Savor the Mundane: Trifecta of Gaming Monotony

[Devastator]

The gem below can be found here on Reddit (84% upvoted with ~2600 points at the moment).

Your single-player experience thus boils down to three exquisite options:

1. The 'freedom' of the open monotony, embellished with a checklist of mundane chores masquerading as epic quests.
2. The 'stunning and brave' linear narrative, devoid of any semblance of depth or intrigue.
3. The unfinished 'masterpiece', a labyrinth without a center. Witness the power of thoughts and prayers.

To all aspiring developers: take heed and learn from these examples!

Original title: Single Player Games are NOT Dead

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

all of those games are the same

 

[Ash]

Yeah, all utterly mediocre at best.

Singleplayer games aren't dead but only if you strictly stick to indie, mods and AA.

 

[Devastator]

Singleplayer games aren't dead but only if you strictly stick to indie, mods and AA.

That's why the single player experience will never die. It's more fun to look for obscure indie games than to sift through most AAA garbage.

Perhaps it was naïve to expect AAA single player games to remain worthwhile. You can't prioritize quality if you are pressured to cater to normies. It's like a band you once loved losing its edge as soon as it goes mainstream and sells out.

 

[Ash]

The sad thing is multi-million dollar, cutting-edge, high budget games used to be worthy, decades ago. But we're typically talking only a few million. Now they're so expensive they cannot be allowed to fail, so they make them for retards...many of which infest this board, the otherwise only non-normie haven for real gamers

 

[Machocruz]

Comments on that are usual dumpster-tier Reddit takes.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

If you aim for a mass audience, as these very expensive games must, your design goals pivot from maximizing appeal to minimizing offense. A game that can be loved has a strong identity, and that identity will be off putting to others. A game with no strong identity can be mildly appealing to a larger audience but will be bland at the core. That's part of why so many AAA games these days seem like reskins of the same core gameplay loop we've already seen dozens or hundreds of times, and why they have no staying power. They're designed to be played, forgotten and replaced by Next Product.

 

[Machocruz]

What most of those games have in common is being brain dead. No need to think about or consider any move you make, what resources you do or don't have, when to use them or not, etc. They're for "I play games to relax" fags. I'd rather play an ascii roguelike.

 

[Jaedar]

The funniest thing in that image is the age of some of those games. Twitc3r is 9 years old, Skyrim 13, I think RDR2, last of us 2 and horizon aren't spring chickens either.

Even if you buy into the idea that they're good singleplayer experiences, half the examples are too old to show singleplayer isn't dead.

 

[destinae vomitus]

Ori is more than a decent enough game if you ask me, as far as platformers go, no idea why it's mixed in with all that triple A open world dreck. Felt more in the spirit of old Nintendo than anything they themselves have released within the past decade or two.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Ori is more than a decent enough game if you ask me, as far as platformers go, no idea why it's mixed in with all that triple A open world dreck. Felt more in the spirit of old Nintendo than anything they themselves have released within the past decade or two.

it's because OP was running out of options to include

 

[Tyranicon]

Ori is more than a decent enough game if you ask me, as far as platformers go, no idea why it's mixed in with all that triple A open world dreck. Felt more in the spirit of old Nintendo than anything they themselves have released within the past decade or two.

it's because OP was running out of options to include

Yeah, they added Valhalla lol. Not sure if ragebait or horrible taste.

 

[Machocruz]

Ori has some challenge to it, so it's not one of the "brain-dead" games aka vacuous consumoid slop.