Summary
- Single-player games are facing a shift in the industry, with AAA studios moving towards games as a service and free-to-play models, leaving fans of story-centric games longing for the cinematic masterpieces of the mid-2000s.
- Prestigious single-player franchises like God of War and The Last of Us have grown in size, with sequels featuring longer runtimes and larger open-world sections, sometimes sacrificing restraint and focus in the narrative.
- Factors such as inflation, consumer demand for bigger and more complex games, and the prioritization of profits over storytelling have contributed to the decline of big-budget narrative games, but hope remains in the indie and AA space for innovative storytelling experiences.
For years, players, critics, and even developers have floated the idea that “single-player games are dead.” This sentiment is both true and untrue. While there has been an observable trend of AAA studios moving away from ten to fifteen-hour single-player story campaigns and toward games as a service at the close of the 2010s, it still felt like there were a fair number of story-centric games even a few years ago. Fast-forward to 2023 and the market is flooded with battle passes and free-to-play models, especially in the AAA market.
The narrative-rich subgenre has continued to thrive in the indie space — last year alone it gave players titles like Stray, Immortality, Pentiment, and Signalis. These are hallmarks of how far games have come in both the quality and techniques used in their storytelling, but fans of narrative games can’t help but miss the cinematic AAA masterpieces of the mid-2000s like Portal, Bioshock, and Uncharted, just to name a few.
Franchises Are Getting Bigger
Prestigious single-player franchises in modern gaming, like God of War and The Last of Us, are prime examples of a move away from smaller cinematic games. There is a marked difference between the size of the first game and its sequel in both series. According to How Long to Beat, God of War (2018)’s runtime of around twenty hours grew to closer to thirty for its follow-up — but at least God of War: Ragnarok still felt like the game had heart. The first Last of Us clocked in at around fifteen hours, while The Last of Us Part II jumped up to a soul-crushing twenty-four-hour runtime.
There’s no question that the sheer size of these sequels increased, even with features as simple as the magnitude of the maps and the extent of the games' light RPG and crafting mechanics. Suddenly titles that were previously curated and polished as linear experiences were built out with large open-world sections and extraneous side quests to pad the runtime. These features don’t make for a worse gaming experience by any means, but when it comes to the artistic merit of the stories, the narratives of the sequels suffered from a lack of restraint and focus.
God of War and The Last of Us have been some of the most prominent single-player franchises over the past few years, and they feel emblematic of a larger trend in the industry. Studios that once focused on smaller, highly polished experiences are now shifting their focus to a larger scale, or abandoning the single-player model altogether. The story campaign (hopefully) won’t disappear entirely, but it certainly feels like the renaissance of the cinematic blockbuster games fans loved in the mid-2000s through the early 2010s is coming to a close.
Case Study: Valve Corporation
Of all the studios to shift away from single-player games, the most disappointing is Valve. Back in the early-to-mid 2000s, everything they touched turned into gold, and their name was synonymous with unprecedented quality and impeccable game design. They created plenty of multiplayer classics like Team Fortress, DOTA, and Left 4 Dead, but some might argue that the greatest legacy of their game development days is their narrative-leaning titles like Portal 2 and Half-Life 2. These two games in particular are regarded as some of the best games ever made, and they are certainly shining examples of the narrative game genre in how they synthesize laser-focused level design with story elements.
Just when Valve was at the top of its game, however, the studio decided to shift gears and focus on other ventures, trying its hand at VR, hardware, and most prominently, running the gaming storefront Steam. For all of their triumphs, Valve has made a plethora of mistakes over the years, arguably the most egregious of which is putting money over their art. Unfortunately for fans of story games, Valve is a corporation at the end of the day. Games are incredibly expensive to develop, and when a platform that requires a fraction of the cost to run is raking in over $3 billion a year, those little narrative games don't stand a chance.
What Is Causing A Shift Away From Story Games?
A myriad of different factors have facilitated the fizzling out of cinematic narrative games. Inflation is the most obvious factor. As games get more expensive, developers start getting pressure from fans to justify the higher cost, as was doubly true when the cost of the average AAA game increased from $60 to $70 over the last year. Furthermore, blockbuster games require more and more computing power to run as players expect the graphics and fidelity to improve year after year. If a player is going to drop hundreds of dollars to secure a new console or get their PC up to snuff, it’s a good bet that they’ll also want their games to feel expansive and impressive to justify that cost.
Most of the games coming from the biggest studios these days are also sequels, spin-offs, or part of a franchise in some capacity. When an IP is already well-established, players don’t want more of the same with each subsequent release. There is an expectation with game sequels that a new title will be bigger and better, and introduce new elements and mechanics. If franchises are all these studios want to focus on at the moment, it’s only natural that these games would get bigger and take longer to beat.
The reality is that capitalism demands game companies always prioritize the bottom line, just like in any industry. Consumer demand is pointing toward longer, bigger, more complex games. The profits are proving that games as a service, battle passes, and microtransactions are king. As long as studios have shareholders to answer to, the bottom line will always take precedence over storytelling and the concept of games as art. This isn’t to say that contemporary blockbuster games don’t have their own artistic merits, or that players will never see any truly excellent story games ever again, but a cultural shift for both players and developers is undeniable.
Narrative Games Will Come Back Around... Someday
Unfortunately, the future isn’t looking terribly bright for big-budget narrative games. Releases like Uncharted 4, The Outer Worlds, and Control are becoming fewer and further between, and fans can't help but notice the feeling that these games are fading in favor of larger, longer, and less story-focused titles. The cost-benefit analysis isn’t on their side, and players have been happy with the move toward bigger games on the whole. There are plenty of indie studios that are absolutely crushing the narrative side of games, however, and the AA space has grown significantly in the past five years thanks to publishers like Annapurna and Devolver Digital.
Fans of the narrative genre shouldn’t lose hope — as previously stated, there are still plenty of games coming out every year that move the interactive medium forward when it comes to storytelling. It’s just that what those games look like and where they’re coming from has shifted a lot as the industry has moved into the ninth generation of consoles. Art exists in trends and cycles, so there’s always the chance that some of the heavy hitters will decide to cycle back and give single-player narrative games another go. For now, however, players will have to make peace with the fact that the ten to fifteen-hour story game has become a thing of the past.