Former Epic Games and Gears of War developer Cliff Bleszinski has weighed in on the hot-button topic of single-player campaigns in first-person shooters and, specifically, just how expensive those lavish and heavily-scripted components tend to be.
More recently, we’ve seen the likes of Titanfall, Evolve and DICE’s high-profile licensed title Star Wars Battlefront ditch a campaign in favor of doubling down on the multiplayer component. For Bleszinski, those solo experiences included in the genre are often viewed as disposable add-ons that you “burn though in a weekend.”
Speaking to PC Gamer, the esteemed developer touched base on the matter of incorporating single-player campaigns into the FPS genre.
“Campaigns cost the most money. They usually cost 75% of the budget, and you burn through the campaign in a weekend, and then you guys go to multiplayer. A shooter campaign is very scripted, linear sequence. Everyone gets it: you’re either doing that – a two-day campaign – or an Assassin’s Creed, Skyrim or Fallout, where it’s this ridiculously large world that’s open-ended, that takes forever to make and costs a load of money. This is order for your average console gamer to avoid the trade-in mentality of the $60 disc-based game.”
By the same token, the likes of MachineGames’ Wolfenstein: The New Order don’t feature any form of multiplayer whatsoever, though it’s clear those experiences are becoming few and far between.
Currently, Cliff Bleszinski is heading up development on LawBreakers, a new R-rated free-to-play shooter in the works for PC. Should his team pinpoint the right porting studio, Bleszinski hinted that a console version of the game could enter development soon after launch.
