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As Elden Ring hits 12 million copies sold, AAA game publishers have hard lessons to learn - Windows Central

digitalrelic

digitalrelic

Weight Loss Champion 2018: Biggest Change
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
13,124
I'm so sick of these stupid articles. Just because Elden Ring is good and sold well doesn't mean every other AAA game now needs to be Elden Ring. Just stop with this ridiculous notion.

Yes, Elden Ring sold really well and it also is super hard, doesn't hold your hand, and avoids game-y tropes like waypoints, hints and checklists.

It's also one of the greatest reviewed games of all-time and has an extremely dedicated fanbase to rely on for sales.

Just because Elden Ring sold well doesn't mean that Assassin's Creed now needs to ditch waypoints and cinematic "Hollywood production" storytelling for their next title.

That's as dumb as saying "Assassin's Creed now needs to score a 96 or better on Metecritic to sell well because that's what Elden Ring did. Wake up, AAA devs!!!!"

Spider-Man sold a fuckton and it holds your hand more than almost any other open world game I've ever played, and is cinematic as all hell. It and Miles Morales are also some of the best open world games ever made. Witcher 3 is one of the best selling & best reviewed games of last generation and it has all kinds of way points and side quests and hand holding and cinematic storytelling.

NOT. EVERY. GAME. NEEDS. TO. BE. ELDEN. RING.

And saying "AAA publishers need to be less greedy" isn't some novel concept and it has nothing to do with Elden Ring. But sure, I of course agree with point 3 (as literally everyone has for years and years now).
 
Dever

Dever

Member
Dec 25, 2019
5,345
It's still wild to me that the modern Assassin's Creed games include XP multipliers you buy with real money lmao. It's like saying "Yeah we made a bunch of bullshit, so you can pay to make it end faster".
 
Zarckoh

Zarckoh

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,084
Mexico
12 million is not that much in the industry when you already have too many other gargantuans sales monsters like GTAV, MK8D, ACNH, COD, Pokemon, etc as examples to follow. Many games that also feature GaaS that have came and went with huge sales milestones plus other games that continue to be popular with it's huge microtransactions margins like Roblox and Fortnite that won't stop anytime soon and there are other elephants to chase such as gacha console games like Genshin Impact.
 
Sande

Sande

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,977
This reads almost like an article about Skyrim in 2011. The author even repeatedly makes a direct comparison. I think that's a huge misunderstanding of what makes Elden Ring work. And shows how relevant the article is.
 
Merv

Merv

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,458
digitalrelic said:
I'm so sick of these stupid articles. Just because Elden Ring is good and sold well doesn't mean every other AAA game now needs to be Elden Ring. Just stop with this ridiculous notion.

Yes, Elden Ring sold really well and it also is super hard, doesn't hold your hand, and avoids game-y tropes like waypoints, hints and checklists.

It's also one of the greatest reviewed games of all-time and has an extremely dedicated fanbase to rely on for sales.

Just because Elden Ring sold well doesn't mean that Assassin's Creed now needs to ditch waypoints and cinematic "Hollywood production" storytelling for their next title.

That's as dumb as saying "Assassin's Creed now needs to score a 96 or better on Metecritic to sell well because that's what Elden Ring did. Wake up, AAA devs!!!!"

Spider-Man sold a fuckton and it holds your hand more than almost any other open world game I've ever played, and is cinematic as all hell. It and Miles Morales are also some of the best open world games ever made. Witcher 3 is one of the best selling & best reviewed games of last generation and it has all kinds of way points and side quests and hand holding and cinematic storytelling.

NOT. EVERY. GAME. NEEDS. TO. BE. ELDEN. RING.

And saying "AAA publishers need to be less greedy" isn't some novel concept and it has nothing to do with Elden Ring. But sure, I of course agree with point 3 (as literally everyone has for years and years now).
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Damn...you ok?
 
Arthoneceron

Arthoneceron

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,024
Minas Gerais, Brazil
I remember when GTA 5 appeared. A lot of studios appeared and said that a game like GTA was "the future" and "an objective that every studio should pursue".

And then, nothing happened. GTA5 business model never got as popular as people claimed, devs started to develop inventive ways to loot their consumers while making the bare minimum of content, predatory mobile practices started to be the pattern of the industry, the Game as a Service meme, and eventually we arrived into the NFT gaming.

Games like Elden Ring, and looking back to other single-player games, like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3 and general massive single player games always have something to offer to the industry, but it's them who refuse to listen due to being too entitled on their own philosophy. EA, for example, with the money they have, they could have make at least three GTA-like games since 2013, and they preferred not to. And it's okay, farming Battlefield and sports games are their business, it would be weird if it was different. And their obligations, like how it is with major studios, are with the shareholders and no one else. The consumers are nothing more than cattle, unless something major happens, like how it was with Battlefield 2042.

If there's a lesson that these developers will learn from Elden Ring, it's "How Elden Ring could have been a lot more profitable, if it was F2P with microtransactions", "adopted a GaaS-like model in the post-release" or even worse, "How to adapt and evolve the core design philosphy of Elden Ring to meet modern standards".
 
McScroggz

McScroggz

The Fallen
Jan 11, 2018
5,973
As much as I love Elden Ring it won't change anything about how AAA games are made other than inspiring a few in the same way Breath of the Wild was a masterpiece that hasn't changed the industry other than being influential.

What these corporations value is profit, and clearly the games as a service and offshoots are the primary way to make money. It's not easy to make a successful service game, but it's a whole lot harder to make Elden Ring - like it's actually hard to fathom just how content rich and dense that game is.
 
wisdom0wl

wisdom0wl

Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
7,856
there's room for both lol creating copies of Elden Ring would just lead to bad copies

Now the thing I hope devs never take from Elden Ring is how it handled side quest tracking. I reaaaallllyyy wish it had some kind of journal to keep reference of conversations with NPCs but I guess that's handholding checklist bullshit lmfao. The whole look up the wiki or write it down in a notebook or your phone is just ridiculous lol. RDR2 had a non in your face quest log, Elden Ring could've had one too
 
SunBroDave

SunBroDave

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,148
Merv said:
Damn...you ok?
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Imagine being told, frequently, that someone else's favorite game is so much better than the games that you like. For the last few weeks, it's been impossible to escape the discourse about how much better Elden Ring is than any other open world game, including the one that released just 7 days before it.

Now, I personally agree that Elden Ring is better than any other game yet made, but I can also see how it would be annoying to other people who don't agree to have to hear so many people evangelize it recently.
 
Tyaren

Tyaren

Character Artist
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
24,722
The lesson AAA publishers learn is that open world games, of whatever kind they are, are where the success and money is at. The most successful games these past generations are open world games.
And Era finally learns that there is no such thing as "open world fatigue". ;)
 
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shoemasta

shoemasta

The Wise Ones
Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,024
Merv said:
Damn...you ok?
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Nah I agree with them and I don't think they are overreacting. Elden Ring is great but the media and audience reaction to how everything needs to be Elden Ring is tiring.

This almost happens everytime a massive, new, well loved title comes out too. And clearly other games have been doing just great being their own thing.
 

brjuntinaar

Banned
Apr 23, 2018
447
I think the success does show that there is a market out there for people who value challenging games with good artistic design and worldbuilding. Basically, that some subset of people out there want quality games that are actually difficult. That said, the success is only relative, as people have pointed out in this thread, to the wild success of games that are neither challenging nor quality. But just that it proves there's a market out there for the former is a really good thing IMO.
 
Arthoneceron

Arthoneceron

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,024
Minas Gerais, Brazil
ILikeFeet said:
to be fair, everyone did do this after GTA3
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GTA 3 was the first step towards that direction. After that it had some good games, like Spiderman 2 of PS2, and some awful ones, like most of sandboxes that Ubisoft tried to make until recently.
The biggest deal nowadays is "how much a dev wants to spend on making a good experience", which goes against the philosophy of "how much a dev wants to profit from a game of a specific genre". And I think these two philosophies can't coexist.
 
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Kyra

Kyra

The Eggplant Queen
Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,245
New York City
Please no. Elden Ring is a great game.but games should be build on as much original concepts as possible. Only the part about reigning in greed makes sense and LOL that ain't happening.
 
turbobrick

turbobrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,064
Phoenix, AZ
Other people have already said it, and the article does as well, but the most important thing is to just make a good game.

I honestly don't think being a GAAS or having micro-transactions really matter as long as the game is good. Though a lot of companies just half-ass it for profits. They don't want to commit the resources it takes to make a quality game.
 
DailyCalmSpirit

DailyCalmSpirit

Banned
May 17, 2018
3,454
Spinluck said:
Might as well just call the devs lazy
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Not my intent. I'm saying they had specific advantages that most developers out there would *never* have, and that's not taken into account in this article.

Almost all of the fundamentals behind Elden Ring, from its gameplay to its storytelling, are things From have done since 2009, but, they were able to generate extra interest this time by disassociating it from the Souls franchise, and simultaneously associating it with a famous author's name. If they called it Dark Souls 4, From fans would still love it just the same (because it is fucking great) but it would never have sold 12 million this quickly, I don't care how good it is.
 
YukiroCTX

YukiroCTX

Prophet of Regret
Member
Oct 30, 2017
2,994
SE mention seems odd since they have been making games that don't have much MTX's probably way more into SP than MP like FF7R, Octopath Traveler, GOTG, Neo, Triangle Strategy they've got upcoming games too aren't GAAS. 1 or 2 games that go GAAS mode like Avengers is hardly reflection of total output of a publisher. Some fail but then there's also SP ones that do too.

Not much developers go into the mindset of not developing the best game possible and not "make a good game". Of course developers want to make a good game lol.

Like the discussion about worldbuilding vs cinematics, Plenty of games have world building, they may not go as deep as fromsoftware does on an item level BUT, fromsoftware's story telling reliance via these items and reading descriptions can severely impact the level of understanding depending on the kind of items you get which some are locked between particular dungeons and bosses that are optional and just missing one item can go from complete understanding to absolutely no idea . It's fine for a one off experience time to time but Elden Ring from story perspective can be a bit too vague, some say it generates players imaginations but I still felt Elden Ring was still too little. Sekiro to me felt like it struck a way better balance than Elden Ring but I would really not want all games to follow this kind of direction all the time. It requires meticulous exploration and time and not necessarily translatable to other games and genres. This isn't necessarily better than the other. It also underestimates the efforts developers go through to develop the game too. How each location, each boss, each encounter works as part of the worlds history, design and lore just because it has more cinematics. Most story beats and themes also go over people's heads any way so really, how important is the difference between that aspect? I think the more important aspect is the the story concept and ideas being more interesting than the delivery to me.

During my playthrough, most of the hours came down to the strength of it's core combat combined with some amazing legacy level dungeons, by my 70th hour I was still seeing bosses and enemies I hadn't before or some new locations with some incredible designs. I think that's more or less the priority of games,

I do agree in some aspects games need to be way less handholding but I think that was shown though even well before Elden Ring with success of Breath of the Wild where the series did a 180 turn from being really handholding to way more free forming, less guidance for the players which resulted in way bigger success than before. Respect players to be able to self discover how to play the games and look it up if they cant figure out as having a start that teaches players for the next hour or 2 slows players is not interesting.
 

Fafalada

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,065
Tophat Jones said:
So, will Elden Ring save us from the endless cycle of increasingly ludicrous microtransactions, and live service games blatantly maximizing profits at the customers expense?
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The other elements being 'roughly equal' service monetizing is more profitable than sales pretty much every time. So what you're really asking is if 'most corporations' will stop caring about profits because of Elden Ring.
But on the more positive note - as long as healthy competition exists in the market, we'll always have choice.

turbobrick said:
I honestly don't think being a GAAS or having micro-transactions really matter as long as the game is good.
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That sounds fine in theory - but it does have a substantial impact on the game experiences themselves, even when mechanics are copied over.
Eg. basically we're talking the difference between getting BoTW or Genshin Impact (and it can't be understated, that even with BoTW being a fantastic selling game, GI outperformed its LTD revenue in just one year by 2-3x).
 

giapel

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,593
Elden Ring's success is on the back of all the previous From games which have built the fanbase and tremendous trust in the developer.
If companies are trying to emulate that success by just looking at Elden Ring then they're in for disappointment. It doesn't work like that.
 
KillLaCam

KillLaCam

Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,383
Seoul
digitalrelic said:
I'm so sick of these stupid articles. Just because Elden Ring is good and sold well doesn't mean every other AAA game now needs to be Elden Ring. Just stop with this ridiculous notion.

Yes, Elden Ring sold really well and it also is super hard, doesn't hold your hand, and avoids game-y tropes like waypoints, hints and checklists.

It's also one of the greatest reviewed games of all-time and has an extremely dedicated fanbase to rely on for sales.

Just because Elden Ring sold well doesn't mean that Assassin's Creed now needs to ditch waypoints and cinematic "Hollywood production" storytelling for their next title.

That's as dumb as saying "Assassin's Creed now needs to score a 96 or better on Metecritic to sell well because that's what Elden Ring did. Wake up, AAA devs!!!!"

Spider-Man sold a fuckton and it holds your hand more than almost any other open world game I've ever played, and is cinematic as all hell. It and Miles Morales are also some of the best open world games ever made. Witcher 3 is one of the best selling & best reviewed games of last generation and it has all kinds of way points and side quests and hand holding and cinematic storytelling.

NOT. EVERY. GAME. NEEDS. TO. BE. ELDEN. RING.

And saying "AAA publishers need to be less greedy" isn't some novel concept and it has nothing to do with Elden Ring. But sure, I of course agree with point 3 (as literally everyone has for years and years now).
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I admire your passion
 
Slayven

Slayven

Never read a comic in his life
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
93,050
Man why we have to deal with absolutes? There is space and money for all niches and types.
 
Mr. Gold

Mr. Gold

Member
Jul 1, 2019
725
Disco Infernal said:
They already started to do that this gen. They've even gone to the extreme of excluding their gift cards from major store promos like this weeks Target sale on gaming cards.
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Time will tell. I still think we'll have major titles down to $20 bucks CAD like last generation. I suppose it will take longer? Maybe I'm just too hopeful
 
Merv

Merv

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,458
Grimminski said:
Are you? 'Cause they aren't wrong.
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Yeah Im fine what makes you ask?

That poster seems to be overreacting a bit to what happens every time a critically acclaimed / popular game comes out .

It's fine I meant it jokingly and they responded well to my comment.

Them being right or not is an opinion. People can agree or disagree. There are alot of things Elden Ring does right, but it gets stuff wrong too. The games they mentioned are all great and sold well, doesn't mean they cant take what works from each other. Spider-Man and a bunch of other games all use Arkham style combat for example. Spider-Man improved it for their use for sure.

It seems like From took some inspiration from BotW which is awesome. It would be awesome if Nintendo took some inspiration from Elden Ring. I don't think people are saying other developers need to follow Elden Ring format to a T, but game designers learning from each other is how we get better and better games.
 
Spinluck

Spinluck

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Avenger
Oct 26, 2017
28,434
Chicago
DailyCalmSpirit said:
Not my intent. I'm saying they had specific advantages that most developers out there would *never* have, and that's not taken into account in this article.

Almost all of the fundamentals behind Elden Ring, from its gameplay to its storytelling, are things From have done since 2009, but, they were able to generate extra interest this time by disassociating it from the Souls franchise, and simultaneously associating it with a famous author's name. If they called it Dark Souls 4, From fans would still love it just the same (because it is fucking great) but it would never have sold 12 million this quickly, I don't care how good it is.
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Thanks for clearing that up
 
BossAttack

BossAttack

Member
Oct 27, 2017
42,954
3. Rein in your obnoxious greed
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Publishers:

bdd.jpg



Honestly, the article is dumb. because while 12 mil is good, I can guarantee you AC: Valhalla will have made far more money than ER ever will due to its microtransactions. You think Ubisoft gives a shit people on message boards and enthusiast trades detest the collectathon riddled map and microtransactions? They are too busy counting stacks every time a player spends money for some armor.
 
AllChan7

AllChan7

Tries to be a positive role model
Member
Apr 30, 2019
3,670
Tovarishch Nix said:
I mean the real lesson is you can just release a broken mess of a game and have it hailed as game of the generation
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I've played close to 50 hours on PS5 and only issue I've had is a few frame drops

That's not a broken mess lmao
Which based on how everyone I know is playing it, whatever issues they're having its not affecting their enjoyment or love of the game. Which is a sentiment a lot of others have shared.
 
Smoolio

Smoolio

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
2,824
Man I hate point 1. Yes the world building is incredible but I hope that doesn't mean we drop character focused narratives like Elden Ring and Beth games do. No more Mass Effect's will make me so depressed damn.

We can have both? Mass Effect had incredible world building as well.
 
golguin

golguin

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,757
HououinKyouma said:
I don't completely buy in to the "live service = bad" mentality from this. Those games mentioned in the article failed because they...aren't good games. If you don't have a solid foundation, of course it's not going to work long-term. Take a look at games like Fortnite if you want examples of it clearly working well.
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I can't think of a live service game that works well and Fornite isn't it.

FF14 works extremely well because it's new story content drives subscriptions. I only sub to play new story content and I let it build up so I get a nice chunk to work on for a month.

The whole idea behind GaaS is to keep players playing in a loop that generates money. The point is the money loop.

FF14 doesn't try to keep players in a loop so their content isn't tied to keeping subscriptions active. Content ends and sub ends. New content comes out and players renew.
 
HK-47

HK-47

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,586
DailyCalmSpirit said:
I have a better idea:

  1. Make a few very well-received but kinda niche games.
  2. Make another one of those, but, just change the name.
  3. Say a world-famous author "worked on it" for wider press coverage.
  4. PROFIT
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From games haven't been niche since after Demon's Souls. You don't consistently sell 5 million plus units and "be niche."
 
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