Once again I am forced to tap the 'singleplayer games are not dying' sign

GamesFPSImmortals of AveumOnce again I am forced to tap the ‘singleplayer games are not dying’ signWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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Immortals of Aveum’s young wizard hero.(Image credit: Ascendant Studios)

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Immortals of Aveum, a singleplayer shooter that released last year, totally flopped, and one person who worked on itreckonsthat “trying to make a triple-A singleplayer shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea.”

If you also subject yourself to the crucible that is social media videogame discourse, you may have recently seen one or more of the following statements about that comment and what the fate of this one wizard shooter means for gaming as a whole:

I don’t think any of those conclusions are right.

Singleplayer games aren’t dying (obviously)

Big-budget games aren’t dying, either

Making big expensive games is clearly still a viable, if risky, path to commercial success. Would Rockstar be wise to scale back Grand Theft Auto 6? Are we going to tell Hideo Kojima he ought to stop putting famous actors in performance capture rigs? It’s his whole thing!

Well, maybe there is an argument for not indulging Hollywood-obsessed videogame auteurs too much, but the idea that triple-A games are being made in lieu of smaller games doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Look atour 2023 GOTYs: Dave the Diver! Dredge! Tchia!

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I’m not convinced ‘more marketing’ was the answer

If it had come out in another year, maybe it would’ve sold better, but I doubt that another $10 million worth of marketing from publisher EA would’ve done the trick. Lots of people are talking about Immortals now, and it’son sale for $24, but it still ain’t at the top of Steam’s top sellers list.

Some games just flop

It’s ironic that Robbins would be accused of having too little faith in singleplayer shooters, because he’s all about them. Ata preview eventfor Immortals of Aveum (see, EA did promote it), I asked him why he chose to make such an old-fashioned kind of FPS campaign—it reminded me of mid-2000s Xbox 360 games—and he said that “well-crafted, scripted” experiences are just what he likes to make. Robbins was previously the creative director of Dead Space and worked on a trio of Call of Dutys.

An early Immortals of Aveum boss fight.(Image credit: Ascendant Studios)

An early Immortals of Aveum boss fight.

If what that ex-employee meant is that it’s harder today than it was in the 2000s or 2010s to get a mainstream hit out of a linear shooter campaign with nice graphics and a dude with magic powers, then yeah, definitely. Immortals of Aveum’s old-fashioned (in videogame timescales) “AAA singleplayer shooter” design needed another hook, and its puppydog-eyed YA novel protagonist wasn’t it.

Dead Space executive producer Glen Schofield had asimilar problemwith The Callisto Protocol, which also didn’t sell.Judas, the upcoming BioShock-like game from Ken Levine, probably has a better shot at commercial success, because people will come for the Levine plot twist if nothing else, but it doesn’t feel like a sure hit—not like BioShock Infinite did 10 years ago. Even Halo has not been immune to changing tastes: Halo 3’s campaign was a huge event, Halo Infinite’s was not.

What I’ve played of Immortals of Aveum wasn’t bad—I even liked some of the dialogue from its precocious wizard hero—but quality of execution is no guarantee of success. If it were, the Zork series wouldn’t have ended with the excellentZork: Grand Inquisitor. Some games are just flops!

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Singleplayer games aren’t dying (obviously)#

Big-budget games aren’t dying, either#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

I’m not convinced ‘more marketing’ was the answer#

Some games just flop#

Singleplayer games aren’t dying (obviously)

Big-budget games aren’t dying, either

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

I’m not convinced ‘more marketing’ was the answer

Some games just flop