for MP versions also ... there are so few games where people want to play both SP and MP that there is little benefit in combining them into a single title usually
 
Multiplayer-only games without campaigns or storylines are the reality TV shows of gaming.
 
I can't remember the last time I played a worthwhile single-player campaign in an FPS title. If it's really costing them that much, things need to change.
 
I don't believe 75% is spent on the campaign, unless he means the ad campaigns.

They should spend money on the campaign of the game. I'd never buy a game without a proper single player campaign in it.
 
Outside of core engine elements. I can believe it. A lot of campaigns require mo-cap sessions, unique sets that aren't reused, various enemy types, AI coding, writing, voice-acting, and that's just to name a few. The attention to detail is much higher.

Given the same engine, I think it'd be way cheaper to just do a multiplayer game. You're just making sets (levels), character models, and gametypes. Like dropping in content.

Now I doubt the 75% quoted includes the marketing budget.
 
My favourite FPS game is still Borderlands 2. In single-player mode.
 
Lets see, use an existing game engine maybe with a few graphical tweaks, don't have to program any sort of AI, don't need to program story, it's simply skins on existing weapons with values changed just so they can do a minimal amount of work (i.e. for these games that come out with new versions every fucking year), other players are the only dynamic aspect of the game, so just count all their money.

Yeah it's not surprising they say 75% of a game cost is single player because they do so little work on getting the game to market.
 
we have a winner

No, we don't. When have you seen an ad campaign focusing exclusively on the single-player aspect of a game? How would you even subdivide advertising costs between single-player and multiplayer aspects of a game? It seems like an easy answer to say "ads/marketing" whenever development costs come into the discussion.
 
Says the guy making an arena shooter clone. Overwatch, Battleborn, Paladins, Lawbreakers... I'm sure there are some more. I think they're all just looking to milk the F2P cash shop model. People don't want to pay $60 for a game, and they don't want to pay a monthly sub, but they're totally OK spending $60/month in a F2P cash shop on some stupid hats and weapon skins.
 
I don't play single player much and I don't get why so many people are bothered by the lack of single player. What is the point in a garbage slapped together campaign with next to no plot?

But even though I don't care about SP I can understand and appreciate that some people do, and its a decent deal when some of those SP types are converted to MP gamers by virtue of just happening to own the game and looking for something to do at some time. Like wise some people likemyself will once in a while play a SP campaign just because we like the MP. And that could trigger us to buy a future release of the game. The 2 sides of a game support each other and help drive up sales. One could say similar things about movies based on games or games based on movies, or books or any combination of them. Now days a franchise is all about franchising the living shit out of it.
 
Almost every game I play is SP with the occasional game having co-op or MMO-type MP. MP only games, unless they're MMOs, hold very little value to me.
 
No single player means no sale. I have no desire to play online only.

Same here.. No Single Player usually means no Buy..

I think back to my top 5 games and each of them was for their single player games (Deus Ex, Interstate 76, Max Payne, Bioshock, Half Life)

Even though I enjoyed UT99 and BF42, its just feels like a waste now to just play the same thing over and over.. Give me a good story in a game (System shock 2) anyday
 
Same here.. No Single Player usually means no Buy..

I think back to my top 5 games and each of them was for their single player games (Deus Ex, Interstate 76, Max Payne, Bioshock, Half Life)

Even though I enjoyed UT99 and BF42, its just feels like a waste now to just play the same thing over and over.. Give me a good story in a game (System shock 2) anyday

well most of those games you listed have no multi player, and then your other games that you enjoyed were mp only with no single player story.

So none of them really suffered from the 75% spent on story and 25% on multiplayer, and the ones that focused on multiplayer and skipped out on story were actually some what enjoyable to you but those were also older games as well, since most of the multiplayer games today force a single player story into the mix which eats up the budget, if there were more multi player only games that had the same full budget as say Max Payne or Bioshock ect they could likely end up being very good and with enough content to make them enjoyable. There is just not enough of that going around to get a good look at it.
 
If the campaign costs 75% of the budget then how does the advertising cost 40-70% of the budget?
 
And it is hard to say if something like Battlefront or Hardline has the full budget of say a Battlefield 4 or if they only ended up spending the same amount on those as they did the multi player only portion of say BF4 to save money.

We need a solid AAA MP only battlefield with a $100m budget, nothing wasted on the story that no one plays besides once at best.
 
No, we don't. When have you seen an ad campaign focusing exclusively on the single-player aspect of a game? How would you even subdivide advertising costs between single-player and multiplayer aspects of a game? It seems like an easy answer to say "ads/marketing" whenever development costs come into the discussion.

irony comprehension fail
 
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