Do gamers ACTUALLY want smaller budget games?

[Shadow1980]

I've been saying for a good while now that we need more games that are shorter and more linear in nature. Too many single-player games these days are gigantic open-world sprawls, and games of that size aren't cheap to make. We could also use more games with unique art styles that aren't as taxing on hardware. Either way, mid- to low-budget games are something we need from the big publishers.

The problem is whether or not the demand is there. Sometimes you'll get a low-budget, high-quality game that sells millions of copies, but those are almost always indie titles, and the list of best-selling games is dominated by bigger budget games. Hollow Knight is a recent example that comes to mind, but that game is neither short nor linear. I can't remember the last time a "short" (by contemporary standards) single-player game with no multiplayer component became a bestseller aside from mainline Mario games. Maybe sometime back in Gen 7 with the Batman: Arkham games and Naughty Dog's output.

"Short" and "linear" became dirty words at some point to most developers and even many gamers. While advances in graphics definitely contribute to rising costs, so too does the increasing size of game worlds. And if you look at the games that dominate the charts, it's pretty clear that, odd exceptions aside, most PS & Xbox owners aren't exactly clamoring for "smaller games with worse graphics." Even some of Nintendo's games have grown in scale and scope, with Zelda going open-world and subsequently destroying franchise records, further normalizing the idea that most gamers want gigantic games that take 40-60 hours or more to finish.

Movies are in a similar situation. People keep complaining about how there's not enough original films out there. Except there still are plenty of original films being made, but people aren't going to go see them, at least not nearly to the degree that they used to. Sinners was the first non-biopic original screenplay to gross over $200M domestically since Gravity, and that was released in 2013. In fact, Gravity, Inception, and Ted were the only live-action films with original screenplays to make the Top 100 films of the 2010s, and Inception was the only one to crack the Top 50, and only just barely. The last film with an original screenplay to become a mega-blockbuster was Avatar, which came out 16 years ago. That should give you an idea of how well original films are faring at the box office.

Meanwhile, most of the Top 100 films of the 80s and roughly half of the Top 100 of the 90s were original screenplays, with box office titans like Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Home Alone, Toy Story, and Independence Day being the biggest films of their respective release years. Over time, people increasingly lost interest in new ideas, and sought out films that are the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. Safe films based on familiar characters and settings. When an original film does well, it's a rare sight, and even then it's not going to put up the gigantic numbers (in adjusted terms) that films from decades past did.