It’s a question of cost-benefit spending developer time on a feature not many people would use
Which is super ironic when you look at games that had an obviously tacked-on, rushed multiplayer component in the first place, such as Spec Ops: The Line, Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 3
You can’t see the store page anymore, that’s it. I know because I own a delisted game that I don’t even remember when/where I got, an astronaut FPS in zero-G asteroids or something. I can still install and try to play, can’t actually play because it’s multiplayer only and servers are dead.
Some stuff that caught my attention, from the 2001 IGN article
Yamauchi says that life would most certainly go on without the game industry, as it is not an essential part of anybody’s life
True. Entertainment, while desirable, isn’t essential. Besides, there’s entertainment to be had by socializing, something that would probably become easier with less “isolating” entertainment available.
The ironfisted leader believes that “games have nothing to do with graphics”
I agree, but graphics can help with sales, which is what matters for companies
The IGN article stops shortly after this, so onwards with what Metro lists:
‘If users can play the same game on every single system out there, then there’ll be no reason to buy one system over the other,’ he said. ‘It’ll be just like buying a TV; no matter which one you buy you’ll still have all the same channels.
For consumers, that’s great. For companies, not so much.
‘Up until now games have had nothing to do with movies, like I’ve kept on saying all this time, but now people are going on about how every game will be like a movie from now on,’ Yamauchi said.
This is interesting for various reasons. For the longest time (???BC ~1970s a.D.), storytelling and games were completely separate things. With the first RPG systems, storytelling became part of the game for the first time. Even then, it was something dynamic, full of unexpected things happening, no two games ever deliver the same story. A “table wide” theater play, if you will. Even with the same group of people doing the exact sequence of actions, it might look similar enough, but never “fully equal”.
Storytelling in general is linear. Stories have a beginning, middle and end. This is very noticeable in many digital games, as the players effectively play the middle and cutscenes to explain/advance the plot are bits where interaction is non existent. Even when the devs account for a variety of situations, such as Larian with Divinity and BG3, it’s still a limited selection of story branches.
It’s no wonder that some of the most popular and long lived games lack a “story”. DotA, League of Legends, Fortnite, Counter Strike, they’re not unlike boardgames that have a set dressing to “explain” why it is like it is, mechanically speaking. Skyrim and Diablo 2 also come to mind, both have a proper story, both have been around for ages, but neither is particularly remembered for “the story”.