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[danmaku]

The "service" model works very well for multiplayer oriented games. Even if you pay 60€ for them, they still have a service component (servers, community, updates...) and they'll still die when the community dies (or the publisher shuts down the servers). Forget about preservation for multiplayer games, it just can't happen. And I'll certainly prefer a free TF2 to a 60€ (+DLCs) CoD. Much better model, much more value for my money.

For single player games, it's much harder to implement without devolving into microtransaction hell, but I'm not worried. Games like Skyrim, The Last of Us, Heavy Rain were successful without any kind of multiplayer. GTAV made 1 billion in 3 days and everyone is playing the single player now. LoL being big doesn't mean your story driven games are going to die.

 

[patapuf]

Multiplayer servers. And that's only for those yearly online titles you're talking about.

Of course multiplayer servers. The only SP "games as service" i'm aware of are smaller phone games and honestly, if one of those gets shut down there will be 10 new ones to replace it.

My point is that multiplayer games can benefit a lot from the service approach as it has a lot of advantages over the traditionial retail games MP that get one or two patches and then are left alone forever.

 

[sub_o]

Well it's definitely a business strategy right now. With the astronomical price for AAA titles, and the 'perceived business risk' from game trade-ins and piracy, developers / publishers are more and more shifting their strategy to service oriented.

Is it good or is it bad ? It depends. As with all other type of business approaches, if it's implemented correctly, then you will gain consumer support. If you were to nickel and dime everything, of course people will shy away from it.

Service oriented approach is nothing new, you can find large number of non-gaming software companies implementing it ? Subscription based ? Look at iTunes Match, Spotify. Free to play / use, look at Dropbox.

Steam is one good example, although it's more of a software. DotA or LoL might be better example though. Sure it's tough to design a game without thinking about your business approach at the same time, but if your approach is outrageous (e.g. look at latest JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) then you'll lose customers.

Sure we will never know what happen in the future, whether this approach will still be feasible or will it crash. What I'm interested is, what will happen if normal manufactures, e.g. furniture, vacuum cleaner, guitar, implement this approach. With the rise of 3D printings, conventional manufacturer will at least feel threaten by it, some will urge for regulations, and some will offer their services as the main value of their merchandise.

 

[Freezie KO]

Of course multiplayer servers. The only SP "games as service" i'm aware of are smaller phone games and honestly, if one of those gets shut down there will be 10 new ones to replace it.

My point is that multiplayer games can benefit a lot from the service approach as it has a lot of advantages over the traditionial retail games MP that get one or two patches and then are left alone forever.

Sony's making a huge push into singleplayer games-as-a-service with PS+ and streaming Gaikai.

 

[BurnOutBrighter]

Nope. Games as a product still exist and will always exist.

 

[Mailenstein]

It depends on, but overall: Nope.

 

[Pandaman]

a competitive game with gameplay-relevant stuff locked away isn't a competitive game, its shit

(that goes beyond f2p of course)

and is the largest esport ever. not bad for shit.

 

[Mauricio_Magus]

It depends from game to game, but mostly..... no.

 

[NinjamicWZ]

I get this complaint, and agree with it to some extent, but from where I'm sitting the old $50-$60 up-front model has its own pathologies. Because it's very hard to know what a game is like before you spend quite a bit of time with it, branding/advertising and first impressions are everything, and this has tended to produce a small number of juggernaut franchises, some copycats, and not a whole lot else.

I really like the idea of subscription games, though I'm concerned that outside of the MMO space they'll have a hard time competing with f2p games which have lower barriers to entry. I think the model does a good job of encouraging the production of games that have lasting appeal and depth without putting developers under pressure to justify every moment of gameplay in terms of whether or not it's leading to the next transaction. Multiplayer, of course. Nothing except an up-front lump sum model seems likely to work for "experience"-type single player games. But I've been reasonably happy with the sorts of games that don't push for cutting-edge graphics and can release for $10-$30, and I feel like there are still plenty of these. I've not really been tempted to buy a big $60 single player game for quite some time.

I agree with the notion of being able to try games and really get into them before committing, and I couldn't have bought much more than a dozen $60 games this whole generation, myself. It doesn't have to be $60, just complete and focused. There's $5-20 games I would consider complete, unified experiences, and $30-50 was fine for disc-based games in the mid-late 90's.

I know it may not apply to something that's 50-100 hrs long, or more perpetual like an MMO, RTS or 4x game etc, but demos worked in the past. Good demos for good games did, anyway. I spent months on end playing the MGS1 demo (along with some others) and ended up even more hyped than I was, so it's tough for me respect that DICE summit conclusion that demos negatively affect sales. I just see it as people getting to sample games that really just aren't good enough to buy, and publishers wanting to keep people from finding out... get them to blindly pre-order it instead. It's like you'd have to convince much of the modern business that making a good game, that people will want to buy and keep, is some kind of "money making scheme" in order to try it.

I'm also leery of universally low pricing, down to DVD-impulse buy levels, because I see it being populated only by 2 or 3 extremely accessible genre archetypes and sets of mechanics that lend themselves well to cinematic experiences, and can be consumed by anyone in one 2-3 hour sitting. I expect game development and tools to eventually allow developers to essentially shoot on location. I don't want everything to be Journey, Half-Life, Asura's Wrath, point N click, and episodic Uncharted with the only other option being more "gamey" games being essentially turned into online quarter munchers. I like all types of games, and that avenue would have potential too (imagine redboxing a couple new game stories every week), I just want to keep seeing balance and familiarity as gaming grows and diversifies.

 

[Acosta]

Nope if the game is good enough for me, I will pay, if is not, I will drop it. Simple.

 

[BurnOutBrighter]

Considering that GTAV made the fastest billion dollars in the entertainment industry without an online component, no.

 

[Ushae]

It does and it doesn't. Weird answer I know.

I like 'true' expansions packs like Brood Wars, Undead Nightmare Pack and GTA DLC. Those are great and worthwhile additions, well worth the money. The free to play model worries people because they tend to very hollow in content offerings and rarely have any meaningful continuity in story, missions etc it doesn't surprise me in the least people are worried about deep down.

Considering that GTAV made the fastest billion dollars in the entertainment industry without an online component, no.

Also this. No doubt publishers will be salivating at the success of GTA V and follow accordingly ie Ubisofts Watchdogs.

Games like GTA V, Skyrim etc proves without a shadow of a doubt that the single player model is stronger than ever and there is huge money in it if the content is there.

 

[mclem]

It isn't some phantom reason.

F2P game design is fundamentally different from the traditional retail model.

Find that new Dungeon? Great! Give us more $$$ if you want to access it!

Need some armor? Here's our store!

Progression in games will get designed around pricing schemes, not how well it fits in the game. Games will be purposely imbalanced to encourage spending.

In the $60 package, developers are challenged to offer us the most value for that $60. On the F2P model, developers are challenged to figure out the best way to nickel and dime their customers.

There are numerous legitimate and tangible reasons gamers find this trend disturbing.

Ultimately, the market dictates whether or not these tactics work, and broadly speaking, they do.

Perhaps if more people who had a problem with these approaches would actively support the titles which don't do it, there could be a swing in the market.


(As a small aside, since I did a double-take at some early posts: In the UK, the word 'scheme' doesn't really have any implicit negative connotations to it. So all the posts saying things like "It's just a scheme" led to me going "...yeah?")

 

[mclem]

My problem with F2P games is that they are designed to hook whales, but they ignore traditional gamers that are willing to pay to play a game normally. They are leaving money on the table.

I've touched on this a few times: Isn't it simply that that group is far too expensive to cater to for the expected revenue unless you have a blockbuster hit, and the field of 'blockbuster hits' is already rather well covered for by CoD, by Madden, by Halo, by Uncharted.

F2P would seem rather lower-risk. At least, I haven't really heard much about high-profile F2P failures. I've heard a lot about high-profile games that went F2P... and then failed, but that's not quite the same!

 

[wowlace]

I blame apple for this shit.

Posted from my Macbook Air lol

 

[Caayn]

Games need to have a smaller buy-in (say, $20-$40 retail purchase, unlocks bulk of the game) and be littered with additional content that is up to the player to determine if they want or not, particularly MP games. I have no problem with the likes of on-disc DLC if that kind of model exists. Or, if a developer prefers, they can offer games F2P and offer sets of content at tiers (all guns for $20, for example, or all equipment for $40, and so on).

I don't have much faith in the nickel + dime model employed by Tribes 2 and Blacklight Retribution.

So you're saying that you want games to follow the same path as NFS: Most Wanted? Only with a lower Retail price? Now is NFS a racing game so there's less immersion then a story driven game. But do you know how a pop-up screen saying "Get X now only for €/$9,99" completely kills the immersion and experience. NFS: Most wanted has become unplayable, as almost ever car you see gives you this pop-up screen.
Now imagine if other games started doing this as well. How fun will gaming be by then.

 

[jakonovski]

What's disturbing is how many companies feel "service" really means "pull a fast one".

 

[Shengar]

It is really worrying. F2P is the kind of revenue that tends to be most exploitative than other revenue income alternative. I wouldn't pass any judgement on a game that isn't come out and yet too reveal their revenue model though since that just plain unfair. I keep my skepticism over F2P games and try to keep my hype as low as possible.

I had no problem with stuff like this.

It's this shit that pisses me off.

This shit is what make me angry. I really love PVZ with all of it quirkiness and now it all come to this? I hope no one in GAF support this shit.

 

[PKrockin]

This topic reminds me how EA pulled so much of the Ultima IX dev team away to work on Ultima Online. Not being into PC gaming at the time, all I can do now is read stories about how great Online was, yet I can still play that abomination sent to die, Ultima IX.

Spoiler

well, i might need to fuck around in compatibility mode for a few hours first

 

[thewhitehawk]

Games are overpriced in general, and I see games as a service as a way to combat that a little. It lowers the entry barrier significantly to anyone wanting to try your title, and those who enjoy will probably end up spending a lot more money on it than they otherwise would.

I don't think it will be the only business model for games in the future, but I think it's here to stay. The only thing that concerns me about it is that when the services go down the game will be "lost" to history forever.

I know that 30 years from now I can put Diablo 2 in a (by-then) probably expensive CD drive and play it, but I will probably have lost all of the data and money I put into League of Legends, Spiral Knights and Ragnarok Online.

 

[useyourfist]

Games as a service in the micro transaction context is a horrible idea to me, I'd probably do what I do now with mobile games...stop playing when I reach the ?hidden' paywall.

Though a games service like ps+ for new games, like a premium rental service I'd be up for to play the games I wouldnt always buy.

Though physical format full content games are what I want to be the main content of the industry.. Like the good ol days

 

[DMiz]

Games are overpriced in general, and I see games as a service as a way to combat that a little. It lowers the entry barrier significantly to anyone wanting to try your title, and those who enjoy will probably end up spending a lot more money on it than they otherwise would.

I don't think it will be the only business model for games in the future, but I think it's here to stay. The only thing that concerns me about it is that when the services go down the game will be "lost" to history forever.

I know that 30 years from now I can put Diablo 2 in a (by-then) probably expensive CD drive and play it, but I will probably have lost all of the data and money I put into League of Legends, Spiral Knights and Ragnarok Online.

This. In the interest of extending the analogy to one extreme, how would you feel if the NES generation also used this model? Assuming that piracy is not as prevalent, imagine that you - and subsequently, all future gamers, as well - are unable to access NES titles because their generation has been 'discontinued' and developers have moved on. (Heck, think about how Nintendo has held us at gunpoint with regards to their Virtual Console selection and the ludicrous prices that some older titles demand!)

I don't think anybody is arguing that it does well to reduce the price of games, particularly with respect to Steam sales, but it does have implications that we haven't had the time to truly feel or experience yet.

 

[nkarafo]

Games as digital services are only beneficial to the publishers and nobody else. Its all about them having full control over the games you already bought.

 

[danmaku]

Games are overpriced in general, and I see games as a service as a way to combat that a little. It lowers the entry barrier significantly to anyone wanting to try your title, and those who enjoy will probably end up spending a lot more money on it than they otherwise would.

I don't think it will be the only business model for games in the future, but I think it's here to stay. The only thing that concerns me about it is that when the services go down the game will be "lost" to history forever.

I know that 30 years from now I can put Diablo 2 in a (by-then) probably expensive CD drive and play it, but I will probably have lost all of the data and money I put into League of Legends, Spiral Knights and Ragnarok Online.

LoL is a multiplayer game. Even if it was a normal 60$ retail game, 30 years from now the servers will be down and the community will be dead and buried. There's no going back with multi, either you're there at the right time or you'll never experience it. It's a problem for preservation, of course, but it has nothing to do with the service/product model.

 

[nkarafo]

LoL is a multiplayer game. Even if it was a normal 60$ retail game, 30 years from now the servers will be down and the community will be dead and buried. There's no going back with multi, either you're there at the right time or you'll never experience it. It's a problem for preservation, of course, but it has nothing to do with the service/product model.

But the same goes for all single player games that have online DRM and are server dependable. Although, i'm not sure if this has happened to any game yet. But i'm sure it will, eventually.

 

[dragonelite]

Dont care really im getting to an age where value per entertainment hour is more important then what kind of package the entertainment comes in.

If i can play an f2p game for 100 hours and spend $70 on it it has more value then the next linear block buster where spending $60 for 10~15 hours of entertainment.

 

[Senor Kami]

It doesn't bother me at all, I just think it's done in a really shitty way now. I don't want to pay a sub solely to keep some server online. I want to pay for content. Like if Skyrim had a subscription fee and all I got was some server being online ant co-op, well that would suck. If I was paying $5 a month and at the end of a year (aka $60) the map size had doubled, the types of enemies doubled, the number of quests doubled, there were new groups to join up (ie thieves guild, dark brotherhood, etc)... that would be awesome to me.

F2P gets a bad wrap imo. The few I've played gave me about 40 hours of fun and I paid $0 for them. Meanwhile, I've paid $20-60 for some traditional games that were never good and I put them to rest after like 5 hours.

 

[Duster]

Many examples of early written work, movies and TV were lost by accident or due to people understandably not being able to envisage future trends, for instance we've lost many episodes of Dr Who because BBC taped over them, they didn't think people in 2013 would still want to watch them.

Videogames are arguably the first medium that can learn from the past and avoid these problems so it's sad they're wilfully building in expiration dates into games that don't need them.

 

[Mario]

The game has to be optimized to suck the most money out of people, rather than be a satisfying experience.

That is, quite simply, completely false. You made that up.

 

[Mael]

If you know how software as a service works you should know why it's shitty and should go away.
Especially in a walled garden environment like console or mobile.

 

[U-R]

As game design goes nearer and nearer behavioral sciences, the sheer breadth of exploitative tactics that are possible in games is staggering, and some of them pivot on the whole "game as services" model for bait and switching on user expectations, building exploitable "commitment" and so on. We've roughly seen the tip of the iceberg.

It's not that bad though, after failed exploitation experiments pile up (ie: Diablo3, Zynga), and gambling regulations are better refined to include virtual goods and gaming's dark patterns, i think a decent equilibrium will be reached. Still, the following years will be interesting to witness.

 

[Globox_82]

I was interested in Deep Down, but now I won't even touch it.

yeah yeah it's free and all that stuff. But I am not going to support f2p and I am not downloading a shell of a "free" game, to help their fake stats. No thanks.

 

[ToxicAdam]

Personally, I find it no more distasteful than what game makers have been doing for decades. Slapping a well-known property on a shitty product and then leveraging that into charging 40-60 dollars for their game (recently, Wreck-it Ralph).

There's always going to be good and bad, it will be up to the consumers to learn the difference.


I do worry about people that have a spectacular lack of self-control. Those that conflate their self-worth with the value they have in an avatar or leaderboard. Those are the people that can be exploited the most. I don't really have a good answer for that.

 

[Orayn]

Many examples of early written work, movies and TV were lost by accident or due to people understandably not being able to envisage future trends, for instance we've lost many episodes of Dr Who because BBC taped over them, they didn't think people in 2013 would still want to watch them.

Videogames are arguably the first medium that can learn from the past and avoid these problems so it's sad they're wilfully building in expiration dates into games that don't need them.

At the same time, refusing to give anything an expiration date is also limiting. I mean, I loved Star Wars Galaxies; yes, it's offline now, but I don't regret the hundreds of hours I spent on it. Those experiences are irreplaceable.

The ideal solution is to make the server software available to players so they can keep the game going or revive it at a later date if they so desire.

 

[BPoole]

Heavily depends on the developer and the "service".

I have been more than happy with how Digital Extremes has handled Warframe, but hearing that Capcom is making Deep Down F2P has me worried since Capcom are notorious for thier scumbaggery.

 

[GiantBreadbug]

I'll always buy games as products. If the industry goes the way of being heavily service-oriented, then I guess I'll just be playing fewer games. It's the same thing that happened for me when online multiplayer became a service.

 

[zoukka]

Yeah the service is good for the developer/publisher and mostly bad for the end user.

Money talks.

 

[thewhitehawk]

LoL is a multiplayer game. Even if it was a normal 60$ retail game, 30 years from now the servers will be down and the community will be dead and buried. There's no going back with multi, either you're there at the right time or you'll never experience it. It's a problem for preservation, of course, but it has nothing to do with the service/product model.

How can you say the preservation problem has nothing to do with the service/product model? The preservation problem is precisely because of the model.

 

[danmaku]

But the same goes for all single player games that have online DRM and are server dependable. Although, i'm not sure if this has happened to any game yet. But i'm sure it will, eventually.

What's happening now is the Sim City situation: slap some multiplayer feature on a single player game to justify the online DRM, and it's a terrible idea. However, I don't see this happening in story driven games, it's hard to include online features that the target audience would consider valuable.

edit: Mass Effect 3 had a multiplayer component connected to the single player story, was it relevant enough to make the game unplayable or unenjoyable when the servers will go down?

How can you say the preservation problem has nothing to do with the service/product model? The preservation problem is precisely because of the model.

The problem comes from the game design itself. LoL is a multiplayer game, regardless of its business model you can't play it if there's no one else that wants to play with you.

 

[terrisus]

Very. Aside from a couple of MMORPGs, it's something I refuse to participate in.

Physical games whenever possible.
For digital, only GoG or other DRM-free versions.

I own over 1000 games that no one can ever take away from me.
I completely refuse to participate in Steam's DRM service.

 

[thewhitehawk]

What's happening now is the Sim City situation: slap some multiplayer feature on a single player game to justify the online DRM, and it's a terrible idea. However, I don't see this happening in story driven games, it's hard to include online features that the target audience would consider valuable.



The problem comes from the game design itself. LoL is a multiplayer game, regardless of its business model you can't play it if there's no one else that wants to play with you.

But you don't even have that option. All of the multiplayer games I grew up playing can be picked up and played at a moment's notice, but the same isn't true for a lot, if not most, of modern multiplayer games. We, gamers, are largely abdicating the right or ability to host our own games and prolong our enjoyment of multiplayer titles and essentially giving publishers and developers the right to stop us from enjoying their product at a moment's notice.

Of course I'm looking at this from a very pessimistic perspective, but I think it is a negative trend that will affect us and future generations in a not-so-distant future.

 

[inm8num2]

It's worrying but not exceedingly so for me, probably because I don't play games with subscriptions or microtransactions.

 

[ShinMaruku]

Some games when being put as a service can also reduce the integrity of the game. This is some of the issues of Deep Down is a part of that. Given Capcom's history and the pull to try to pull people into paying money. Diablo 3 was compromised by designing the game with the auction house in mind. (It was and that made loot drops and loot in general ass)

 

[NoirVisage]

Yes, very much so, and from CAPCOM, seeing how they've mutilated FULL games just to nickle and dime their fanbase, I don't trust them to create a full experience with a free to play backbone,

 

[ShinMaruku]

Yes, very much so, and from CAPCOM, seeing how they've mutilated FULL games just to nickle and dime their fanbase, I don't trust them to create a full experience with a free to play backbone,

I don't trust most of these publishers with services myself. So far Sony's PS+ is the only good one

 

[The Gaming Zen]

I do not like F2P nor do I like in game purchases of any kind. Obviously other people don't mind them or else companies wouldn't be using this model as often as they do. Maybe it's because I grew up paying for a game and enjoying it as a COMPLETE experience as it was intended. So to answer your question, yes, it's a very worrying trend.

 

[Abounder]

Yes it is worrying but mostly because I think it further promotes bloated development teams and rushed releases. Also not a big fan of having to use several different passwords to log into my divided libraries of games

 

[Foffy]

To me games are games. If they want to be "services" I'll simply play them less. I feel this direction is simply more like a free to play model where chunks of the game may be available as separate purchases. I have never seen the appeal for that.

 

[WolvenOne]

A bit, yeah. The problem with gaming as a service, is that it locks developers into a few very specific design paradigms, which may potentially limit innovation.

First, there's the TF2, Dota2, LoL paradigm, which revolves around competitive games that make their money off micro-transactions.

The second is the Subscribe to play paradigm, which sometimes isn't overt. This means that you have to keep paying, steadily, to keep getting content.

The problem with the first, is that it's a very limiting genre. Not every game can be a competitive multi-player online title like TF2.

The problem with the later, is that it tends to lock people down to very specific titles. Whether it's an MMO, or a game that's forcing you to pay for DLC every month to get to the end of a story, users feel financially obligated to play mostly that game. This hurts smaller developers, and leads both high highs and low lows for publishers, as gamers flock too and from titles.

It's not that these models are horrible, as a supplement to classic pay-once models they're a fantastic addition. However, the fact that every publisher seems intent on having at least one, and ideally several titles that run off an overt or pseudo subscribe to pay model, does worry me somewhat.

 

[Tertullian]

Yes, extremely troubling. Anything that erodes consumer ownership is troubling.

It's this shit that pisses me off.

I can't agree with the hate for PvZ 2, though. The microtransactions there are not bad at all. They're a little in-your-face (e.g., plants you have to buy with real money appear on your plant select screen), but honestly, that's acceptable in a game that's free up front. The important thing is, you never have to spend real money to win or progress.

The power-ups you can buy with in-game money (which you'll have way too much of anyway) are more than sufficient to beat every single level. I never spent a dime on PvZ2, and I had no trouble 3-starring everything using the power-ups when necessary.

I can see why someone wouldn't like the power-ups, but that has nothing to do with microtransactions or games-as-service. The game absolutely does not force you to spend real world money.