On February 13, 2024, an anonymous former employee of Ascendant Studios claimed—regarding the commercial failure of Immortals of Aveum—that “trying to make a triple-A single-player shooter in today’s market was a truly awful idea.” It was the kind of quote that really stuck with me, not just for how profoundly inaccurate it was but because it was drearily repetitive. If you take a second to consider reality, then it becomes pretty apparent that Immortals of Aveum failed for a number of reasons, and none of them were “releasing a single-player shooter in 2023.”
I played Immortals of Aveum…it was fine. It was a game that had a solid premise but failed to craft anything unique or interesting. Almost every critic agreed it was Call of Duty: Magic Edition—I believe Stephanie Sterling described it best as “aggressively mediocre.” But Immortals of Aveum could’ve probably gotten by if it had been released during one of the drier months for gaming, with a little bit of fanfare—the developer claims EA kicked in 40 million for marketing, but I know I didn’t see a single ad for it. Instead, it was released on August 22nd, 2023—a few days before Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon and a couple of weeks before the console launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield and Mortal Kombat 1. The game never had a chance.
Furthermore, the very idea that releasing a single-player shooter in “today’s market” would be a “terrible idea” is just pure poppycock. The same market where games like Resident Evil Village, Cyberpunk 2077 (even with all its issues), Robocop: Rogue City, Remnant 2, Metal Hellsinger and a whole host of others could see both commercial and critical acclaim? No, Immortals of Aveum didn’t fail in this industry, the industry failed it.
“Immortals of Aveum failed for a number of reasons, and none of them were ‘releasing a single-player shooter in 2023.'”
It was the way the former Ascendant Studios developer was quick to point the finger at the consumer, rather than the broken industry they need to operate in, that not only bothered me but gave me a sense of déjà vu. Setting aside that the AAA industry is rife with stories of games that do reasonably well but are still listed as “failing to meet expectations,” we’ve been down this road before. You need only type “single-player games dead” into Google to find a cornucopia of stories stretching back years about studios proclaiming the supposed terribleness of releasing a single-player game.
It wasn’t that long ago that the industry had decided the majority of gamers didn’t want single-player games, and a plethora of titles were made as online multiplayer only. The industry—by which I mean publishers—decided gamers didn’t want horror games until the indie scene proved that idea wrong. Now, largely due to the success of games like Fortnite, we’re seeing a repeat of the trend—players ONLY want online Battle Royale games or live-service style games that MAYBE have a single-player mode tacked onto them.
Despite the failures of high-profile games like Evolve, Anthem, Fallout 76, Marvel’s Avengers, Babylon’s Fall, and most recently Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League—to say nothing of the mountain of less notable corpses these examples lay upon—the industry has once again decided what we want and will keep attempting to pump the well until it sputters up rocks. And if ever a game fails, you can just point to the audience and say, “Well, clearly, they don’t want it.”
It’s depressing because it wasn’t true then, and it’s still not true now. We’ve seen so many single-player, linear games see both commercial and financial success, what exactly about “today’s market” makes it a terrible idea to release one? Is it pure coincidence that games like Elden Ring, God of War, The Last of Us, Alan Wake 2, Death Stranding and a host of others sweep The Game Awards every year? At this point, in the face of so many successful single-player “AAA” and indie games, blaming the audience for your game’s failure is incredibly gauche—it kind of reminds me of that Penny Arcade comic about Tony Hawk’s RIDE.
This leads me to my second point, also based within the news of supposed failures. Literally, the day after the Immortals of Aveum post, following poor sales of the PS5, Sony Senior Vice President Naomi Matsuoka said the console was entering the “latter stages of its life cycle.” Now, it’s hard to know exactly what that means, but it almost reads similarly to the statement made by the former Ascendent Studios dev. People aren’t buying PS5s anymore, so, clearly, they don’t want it and it’s probably time to start focusing on getting that PS6 out to market.
It’s bizarre how we reached a point where the industry sets the conditions of play so exclusively. When the PS5 launched back in 2020, it was during the height of a global pandemic. Supply chains were stunted, and availability was incredibly sparse due to the extent of lockdowns and social distancing, the means of getting a system was a complete shambles—you’d wait for hours for any store’s website to update their stock, only to see them crash thanks to scalpers using AI to buy up the consoles in a matter of moments. I didn’t finally get a PS5 with any degree of reliability until March of 2023.
This is to say nothing of the complete drought of content that was released for the console where play supposedly had no limits. And this is exactly my point—when a new console is announced, you have executives telling you how amazing it’s going to be and how YOU. SIMPLY. HAVE. TO. HAVE. IT. You get to see all the amazing games that are apparently going to take advantage of the hardware and how it’s going to be supported for at least seven to eight years—the average console lifespan.
“Both EA and Ascendent could have done more to support Immortals of Aveum instead of bloating its budget and stacking the deck so horribly against it.”
And this is a lot of overpromising, even during the best of times. Releasing a console during a global pandemic that was impossible to even get for two solid years, and then four years into its life, saying it’s entering the end of its lifespan? The last time that happened was Nintendo’s Wii U, and Nintendo at least kept that thing going with a plethora of solid first-party content. How exactly is the PS5 a Wii U-level failure?
Over the past decade, the whole game industry has built its foundation upon short-term gains and quick profit chasing almost to the detriment of all else, and I can think of no clearer example of how quickly it unravels than these two stories side-by-side. Both EA and Ascendent could have done more to support Immortals of Aveum instead of bloating its budget and stacking the deck so horribly against it.
Sony is sitting on a mountain of properties it could utilize to bolster sales of its system instead of doing nothing—they literally said there would be no first-party releases until 2025—and apparently planning their next console when sales start to dip. We really are starting to see the hubris of this industry’s short-sightedness both in the micro—with borderline silly examples like these—and in the macro, as every mild profit loss has led to the most extreme round of industry-wide layoffs we’ve seen in decades.
“Over the past decade, the whole game industry has built its foundation upon short-term gains and quick profit chasing almost to the detriment of all else.”
Although, I do believe we’re starting to see the shift in gamer/consumer mentality. More and more people are cluing into the way the “AAA” industry operates and are actively working against it. If Immortals of Aveum didn’t sell because critics said it was mediocre, perhaps the game industry shouldn’t have worked so hard to destroy demo and rental options, thus facilitating the need to rely on critics. The PS5 isn’t selling as well as during the gold rush of trying to get one during a pandemic? Maybe they shouldn’t have overhyped and oversold it and delayed the launch by a year—it wouldn’t have even mattered since games are still releasing on PS4.
If I can end on any point of just how pathetically idiotic this whole ideology is, we need look no further than Nintendo. While they’re not perfect by any means, they act in stark contrast to everything this industry has tried to lead us to believe. The Nintendo Switch, though “gimmicky” and underpowered, has been a consistent best-seller, bolstered by a near-constant stream of solid first-party support.
Nintendo is currently listed as Japan’s richest company, having over $11 billion in cash and no debt, and even when they did hit financial troubles—with both the aforementioned Wii U and the 3DS—rather than have a round of layoffs to inflate profit numbers and appease shareholders, the late Satoru Iwata famously slashed his own salary in half to keep his staff employed. Nintendo—which, again, I admit isn’t without its issues—at least understands that the industry of video games needs good, engaging video games to survive.
But before I conclude, I do want to say it’s not all doom and gloom. While the “AAA” industry operates in such a way that would make anyone depressed, as I’ve said in a number of my reviews, the indie scene is alive and has been thriving lately. From the big indies like Larion putting out a work of genuine passion and ingenuity with Baldur’s Gate 3 to the smaller guys like LJ Lephemstar, who has been periodically updating the demo for his Parapa the Rappa-inspired Scratchin’ Melodii—which is free on itch.io.
