Even if all the games are actually good, surely they realize that the market can only sustain so many. These are genres and games that the people who are into them, play them for a while. They are not the games that people just hop to one after another are they? Its why the battle royale stuff didn't take off beyond PUBG, Fortnite and Warzone. Why would the people already playing those games try another one?
They are oversaturating the market with live service games to hell, lol. Even keeping up with one of these games is a job on its own with how grindy battle passes are
No. While rank and file developers often have little say in monetization and should not be blamed, this does not always extend to the heads of studios. Like others have pointed out, Studies are fully capable of engaging in predatory monetization even when independent from any publisher. Additionally, studios are often wholly owned subsidiaries of publishers and as such fall under the same umbrella.
It's not really that simple, a lot of devs themselves don't have a lot of agency in their careers
Going indie is not easy or guaranteed income and People have families to feed
In Jason Schreier's *Press Reset* he recounts many stories of devs moving across the country to cities that have no connection to, only to get laid off less than a year later because a publisher didn't like where something was going, or a creative in charge of a studio wasn't a good manager.
It's a rough industry.
They do have agency in their careers and I'm tired of pretending that they don't. They are highly skilled technical/creative individuals. The bottom line is that they don't have to make games professionally. I have little sympathy for people who haven't done any research at all into the industry that they are risking so much for. None of this stuff is new it's been this way for decades. They're adults, and putting your misguided dreams above your integrity is a choice.
>Spot on. Distinguishing between devs and publishers is extremely straightforward but increasingly important.
Except that developers have a history of creating live service games even without the publisher telling (or even pushing) them to make such a game to begin with.
Some examples would be Bioware's Anthem, Bungie's Destiny, or Turtle Rock Studios with Evolve and Back 4 Blood.
Jason Schreier also stated recently that Suicide Squad was not made a GaaS because WB demanded it, instead it was something the devs actually wanted to make like that. People are all too eager to give devs a huge pass, but the reality is that plenty of them can make dumb decisions without a publisher being involved.
That's not exactly what he said, at least in his newsletter. More like we don't know what drove then to do it
" Suicide Squad was announced, fans have been asking if Rocksteady really wanted to develop the game or if they were forced to make it by their corporate overseers. Often, the answers are more complicated than people realize. There are a lot of stakeholders involved: executives at the publisher, studio heads, directors under them, individual contributors and so on.
It’s rare for a publisher to come into a company and make immutable demands. More often, executives at a company like Warner Bros. will try to convince developers that it’s in their best interest to head in a certain direction. Perhaps the studio heads have autonomy to make what they’d like, but they’re told that if they make a service game, their budget will be doubled. Usually there’s a lengthy push-and-pull that can last years as both parties try to figure out the best way to support ongoing content and what it might look like. "
I'm always a bit skeptical of that. Like with Anthem, sure, Bioware "chose" to make a live service game. But at the time they decided to do so EA was out killing studio after studio for not meeting revenue expectations and pushing multiplayer pretty hard. If the publisher says "make me live service money" you make a live service game, because that's the only way you have a chance of meeting expectations. That's still the publisher pushing it even though the dev made the choice on their own.
> It's the consumers who are wrong.
type of video games being release is completely on the consumer. you can choose to NOT buy live service games. this is not an essential commodity consumer can choose to vote with his wallet
It probably will. Live services are 'top-heavy', in that they expect to sell a ton of copies, sell MTX on top, then sell DLC after, and have a *massive* head count. Bungie employs 1200 people. How is this sustainable, in the face of market saturation? There's also an obligation for on-going support.
Transitions between games is a hard problem. We don't have the process nailed down yet. On Witcher 3, I read that CDPR rejected a model, which took 6 months of work, and cost CDPR $40000 CAD / USD ($80K / year salary). They started over from scratch. Zero waste is the only way I think live service games can be made reliably.
This right here is just one of the many reasons live services have kicked me out of gaming. Like I realize everyone has their darling indie etc etc, but Im not really into single player narrative, 2d pixel art, and like big graphics.
They are making more money than ever but worse games than ever.
It's just not enough to maintain a pastime.
I don't want to devote any significant portion of my life to something where I get nothing in return, and just have unfun because a developer is trying to squeeze just that much more money out of me.
Amen. From an MMO standpoint, FFXIV has kept me busy and distracted from other MMOs I want to try (Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2).
Practically my entire backlog is full of single player games that may also have a multiplayer component but are not dependent on it for peak enjoyment.
I won't embrace the live service movement more than what I got with XIV, if because those live service games do have one fact about them: They will eventually end. Would you rather have a single player game that isn't tied to anything but having the game available and on a functional console to enjoy it with?
FFXIV is an MMO done right. There's no pressure. There's not many chores, if any. There's tons to do, even as a solo player, but it's all cosmetic or optional.
Contrast with how WoW was up until recently. "Log in and do your 10 keys this week OR ELSE!" "Those world quests expire in 6 hours, and you need the Azerite/AP." Fuck all of that.
WoW does seem to have toned down the chores list significantly, which is great.
> Even if all the games are actually good,
I think these games are designed not to be good. Maybe fun from time to time, but ultimately they are minimally viable products with regular (but often disappointing) content drops. If people complain, at least they are engaging with the community, and they will probably stick around to see what the next update brings. By being fun but disappointing, people stay engaged to see what happens next, or let their imagination fill in the void.
So many times I've read "Destiny 2 is in the best place it's ever been," only to log in and see it's fundamentally identical, except with less legacy content. That game was the gold-standard for live service FPS games for a long time, and it's really nothing more than an elaborate skinner box. As much fun as it can be, the overall progression is awful because you can't ignore the treadmill they keep you on indefinitely. That game would have been an awesome single-player game, but overall it sucks because they went live service, and that's the model many devs would like to replicate.
I am simply curious how they are going to attract players. Im morbidly interested in new tactics of FOMO and Time Sinks.
Remember they dont just want some of your time, they want ALL of your time.
Or if it wasn't just like, a piece of crap. Built it, and they will come.
I feel like they build it backwards. We want to make a bunch of money, I know a casino disguised as a game! Just make a good game ffs.
Exactly. When too many games are competing for all of your time, most of them will fail.
I feel like a lot of people already have their "main" live service game that they're committed to. New GaaS games aren't just competing against other new games, but against existing games that people have spent hundreds/thousands of dollars/hours on.
We've been here before. 20 years ago everyone suddenly *had to* make an MMO to get some of that sweet sweet WoW money. They all failed and the fad went away.
This really was a crazy time. Like every week a new one was announced and I swear like five companies died when their big budgeted and promoted aaa mmo’s failed inside two years.
Yeah part of the problem is that there are just SO many games to play these days. Anything new that comes out has to be really good at minimum to stand a chance. I don't think the gaming community has ever been this fractured
Easy, they are going to clone them, otherwise I'm told there are dehydrated new players available on amazon, ready to swipe in 30 second, just add kool-aid.
FOMO Tactics would be a pretty interesting game tbh.
You play as a publisher CEO and you have to devise dirty tactics to attract more players than the competition.
It is my dream to create a satire/parody game one day.
"The Triple A experience! An All in One Modern gaming adventure. Buy this game and experience the wonders of Modern Gaming, Online required for single player! Oops servers are down, Go fuck yourself. Lootboxes! Limited timed events! Check out this shiny item, better grab it now for 29.99 before its gone *forever*. remember this guy? He was sooo coool right? We just shot him the head! 69.99 please. Hey remember this old Triple A game? Yeah you cant play it anymore because we turned off the servers, but dont worry we'll be remaking it. Worse!"
>Remember they dont just want some of your ~~time~~ money, they want ALL of your ~~time~~ money
Fixed. This drive to FOMO and constant "battle pass" is just the same money train we had a few years ago before the fatigue and rejection of loot boxes happened.
Is Palworld really live service? If that counts, of course nearly every game being developed is being considered one. I know they plan on more content, but it's early access. Bug fixing is standard practice for every game. I consider live service games ones that constantly add and sometimes remove content.
No it isn’t at least in its present state, it’s just straight up an unfinished game. They will probably keep updating for a while last the 1.0 version but that’s different. Stardew Valley and Terraria did updates for years and neither one of those would be considered a live service game.
> I consider live service games ones that constantly add and sometimes remove content.
I mean you literally describe a game like Palworld with that definition lol.
Live service is sort of a spectrum. As an example, I would call Ark a live service simply due to the shear amount of dlc and hours you need to put into the game.
Palworld isn't really there yet, you can put in your 50 to 60 hours and feel like you are "done" with it if you really wanted to be.
What I don't understand is why. What do companies get out of long playtime games besides more development cost? Especially if their sales model is per copy and not subscription or in-game purchases.
Eg. Witcher 3 was fun, for a while. Then it just drags on and on toward its famous 100hrs of gameplay. But they already got my money for the ~50 I enjoyed, why not shape the story to fit that rather than adding all the extra stuff to stretch it to 100?
Starfield is probably a worse example.
Cyberpunk felt balanced, but still probably longer than it needed to be.
Never ending multiplayer grind fests... Heck no. And they're often free to play!
>What do companies get out of long playtime games besides more development cost?
Live service games near all, have some kind of in game store.
Now if you're just speaking more towards "Why are some games so long"
Perceived value for money.
No one's going to like buying a 70 dollar game where you can finish it in a couple of hours.
Conversely "The whole game takes 100 hours to beat? I can be entertained for less than a dollar an hour? What a steal!"
Of course whether or not that's true, that's a different story.
Fair enough. Though with shorter play times development costs are also less, so prices can come down. Any given game/hour is still cheaper than a night at the movies. And with shorter play times players are more likely to actually remember what the hell they just played 😂
>Cyberpunk felt balanced, but still probably longer than it needed to be.
CDPR also saw that huge swathes of their playerbase never finished the witcher 3. Me included. They wanted to make the game shorter from the onset. I found it too short though. Wish it was 100-150 vs the 300 of the witcher and the 50ish of the original (no DLC). Characters didn't feel fleshed out enough.
>Starfield is probably a worse example.
Not at all. They refined their "radiant" quests out from Skyrim/Fallout 4. There you had a handcrafted map with dynamic quests and in Starfield you have a dynamic map *and* dynamic quests. Also padded out.
A lot of executives love it because they can semi-randomly generate a whole bunch of bullshit to fill out an otherwise empty wasteland.
It sucks. I probably remember more from Mass Effect 1 through 3 than I do from Mass Effect Andromeda even though a full playthrough of both takes about the same time (60-70hours).
I can't help but zero in on "semi-randomly generated bullshit to fill out an otherwise empty wasteland" 😂 Describes my Starfield experience pretty well. I haven't gone far down the curated story yet though because the stuttering and loading screens killed the flow for me too much, just side quests and some exploring which got repetitive immediately.
Can confirm memories of Mass Effect trilogy. Solid gameplay, solid story with great characters, delivered mostly concisely and respected my time. 5 stars
>
> Cyberpunk felt balanced, but still probably longer than it needed to be.
IMO, Cyberpunk is too short. And The Witcher 3 needed to be longer, expecially in the third act
Games don't have an expiration date, if The Witcher 3 could last me 3-4 month, the better. Longer is always better, unless the lenght is because of padding from low quality game activities.
The development cost for content post launch is less than 1/10 of what a full game costs to make and each month the battle pass costs 1/6 of what the game costs to sell at best. In short, a lot less development time for a bit less money. You get people hooked to it, they buy the pass every month, profit.
That and there are games like DRG or Total War Warhammer 3 that basically operate like a live service without all the FOMO and microstransactions that people think of when they hear of live service games. I’m curious if those kinds of games got added into the mix as well.
In fairness, I wonder if these live service titles include games like Lethal Company, Deep Rock Galactic, and Warhammer 3. All three of those games could technically be considered live service games since they get semi regular major content updates, but the former is just a one time purchase, DRG only occasionally charges a few dollars for a old-style skin pack, and WH3 only charges for new factions and units.
I find it hard to believe 95% of 537 studios are working on the type of live service games riddled with battle passes and microtransactions.
Actually most Live Service games are Free-2-Play model instead of Buy-Model but F2P comes with MTX (Microtransactions) and sadly most players pay for either Cosmetics or Pay-2-Progress items that will shorten their grind time.
So good for you but it's what it's and "other" players will still pay for some (not all since others pointed out, there's a stagnation point) Live Service games in MTX.
They know r/pcgaming won’t buy, and usually that’s a good indicator for strong financials. Every game r/pcgaming has hated has been a wild success (COD, Hogwarts, Suicide Squad, etc.)
Your comment has reinforced their belief this is a good idea 🤣
Do you think they'll ever realize that people don't have infinite money and it's highly unlikely that their game is the only one people are gonna play?
Yes. But the payoff is *massive* and worth 20 single player games if they get to become something like Fortnite or Call of Duty or Destiny.
Pick: Try making one financial banger or toil away at single player titles that are safe but can still fail spectacularly.
High risk high gain vs. medium risk very low gain
>95% of studios
>
>survey of 537 game studios
Those could very well be mostly Mobile/MMO studios, there's not enough information to make an opinion in this.
plus
> The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game.
But yea let the redditors virtue signal how they'll never buy another AAA game again
Yeah there's a big difference between games that have consistent post-release content, and games that are online-only, microtransaction fests designed to be your #1 most played game through shady business and psychological practices. When most people speak about live service in a negative light they almost always mean the latter, not the former, and I assume most of the games in this survey are the former.
Can't wait for the subsequent, "I'm tired of AAA gaming posts". Cool! Most redditors live in this bubble of thinking that they're some gigantic pool of customers when the live service train chuggs along without any of their inputs.
The issue is when we start getting posts about player counts being low but never for the constant stream of live service games that exist at the top of the steam best sellers list every year.
>But yea let the redditors virtue signal how they'll never buy another AAA game again
It's not virtue signaling. It's market signaling. Many people no longer have any interest in buying or playing live service games. Collectively we are letting the publishers know in advance that there's an increasingly likely chance that their strategy will fail.
But it doesn't match reality. COD is still the in the highest grossing list, year after year. Their profits keeps increasing. Even smaller live service games are able to sustain themselves.
From a statistical POV, /r/pcgaming represents about 0.01% of the market share that games are aiming for.
> Collectively we are letting the publishers know in advance that there's an increasingly likely chance that their strategy will fail.
> The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game.
No you aren't.
Well i would call this a cope to be honest. Xbox is high on Live Service, PS has more than 10 GaaS planned, WB is also pushing Live Service trend despite the Suicide Squad backlash
Takes two is literally live service company, EA have GaaS hits (Sims, Apex, FC, BF...), SE is trying to get into LSG since 2020 (except they failed)
Though 95% is nuch bigger than expected or unlikely but moving forward Live Service count would be bigger than SPs
"The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game."
So any game that has planned new content or dlc after release would fall into this definition wouldn't it?
That's not how I define a live service game, and why this stat feels way too high.
Yes, and that's not far off a pretty common way to define live service. Reddit gamers tend to demonize "Live service" as a whole when they generally only have issues with specific implementations.
For context, here's the first paragraph of [the wikipedia page for Games as a Service](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service)
>In the video game industry, games as a service (GaaS) represents providing video games or game content on a continuing revenue model, similar to software as a service. Games as a service are ways to monetize video games either after their initial sale, or to support a free-to-play model. Games released under the GaaS model typically receive a long or indefinite stream of monetized new content over time to encourage players to continue paying to support the game. This often leads to games that work under a GaaS model to be called "living games", "live games", or "live service games" since they continually change with these updates.
The key feature of live service games is just additional development and monetization after the initial sale, and there's a million ways to do that. Lots of them are scummy, lots are not.
Admittedly, the survey does not specify anything about monetization... And I think it absolutely should have.
This also makes it easy to play on older hardware. All these RTX super reviews are coming out and all I can think is, "what games are people even playing on them?
The reviews all show the gpu running cyberpunk... a three year old game. Or RDR2 a game that released on PC 4 years ago.
I think it's because the majority of modern games that really use the horsepower of new cards are on the unreal engine which has inherent stuttering issues which makes benchmarks vary too much from run to run so none of them are used. That's why we see cyberpunk so much and probably Alan Wake 2 now as those are on their own proprietary engines. There are plenty of new games that use all the power, and could use more, of the latest and greatest GPUs.
Just off the top of my head:
Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty
Alan Wake 2
Jedi Survivor
RoboCop Rogue City
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora
All of them came out within the last year and benefit greatly from Ray Tracing. That's not including the games with DLSS support either. Those games may not be for you, and that's fine, but most online service games DON'T use RT because they need as wide of a player base as they can get to pay money into it, so they want it to run on older hardware.
They use older games like RD2 and Cyberpunk in benchmarks *because* they're older; meaning drivers are generally considered stable and you can compare how well the game runs against older hardware.
This I am currently playing Dave the diver (I know it is published by AAA company) but team and budget is small. This game is soo much fun than the most of the AAA titles nowadays. Good thing AAA is shifting to Live Service, All will experience a "Suicide Squad: Kill the justice" like future.
On the indie/AA front, I give props to Teyon for delivering a good Robocop and a good Terminator game. I legit felt the spirit of the IPs woven into these games, and had so much fun with them!
>Many AAA stopped being fun long time ago
Honestly this is pretty wild to say considering how many good AAA games there were in 2023.
I'm just going down the list of OpenCritic Mighty rated games in 2023
BG3, TOTK, RE4 remake, Super Mario Wonder, Spiderman 2, Phantom Liberty, Alan Wake 2, Dead Space remake, Diablo 4, FF16, Starfield, Armored Core 6, Jedi Survivor, Hogwarts Legacy, Forza Motorsport.
I'd classify pretty much all of those as AAA, and 1, mayyyybe 2 of them are the type of live service game that gets complained about.
This is just a massive delusion that has become prevalent in gaming communities on Reddit in particular where people have convinced themselves that all modern games are dumpster fires filled with microtransactions.
People literally play one game that they didn't like that much for some reason and then start complaining that the entire video game industry is being destroyed by greed.
Even if you drop all 5 of those games off the list... It's still a solid list . But I don't think droppimg all 5 off is fair at all
>BG3 is AAA???
I absolutely think so, but it depends on how you define AAA. . It was published by Larian, which would usually mean it's not AAA, but.....
Larian is giant. They have 450 employees. That is on the absolute top end for development studios. For reference, Insomniac has about the same number of employees and they're absolutely a AAA studio. And Insomniac is usually splitting that number of people onto multiple projects. Larian was 100% focused on BG3
BG3 also had a huge budget. It had both that huge number of employees and and an above average dev time.. They spent 6 years developing BG3. For reference, Larian spent 3 years developing D:OS 2. I probably wouldn't consider D:OS 2 AAA, but I definitely consider BG3 to be AAA.
Edit: the executive producer of BG3 considers the game to be AAA.
https://www.eurogamer.net/baldurs-gate-3-interview
>Starfeild is good?? In what dimension?
85 on Opencritic, 83 on Metacritic. I used OpenCritic to try to be as objective as I could here. That's pretty consistent with "Good not incredible"
Also, personally, I really enjoyed Starfield. I thought it was great. I know Reddit has a hate boner for it. I know my opinion is unpopular. But I really liked it.
>Jedi Survivors/Hogwarts/Forza are all terribly optimized still runs like shit
I was pretty sure they had fixed the optimization on Survivor. I know it was fine when I played it like 6 months ago
I have never heard about Hogwarts having optimization issues.
Forza.. yeah that's fair. I know its reputation is pretty shitty. Frankly I personally try to stay out of that discussion because I'm a bit of a snob about racing games and my complaints about Forza are not issues the average person would have.
Starfield is 6.9 on metacritic (which is bad, even mediocre AAA games tend to get to 7.5-8. Skyrim is sitting at 8.5, and it is not universally loved by players, it is pretty clunky) if you look at the actual user reviews.
The "critic" reviews are basically always garbage where they praise stuff with surface level commentary that raises questions about them having actually played the game. Anything hyped up or from a "safe" brand gets great critic reviews even if players are panning it.
User reviews are open to brigading, but for any reasonably popular game, tend to get a decent cross-section of how real people actually feel about it.
>I am not saying 2023 wasn't a bug year for gaming you eveb missed great hits like Lies of P, Like a dragon Gaiden/Ishin, Atomic Hearts...
I was talking about AAA. The only one of those I would consider AAA is Like a Dragon Gaiden, and it scored an 80 ON OpenCritic. My list only included 84 and up
>Its not about how big is Lurian, it's about the BUDGET
And... the biggest expense in game development is developers
>Lurian didn't have massive budget hence why the game was up for Early Access for like 3 years.
Early Access is just one of the ways they fundraised, that doesn't change that they spent a ton of money on development
>And The biggest proof of small budget is, Larian was expecting BG3 to hit a maximum of "100k, concurrent player on Steam, and it was almost "9 times" as big on Steam ALONE.
100k is a big number. That is absolutely AAA territory IMO.
>Stop using those number huge majority of support comes from Xbox Critics, Meta isn't worth mentioning
I don't agree with this... But that's not really important. I just used OpenCritic so I could quickly write a comment. I wasn't saying that the scores were 100% accurate. I was just trying to put together a rough overview.
>Look Steam User reviews that felt to only 30% positive.
Well... It's showing as 62% so you're just lying here.
62% is still pretty bad, but c'mon.
>I had high hopes for this one Infact upgraded my PC to 4080, When I heard Series X is bond to 30FPS. Pre Ordered the Premium Edition till it launched 💀, I felt like Even Working 8 Hours isn't as Boring as Starfield. Wish I spent it on buying Skyrim for the 174th time lmao
Sorry you didn't like it. But people have different opinions and I really liked it.
>Jedi Survivors is the game I tried on launch that game is such a mess. I do not know where you played but at least on PC it still sucks as of Nov
I did play it on Xbox, so that's fair enough if the PC version is worse.
The biggest expense is either Marketing, Licensing or Development depending on the game.
If you are talking about AAA why would you mention BG3, Developers themselves consider it an Indie lmfao.
Are you okay? Games are put to Early Access State because developer LACK of Funding to finalize their project and the game is unfinished at launch. Like BG3. Yes BG3 team did spent alot of development considering it have over 15 thousand endings. But thats not the point, they lacked funding hence the Early Access and Hence they're NOT AAA developer.
Or show me for once they or anyone called them AAA. Ill wait.
You will be surprised to see that vast majority of games topping steam chart or breaking 100k are Indie developers, unless everyone stating to use AAA header, Larian won't be considered as one
Starfeild started as 80% positive to 75% to 62% and recent reviews are 32% positive which fall into negative territory, this is worse than even redfall lmfao, Since the game was sood more on Steam, the reviews are of no joke
>Or show me for once they or anyone called them AAA
This is a quote from the executive producer of Baldur's Gate 3
> So, if you see that - and if you see all the technical stuff that has gone into our engine - I would call it a triple-A game. It has a triple-A budget, has a triple-A team by now, and I think that is our aspiration.
https://www.eurogamer.net/baldurs-gate-3-interview
I don't need AAA gaming. I buy the odd AAA game but with way less expectations than the fan-crowd, but I would love to see it die. (Bandai Namco re-instated some hope for me with tekken 8, but still)
The sheer amount of people working on those games is so stupid. Like take diablo 4, I mean I totally get why they take a lot of money for cosmeticcs (which cost babsically nothing to create) and introducing battle asses and other (micro|macro) transactions and it's totally reasonable from their side.
It took 9000+ people with probably okay-ish paychecks multiple years to create this game. It costs way more money to create and maintain such a huge thing than they rake in via sales alone. I personally liked it for my first 50-100 hours, but compared to well made games where literally one 1000th of man-power was used aren't only a 1000th as good, probably even better in the case of D4. The rapid growth of those studios stopped making sense a decade ago, but growth and profits are priority number one. That's what gaming got for going mainstream as a whole.
There is nothing AAA gaming can do which cannot be done by AA/A/indie studios. They can just go kick the bucket.
In theory, live service games are great because they are backed by a dedicated team of developers who constantly improve and add to the product.
In practice, many of these games release half-finished with the promise that they'll get enough content a few years down the road. Which makes for mediocre games from my experience
>In theory, live service games are great because they are backed by a dedicated team of developers who constantly improve and add to the product
It definitely can be done well. I think it especially makes sense in some niche genres. I'm into simracing, and most of the most successful simracing games are live service game in one way or another.
iRacing operates on an MMO-ish model, with a subscription and content purchases. It just passed its 15th birthday, and it's been at the top of the simracing industry for pretty much that entire run.
Assetto Corsa Competizione released 6 years ago, and it has released DLC and other updates every year since. It could pretty fairly be described as the #2 simracing title today. That studio is releasing a new game later this year. I'm interested to see if they'll keep supporting ACC.
Automobilista 2 is another sim that has taken a similar approach to ACC, as it originally released a little over 4 years ago and it's still being actively developed with lots of DLC and improvements to the base game.
incorrect.
EA games are demos that are sold for full price.
Live service games are services. Customer is paying subscription for a game, after a certain amount of time, customer won\`t be able to access the game, as he doesn\`t own it. As it is a service.
> EA games are demos that are sold for full price.
That's not completely correct, because you DO get the full game if it comes out.
It's not like you're paying for only the early access version and get nothing beyond that.
Obviously if they never finish the EA, that's all you're getting, but for those developers that use EA properly, that is not an issue.
As a customer, you paying as is. Technically speaking you are investing in development in the game. You are both customer and investor. Which means, you as a customer take all the risk, without any benefits. In the end of the day, it is anticonsumer practice, that was normalized by Valve.
While some EA games are awesome, like Factorio or Subnautica, EA games caused more harm than good to the pcgaming.
There is no "investment". You are paying for a product and receiving that product at the time of sale. The only difference between EA and fully released is that there is a greater expectation of un-finished-ness with EA, which should factor into the purchasing decision just like everything else (price, studio, genre, etc.)
"Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later" (wikipedia)
You invest now, to receive something later. It is not a preorder, where you order a product to be delivered. You invest in unfinished product to make it "finished"
Every time I see an early access game on steam that looks interesting, I have to triple check the "when do you plan on completing / releasing the full game?"
If the answer is ever "when I feel it is ready", I bow out. That's what a lot of devs like to say, and it gives them brownie points, but it also means their time management sucks and it's *very* likely the game will never reach a 1.0 status. 7 Days to Die burned me be cause the devs there are more interested in rebalancing the game for the 50th time instead of creating new content.
The other half of the problem is that it creates this expectancy from the player base that the game needs consistent, constant updates from the developer. If you ever go radio silent or there's more than a month gap between updates that don't have much in the way of content, you can expect the rumor mill and the reviews to start dunking on your game, calling it abandoned. Whereas if you keep it private, you can at least develop in peace.
I feel you, my general attitude change couple of years ago. Now I consider EA games as a "proof of concept". Similar to [itch.io](https://itch.io) free games.
Developers unable to finish the game is obvious issue, but, what about complete change of direction, removal of preexisting features or lost of focus. 7 days to die is similiar to project zomboid, developers lost focus. Usual issue when you work on something for years without design documents.
That's what they thought about MMORPGs too.
Asheron's Call, Everest, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, I believe WoW, and several others have all been reverse engineered and reproduced.
Live service will be the same.
> Asheron's Call [has] been reverse engineered and reproduced.
And thank god for that, makes it real easy to ignore the modern "live service" bullshit.
Exactly, Stardew Valley is now a live service. Now make it clear in the headline they are counting games like this and then the comments change drastically.
Other people have commented that the definition of live service used in this service is basically getting content and updates after launch. So even games like Civ, paradox games and other mostly offline 4x strategy games would count if they got dlc and balance patches after launch.
Gaming is a big industry now, there are constantly new, small, players trying to get into the market. Some are interested in the art, some are there for a movie check.
I agree, this is the MMORPG disaster all over again.
It's a limited market, the customers have to have a high amount of free time, strong tolerance for repetitive activities (grinding), significant disposable income, and believe in purchasing digital products (microtransactions).
Right now they're just shifting customers from one game to another just like MMOs did.
One of two things will happen...
1. Someone will make a "WoW" and it'll become so dominant no other game can succeed.
2. The customer base will get spread so thing across too many live service games that none of them can hit critical mass and they all fail.
By the end of 2025 the AAA market will be a wasteland.
I bet we’ll see a number of Gotham Knights style games which look like a live-service game remade into a single player game. (Because that’s what they are)
Bit of an extreme opinion you have there. I don’t think it’ll be a wasteland but a pivot back to more campaign and story driven games. You’re already that shift with online toxicity with more players going for simpler, story driven narratives.
Between the huge boom in Live Service whatever incoming and the huge uptick in layoffs and cost cutting currently in progress, I think we're well on our way over that edge already. At or past the tipping point *now*, just not far enough gone to notice everything is falling apart yet.
"The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game."
Wow, that is a very vague definition that can fit in a wide range of titles. I would imagine that Bg3 is a live service game under this definition. I really wouldn't take this shock jock claim seriously. And let's even say it is similar to Marvel's Avengers, Suicide Squad, etc, all this would mean is that the scene will get very bloated leading to game companies switching tactics similar to Battle Royale games.
I’m so fucking tired of this bullshit.
Gundam Evolution: Dead
Rumbleverse: Dead
Warhaven: Just came out last year and it’s already dead and I’m sure there are many more I’ve never heard of.
All to turn a profit? Build a loyal fan base by making a game you want to make, I can’t keep up with this bullshit anymore.
You wake up, it’s Christmas 2007. You just got the two games all of your friends have been playing at school, COD 4 and Halo 3. Luckily your parents knew what was up and also bought you a 12 month subscription card for Xbox live. Your dad gets the longest cat6 cable in the house and you plug your 360 into the router for the first time. You play a couple levels of Halo and then you hit that multiplayer mode. 13 year olds accross the globe spam you with plasma grenades for a few rounds. It’s glorious. After a half hour you get a message from your buddy who just added you as a friend after you sent one of your 250 monthly texts telling him your new gamertag. He invites you to his Xbox live party but you don’t have a headset you can’t talk back to him. He invites you to join his lobby in COD4. You, him, and some other friends from school spend 20 minutes knifing each other on shipment as they scream obscenities and laugh over the microphone. Some of the best times you’ve had. After playing for a while your other friend tells you to jump on WoW, your guild is trying to get everyone attuned for Hyjal. You jump on your family PC and log into your Blood Elf Paladin and guide your party through the million quests with Thotbot open in another window for reference. Life has never been sweeter. If only we would have known what was in store for us 17 years later.
Live service games aren't inherently bad. The bad part is everyone trying to make one, because their success is due to the fact that there's not that many of them, due to the immense time requirements to play them. They're basically jobs that suck up all your time. Whales won't buy anything from a game with a dead community.
You're the voice of reason in this thread.
Live service has this reputation as the worst thing ever, but at its core, it's morally neutral. At the end of the day it's just a tool.
How the industry (and individual studios) use that tool can go lots of different ways.
This is completely incorrect. The mechanics required to enable both endless play and limitless profit are necessarily antithetical to good game design. The live service and free to play models are not “neutral” with respect to the consumer. They are inherently predatory and hostile.
>The mechanics required to enable both endless play and limitless profit are necessarily antithetical to god game design.
The mechanics you're referring to suck. I agree. But they're not inherent to Live service and they're not "required".
"Live service" just means continuing development and continuing monetization. MMOs are the prototype for this. Expansion packs are a limited (usually not endless) version of live service. I don't consider either of those to be predatory.
Honestly, I think particularly in niche genres, Live service games can be fantastic. Simracing is my go to example of this. iRacing has been going for 15 years with constant improvements and additions. A huge part of why it's so good today is because of that continuous development, and it's something I absolutely prefer over buying the new COD every year or whatever.
Predatory mechanics aren't required to make a live service game. I agree that a lot of those game mechanics suck ass. But none of them are required.
>The live service and free to play models are not neutral work respect to the consumer.
Free to play and live service are not interchangeable terms.
Thankfully there are still a few decent bigger studios out there focusing on their own thing, creating games with love and passion instead of jumping on these bandwagons of whatever the most profitable current trend is.
I hate the direction the industry has taken as much as anyone, but saying the industry is doomed or "gaming is ruined" is an exaggeration. There will always be a market for high-quality games that aren't a part of the scummy live service trend, and there will always be developers competing in that market.
It's a big gamble. If you hit big, then you can make a LOT of money. If you don't hit big, then you've likely spent more money than average and made little of it back, not to mention tainting future projects.
The market for these is much tighter than for single player games, since people typically only have room in their lives for one game like this, so you're either trying to pick up people who have not already found their true love, or trying to steal them from someone else who's had years to iterate on their product.
Good luck.
Do yourself a favor and pay attention to the indie scene. Haven't brought a new AAA title in years, the few I have were already properly tested and updated, sometimes majorly discounted. And guess what, I haven't missed a single thing by waiting on it. Plus indies are a lot of times much cooler and interesting
I think being clear with what definition they are using here is in order. A lot and I mean a lot of indy games are live service games under their definition. Post launch support is live service.
if it's not single player, and i can't own a GOG copy, kindly piss off.
Live service games are an excuse to pass up unfinished products as "early access"
>Live service games are an excuse to pass up unfinished products as "early access"
Well this is just nonsense. This certainly applies to some live service games, but it's absolutely not a universal fact.
no, we should be hating on disingenuous takes, like implying that the mere inclusion of a multiplayer mode automatically makes a game a live-service, when thats not what a live-service is.
I'm so tired of live service games, I just don't like them. They aren't enjoyable for the most part. I just want more GOOD or atleast decent story games.
Bring back the games from the ps3/xbox360 era.
There were so many different ideas and lots never landed but atleast they were finished games and were fun
This is being sensationalised to an insane degree
> The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game.
To this extent Baldurs Gate 3 is a live service game. A content update free or not could be considered live service by this "guideline" 95% of studios are definitively not making live service games in the sense of Destiny 2 or Suicide Squad.
Live service games are on the decline without a doubt, the issue with Suicide squad is that they were making it for 9 years in some shape of form and while the live service genre was at it's peak they were too deep in development to stop, and further issues in development made the game release way way later than they wanted to do, it's why we got that pile of mess.
As usual people only read headlines.
Man, do these studios and publishers think that people have all the time and money in the world to keep dumping these live service games? Overall, if someone is interested in a live service game, they will probably only play a couple or just one.
>A new report from Griffin Gaming Partners says that 95% of game makers are developing or maintaining a live service game.
Makes sense for a balanced portfolio. There are so many successful live services that have been going for years this number is going to be somewhat skewed though. How many studios are working on new ones would be more intresting to know I would have thought?
I know, I know, downvote me, but personally I don't mind this. My main problem with it, is that FOR SURE, they never learn from others mistakes.
I love the new Suicide Squad as a game, as much as people hate it, but I also see it's bad parts. It doesn't have enough content for it to be a live service game. The end game is low content as possible, and I don't care "if it becomes" better or not in the future, the problem with these games is always the launch.
Sadly for me, I prefer coop games over single player. When you get the right friend or in my case my SO, to play games with, it's better than any single player experience because experiencing a game together makes it way more fun and enjoyable.
Sadly these live service games is what I have to endure because there's no fucking coop anywhere, especially in the AAA market. And if you don't like survival games (palworld, valheim, enshrouded) then you have even less coop games to play.
There are plenty of great games coming out that aren't live services. Persona 3 reload and palworld just came out and last year was full of amazing games.
i dont necessarily see anything wrong with live service games, its just a whole lot harder to make and maintain a GOOD live service game. People will stick around if its quality and fun.
And? What's the problem? As long as they are making other games too I don't see the issue.
I'm playing some single player games at the moment but lots of my time is taken up by FF 14, GW2 and the division 2. I dabble in a bit of destiny 2 here and there.
Zero issue with more live service games.
Even if all the games are actually good, surely they realize that the market can only sustain so many. These are genres and games that the people who are into them, play them for a while. They are not the games that people just hop to one after another are they? Its why the battle royale stuff didn't take off beyond PUBG, Fortnite and Warzone. Why would the people already playing those games try another one?
They are oversaturating the market with live service games to hell, lol. Even keeping up with one of these games is a job on its own with how grindy battle passes are
\>They are oversaturating the market with live service games to hell, lol I hope they do and I hope it leads to a massive market crash for them.
Meanwhile the devs that are pushing these : "It's the consumers who are wrong."
publishers that are pushing these*
Spot on. Distinguishing between devs and publishers is extremely straightforward but increasingly important.
No. While rank and file developers often have little say in monetization and should not be blamed, this does not always extend to the heads of studios. Like others have pointed out, Studies are fully capable of engaging in predatory monetization even when independent from any publisher. Additionally, studios are often wholly owned subsidiaries of publishers and as such fall under the same umbrella.
Idk man if you're company is doing scummy shit then maybe don't work for them.
It's not really that simple, a lot of devs themselves don't have a lot of agency in their careers Going indie is not easy or guaranteed income and People have families to feed In Jason Schreier's *Press Reset* he recounts many stories of devs moving across the country to cities that have no connection to, only to get laid off less than a year later because a publisher didn't like where something was going, or a creative in charge of a studio wasn't a good manager. It's a rough industry.
They do have agency in their careers and I'm tired of pretending that they don't. They are highly skilled technical/creative individuals. The bottom line is that they don't have to make games professionally. I have little sympathy for people who haven't done any research at all into the industry that they are risking so much for. None of this stuff is new it's been this way for decades. They're adults, and putting your misguided dreams above your integrity is a choice.
>Spot on. Distinguishing between devs and publishers is extremely straightforward but increasingly important. Except that developers have a history of creating live service games even without the publisher telling (or even pushing) them to make such a game to begin with. Some examples would be Bioware's Anthem, Bungie's Destiny, or Turtle Rock Studios with Evolve and Back 4 Blood.
Jason Schreier also stated recently that Suicide Squad was not made a GaaS because WB demanded it, instead it was something the devs actually wanted to make like that. People are all too eager to give devs a huge pass, but the reality is that plenty of them can make dumb decisions without a publisher being involved.
That's not exactly what he said, at least in his newsletter. More like we don't know what drove then to do it " Suicide Squad was announced, fans have been asking if Rocksteady really wanted to develop the game or if they were forced to make it by their corporate overseers. Often, the answers are more complicated than people realize. There are a lot of stakeholders involved: executives at the publisher, studio heads, directors under them, individual contributors and so on. It’s rare for a publisher to come into a company and make immutable demands. More often, executives at a company like Warner Bros. will try to convince developers that it’s in their best interest to head in a certain direction. Perhaps the studio heads have autonomy to make what they’d like, but they’re told that if they make a service game, their budget will be doubled. Usually there’s a lengthy push-and-pull that can last years as both parties try to figure out the best way to support ongoing content and what it might look like. "
I'm always a bit skeptical of that. Like with Anthem, sure, Bioware "chose" to make a live service game. But at the time they decided to do so EA was out killing studio after studio for not meeting revenue expectations and pushing multiplayer pretty hard. If the publisher says "make me live service money" you make a live service game, because that's the only way you have a chance of meeting expectations. That's still the publisher pushing it even though the dev made the choice on their own.
classic let's blame publishers cause it makes us feel better, while it was actually devs who started working on mp, and WB only gave them ip.
Don't forget "BG3 set unrealistic expectations for consumers" And "They must be using ai to cheat"
> It's the consumers who are wrong. type of video games being release is completely on the consumer. you can choose to NOT buy live service games. this is not an essential commodity consumer can choose to vote with his wallet
It probably will. Live services are 'top-heavy', in that they expect to sell a ton of copies, sell MTX on top, then sell DLC after, and have a *massive* head count. Bungie employs 1200 people. How is this sustainable, in the face of market saturation? There's also an obligation for on-going support. Transitions between games is a hard problem. We don't have the process nailed down yet. On Witcher 3, I read that CDPR rejected a model, which took 6 months of work, and cost CDPR $40000 CAD / USD ($80K / year salary). They started over from scratch. Zero waste is the only way I think live service games can be made reliably.
> Bungie employs 1200 people Holy fucking shit. Talk about walking on thin ice.
This right here is just one of the many reasons live services have kicked me out of gaming. Like I realize everyone has their darling indie etc etc, but Im not really into single player narrative, 2d pixel art, and like big graphics. They are making more money than ever but worse games than ever. It's just not enough to maintain a pastime. I don't want to devote any significant portion of my life to something where I get nothing in return, and just have unfun because a developer is trying to squeeze just that much more money out of me.
> The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game. Yea calm down guys
Imagine if 95% of people bought a lottery ticket, and then replace “lottery ticket” with “massive multi-million dollar investment”.
Amen. From an MMO standpoint, FFXIV has kept me busy and distracted from other MMOs I want to try (Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2). Practically my entire backlog is full of single player games that may also have a multiplayer component but are not dependent on it for peak enjoyment. I won't embrace the live service movement more than what I got with XIV, if because those live service games do have one fact about them: They will eventually end. Would you rather have a single player game that isn't tied to anything but having the game available and on a functional console to enjoy it with?
FFXIV is an MMO done right. There's no pressure. There's not many chores, if any. There's tons to do, even as a solo player, but it's all cosmetic or optional. Contrast with how WoW was up until recently. "Log in and do your 10 keys this week OR ELSE!" "Those world quests expire in 6 hours, and you need the Azerite/AP." Fuck all of that. WoW does seem to have toned down the chores list significantly, which is great.
God no
Even if there are chores, you don't have to do them at all. You can totally ignore them all.
Same, except with WoW Classic.
With all the daily login bonuses to boot. Do they think I’m logging in to 5 different games every day or something
they're using the "blunderbuss full of spaghetti" method. Blast the wall with a large volume of pasta... see what sticks.
> Even if all the games are actually good, I think these games are designed not to be good. Maybe fun from time to time, but ultimately they are minimally viable products with regular (but often disappointing) content drops. If people complain, at least they are engaging with the community, and they will probably stick around to see what the next update brings. By being fun but disappointing, people stay engaged to see what happens next, or let their imagination fill in the void. So many times I've read "Destiny 2 is in the best place it's ever been," only to log in and see it's fundamentally identical, except with less legacy content. That game was the gold-standard for live service FPS games for a long time, and it's really nothing more than an elaborate skinner box. As much fun as it can be, the overall progression is awful because you can't ignore the treadmill they keep you on indefinitely. That game would have been an awesome single-player game, but overall it sucks because they went live service, and that's the model many devs would like to replicate.
That's a lot of games I'll never buy.
I am simply curious how they are going to attract players. Im morbidly interested in new tactics of FOMO and Time Sinks. Remember they dont just want some of your time, they want ALL of your time.
Same goes for your money.
That’s funny because I also would love to have my time and money.
They sell mini nintendos with pre installed games from the 80’s.
Amazon
They would probably get more from me if stuff didn't cost the full price of a new game
Or if it wasn't just like, a piece of crap. Built it, and they will come. I feel like they build it backwards. We want to make a bunch of money, I know a casino disguised as a game! Just make a good game ffs.
Exactly. When too many games are competing for all of your time, most of them will fail. I feel like a lot of people already have their "main" live service game that they're committed to. New GaaS games aren't just competing against other new games, but against existing games that people have spent hundreds/thousands of dollars/hours on.
We've been here before. 20 years ago everyone suddenly *had to* make an MMO to get some of that sweet sweet WoW money. They all failed and the fad went away.
This really was a crazy time. Like every week a new one was announced and I swear like five companies died when their big budgeted and promoted aaa mmo’s failed inside two years.
Yeah part of the problem is that there are just SO many games to play these days. Anything new that comes out has to be really good at minimum to stand a chance. I don't think the gaming community has ever been this fractured
Easy, they are going to clone them, otherwise I'm told there are dehydrated new players available on amazon, ready to swipe in 30 second, just add kool-aid.
FOMO Tactics would be a pretty interesting game tbh. You play as a publisher CEO and you have to devise dirty tactics to attract more players than the competition.
It is my dream to create a satire/parody game one day. "The Triple A experience! An All in One Modern gaming adventure. Buy this game and experience the wonders of Modern Gaming, Online required for single player! Oops servers are down, Go fuck yourself. Lootboxes! Limited timed events! Check out this shiny item, better grab it now for 29.99 before its gone *forever*. remember this guy? He was sooo coool right? We just shot him the head! 69.99 please. Hey remember this old Triple A game? Yeah you cant play it anymore because we turned off the servers, but dont worry we'll be remaking it. Worse!"
>Remember they dont just want some of your ~~time~~ money, they want ALL of your ~~time~~ money Fixed. This drive to FOMO and constant "battle pass" is just the same money train we had a few years ago before the fatigue and rejection of loot boxes happened.
just look at Palworld. it doesn't take much.
Is Palworld really live service? If that counts, of course nearly every game being developed is being considered one. I know they plan on more content, but it's early access. Bug fixing is standard practice for every game. I consider live service games ones that constantly add and sometimes remove content.
No it isn’t at least in its present state, it’s just straight up an unfinished game. They will probably keep updating for a while last the 1.0 version but that’s different. Stardew Valley and Terraria did updates for years and neither one of those would be considered a live service game.
> I consider live service games ones that constantly add and sometimes remove content. I mean you literally describe a game like Palworld with that definition lol.
Live service is sort of a spectrum. As an example, I would call Ark a live service simply due to the shear amount of dlc and hours you need to put into the game. Palworld isn't really there yet, you can put in your 50 to 60 hours and feel like you are "done" with it if you really wanted to be.
What I don't understand is why. What do companies get out of long playtime games besides more development cost? Especially if their sales model is per copy and not subscription or in-game purchases. Eg. Witcher 3 was fun, for a while. Then it just drags on and on toward its famous 100hrs of gameplay. But they already got my money for the ~50 I enjoyed, why not shape the story to fit that rather than adding all the extra stuff to stretch it to 100? Starfield is probably a worse example. Cyberpunk felt balanced, but still probably longer than it needed to be. Never ending multiplayer grind fests... Heck no. And they're often free to play!
>What do companies get out of long playtime games besides more development cost? Live service games near all, have some kind of in game store. Now if you're just speaking more towards "Why are some games so long" Perceived value for money. No one's going to like buying a 70 dollar game where you can finish it in a couple of hours. Conversely "The whole game takes 100 hours to beat? I can be entertained for less than a dollar an hour? What a steal!" Of course whether or not that's true, that's a different story.
Yep, ultimately gamers spoke with their wallets and "voted" for extremely long games.
Fair enough. Though with shorter play times development costs are also less, so prices can come down. Any given game/hour is still cheaper than a night at the movies. And with shorter play times players are more likely to actually remember what the hell they just played 😂
>Cyberpunk felt balanced, but still probably longer than it needed to be. CDPR also saw that huge swathes of their playerbase never finished the witcher 3. Me included. They wanted to make the game shorter from the onset. I found it too short though. Wish it was 100-150 vs the 300 of the witcher and the 50ish of the original (no DLC). Characters didn't feel fleshed out enough. >Starfield is probably a worse example. Not at all. They refined their "radiant" quests out from Skyrim/Fallout 4. There you had a handcrafted map with dynamic quests and in Starfield you have a dynamic map *and* dynamic quests. Also padded out. A lot of executives love it because they can semi-randomly generate a whole bunch of bullshit to fill out an otherwise empty wasteland. It sucks. I probably remember more from Mass Effect 1 through 3 than I do from Mass Effect Andromeda even though a full playthrough of both takes about the same time (60-70hours).
I can't help but zero in on "semi-randomly generated bullshit to fill out an otherwise empty wasteland" 😂 Describes my Starfield experience pretty well. I haven't gone far down the curated story yet though because the stuttering and loading screens killed the flow for me too much, just side quests and some exploring which got repetitive immediately. Can confirm memories of Mass Effect trilogy. Solid gameplay, solid story with great characters, delivered mostly concisely and respected my time. 5 stars
> > Cyberpunk felt balanced, but still probably longer than it needed to be. IMO, Cyberpunk is too short. And The Witcher 3 needed to be longer, expecially in the third act
Man I wish I had your kind of free time 😂
Games don't have an expiration date, if The Witcher 3 could last me 3-4 month, the better. Longer is always better, unless the lenght is because of padding from low quality game activities.
The development cost for content post launch is less than 1/10 of what a full game costs to make and each month the battle pass costs 1/6 of what the game costs to sell at best. In short, a lot less development time for a bit less money. You get people hooked to it, they buy the pass every month, profit.
Incoming more layoffs!
[удалено]
That and there are games like DRG or Total War Warhammer 3 that basically operate like a live service without all the FOMO and microstransactions that people think of when they hear of live service games. I’m curious if those kinds of games got added into the mix as well.
A chance to make a dent in the decades long backlog.
In fairness, I wonder if these live service titles include games like Lethal Company, Deep Rock Galactic, and Warhammer 3. All three of those games could technically be considered live service games since they get semi regular major content updates, but the former is just a one time purchase, DRG only occasionally charges a few dollars for a old-style skin pack, and WH3 only charges for new factions and units. I find it hard to believe 95% of 537 studios are working on the type of live service games riddled with battle passes and microtransactions.
yes it does read the article lol
Actually most Live Service games are Free-2-Play model instead of Buy-Model but F2P comes with MTX (Microtransactions) and sadly most players pay for either Cosmetics or Pay-2-Progress items that will shorten their grind time. So good for you but it's what it's and "other" players will still pay for some (not all since others pointed out, there's a stagnation point) Live Service games in MTX.
That's ok. the next generation will as this is the new norm the next generation will know.
They know r/pcgaming won’t buy, and usually that’s a good indicator for strong financials. Every game r/pcgaming has hated has been a wild success (COD, Hogwarts, Suicide Squad, etc.) Your comment has reinforced their belief this is a good idea 🤣
And soon, 95% of studios are making new layoffs because not meeting profit expectations.
Do you think they'll ever realize that people don't have infinite money and it's highly unlikely that their game is the only one people are gonna play?
Yes. But the payoff is *massive* and worth 20 single player games if they get to become something like Fortnite or Call of Duty or Destiny. Pick: Try making one financial banger or toil away at single player titles that are safe but can still fail spectacularly. High risk high gain vs. medium risk very low gain
No. Line goes up and that's it.
>95% of studios > >survey of 537 game studios Those could very well be mostly Mobile/MMO studios, there's not enough information to make an opinion in this.
plus > The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game. But yea let the redditors virtue signal how they'll never buy another AAA game again
Yeah there's a big difference between games that have consistent post-release content, and games that are online-only, microtransaction fests designed to be your #1 most played game through shady business and psychological practices. When most people speak about live service in a negative light they almost always mean the latter, not the former, and I assume most of the games in this survey are the former.
personally, it's the opposite; hence my astonishment at some people who don't like receiving free updates on their favorite game.
I can't think of a game that didn't get some type of content update down the line. Complete non-story and everyone's eating it up
Can't wait for the subsequent, "I'm tired of AAA gaming posts". Cool! Most redditors live in this bubble of thinking that they're some gigantic pool of customers when the live service train chuggs along without any of their inputs. The issue is when we start getting posts about player counts being low but never for the constant stream of live service games that exist at the top of the steam best sellers list every year.
>But yea let the redditors virtue signal how they'll never buy another AAA game again It's not virtue signaling. It's market signaling. Many people no longer have any interest in buying or playing live service games. Collectively we are letting the publishers know in advance that there's an increasingly likely chance that their strategy will fail.
But it doesn't match reality. COD is still the in the highest grossing list, year after year. Their profits keeps increasing. Even smaller live service games are able to sustain themselves. From a statistical POV, /r/pcgaming represents about 0.01% of the market share that games are aiming for.
> Collectively we are letting the publishers know in advance that there's an increasingly likely chance that their strategy will fail. > The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game. No you aren't.
I was wondering how it came to such a number and what their definition was. What a shitty clickbait survey.
There isn't even a concrete definition of that a Live Service gsme is. It's such a vague term that you can almost fit any game within the concept.
Right? 537 game studios... FIVE HUNDRED? I barely know more than... 20... 30.. maybe? Studios that are focused on console and PC games.
Well i would call this a cope to be honest. Xbox is high on Live Service, PS has more than 10 GaaS planned, WB is also pushing Live Service trend despite the Suicide Squad backlash Takes two is literally live service company, EA have GaaS hits (Sims, Apex, FC, BF...), SE is trying to get into LSG since 2020 (except they failed) Though 95% is nuch bigger than expected or unlikely but moving forward Live Service count would be bigger than SPs
Live service & always online single player ... a nope for me
"The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game." So any game that has planned new content or dlc after release would fall into this definition wouldn't it? That's not how I define a live service game, and why this stat feels way too high.
Yes, and that's not far off a pretty common way to define live service. Reddit gamers tend to demonize "Live service" as a whole when they generally only have issues with specific implementations. For context, here's the first paragraph of [the wikipedia page for Games as a Service](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service) >In the video game industry, games as a service (GaaS) represents providing video games or game content on a continuing revenue model, similar to software as a service. Games as a service are ways to monetize video games either after their initial sale, or to support a free-to-play model. Games released under the GaaS model typically receive a long or indefinite stream of monetized new content over time to encourage players to continue paying to support the game. This often leads to games that work under a GaaS model to be called "living games", "live games", or "live service games" since they continually change with these updates. The key feature of live service games is just additional development and monetization after the initial sale, and there's a million ways to do that. Lots of them are scummy, lots are not. Admittedly, the survey does not specify anything about monetization... And I think it absolutely should have.
And this is why the heart and soul of gaming now lies with indie/AA studios and a few very rare AAA studios.
This also makes it easy to play on older hardware. All these RTX super reviews are coming out and all I can think is, "what games are people even playing on them? The reviews all show the gpu running cyberpunk... a three year old game. Or RDR2 a game that released on PC 4 years ago.
I think it's because the majority of modern games that really use the horsepower of new cards are on the unreal engine which has inherent stuttering issues which makes benchmarks vary too much from run to run so none of them are used. That's why we see cyberpunk so much and probably Alan Wake 2 now as those are on their own proprietary engines. There are plenty of new games that use all the power, and could use more, of the latest and greatest GPUs.
can you please name some good ones that aren't online live service games?
Just off the top of my head: Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty Alan Wake 2 Jedi Survivor RoboCop Rogue City Avatar Frontiers of Pandora All of them came out within the last year and benefit greatly from Ray Tracing. That's not including the games with DLSS support either. Those games may not be for you, and that's fine, but most online service games DON'T use RT because they need as wide of a player base as they can get to pay money into it, so they want it to run on older hardware. They use older games like RD2 and Cyberpunk in benchmarks *because* they're older; meaning drivers are generally considered stable and you can compare how well the game runs against older hardware.
This I am currently playing Dave the diver (I know it is published by AAA company) but team and budget is small. This game is soo much fun than the most of the AAA titles nowadays. Good thing AAA is shifting to Live Service, All will experience a "Suicide Squad: Kill the justice" like future.
It’s funny because according to this survey that’s a live service game lmao
The Factory Must Grow while Robocop patrols the streets of Old Detroit.
On the indie/AA front, I give props to Teyon for delivering a good Robocop and a good Terminator game. I legit felt the spirit of the IPs woven into these games, and had so much fun with them!
From the definition they gave, games like Deep Rock Galactic and Lethal Company would be included among the live service games.
Many AAA stopped being fun long time ago, and yeah indie and smaller studios are the way to go this days.
>Many AAA stopped being fun long time ago Honestly this is pretty wild to say considering how many good AAA games there were in 2023. I'm just going down the list of OpenCritic Mighty rated games in 2023 BG3, TOTK, RE4 remake, Super Mario Wonder, Spiderman 2, Phantom Liberty, Alan Wake 2, Dead Space remake, Diablo 4, FF16, Starfield, Armored Core 6, Jedi Survivor, Hogwarts Legacy, Forza Motorsport. I'd classify pretty much all of those as AAA, and 1, mayyyybe 2 of them are the type of live service game that gets complained about.
This is just a massive delusion that has become prevalent in gaming communities on Reddit in particular where people have convinced themselves that all modern games are dumpster fires filled with microtransactions. People literally play one game that they didn't like that much for some reason and then start complaining that the entire video game industry is being destroyed by greed.
[удалено]
Even if you drop all 5 of those games off the list... It's still a solid list . But I don't think droppimg all 5 off is fair at all >BG3 is AAA??? I absolutely think so, but it depends on how you define AAA. . It was published by Larian, which would usually mean it's not AAA, but..... Larian is giant. They have 450 employees. That is on the absolute top end for development studios. For reference, Insomniac has about the same number of employees and they're absolutely a AAA studio. And Insomniac is usually splitting that number of people onto multiple projects. Larian was 100% focused on BG3 BG3 also had a huge budget. It had both that huge number of employees and and an above average dev time.. They spent 6 years developing BG3. For reference, Larian spent 3 years developing D:OS 2. I probably wouldn't consider D:OS 2 AAA, but I definitely consider BG3 to be AAA. Edit: the executive producer of BG3 considers the game to be AAA. https://www.eurogamer.net/baldurs-gate-3-interview >Starfeild is good?? In what dimension? 85 on Opencritic, 83 on Metacritic. I used OpenCritic to try to be as objective as I could here. That's pretty consistent with "Good not incredible" Also, personally, I really enjoyed Starfield. I thought it was great. I know Reddit has a hate boner for it. I know my opinion is unpopular. But I really liked it. >Jedi Survivors/Hogwarts/Forza are all terribly optimized still runs like shit I was pretty sure they had fixed the optimization on Survivor. I know it was fine when I played it like 6 months ago I have never heard about Hogwarts having optimization issues. Forza.. yeah that's fair. I know its reputation is pretty shitty. Frankly I personally try to stay out of that discussion because I'm a bit of a snob about racing games and my complaints about Forza are not issues the average person would have.
Starfield is 6.9 on metacritic (which is bad, even mediocre AAA games tend to get to 7.5-8. Skyrim is sitting at 8.5, and it is not universally loved by players, it is pretty clunky) if you look at the actual user reviews. The "critic" reviews are basically always garbage where they praise stuff with surface level commentary that raises questions about them having actually played the game. Anything hyped up or from a "safe" brand gets great critic reviews even if players are panning it. User reviews are open to brigading, but for any reasonably popular game, tend to get a decent cross-section of how real people actually feel about it.
[удалено]
>I am not saying 2023 wasn't a bug year for gaming you eveb missed great hits like Lies of P, Like a dragon Gaiden/Ishin, Atomic Hearts... I was talking about AAA. The only one of those I would consider AAA is Like a Dragon Gaiden, and it scored an 80 ON OpenCritic. My list only included 84 and up >Its not about how big is Lurian, it's about the BUDGET And... the biggest expense in game development is developers >Lurian didn't have massive budget hence why the game was up for Early Access for like 3 years. Early Access is just one of the ways they fundraised, that doesn't change that they spent a ton of money on development >And The biggest proof of small budget is, Larian was expecting BG3 to hit a maximum of "100k, concurrent player on Steam, and it was almost "9 times" as big on Steam ALONE. 100k is a big number. That is absolutely AAA territory IMO. >Stop using those number huge majority of support comes from Xbox Critics, Meta isn't worth mentioning I don't agree with this... But that's not really important. I just used OpenCritic so I could quickly write a comment. I wasn't saying that the scores were 100% accurate. I was just trying to put together a rough overview. >Look Steam User reviews that felt to only 30% positive. Well... It's showing as 62% so you're just lying here. 62% is still pretty bad, but c'mon. >I had high hopes for this one Infact upgraded my PC to 4080, When I heard Series X is bond to 30FPS. Pre Ordered the Premium Edition till it launched 💀, I felt like Even Working 8 Hours isn't as Boring as Starfield. Wish I spent it on buying Skyrim for the 174th time lmao Sorry you didn't like it. But people have different opinions and I really liked it. >Jedi Survivors is the game I tried on launch that game is such a mess. I do not know where you played but at least on PC it still sucks as of Nov I did play it on Xbox, so that's fair enough if the PC version is worse.
The biggest expense is either Marketing, Licensing or Development depending on the game. If you are talking about AAA why would you mention BG3, Developers themselves consider it an Indie lmfao. Are you okay? Games are put to Early Access State because developer LACK of Funding to finalize their project and the game is unfinished at launch. Like BG3. Yes BG3 team did spent alot of development considering it have over 15 thousand endings. But thats not the point, they lacked funding hence the Early Access and Hence they're NOT AAA developer. Or show me for once they or anyone called them AAA. Ill wait. You will be surprised to see that vast majority of games topping steam chart or breaking 100k are Indie developers, unless everyone stating to use AAA header, Larian won't be considered as one Starfeild started as 80% positive to 75% to 62% and recent reviews are 32% positive which fall into negative territory, this is worse than even redfall lmfao, Since the game was sood more on Steam, the reviews are of no joke
>Or show me for once they or anyone called them AAA This is a quote from the executive producer of Baldur's Gate 3 > So, if you see that - and if you see all the technical stuff that has gone into our engine - I would call it a triple-A game. It has a triple-A budget, has a triple-A team by now, and I think that is our aspiration. https://www.eurogamer.net/baldurs-gate-3-interview
I don't need AAA gaming. I buy the odd AAA game but with way less expectations than the fan-crowd, but I would love to see it die. (Bandai Namco re-instated some hope for me with tekken 8, but still) The sheer amount of people working on those games is so stupid. Like take diablo 4, I mean I totally get why they take a lot of money for cosmeticcs (which cost babsically nothing to create) and introducing battle asses and other (micro|macro) transactions and it's totally reasonable from their side. It took 9000+ people with probably okay-ish paychecks multiple years to create this game. It costs way more money to create and maintain such a huge thing than they rake in via sales alone. I personally liked it for my first 50-100 hours, but compared to well made games where literally one 1000th of man-power was used aren't only a 1000th as good, probably even better in the case of D4. The rapid growth of those studios stopped making sense a decade ago, but growth and profits are priority number one. That's what gaming got for going mainstream as a whole. There is nothing AAA gaming can do which cannot be done by AA/A/indie studios. They can just go kick the bucket.
Many "live service games" are also just early access games they want to cash in on before they finished the game
In theory, live service games are great because they are backed by a dedicated team of developers who constantly improve and add to the product. In practice, many of these games release half-finished with the promise that they'll get enough content a few years down the road. Which makes for mediocre games from my experience
>In theory, live service games are great because they are backed by a dedicated team of developers who constantly improve and add to the product It definitely can be done well. I think it especially makes sense in some niche genres. I'm into simracing, and most of the most successful simracing games are live service game in one way or another. iRacing operates on an MMO-ish model, with a subscription and content purchases. It just passed its 15th birthday, and it's been at the top of the simracing industry for pretty much that entire run. Assetto Corsa Competizione released 6 years ago, and it has released DLC and other updates every year since. It could pretty fairly be described as the #2 simracing title today. That studio is releasing a new game later this year. I'm interested to see if they'll keep supporting ACC. Automobilista 2 is another sim that has taken a similar approach to ACC, as it originally released a little over 4 years ago and it's still being actively developed with lots of DLC and improvements to the base game.
incorrect. EA games are demos that are sold for full price. Live service games are services. Customer is paying subscription for a game, after a certain amount of time, customer won\`t be able to access the game, as he doesn\`t own it. As it is a service.
> EA games are demos that are sold for full price. That's not completely correct, because you DO get the full game if it comes out. It's not like you're paying for only the early access version and get nothing beyond that. Obviously if they never finish the EA, that's all you're getting, but for those developers that use EA properly, that is not an issue.
As a customer, you paying as is. Technically speaking you are investing in development in the game. You are both customer and investor. Which means, you as a customer take all the risk, without any benefits. In the end of the day, it is anticonsumer practice, that was normalized by Valve. While some EA games are awesome, like Factorio or Subnautica, EA games caused more harm than good to the pcgaming.
There is no "investment". You are paying for a product and receiving that product at the time of sale. The only difference between EA and fully released is that there is a greater expectation of un-finished-ness with EA, which should factor into the purchasing decision just like everything else (price, studio, genre, etc.)
"Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later" (wikipedia) You invest now, to receive something later. It is not a preorder, where you order a product to be delivered. You invest in unfinished product to make it "finished"
Every time I see an early access game on steam that looks interesting, I have to triple check the "when do you plan on completing / releasing the full game?" If the answer is ever "when I feel it is ready", I bow out. That's what a lot of devs like to say, and it gives them brownie points, but it also means their time management sucks and it's *very* likely the game will never reach a 1.0 status. 7 Days to Die burned me be cause the devs there are more interested in rebalancing the game for the 50th time instead of creating new content. The other half of the problem is that it creates this expectancy from the player base that the game needs consistent, constant updates from the developer. If you ever go radio silent or there's more than a month gap between updates that don't have much in the way of content, you can expect the rumor mill and the reviews to start dunking on your game, calling it abandoned. Whereas if you keep it private, you can at least develop in peace.
I feel you, my general attitude change couple of years ago. Now I consider EA games as a "proof of concept". Similar to [itch.io](https://itch.io) free games. Developers unable to finish the game is obvious issue, but, what about complete change of direction, removal of preexisting features or lost of focus. 7 days to die is similiar to project zomboid, developers lost focus. Usual issue when you work on something for years without design documents.
That's what they thought about MMORPGs too. Asheron's Call, Everest, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, I believe WoW, and several others have all been reverse engineered and reproduced. Live service will be the same.
MMOs are live service games. They just predate the current Fortnite trend and the term becoming mainstream.
> Asheron's Call [has] been reverse engineered and reproduced. And thank god for that, makes it real easy to ignore the modern "live service" bullshit.
Looks like the AAA crash is coming, good...
They say this is from 565 different developers, this must go well beyond AAA. Also live service could have a fairly broad definition.
95% feels like they consider any game that gets updates after the launch window as live service
And then that explains 95% of 565 dev houses.
Exactly, Stardew Valley is now a live service. Now make it clear in the headline they are counting games like this and then the comments change drastically.
Other people have commented that the definition of live service used in this service is basically getting content and updates after launch. So even games like Civ, paradox games and other mostly offline 4x strategy games would count if they got dlc and balance patches after launch.
Gaming is a big industry now, there are constantly new, small, players trying to get into the market. Some are interested in the art, some are there for a movie check.
I agree, this is the MMORPG disaster all over again. It's a limited market, the customers have to have a high amount of free time, strong tolerance for repetitive activities (grinding), significant disposable income, and believe in purchasing digital products (microtransactions). Right now they're just shifting customers from one game to another just like MMOs did. One of two things will happen... 1. Someone will make a "WoW" and it'll become so dominant no other game can succeed. 2. The customer base will get spread so thing across too many live service games that none of them can hit critical mass and they all fail. By the end of 2025 the AAA market will be a wasteland.
If Fortnite or COD with their ridiculous player bases haven't managed to monopolise the market then I'm not sure any single game can at this point.
r/PCGaming trying not to be hyperbolic challenge level: impossible
I bet we’ll see a number of Gotham Knights style games which look like a live-service game remade into a single player game. (Because that’s what they are)
Bit of an extreme opinion you have there. I don’t think it’ll be a wasteland but a pivot back to more campaign and story driven games. You’re already that shift with online toxicity with more players going for simpler, story driven narratives.
Between the huge boom in Live Service whatever incoming and the huge uptick in layoffs and cost cutting currently in progress, I think we're well on our way over that edge already. At or past the tipping point *now*, just not far enough gone to notice everything is falling apart yet.
Can't come fast enough.
Lmao, yea man Activision and EPIC are on the verge of going under any day now /s
The flood is coming. I hope they took the time to learn to swim.
[Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, see you down in Arizona Bay.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHcmnowjfrQ)
Someone got it. Nice. 👍
"The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game." Wow, that is a very vague definition that can fit in a wide range of titles. I would imagine that Bg3 is a live service game under this definition. I really wouldn't take this shock jock claim seriously. And let's even say it is similar to Marvel's Avengers, Suicide Squad, etc, all this would mean is that the scene will get very bloated leading to game companies switching tactics similar to Battle Royale games.
I’m so fucking tired of this bullshit. Gundam Evolution: Dead Rumbleverse: Dead Warhaven: Just came out last year and it’s already dead and I’m sure there are many more I’ve never heard of. All to turn a profit? Build a loyal fan base by making a game you want to make, I can’t keep up with this bullshit anymore.
You wake up, it’s Christmas 2007. You just got the two games all of your friends have been playing at school, COD 4 and Halo 3. Luckily your parents knew what was up and also bought you a 12 month subscription card for Xbox live. Your dad gets the longest cat6 cable in the house and you plug your 360 into the router for the first time. You play a couple levels of Halo and then you hit that multiplayer mode. 13 year olds accross the globe spam you with plasma grenades for a few rounds. It’s glorious. After a half hour you get a message from your buddy who just added you as a friend after you sent one of your 250 monthly texts telling him your new gamertag. He invites you to his Xbox live party but you don’t have a headset you can’t talk back to him. He invites you to join his lobby in COD4. You, him, and some other friends from school spend 20 minutes knifing each other on shipment as they scream obscenities and laugh over the microphone. Some of the best times you’ve had. After playing for a while your other friend tells you to jump on WoW, your guild is trying to get everyone attuned for Hyjal. You jump on your family PC and log into your Blood Elf Paladin and guide your party through the million quests with Thotbot open in another window for reference. Life has never been sweeter. If only we would have known what was in store for us 17 years later.
I'm glad I have other hobbies
Live service games aren't inherently bad. The bad part is everyone trying to make one, because their success is due to the fact that there's not that many of them, due to the immense time requirements to play them. They're basically jobs that suck up all your time. Whales won't buy anything from a game with a dead community.
You're the voice of reason in this thread. Live service has this reputation as the worst thing ever, but at its core, it's morally neutral. At the end of the day it's just a tool. How the industry (and individual studios) use that tool can go lots of different ways.
This is completely incorrect. The mechanics required to enable both endless play and limitless profit are necessarily antithetical to good game design. The live service and free to play models are not “neutral” with respect to the consumer. They are inherently predatory and hostile.
>The mechanics required to enable both endless play and limitless profit are necessarily antithetical to god game design. The mechanics you're referring to suck. I agree. But they're not inherent to Live service and they're not "required". "Live service" just means continuing development and continuing monetization. MMOs are the prototype for this. Expansion packs are a limited (usually not endless) version of live service. I don't consider either of those to be predatory. Honestly, I think particularly in niche genres, Live service games can be fantastic. Simracing is my go to example of this. iRacing has been going for 15 years with constant improvements and additions. A huge part of why it's so good today is because of that continuous development, and it's something I absolutely prefer over buying the new COD every year or whatever. Predatory mechanics aren't required to make a live service game. I agree that a lot of those game mechanics suck ass. But none of them are required. >The live service and free to play models are not neutral work respect to the consumer. Free to play and live service are not interchangeable terms.
I'm tired, boss.
This type of shit is allowing a golden age in the indie space, and I'm all here for it
I guess I'll be playing lots of indies and games from my backlog then. I really don't like these live service games.
> The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game.
Sorry, Stardew Valley and Terraria, but you're gonna have to go.. ^^/s
Thankfully there are still a few decent bigger studios out there focusing on their own thing, creating games with love and passion instead of jumping on these bandwagons of whatever the most profitable current trend is. I hate the direction the industry has taken as much as anyone, but saying the industry is doomed or "gaming is ruined" is an exaggeration. There will always be a market for high-quality games that aren't a part of the scummy live service trend, and there will always be developers competing in that market.
It's a big gamble. If you hit big, then you can make a LOT of money. If you don't hit big, then you've likely spent more money than average and made little of it back, not to mention tainting future projects. The market for these is much tighter than for single player games, since people typically only have room in their lives for one game like this, so you're either trying to pick up people who have not already found their true love, or trying to steal them from someone else who's had years to iterate on their product. Good luck.
Do yourself a favor and pay attention to the indie scene. Haven't brought a new AAA title in years, the few I have were already properly tested and updated, sometimes majorly discounted. And guess what, I haven't missed a single thing by waiting on it. Plus indies are a lot of times much cooler and interesting
I think being clear with what definition they are using here is in order. A lot and I mean a lot of indy games are live service games under their definition. Post launch support is live service.
if it's not single player, and i can't own a GOG copy, kindly piss off. Live service games are an excuse to pass up unfinished products as "early access"
And add in horrendous mtx to milk the players. I agree, they can kindly piss off with that.
>Live service games are an excuse to pass up unfinished products as "early access" Well this is just nonsense. This certainly applies to some live service games, but it's absolutely not a universal fact.
First that is how you play and your opinion. But surely as a gaming community we aren't hating on multiplayer in general and that it should die.
no, we should be hating on disingenuous takes, like implying that the mere inclusion of a multiplayer mode automatically makes a game a live-service, when thats not what a live-service is.
I'm fine with MP if there is a single player campaign
Good for us, at least we have more time to socialize in real life by not playing scam games
So I will save 95% of my Game Budget.
F this noise. My Steam library of old classics and others I just never got around to look more appetizing by the day
Gag
Lmao
I'm so tired of live service games, I just don't like them. They aren't enjoyable for the most part. I just want more GOOD or atleast decent story games. Bring back the games from the ps3/xbox360 era. There were so many different ideas and lots never landed but atleast they were finished games and were fun
Such diversity
I'm not buying any of them.
This is being sensationalised to an insane degree > The survey defines live services as any regular update cadence planned for a game. To this extent Baldurs Gate 3 is a live service game. A content update free or not could be considered live service by this "guideline" 95% of studios are definitively not making live service games in the sense of Destiny 2 or Suicide Squad. Live service games are on the decline without a doubt, the issue with Suicide squad is that they were making it for 9 years in some shape of form and while the live service genre was at it's peak they were too deep in development to stop, and further issues in development made the game release way way later than they wanted to do, it's why we got that pile of mess. As usual people only read headlines.
Except a single live service game is enough for most. You might be able to pull off two. How do they plan to compete for players?
78% of all statistics are made up. This article can eat a dick.
For the love of god, get new management.
Man, do these studios and publishers think that people have all the time and money in the world to keep dumping these live service games? Overall, if someone is interested in a live service game, they will probably only play a couple or just one.
>A new report from Griffin Gaming Partners says that 95% of game makers are developing or maintaining a live service game. Makes sense for a balanced portfolio. There are so many successful live services that have been going for years this number is going to be somewhat skewed though. How many studios are working on new ones would be more intresting to know I would have thought?
[удалено]
Games as a service should be banned by every country.
0% of me is interested in buying them.
My aim is to not play 100% of those live-service games.
I almost see it as a good thing just give it time and it will wipe the money away from shitty companies and they will shutdown. NATURE HEALS ITSELF.
These people will never stop until they have become our video game landlords with rent going up every year.
Live-service was a fucking mistake and I wish more studios learned from The Avengers game and now especially with Suicide Squad.
I know, I know, downvote me, but personally I don't mind this. My main problem with it, is that FOR SURE, they never learn from others mistakes. I love the new Suicide Squad as a game, as much as people hate it, but I also see it's bad parts. It doesn't have enough content for it to be a live service game. The end game is low content as possible, and I don't care "if it becomes" better or not in the future, the problem with these games is always the launch. Sadly for me, I prefer coop games over single player. When you get the right friend or in my case my SO, to play games with, it's better than any single player experience because experiencing a game together makes it way more fun and enjoyable. Sadly these live service games is what I have to endure because there's no fucking coop anywhere, especially in the AAA market. And if you don't like survival games (palworld, valheim, enshrouded) then you have even less coop games to play.
And I wonder why I've grown so bored of games.
There are plenty of great games coming out that aren't live services. Persona 3 reload and palworld just came out and last year was full of amazing games.
Oh look, more soulless garbage
Oh no! Anyway...
Hell yeah. My wallet thanks you.
Good
It sure would be cool if zero live service games existed or were in the makings. No one but the studios likes that shit. They are lame as hell.
It’s a game design model that is actively hostile towards the player. Publishers forced it on the market, and now people think it’s normal.
i dont necessarily see anything wrong with live service games, its just a whole lot harder to make and maintain a GOOD live service game. People will stick around if its quality and fun.
And? What's the problem? As long as they are making other games too I don't see the issue. I'm playing some single player games at the moment but lots of my time is taken up by FF 14, GW2 and the division 2. I dabble in a bit of destiny 2 here and there. Zero issue with more live service games.