No, it's just that people don't care about your posts.
The number one reason why Live Service is the future and I see no one talking about it...
- Thread starter Men_in_Boxes
- Start date
You made this same topic before. Its nothing new.
Its the future cool. Its gonna be bigger and bigger, great.
Its not gonna get rid of SP games EA and others have been saying that for years. This isnt a new take, just FUD for SP gaming like how Mobile gaming was gonna get rid of consoling gaming.
OP
OP
Nah, started way before that. The first live service game where I did work got released in 2009 and there were many before it.
Why not 20th Live Service generation and 23409402th non-GaaS generation?
People in the industry played about this during many years.
Players normally don't talk about business models, normally prefer to talk about if they like or not this game or company independently of the business model.
OP
OP
Eras don't begin with the first entry. They begin when they hit a certain amount of critical mass.
In 2009, the industry spent next to nothing on Live Service games. The vast majority of investment was still spent on traditional old model games
That all changed in 2017. That was the year the industry really woke up to where gaming was headed.
Because Fortnite is a Gen 1 Live Service game for Epic Games. All their previous multiplayer titles operated on the old pay up front model. Gen 1 or Gen 2 is debatable, but we're certainly not in Gen 20.
I see a lot of talk about business models. "They should stick to making the types of games I prefer" and "They're just chasing trends" gets said on the daily. This seems very obvious that people aren't prepared to consider a (new) viewpoint that contradicts their previously held beliefs.
is no one going to talk about hyenas, foamstars, concord, babylon's fall, or deathverse?
The number one reason why Live Service is the future and I see no one talking about it
There will be the occasional one that does something. Maybe in time as users abandon tbe forever juggernauts a new big hit can arise, but the market is oversaturated with these games now. Its no longer fresh new and exciting that people flocked to in 2017. Ideas have been played out and reused.
Theres also too many games in the market as a whole and if you arent truly great probably gonna have a rough time.
Most of these live service games are complete though
Theres also too many games in the market as a whole and if you arent truly great probably gonna have a rough time.
Most of these live service games are complete though
You have no idea what you're talking about. You have no idea about the history of live service games.
Just a few examples, there are many more:
- Runescape released in 2001 and got over 300M users
- World of Warcraft was released in 2004 and got 100M users a decade ago
- Dungeon Fighter Online released in 2005 and over time achieved over 850M players, during a decade was constantly swapping with LoL the monthly top 1 position of the top grossing PC game of the world)
- Farmville was released in 2009 with huge success and peaked with 84M monthly active (not lifetime, active in the same month) users
- Following the success of several companies like Zynga, King, PlayFish or Digital Chocolate in (GaaS) casual browser games and social games in 2009 companies like Wooga started that year becoming other pillars of social games and browing games
- In 2009 there were already a huge amount of GaaS hits including PC MMOs, F2P casual browser games or F2P social games. The first F2P ones for mobile were starting to appear, in many cases adaptations of these casual / browser game hits
There was no signifiant change in 2017. If you mean GaaS getting popular in console, I'd say maybe Destiny (2014) is the one who popularized GaaS on console even if not the first one at all.
This GaaS gens you made out is nonsensical and has nothing to do with the history and evolution of GaaS.
There's a ton of people on internet, who frequently talk about topics they don't know about, for sure. In case of games, a tiny subset of passionate hardcore players talk in forums like this one, but mostly about news, new released games and fanboy wars. Regarding GaaS some people even think it's a shooter type and don't know what a GaaS or a business model is.
But yes, normally many people reject the new and different things and prefer what they were used to, fearing the new and different because they don't understand it and are worried that may replace the type of game they are used to.
That happened when computer games and console games were introduced (old school fans hated them and prefered arcades), with analog sticks vs dpad in console, with 3D (polygonal) visuals vs pixel art, with CD vs cartridge, with digital games vs retail ones, online MP vs local MP, free games vs paid ones, indie games vs AAA ones, mobile games vs console/PC ones, games with DLCs vs games without DLCs, and in recent times GaaS vs non-GaaS or VR vs flat gaming or cloud gaming vs native/local gaming.
In most of these cases, the introduced new things needed a time to get improved via some iterations before becoming mainstream and the new standard, to years later get accepted by almost all players, with only a few haters left. In most cases these new things became complementary and didn't -at least completely- killed the previous one.
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OP
OP
And yet, overall industry investment still overwhelmingly went to old, tradition pay up front style games at this point. They were precursors to the Live Service era we now find ourselves in.
Again...
There were successful car companies before Henry Fords Model T.
There were successful grunge albums released before 1990.
There were successful superhero movies before the Marvel verse.
Tons of GaaS are pay up front style games (FIFA, CoD, GT7), some even with subscriptions (WoW), also was already the case back in 2009.
The budgets of games like World of Warcraft were back then the highest ones in gaming history. They required longer than usual developments to release them, and also years of post launch development/support.
Regarding investments, as a random example, the company where I was had big investments from people like Sequoia Capital (the ones of Apple, Google, IBM, Nvidia, WhatsApp, YouTube, Cisco, Unity...) and CEOs or execs like the founder and first CEO of EA (which during a ton of years was the biggest 3rd party). And as I remember we were only top 4/5 in mobile and top 4/5 in social games. There were also other huge/ bigger GaaS players in the PC MMO area and casual browser gaming area.
Some people of the relatively small company where I did work left to create -these are a few examples, there are more- Supercell (you may have heard about Clash of Clans or Clash Royale), or the Barcelona offices of King (their biggest studio) or Scopely Barcelona (their biggest studio too, they work in games like Monopoly Go or Stumble Guys) and our studio ended bought by Ubisoft because they were interested to learn about our expertise on mobile and GaaS.
As reference the folks who created Supercell, before creating Supercell already had around a dozen worldwide top 1 games either with us (as Digital Chocolate) or before our company acquired them (as Sumea).
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OP
OP
The transition from pay up front to engagement model isn't as black and white as you want to think.
Obviously there's going to be a transition period
Perhaps I'm not stating my position clearly enough. I will reiterate again...
When World of Warcraft launched in 2004, the wider industry was still overwhelmingly playing, investing in, iterating on, refining the old traditional model of game.
That really stopped after 2017 when PUBG and Fortnite altered gamings trajectory forever.
Exactly.
Never heard of three of them. Only heard of Foamstars because someone here listed it as an exclusive and never heard about it anywhere else ever, and only heard of Concord a week before the release because everyone said it looked like shite, which I thought a bit harsh but showed how noone cared enough to stop whatever else they were doing.
The immediate future of gaming looks like a very busy market with plenty of high profile failures. In all genres.
How's XDefiant doing?
Live service is predatory, it's open ended spending on a platform that disguise as a game.
I don't care about engagement and those other metrics, they break not only gaming, but software in general as well as all types of connected content as they take precedence over the actual interest of the thing (which means they will make caracters more or less prominent according to popularity as opposed to relevance in a tv show by example).
This is the bane of the industry, I get why investors are interested... but as a paying customer I could not care less, and I keep my kids away from this as much as I keep them away from drugs.
I don't care about engagement and those other metrics, they break not only gaming, but software in general as well as all types of connected content as they take precedence over the actual interest of the thing (which means they will make caracters more or less prominent according to popularity as opposed to relevance in a tv show by example).
This is the bane of the industry, I get why investors are interested... but as a paying customer I could not care less, and I keep my kids away from this as much as I keep them away from drugs.
All GaaS, since the first one, focus on engagement. Because statistically the longer you keep playing a game, the more possible is that you end buying (or buying more) DLC/IAPs/subscriptions fees.
That's the whole point of GaaS: to give the players fresh stuff post launch in the game, to keep them engaged longer, to keep getting more recurring revenue.
The non-GaaS titles instead get all their revenue only from the initial purchase, or in some cases also from a handful dlcs.
Nah. PUBG popularized the battle Royale sub genre, and Fortnite the battle passes, that's all. Battle royales represent a small part of the GaaS games. And a small portion of GaaS adopted battle passes as part of their progression, retention and monetization systems.
Both PUBG and Fortnite are huge and had some influence like many other ones other ones. But more on popularizing battle royales as subgenre than in their GaaS side.
Even if we ignore mobile (a bigger and more important area for GaaS than PC or consoles), in PC League of Legends and Dungeon Fighter Online kept being the top 2 top grossing PC gamesw worldwide until at least a handful years ago when I lost access to the website where I did check the ranking.
People quickly forgot them, in the same way that also forget the way bigger number of non-GaaS that also tanked.
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OP
OP
We agree on this. That's not the topic here.
The topic is that early GAAS like Ultima Online and World of Warcraft didn't influence the wider industry like Fortnite and PUBG did. If you paid attention to PlayStations hiring practices, in 2018 essentially every studio they had started hiring people with Live Service / GAAS experience. Then a few years later, they announced they were going to release 12 Live Service titles before FY2025. Obviously they didn't hit that goal but the cataclysmic event was Fortnite, not World of Warcraft.
Fortnite ushered in the GAAS era
We agree here.
This really short sells the impact of PUBG and Fortnite. These titles were way bigger and more impactful than you want to admit. PlayStation completely changed their orientation due to 2017. Most of the top publishers of today are prioritizing Live Service over traditional games. This was not the case in 2012. The GAAS era really started post 2017.
Mobile is worth ignoring because that market is pretty different than the PC/Console market that we follow.
The main point I'm trying to drive home is that GAAS investment and GAAS popularity really skyrocketed after 2017. Games are now being built by gamers who grew up playing Fortnite as opposed to a game like Zelda Ocarina of Time. The new era is here.
We agree here as well.
No, it's just that you realized about GaaS now. GaaS were already huge even in console, specially in PC and mobile, before Fortnite.
Before Fortnite, seeing the success of early MMORPGs like Neverwinter Nights, Ultima Online, The Sims Online (with a young pre-Ubisoft Jade Raymond) or Everquest (by ex Sony Online Entertainment devs that later got reacquired), Blizzard made WoW, Sega made Fantasy Star Online or Square made FFXI or later FFXIV. Big publishers who could afford it tried to have their own MMORPG, and many failed.
As mentioned, similar happened in browser/social or in mobile games: native startups started iterating until achieving some huge success and the market kept quickly growing, so later all the big publishers came to that market acquiring or creating their own dedicated teams because wanted their own slice of the pice.
Later same happened with MOBA. Some small team made Aeon of Strife (2002), DOTA (2003) and exploded with LoL (2009). Many followed trying to make their own MOBA, only a few achieved it.
Then Roblox (2006), Little Big Planet (2008) and Minecraft (2011) got a great success with another GaaS variant: UGC (user generated content) games that got also followed by many, and that included Mega Man and Mario replicas of the LBP concept, or Dragon Quest trying the Minecraft one.
And well, this is mainly in the west or west friendly publisher. Meanwhile in Asia they had their own PC and mobile MMORPGs with their own stuff filled of grinding, loot boxes, gatcha etc. There was even Monster Hunter Online, a Tencent developed MMORPG for PC.
Then in 2014 Bungie properly mixed the MP FPS with MMORPG elements and created another type of GaaS, better adapted for consoles and more mainstream friendly. Again, many tried the replicate and little were able to do so. Most notably CoD and other top shooters got very successful on adapting the concept of season passes and other GaaS things.
Sports games from top publishers also adapted some of these console friendly GaaS concepts, also seen in mobile. So FIFA, NBA2K or others, more recently MLB, transitioned expanding to GaaS model. Same happened with racing games like Gran Turismo, Forza, etc or fighting games like Street Fighter V, Tekken 7 and nowadays basically all of them. Many genres and subgenres adapted to GaaS, as we can see in cases like Genshin Impact or ZZZ adding stuff open world, hack & slash to the RPG.
Other GaaS focused subgenres kept appearing (there are a lot in mobile) being one of them battle royale. Again, like in the other GaaS types and in other many market trends / artistic movements, some little players started with battle royale success and many big dogs came to replicate it, with Fortnite and CoD Warzone being the main successful stories while many other failed.
Some of these console friendly GaaS went F2P and adapted more ideas from the mobile ones, others didn't and kept an experience more similar to the traditional console one. In recent times, in the same way that in the last decade many GaaS kept removing the pay to win, some games like Helldivers 2 or Concord tried to have a less aggresive approach with the grinding, FOMO removing things like loot boxes, gatcha or time limited battle passes with expiration date etc.
GaaS kept evolving and changing since the start in the last millenium and there are many types from many genres and subgenres, in addition to many evolutionary steps. Battle Royale and Fortnite are just a tiny portion of them. Fortnite's main addition were the battle passes concept (adopted by a small part of GaaS), but the rest already were there and was popular in GaaS.
Shooters, massive multipleyer, UGC, skins, licensed guest content, etc. already were popular and common.
Mobile isn't worth ignoring becasuse its GaaS userbase and revenue is way bigger, and most of the GaaS things added to console GaaS comes from there because of that.
And again, there's no change in 2017. Nothing started there, no big publisher started to invest on GaaS in or after 2017. All of them already were in GaaS, because GaaS were huge way before that. Maybe you discoverd GaaS or noticed how bit they were with Fortnite, that's all.
I'ts like thinking that Sony started in GaaS with the current "12 IPs with GaaS" push. It isn't the case, they made many of them before, that goes back until the SOE days. Or like thinking Sony started in videogames with PlayStation, because you didn't know they already were publishing games for other consoles and computers since 1983/1984. Meaning, Sony didn't start in PC with the current push started by Shawn Layden.
Same goes with thinking that their upcoming mobile games push is their first attempt in mobile. I mean, the mobile game studio where I worked made this (let's say not great xDD) mobile game back in 2003 (21 years ago), a couple of years before I joined the studio:
A few years later (2007) they even made a GoW game for mobile -still not GaaS- developed by some other studio, this case under SOE:
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I think the op dreams about gaas games where millions of people populate a game world like something out of ready player one, and a medieval fantasy world for example would have people out there acting the day of a blacksmith, making swords and taking care of his in game wife played by some shmuck who decided to act like a wife who takes care of the garden, etc etc
The problem with videogames is that everybody wants to feel like the main character and that’s a hard limit on what these games can be.
The problem with videogames is that everybody wants to feel like the main character and that’s a hard limit on what these games can be.
OP
OP
There is no question that industry investment into Live Service was relatively small prior to 2017. You listed off a small handful of successful Live Service titles but you ignore the overwhelming market investment into traditional single player games during those times. That's the topic here. The topic you seem afraid to grapple with.
And yet, these successes were developed in an industry that overwhelmingly invested in traditional single player games. 2017 changed that.
The industry wasn't investing the majority of their resources into Live Service games after 2014. That sea change came after two exponentially bigger hits in PUBG and Fortnite in 2017.
Mobile is worth ignoring because the console / PC market is the one we're interested in. A huge percentage of the mobile market comes from casual games like Candy Crush and
Again...it's not when GAAS started. It's when the era of GAAS arrived. PlayStation was a single player oriented company before Fortnite. Fortnite literally changed the entire orientation of one of the biggest videogame companies on earth. Fortnite was THAT monumental of a game.
Live Service / GAAS grew up from an interesting side hustle for many to the primary function of most giant studios.
There were successful grunge albums released before 1990.
There were successful car companies before Fords model T.
There were successful superhero movies before the Marvel verse.
We're talking about eras and level of investment, not start dates.
You seem afraid to engage with the actual premise posed in the OP. You're trying to shift the conversation to an entirely different topic (when did GAAS start).
Why not engage with the actual OP instead?