The Live Service Model Needs To Die

[Darujhistan]

It's sad that Games lend themselves perfectly to being pushed out half-finished and stripped of content to be sold to you later, add to that the years long hype train and pre-order culture that gets turns gamers into 'fans of x' before they've even played it means there's an army of White Knights ready to defend their purchase to the death on the internet, and by extension any anti-consumer practices the pubs/devs pull. Jim Sterling et all have been all over the games-as-a-service model for a long time, so I know I'm not saying anything new.

Personally however, I'd have never bought Anthem, F76 or Destiny because open Worlds are too often empty Worlds, 'open World' is really another way of saying 'give us £50 and we'll let you make your own entertainment, here's some repetitive tasks you can perform 1,000s of times'.

The loot this, upgrade this, fetch this, find this and kill this loop isn't an experience it's just work in another form, and weirdly I think that's what I think many find appealing, it's simple and requires little mental effort, which for many is exactly what work is. I suppose it's kind of soothing, it's work but it's my work.

Devs have conditioned people to accept half-arsed tat as standard for full price, and that's the real problem. Pre-ordering and early access culture have led directly to poorer and poorer games at launch, so gamers themselves are actually to blame in the end.

 

[Malevolence]

Devs have conditioned people to accept half-arsed tat as standard for full price, and that's the real problem. Pre-ordering and early access culture have led directly to poorer and poorer games at launch, so gamers themselves are actually to blame in the end.

This. This is why I never pre-order and never pay for Early Access. I remember being part of some great beta tests back in the day, take Project: IGI for example, Eidos actually posted out discs with the game on so people wouldn't have to download the data, and then once the beta was finished we all received free copies of the game, t-shirts, a cap and other things.

 

[cheesyboy]

No point wasting resources finishing a game and packing it with content if it's not going to take off.

Save $millions by putting it out barebones. If it blows up, then you can sell the rest of the game to the punters as expansions or just use it to refresh thi gs to keep them putting coins in the slot. If it just plain blows, then at least you've not put as much resource into it.

Sometimes it's self-fulfilling, though. Remembering that asymmetric combat game from, I think, 2k -the one where one player is a monster, and the others are class-based soldiers. That thing died mostly because they cut too much out. There was just no content.

 

[Malevolence]

Sometimes it's self-fulfilling, though. Remembering that asymmetric combat game from, I think, 2k -the one where one player is a monster, and the others are class-based soldiers. That thing died mostly because they cut too much out. There was just no content.

Evolve?

 

[StarShock]

Save $millions by putting it out barebones. If it blows up, then you can sell the rest of the game to the punters as expansions or just use it to refresh thi gs to keep them putting coins in the slot. If it just plain blows, then at least you've not put as much resource into it.

This can work really well, so long as the base game is free, apex as an example, it's pretty bare bones but good fun. And got really big really fast by being free

 

[Panos]

Fallout 76, Destiny 1 and 2, The Division, Anthem, Battlefield V, Battlefront 2, the last 4 COD games. There's so many examples that show that the games as a service model needs to die off. This terrible model has convinced publishers like EA, Bethesda and Activision that its ok to release unfinished messes of a game at launch and then fix it over the next few years with DLC and updates.

Well it's not ok. Anthem is a game thats the epitome of live service games. Buggy, rushed, unfinished products with no care put into them. Anthem has really shown why this model needs to end. It's ruining gaming. Remember when we used to get finished content packed games at release? What happened to that? It's like Rockstar and CDPR are the only AAA companies that do that nowadays.

Look, when a game is buggy and not "finished" sure I am with you. Or it's purpose is to monetize on microtransactions and loot boxes.

However there are many games that are finished aka completed when they come out, and DLCs further expand the game.
Look at CK2 or EU4. 7 and 6 years, respectively, worth of support and DLCs. The games are completely different today than the day they were released. Should PDX waited +7 years to release CK2 to bring it to how it is today? No.

Same applies to games like Elder Scrolls Online. A great example how a good game becomes great in 5 years, and is B2P game, without subscription.

 

[cheesyboy]

Evolve?

Yeah that's the one.

 

[Angilion]

Er no. Maybe during the Atari 2600 days when games were simple but even then they messed up with games like E.T.

That was the exception, not the norm. That's why E.T. is notorious. It's also why it ended up in landfill, not sold. Nowadays the reverse is true - it's normal for games to be released unfinished, buggy and with content removed so it can be sold seperately later.

[..] I feel sorry for the people who are developing these games, who may have/had passion about the game they make but get told to skip x y and z because they don't have enough time or because they will hold back features/content for the next release.[..]

So do I. They are forced to make games that they know are worse than they could be and they have no job security - even if a game does well their jobs are still at risk because the people in control see them as a cost to be cut at all costs.

 

[pestt]

Good timing for this thread.