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Just because a signal is sent, it doesn’t mean it’ll be received. We all know that practically any other major brand will still pump and dump e-waste, filled to the brim with mtx
The lesson heard is probably “more sequels”
Assume I’m a
psychopathC-level executive. Why would I spend huge resources on a success that earns money when I can earn money on fifty screwups instead?I’ll go ahead and say the same thing I said last time this was posted.
Okay yes, but helldivers is still filled to the brim with bugs. Not quite an equal comparison
Commence the down votes for simply stating a fact
Well yeah it is. It’s also heavy on the mtx, non-pushy as they stay (for now). Compared to something like DRG I really don’t feel the appeal, apart from maybe having overplayed DRG at this point.
I get that they’re successful, and it’d be fantastic if this became the trend. But Battlefield and Call of Duty sell consistently with much less development effort and a lot lower risk of flopping.
It looks like Call of Duty is typically 3 year development cycles, and one took only 1.5 years. Baldur’s Gate took 6 years.
While Helldivers 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 might look like sudden jackpot successes
This article is funny. It’s like the feel-good inverse of a rage-bait article. It’s stating what we all want to be true and cherry-picking two games that only sort of provide evidence towards it, and only if you squint really hard.
Both games are sequels backed by huge publishers with tons of cash.
BG3 is a Dungeons and Dragons franchise title; a franchise which recently received a massively successful film, a huge boost in popularity during a pandemic, and a boost in cultural relevance in Strange Things.
Helldivers 2 fits the claim a bit better, but it is still a sequel to a well received, well selling title. The extraction shooter genre is also exceedingly popular right now, and the fact that it has Games as a Service bullshit built in says that publishers weren’t as hands-off as the article implies.
So the more realistic take-away from this is that good games with huge budgets for development AND marketing in reasonably popular genres can make a ton of money.
Which isn’t saying much. And it certainly doesn’t look like a sudden jackpot.
“Two popular games with little else in common can be shoehorned into my pet narrative” is a bad title, though.
Worth mentioning that Helldivers is hugely and openly influenced by Starship troopers, which although not as big as something like D&D, is still pretty well known in pop-culture to this day, at least in the sci-fi circles.
The real message being sent is that you can release a $40 always-online PVE game with MTXs and rootkit anti cheat and gamers will tolerate all of it if they think it’s fun…
