Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 dev Tim Willits explains why the game was able to achieve massive success when so many big budget games have failed lately.
And development teams are too big. No game should realistically be having 500+ people working on it. That’s too many people, too big a ship to steer fast enough for the changes that happen in game development. Even the biggest games have done very well with teams of 250 or less, including all staff that work on the game, how about development studios pay attention to that?
I’ve heard this often, but most of the games I see people consume live updates for weren’t initially planned to get such constant updates.
Ex: Dead by Daylight. Released as dumb party horror game with low shelf life. Now on its 8th plus year. Fortnite: Epic’s base building game that pivoted to follow the battle royale trend, then ten other trends. DOTA 2: First released as a Warcraft map. GTA V: First released as a singleplayer game before tons of expansion went into online. Same with Minecraft.
It just doesn’t make sense to pour $500M into something before everyone agrees it’s a fun idea. There’s obviously nothing gained in planning out the “constant content cycle” before a game’s first public release.
Drag can think of one counterexample: Warframe. But Warframe is also 100% free to play and free to participate in every content update and event. And Warframe is developed by an indie team from Fake London who started the game with 120 employees.
Warframe feels just as riddled though with all of its different kinds of currencies and crafting mechanics. It may not have an egregious mtx model but the game loop around it still feels like it’s meant to. I much more enjoyed the game in beta when it was simpler. I go on it now and I haven’t got a fucking clue what to do, fumble around for an hour and just decide to play something else instead.
Warframe is much more fun with friends. Friends will tell you that you don’t have to bother with all the currencies. You can just do the story missions.
Oh, good news for you. They just released an update two days ago that separates the quests in the codex into story, side, and warframe quests. DE listened to player feedback and fixed the problem. Now you go to the codex terminal, you click on story quests, and it tells you what to do next.
Who is these people that want this? And even if they do. Creating a good game does not need 500 people. And if you want to provide content after setup several small parallel teams to make cosmetics and stuff.
But the whole live service is something the companies want. So they can keep monetizing it and turn if off once a new iteration is done.
It’s like they exist in an alternate reality. But then I’m fine with that too. If there is a market for that… just a shame that the hunt for this audience eats up everything else.
Another way to look at it is that the multiplayer market is the only pool of money big enough to support games at that level.
Maybe if single player gamers would be accepting of feature scopes from 10-15 years ago, there’d be a stable niche for single player games.
I’m in my 40s and only get enjoyment from multiplayer games. Single player just dries up for me in terms of dopamine release.
When I was in my 20s I was unsocial, heavily autistic, couldn’t stand multiplayer because I didn’t control the variables.
Basically, my wallet and my brain followed a coupled pair of paths. The version of me with more money has more need for other people in my games.
I have more tolerance for other people. But also I’m more lonely in life. Used to be, games were a refuge from the other people I was constantly surrounded by in school, college, roommate situations. I could just go be alone and have fun, and I needed to be alone.
And that was when I was broke.
Now, I have more money, and I crave social contact. I live alone, don’t have constant social overwhelm any longer. Games aren’t my refuge of solitude any more. Now they’re a way to feel other people without having to go out my front door.
I’m not made of money, but I can afford games now.
Probably a connection there.
My main thesis though is just that maybe the world of multiplayer gaming just has more money in it period. Maybe it’s only the world of multiplayer gaming that can actually support AAA games’ budgets.
15 years ago, no game had a budget with the same orders of magnitude we see these days. Also, 15 years ago the oldest gamer demographics were 15 years younger.
Which brings me back to my original point: maybe it’s not that the multiplayer games are somehow nullifying the market for AAA single player games; maybe it’s just that no such market ever existed. That the multiplayer market is a new market that didn’t exist 15 years ago, not a transformation of an existing market.
For me at least the correlation is that me having this kind of gaming budget is correlated with me having overall social isolation more than overall social overwhelm like I did in my twenties.
I’ve worked on a team of 12 at one point and I remember that being a pain to organize. Not that I was the one doing the organization mind you but it just seemed like it was a nightmare.
And development teams are too big. No game should realistically be having 500+ people working on it. That’s too many people, too big a ship to steer fast enough for the changes that happen in game development. Even the biggest games have done very well with teams of 250 or less, including all staff that work on the game, how about development studios pay attention to that?
People expect all games to be multiplayer with online live ops and events and a steady flow of new content.
That’s why you need to have a 500 person team. Someone needs to be designing and coding the valentine’s event for 2025 right now
I’ve heard this often, but most of the games I see people consume live updates for weren’t initially planned to get such constant updates.
Ex: Dead by Daylight. Released as dumb party horror game with low shelf life. Now on its 8th plus year. Fortnite: Epic’s base building game that pivoted to follow the battle royale trend, then ten other trends. DOTA 2: First released as a Warcraft map. GTA V: First released as a singleplayer game before tons of expansion went into online. Same with Minecraft.
It just doesn’t make sense to pour $500M into something before everyone agrees it’s a fun idea. There’s obviously nothing gained in planning out the “constant content cycle” before a game’s first public release.
Drag can think of one counterexample: Warframe. But Warframe is also 100% free to play and free to participate in every content update and event. And Warframe is developed by an indie team from Fake London who started the game with 120 employees.
Warframe feels just as riddled though with all of its different kinds of currencies and crafting mechanics. It may not have an egregious mtx model but the game loop around it still feels like it’s meant to. I much more enjoyed the game in beta when it was simpler. I go on it now and I haven’t got a fucking clue what to do, fumble around for an hour and just decide to play something else instead.
Warframe is much more fun with friends. Friends will tell you that you don’t have to bother with all the currencies. You can just do the story missions.
That’s the thing, had no idea there were specific story missions or where to do them
Oh, good news for you. They just released an update two days ago that separates the quests in the codex into story, side, and warframe quests. DE listened to player feedback and fixed the problem. Now you go to the codex terminal, you click on story quests, and it tells you what to do next.
That’s good to know
Companies want all games to be multiplayer with online live ops and events and a steady flow of microtransactions money.
Who is these people that want this? And even if they do. Creating a good game does not need 500 people. And if you want to provide content after setup several small parallel teams to make cosmetics and stuff.
But the whole live service is something the companies want. So they can keep monetizing it and turn if off once a new iteration is done.
Check out the leaks from the Sony/Microsoft trial
There are literally tens of millions of people who ONLY use their PS5 for CoD - a live service multiplayer game.
A whole generation of people have literally never played a single player game and don’t know how to.
It’s like they exist in an alternate reality. But then I’m fine with that too. If there is a market for that… just a shame that the hunt for this audience eats up everything else.
Another way to look at it is that the multiplayer market is the only pool of money big enough to support games at that level.
Maybe if single player gamers would be accepting of feature scopes from 10-15 years ago, there’d be a stable niche for single player games.
I’m in my 40s and only get enjoyment from multiplayer games. Single player just dries up for me in terms of dopamine release.
When I was in my 20s I was unsocial, heavily autistic, couldn’t stand multiplayer because I didn’t control the variables.
Basically, my wallet and my brain followed a coupled pair of paths. The version of me with more money has more need for other people in my games.
I have more tolerance for other people. But also I’m more lonely in life. Used to be, games were a refuge from the other people I was constantly surrounded by in school, college, roommate situations. I could just go be alone and have fun, and I needed to be alone.
And that was when I was broke.
Now, I have more money, and I crave social contact. I live alone, don’t have constant social overwhelm any longer. Games aren’t my refuge of solitude any more. Now they’re a way to feel other people without having to go out my front door.
I’m not made of money, but I can afford games now.
Probably a connection there.
My main thesis though is just that maybe the world of multiplayer gaming just has more money in it period. Maybe it’s only the world of multiplayer gaming that can actually support AAA games’ budgets.
15 years ago, no game had a budget with the same orders of magnitude we see these days. Also, 15 years ago the oldest gamer demographics were 15 years younger.
Which brings me back to my original point: maybe it’s not that the multiplayer games are somehow nullifying the market for AAA single player games; maybe it’s just that no such market ever existed. That the multiplayer market is a new market that didn’t exist 15 years ago, not a transformation of an existing market.
For me at least the correlation is that me having this kind of gaming budget is correlated with me having overall social isolation more than overall social overwhelm like I did in my twenties.
To quote Bernard Black: “Well expect away!”
I once worked on a dance game that officially had a team of 400
How did that go
I’ve worked on a team of 12 at one point and I remember that being a pain to organize. Not that I was the one doing the organization mind you but it just seemed like it was a nightmare.