Singleplayer fps used to be the most profitable genre, now a ghost town

Bioshock 4 has been stuck in development hell ever since conception. We've seen no screenshots, no trailers, not even a tech trailer. All we know is that it was supposed to take place in a polar area.

Crysis 4 was cancelled late last year. All we've seen was a tech trailer for the new engine that got fans exited.

Half Life 3 seems like a dream most people have, not a real game.

Delta Force Black Hawk Down released the other day to mostly negative reviews on Steam. The game feels like the devs just wanted to get it over with, releasing a game that was still in scafolding, barely complete. Rather focussing on the online portion of this game.

Long gone are the golden days of the 90s where it seemed like everyone and their mom wanted to create an FPS. With all the DOOM clones we had and then later more storied games with the continued success of Half Life.

Sure in the past years we still got the excellent System Shock, but that is a remake.

And this year we'll get Doom The Dark Ages, but that is a sequel.

Where's the money in this genre? Tell me is a run-of-the-mill COD campaign each year really all we deserve?

World is busy with clown shooters.

@Litchie: I wrote this steam review for Vladik Brutal the other day. It's very short so I can name it off the top of my head:

"This great shooter costs less than a skin for COD"

And it's true because the game doesn't even cost 10 bucks on sale.

Now is Vladik as good as Half Life, which it clearly takes inspiration from?

No it does stumble a lot. But at least i has soul. And it tries something.

I wish more studios would try and I don't mind if this results in a 6-7 hour campaign. I don't mind shorter, more linear games. I tend to replay good games a lot.

Well for starters D00M doesn't really want to be a FPS anymore. So that's a big red-flag. I think it's that the big names are bored of making them and want to flex into different genres. As for CoD and Battlefield my guess is they're not passionate about making a good campaign anymore, the money is in multiplayer. Passion for a raw shooter no longer exists with those teams.

So yeah, the honest answer is it's just not profitable because the quality is failing with the bigger names. Some of this is certainly due to burnout as well I fear, you can find so many FPS campaigns to play it's unreal. Not to mention we get some good ones popping out the woodwork but they're usually indie games with a retro artstyle that snobby tech-heads wouldn't touch with a stick. Those calling Eternal the greatest game ever & crying for a Half Life 3 are not playing DUSK (despite arguably being one of if not the best FPS in many years)

I think Single-player FPS will probably die out for a decade or so as a genre & have a resurgence.

Three of my favorite genres died our roughly ten years ago and are coming back swinging, 3D Slashers being the most recent thanks to the popularity of Devil May Cry 5.

On that note I personally feel Action RPGs are probably going to die out by 2030 because again, burnout and the leading developers won't want to make them anymore. We already see that with From Software, they're sick of making the same game year after year.

Yeah market saturation is a big thing. When the entire market is saturated only a few can come out on top. But let's not forget that not even two generations ago, Sony and Microsoft were going all in on shooter games (Killzone, Resistance, Halo)

About Battlefield:

I think the devs for Battlefiel said that creating the intro mission for BF V alone costed them millions. So yeah the budgets bloat up easily. From creating unique assets to sound design to scripting...

And yes the indie scene is thriving:

Games like Industria and its sequel, Prodeus and its DLC... To like you say Dusk. You keep bringing it up but for good reason: everyone should play it.

Real time strategy I feel is another genre where every article I see about it it's about some other studio trying to reinvent the wheel.

Speaking off DMC and character based action games:

Have you tried out Lollipop Chainsaw repop?

Barely any FPS games release today as compare to previous years because everyone complete "Hurr too many FPS hurr another FPS" congrats now you get woke cartoonish games.

still Doom, STALKER 2, Cyberpunk, Robocop are excellent and unique style SP FPS released in recent year. despite STALKER 2 is nowhere near as good as original but its amazing SP FPS experience.

Doom series is only left. that is profiatable SP FPS.

I have played almost every SP FPS since 90s and yes Eternal is among the greatest FPS of all time with STALKER 1, Half life 2, FEAR etc

Oh yeah it's a fun game, fan of the original. Not going to set the world on fire yet if you're looking for a more energetic and colorful alternative to classic God of War. A junk-food Slasher as I like to dub them, Lollipop is the way to go. Not very challenging and doesn't outlive its welcome. The butt smack is easily one of the most useful moves in the game.. would certainly work on me.

To like you say Dusk. You keep bringing it up but for good reason: everyone should play it.

Indeed, I've played quite a lot of the retro Boomer shooters: Ion Fury, Hedon, Amid Evil, Boltgun. DUSK just manages to be perfect for me, I loved D00M 2016 when it came out and DUSK is just the best, I boot-up and play it often.

Not to fear, Joanna Dark is almost here. lol :P

@ghosts4ever: Well that summary wasn't about you, but here we are..

I like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. too, even if a buggy mess no matter how many fan-patches you throw-in. Feel it has Immersive Sim vibes though more than a traditional Raw Shooter. Still a FPS, but more of a hybrid.

Cyberpunk is well.. a prettier Single-Player Boarderlands. If you like Boarderlands that's cool, however rarely care for RPG Looter-Shooters personally. Each his or her own bruh.

Half Life series is great, played them all and had a good time. Don't care for FEAR, found it lacking. Eternal despite being well-crafted and fun barely want's to be a Shooter, with its sequel seemingly waving goodbye to the FPS genre entirely.

Meanwhile DUSK is a raw by the numbers First Person Shooter with extremely good level design, pacing, enemy variety and satisfying weapons.

Not going to state DUSK is the greatest FPS of all time, but if you're a fan of the genre and skip over DUSK.. well gonna need to reduct points from your FPS cred.

I'm really enjoying Boltgun right now, I thought i'd be done with it once I had finished the campaign, but nope moved right onto the DLC since I can't get enough.

If I can recommend you a game: Prodeus is a fantastic boomer shooter. But I want to recommend you one aspect of the game in particular: the community maps.

I have something like 9 hours into this game and I haven't even touched the main campaign. Making maps for this game is really easy and if you subscribe to one it's like a 4kb download and you're into this custom built campaign.

Every single one I've tried so far has been excellent, there was a competition and those ones were amazing. They are unique, sometimes styled after other games (Doom, quake) they all share the Prodeus DNA but they are all very bespoke and speak to what the creator was influenced by.

The main complaint that bugs me is that people are not willing to spend 80 euro on short linear games.

This is what killed singleplayer FPS. A few years ago we still got a ton of FPS: they all went open world. And open world is just not a great fit for FPS.

@R4gn4r0k: I've had Prodeus on my wishlist for awhile, thanks for the callout on community maps. If it's anything like the D00M modding scene I'm in for a treat!

Yeah it's sad to see as it's one of my favourite genres. Thankful for indies. Trepang2 has been one of my favourite games to come out in the last few years, it's exactly what I was looking for. Few games have made me smile with glee like that. And that Vladik Brutal looks really good, I'll have to check it out.

I'm sorry but the genre got over saturated and that left a bad taste in a lot of gamer's mouths.

And.....sometimes genres don't make it forever in the gaming space. I'm not saying FPS is going the way of point and click adventure or RTS just yet....but I think the industry has moved towards Third Person action/shooter/RPG.

Maybe in a few years FPS will make a comeback

STALKER 2 is best open world FPS ever. 1 was semi open world.

"Singleplayer fps used to be the most profitable genre"? Every historical statistic I casually looked at shows "sports" at the top and then "action" and then "shooter" is below these.

Most of the SP games tend to buy are the cheaper £25+ range on Steam.

Not compelled to drop £70+ most modern games now. Just not worth it.

Vladik Brutal is good man, it's insane how many settings and options there are for a solo project, from a FOV slider to DLSS to hdr... it puts AAA to shame;

It does stumble sometimes. Like in the end we got some recreation of "follow freeman" but I don't think it gelled particularly well. Still a solid game overall.

Trepang was fantastic for sure!

I guess my statement is more like how publishers saw it in the 90s-00s than a factual statement that it sold more or was more profitable than sports games.

@R4gn4r0k: Maybe this is on PC? In the 90s-00s is when there was a first person boom on PC, and the term "doom clone" was coined because everyone was trying to get in on the hype. There were far less traditional console game developers making games on PC at that time too, so there was a lack of other genres on the PC at the time.

It was accessible for people to mod FPS games. There were a lot of free and commercial tools and documentation on how to do this, and source code for the engines was being provided to developers under a license that allowed the freedom for people to use the engines in commercial products. The barrier to entry was low on this genre, and experience was high for developers.

Because of that there might have been extra emphasis on the genre just due to those circumstances. You might say there was an overabundance of them. This is why we had games like Ken's Labyrinth, Noah's Ark, and Chex Quest. It was novel enough for people to want to play those things, and it was cheap and easy enough to churn out these games. I don't think that's the case anymore.

@girlusocrazy: No man, on consoles as well:

Nintendo 64 had Goldeneye, Perfect Dark which were both massive hits as well as cult classics.

PSX had medal of honor, alien vs predator

Xbox of course had Halo

Playstation 2 man that gen was so full of shooters but also Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Timesplitters

Nintendo tried their luck with Gheist.

Most of these games never came to PC at all. FPS used to be huge, everyone was making them and everyone was buying them.

Love me some good FPS campaigns ever since Wolf 3D on PC.

@R4gn4r0k: They were trying a lot of things in 3D at first, but I don't feel like there were more FPSes on console in the N64/PS1/Xbox/PS2 days compared to later on. I could be wrong.

Very nice list. good to see Cyberpunk there.

its only game in history of gaming that went from broken and terrible to become Masterpiece and one of all time Great in 3 years. Achivement.!!

Good. It's not like I'm getting more interesting games in place of FPS, not like I'm consuming more, but I'm happy they have somewhat died off. Crappy perspective.

Forgive Me Father is a pretty fun boomer shooter ( also has a sequel which I've not tried )

But Yea ... looks pretty bleak for big budget ones. Turok is now tps. Questionable move. Would've thought they'd try a Doom/Wolfenstein/Shadow Warrior type revival.

Since Sony loves remasters maybe they'll remaster the Resistance or Killzone games. (Would actually be cool if they ported them to VR but looks like they've abandoned the medium)

“Single player” and ”shooter” don’t really mix these days. A smaller budget title like Terminator and Robocop still work, but mostly because their sales expectations are in check. Everybody else is trying to dethrone Fortnite and COD, and a single player focused game isn't going to do that.

I keep replaying Wolfenstein The New Order and The Old Blood, the shooting in these games is just ace.

That's the thing that's major suckage. A lot of the best experiences just aren't commercially viable anymore.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is another great.

As soon saw New Order disregarded it my friend.

@R4gn4r0k:

That sounds amazing, I love being able to tinker my experience to my liking. I might grab it today, this looks right up my alley from the gameplay I've watched. This should compliment my Lollipop Chainsaw Repop playthrough nicely too. I'll take these experiences over a lot of the other stuff we get today.

Ever since COD Modern Warfare nearly 2 decades back, everyone has been trying to get a piece of the MP cash cow, and sell season passes and expansions and shit. Well, we're way beyond that now, but essentially online games with high volumes of active users and a monetization strategy.

I wish developers though would think more about PvE focused games because PvP just isn't my thing anymore.

The industry just can't help but chase trends. In the wake of Halo and CoD, we had countless FPS games. In the wake of Tony Hawk, we had the eXtreme sports genre. Burnout influenced tons of arcade racers for a while, and remember what Guitar Hero did? Right now the big things to copy are Fortnite and Soulsborne, but those seem to be pettering out as well.

Gaming needs a new thing to copycat.

I just checked and it looks like there's multiple new ones every day

Because as a viewpoint first person sucks. It's so restrictive gameplay wise.

I'm happy we see less & less of them, as most are crap.

Third person shooters for the win.

PS. Seeing Ghost cry about having less of them and blaming " cartoon woke games" for it is very entertaining 🤣

Why make $100 million on a singleplayer FPS game that cost you $20 million to make when you can make $1 billion on a live-service game that cost you $200 million to make?

I think that's the logic they use, at least...

I wonder if the internet in other languages even talks about stuff like that or if it's just English internet. Maybe they get to have normal conversations about games.

@girlusocrazy: Ghost is not from an English speaking country, so you can probably say they cry about "woke" stuff in their native tongue also 🤣

@last_lap: Oh, that's too bad.

Bring back MAG, Resistance and Killzone

Yeah we sadly don't get fun AAA singleplayer fps these days. They ether have to be multiplayer focus or open world rpg. The indie developers are the only ones who still make old school style fps. At least we still get Doom: The Dark Ages.

Yes. An interesting statistic I read once is that more people had the original doom then windows 95. It used to be a popular genre, for sure.