Bleszinski: Making a shooter? Expect to spend 75% of your budget on the campaign

Gears of War, Unreal Tournament and Lawbreakers dev Cliff Bleszinski has explained the recent transition to multiplayer-only shooters by studios.

Speaking to PC Gamer, the former Epic Games designer and Boss Key Productions founder said that the sheer budgetary investment required to create a story mode for a first-person shooter had led to a draw towards campaign-less titles such as Star Wars Battlefront, Overwatch and Rainbow Six: Siege.

“Campaigns cost the most money,” he said bluntly. "They usually cost 75% of the budget, and you burn through the campaign in a weekend, and then you guys go to multiplayer.”

He continued: “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.”

He added his suggestion that developers should combine the elements of storytelling and multiplayer into co-operative multiplayer modes.

“What I would like to see is these traditional campaigns that have at least two-player co-op,” he said. “I have a joke and a saying: a couple that games together, stays together.”

Watch the full interview below.