In the annual game awards, stand-alone games, especially buyout stand-alone games, usually have unlimited scenery, and these games lack popularity in China, and some even no one cares, and the embarrassing situation of domestic stand-alone games is more obvious.
In contrast, popular PC games and online mobile games have become synonymous with games in China and are highly sought after by players. Online games not only dominate the player base, but also further increase their dominance through version updates and promotions.
What exactly does a single-player game go through?
Single-player games have not gradually declined, and although the former single-player games have once been infamous and faded from people's sight, they have indeed accompanied the growth of a large number of people.
Nowadays, in the Internet environment, stand-alone games are constantly being updated, not only those who do not need to be connected to the Internet, many new games also support multiplayer online, and the elements of social and network attributes are increasingly used in single-player games. Players can play single-player game platforms are also very diverse, including consoles, computers, handhelds, mobile phones, arcade machines and so on.
Among the many single-player games, the influence of high-input buyout AAA large-scale games is the most significant, and with the increase in the output of these high-quality sub-era games, single-player games have gradually become popular in China.
Why are single-player games not popular in China?
1. Profit method
As a game maker, the primary purpose of the game is to make a profit.
Online games can make money from players' kryptonite and advertising, and can continuously update versions to further enhance the vitality of the game. Relying on strong social attributes, online games are more popular than single-player games, and the player base is also larger.
The life cycle of single-player games is relatively short, and it can only win by quantity and sales. In the case of the domestic game industry is not mature enough and the game version number is restricted, the output of domestic stand-alone games is relatively insufficient, coupled with the high cost of publicity, most of them rely on players to generate electricity with love, and their comprehensive influence is even inferior to a single online game.
Single-player games must be on par with AAA mega games if they want to extend their life cycle and attract more players, but the high cost, long cycle, and high risk that come with it are not something that small studios can afford.
2. Player habits
With the fragmentation of people's time, the time to play games is also relatively scattered, mobile online games that can be played anytime and anywhere and the end games that can be offline are more favored by players, and stand-alone games are more testing of the patience of players, and the pursuit of the thrill of passing the level all the way to the end.
It is difficult to imagine that the generation that was once addicted to LOL, CF, DNF is still immersed in these games, because these players are initially exposed to more of this kind of popular online games, and then contact single-player games will feel strange, "Cyberpunk 2077", "Red Dead Redemption" and other well-known large-scale single-player games, but also in recent years gradually popular in China.
Secondly, most online games can be played for free, many stand-alone games are paid out of pocket, due to the earlier contact with these popular online games, coupled with the emergence of pirated games in an endless stream, this "pay first and then play" buyout behavior and concept is difficult to popularize.
3. Technical threshold
The reason why many popular online games have been popularized is also because their configuration requirements for the platform are not high, and even the old computer host can run smoothly. In the next era, between the 3A large-scale single-player games, it is like opening an arms race, constantly pursuing rendering technologies such as 4K native image quality and ray tracing, and players have to weigh whether their platform configuration is enough before playing, which is prohibitive.
Although the buyout of single-player games is not as influential as online games in China, it does not prevent it from becoming the leader of the "ninth art", and the immersion and meaning behind it are also different from online games.