Hello? Single-player fans? Bethesda is talking to you directly, and it would like you to purchase its games.
In an ad that ran during The Game Awards 2017 on Thursday night, Bethesda Softworks invoked the power of Lynda Carter (of classic Wonder Woman fame) to remind people that it made a lot of single-player games this year. In a year where studios like EA pivoted its upcoming Star Wars title away from a single-player adventure, and multiplayer experiences like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds dominate the conversation, it’s easy to see why single-player games might lose their shine — especially when publishers are looking at their bottom line.
Bethesda decided to hammer home that there are still a lot of single-player games out there. This year alone, it released a ton of them, including Prey, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, The Evil Within 2, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim’s Nintendo Switch port.
All these games, along with 2016’s Doom and Fallout 4, will be on sale this weekend digitally for up to 50 percent off, Bethesda said. The company said it is also donating $100,000 to the ESA Foundation, “an organization that provides scholarships to the next generation of industry innovators.”
While all these titles have been critically acclaimed (we have already put two of them on our Game of the Year list), they’ve also been eclipsed on NPD’s U.S. sales charts by other titles. Bethesda might just be giving the most not-so-subtle reminder that, “Hey, we have made a lot of games this year.” (There is a hashtag, which is how you know they’re serious.)
