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[Bryank75]

This was posted by Bellular News a few weeks back and I thought it was still very relevant today, especially given the purchase of Haven by Sony for GAAS.

We can also look at EA and their focus on GAAS.... Battlefield with no campaign, Apex and next to no games made with traditional campaigns.




The video points out key issues arising out of the industry focus on live services.

 

[ManaByte]

 

[Damigos]

Let them burn

 

[Saucy Papi]

Are these games really making money, though? It seems like I consistently see failure after failure when it comes to GAAS.

 

[tmlDan]

This is entirely dependent on the game, 4 people leaving destiny is not a lot.

FPS's Live service can be stale over time but a live service RPG can be wildly satisfying over time.

This doesn't tell me anything because people like moving and trying new things, the only concerning one was BF but that could be many factors (plus BF is not a live service game)

 

[M.W.]

Isn't the next AC game a GAAS?

 

[ethomaz]

Are these games really making money, though? It seems like I consistently see failure after failure when it comes to GAAS.

Which one was a failure?

Destiny and Destiny probably made a lot of money (still make).
Street Figher V either.
It is not even remotely probably that Apex is not doing a lot of money.
Division even with lower success I believe made money.
Minecraft... well needs to say?
GTA Online... duh.

Of course there is the failures like Anthem... or that Marvel game but I see way more success than failrues.

 

[ManaByte]

Are these games really making money, though? It seems like I consistently see failure after failure when it comes to GAAS.

Sony isn't working on 10 GAAS games of artistic reasons.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I'm 20 seconds in and already thinking:

"This is clickbait designed to prey on low information gamers who don't understand how transient the industry is."

 

[Captain Toad]

Are these games really making money, though? It seems like I consistently see failure after failure when it comes to GAAS.

The way GAAS works is you don't need them all to hit. If you make 5 GaaS and 4 fail, it's still a win if the other one turns into a massive hit.

 

[poppabk]

The way GAAS works is you don't need them all to hit. If you make 5 GaaS and 4 fail, it's still a win if the other one turns into a massive hit.

Yeah it's like the rush to make MMO's except with more success stories as the GaaS model applies well to pretty much any genre and there is less buy in required from players.

 

[ACESHIGH]

Good, hopefully it's swift and brutal

 

[Warablo]

GAAS makes so much more money with half the effort.

 

[InfiniteCombo]

What's with the YouTube-style thread title?

"Elden Ring pro DESTROYS critic's reputation in BRUTAL takedown"

"Pachter says Sony is FINISHED, Microsoft will become gaming KING with Gamepass"

"Grandma FARTS in elevator and completely WRECKS everyone's sense of smell"

 

[KXVXII9X]

What's with the YouTube-style thread title?

"Elden Ring pro DESTROYS critic's reputation in BRUTAL takedown"

"Pachter says Sony is FINISHED, Microsoft will become gaming KING with Gamepass"

"Grandma FARTS in elevator and completely WRECKS everyone's sense of smell"

I basically stopped caring about most gaming YouTubers at this point. Most lost their passion and seem only in it to siphon clicks through gamer rage clickbait. EVERYTHING is a hyperbole.

 

[ReBurn]

I don't think I play any live service games.

 

[kingfey]

Games become business. Business invite business people. Business people make business games. So we end up with games like these, because business people are in charge. and they want to make a game, which makes more money.

To put it simply, people who made games because of passion are now business people. All they care is make more money now.

 

[March Climber]

Which one was a failure?

Destiny and Destiny probably made a lot of money (still make).
Street Figher V either.
It is not even remotely probably that Apex is not doing a lot of money.
Division even with lower success I believe made money.
Minecraft... well needs to say?
GTA Online... duh.

Of course there is the failures like Anthem... or that Marvel game but I see way more success than failrues.

I think Saucy Papi was hinting more towards the massive number of gaas failures for the seven successes that you've pointed out. These big publishers are pumping large amounts of money into, at most, 3 GAAS titles nearly every year, when sometimes not even 1 makes it through to success. For every Division and Destiny, there's a Hyperscape, Anthem, Fallout 76, Knockout City, Destruction Allstars, etc that we tend to sweep under the rug and pretend that these games weren't a negative hit to a wallet.

 

[Laptop1991]

I personally don't like gaas games, and hope they all fail as they are the reason there is a lot less focus on really good singleplayer games, but the publishers just see money!.

 

[Hobbygaming]

Are these games really making money, though? It seems like I consistently see failure after failure when it comes to GAAS.

Yup, only a few GAAS titles become hits. There's a lot more failures than successes

 

[Guilty_AI]

just let it burn

 

[A.Romero]

It's always been like that with AAA gaming: a few hits compensate the losses from other underperforming titles.

It doesn't matter, though. They are the trend and the market is responding well. I'd be pissed off as a shareholder if the company I'm investing in didn't have a strategy to capitalize GAAS.

 

[Craig of War]

This is not entirely true Square is living off of FF14 live service success and many other PUB'S are too the notion that all Live Service games are bad is not the case

 

[March Climber]

I personally don't like gaas games, and hope they all fail as they are the reason there is a lot less focus on really good singleplayer games, but the publishers just see money!.

The issue is that they take your favorite dev teams down to drown first, before the Publisher ship is even close to sinking. It's almost the perfect gambling system. Make your devs compete to make gaas games, treat it like a lottery system with players, and then whatever fails goes through the grinder never to be heard of again. The 'almost perfect' part comes in to where they take a hit in development costs for a game that died. If they figured out a way around this, everything would be worse.

 

[odhiex]

Making a videogame is risky and also provide opportunity, and that's not exclusive to GAAS thing.

Making a big budget SP only game is also very risky. Typically, the game "needs" to be critically acclaimed and highly demanded/discussed among gamers to fully reach its potential and consistency in sales.

Service games, typically, only need consistent numbers of players (especially the engaged players, who are willing to spend money on extra contents).

They don't "really need" the glamours review figures at the Metacritic, although it would help to build the awareness. But normally, at launch, the game's features are tend to be minimum, bare and seems incomplete...sometimes even buggy. They just need the consistent growth of players and make improvements from the players feedback...and that's not an easy task!!

 

[Laptop1991]

The issue is that they take your favorite dev teams down to drown first, before the Publisher ship is even close to sinking. It's almost the perfect gambling system. Make your devs compete to make gaas games, treat it like a lottery system with players, and then whatever fails goes through the grinder never to be heard of again. The 'almost perfect' part comes in to where they take a hit in development costs for a game that died. If they figured out a way around this, everything would be worse.

yeah agreed, as others have said, let them all burn.

 

[EDMIX]

lol fuck yes! The first gif I thought of right when I read the title of this thread.

Mana did not disappoint.

Are these games really making money, though? It seems like I consistently see failure after failure when it comes to GAAS.

You can say the same shit about any fucking genre though. Like is "blank_______ games really making money doe?, cause I see failure after failure"

Sir, every fucking genre in gaming has fails, every genre has some successes. Lets stop fucking pretending like 100 million, 80 million, 70 million etc install base on a game is magically something to worry about. Its even more wild when you consider they are making the bulk of their money not from game sales, from mtx.... as in a GAAS title can sell less then a major big AAA single player game and still make more money.

The person that bought that single player game paid once.

The person that plays those GAAS games pays many times. Massive, massive difference. So you are seeing many attempts at GAAS because if it can be done correctly, it can reap BILLIONS, fucking BILLIONS of dollars.

You know of a single player game that makes any publisher 300 million a month? The fuck? Soooooo when those games flop btw, its not like a win is going to turn into 300 million a month for years, thus when they flop, they just lost that money. When a GAAS flops, it means nothing to a publisher compared to a single player game, as if it works, it literally pays for all those attempts anyway. The amount that those publishers are making is so wild, I think some of you really need to focus on that number to understand this instead of making it sound like any fucking publisher is spending 10 billion per GAAS game in terms of development cost. imho, the money they are losing is 100% worth it to find the next PUBG, Destiny, Fortnite, MineCraft etc.

As it stands, if a single player does well, it pays for its development cost, if a GAAS does well, it pays for that, pays for all the attempts....keeps paying. So when you ask are they really making money....it tells me you may not realize just how much money those games are making lol

Sony isn't working on 10 GAAS games of artistic reasons.

lol I'M SAYING!

They'd be dumb not to. With MS focusing on that genre, Sony are correct to compete or get lost.

They likely want a solid line up that has single player and online, Bungie, Haven and that game being made by that ex Call Of Duty dev will likely deliver on what Sony is looking for, I don't know about the rest though, but they are correct to cast a wide net as is MS. Anything can fall thru the cracks and be a flop, so its correct to have many in the pipeline to test out the market. I also think its wise they chose developers that actually have a strong history in doing such things vs forcing their other teams to try to do such concepts, but to be honest I think a lot of the industry is doing that now.

EA with only have BF be online and only having Dragon Age 4 be single player, I think many are seeing that you can't really force a team to do that well and it benefits the project to have the team just do single player if that is what they are good at, I think they are seeing successes like BoTW, Witcher, Spiderman and realizing that such a concept can't be forced and just having a team do a single player can have massive benefits no different then having a team focus on GAAS. So I think you'll see single player focused games, GAAS focused games, but I think the days of seeing them force it all in 1 thing are becoming less and less.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

They miss the mark that the "old school" non-GaaS method also had high staff turnover, contracting and outsourcing just as much as GaaS models. A game success or failure did and still does heavily influence the bottom line of the company or service in terms of staff retention, hiring, game longevity etc. Each of their arguments against GaaS are just as valid in the old school models too.

 

[TidusYuna]

 

[March Climber]

yeah agreed, as others have said, let them all burn.

I guess I can't agree with you here. Some of my favorite dev teams, both eastern and western, are sometimes held hostage by this. Letting them all burn won't solve anything but give everyone more bad AAA games. You're choosing the bad ending in an RPG.

 

[ANDS]

It clearly isn't. Bad GaaS will fail just like bad games. Good GaaS (irrespective of your position on GaaS in general) make tons of money. APEX, GENSHIN, FORK KNIFE, R6S, ACV, Borderlands, GTA Online, Lost Ark and on and on. If a GaaS is well developed on the Game side, the Service side will thrive.

. . .and look, we all get it. Some of you yearn for the days when your summers were spent replaying Double Dragon over and over, seeing how fast you can reach the end of the game with your siblings and you could live off that self-contained content for what might seem like forever. That shit is done.

More, there are people (like myself) who don't mind a GaaS, particularly if the world is worth visiting longer than the average singleplayer experience. All this howling about "GaaS is killing the industry. . ." is just generic "let's put everything that's not X in a boss because I hate that it includes Y."

TLDR: GaaS is here to stay. If you're going to play, play those that respects the consumer (while acknowledging that all gaming at the end of the day is trying to take your money).

 

[ethomaz]

I think Saucy Papi was hinting more towards the massive number of gaas failures for the seven successes that you've pointed out. These big publishers are pumping large amounts of money into, at most, 3 GAAS titles nearly every year, when sometimes not even 1 makes it through to success. For every Division and Destiny, there's a Hyperscape, Anthem, Fallout 76, Knockout City, Destruction Allstars, etc that we tend to sweep under the rug and pretend that these games weren't a negative hit to a wallet.

But the fact if you get a hit you basically have a mine that can even support a whole company.

See Fortnite, FFXIV, Freefire, Genshin, Sierge etc etc etc.
I mean it is not just these 7 success.

I'm not sure if there are more failures than success at all.

 

[Fuz]

 

[March Climber]

But the fact if you get a hit you basically have a mine that can even support a whole company.

See Fortnite, FFXIV, Freefire, Genshin, Sierge etc etc etc.
I mean it is not just these 7 success.

I'm not sure if there are more failures than success at all.

The problem here is that you and others might be forgetting how many failures there truly are, because again, no one makes a big fuss about what happens when a disliked or non-popular GAAS game dies. The successes might as well be standing on a mountain of dead bodies that are the failures. If you truly want, we can play the name game here, but I urge you to think back and consider the amount of gaas releases in the past 5-8 years that just came and went like a breeze in the wind. Games that you yourself might have even commented in a thread about, that you've completely forgotten were a thing.

 

[Laptop1991]

I guess I can't agree with you here. Some of my favorite dev teams, both eastern and western, are sometimes held hostage by this. Letting them all burn won't solve anything but give everyone more bad AAA games. You're choosing the bad ending in an RPG.

Well i'm a gamer first not a shareholder and funny you should mention rpg as when it comes to ESO and Fallout 76, i never played them or gave them any money as they are vastly inferior to the SP main games i played to death, all that happens for me is i play less games, i don't really care how much extra money they make, it doesn't improve the gaming experience for me or make me pay more, i'm giving them less now, but if others like them, fine that's up to them.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Personally, I think Sony's approach is a good one. Keep your stable of existing in-house devs making traditional games.

Buy new studios with GaaS chops to make new live service games, that way the GaaS ones are additive to the overall portfolio.

 

[ethomaz]

The problem here is that you and others might be forgetting how many failures there truly are, because again, no one makes a big fuss about what happens when a disliked or non-popular GAAS game dies. The successes might as well be standing on a mountain of dead bodies that are the failures. If you truly want, we can play the name game here, but I urge you to think back and consider the amount of gaas releases in the past 5-8 years that just came and went like a breeze in the wind. Games that you yourself might have even commented in a thread about, that you've completely forgotten were a thing.

But that is no different from simple player games.
There are tons of games that didn't break even and are not even know by most gamers.

It is not a GAAS exclusive issue.

 

[ethomaz]

Personally, I think Sony's approach is a good one. Keep your stable of existing in-house devs making traditional games.

Buy new studios with GaaS chops to make new live service games, that way the GaaS ones are additive to the overall portfolio.

Platform Holders should have all types of games and expand when possible or needed.

And I'm talking about AAA only… platform holders should mix with AAA, AA, A, etc… they should
Have experimental ideias together with the already successful ideias.

It should grow it own diversity and library and not rely on 3rd-parties because the 3rd-parties are the icing in the cake that makes everything better but you need still have a good cake foundation.

 

[Dream-Knife]

A video game crash is actually needed. Hopefully GAAS bankrupts the big boys.

 

[AmuroChan]

Live service games are inherently risky as they rely entirely on continuous engagement from the player base in a space where other live service games are trying their best to pry players away from your game. There's not much of a middle ground when it comes to live service games. They're either going to be really successful, or abject failures.

On one side you have the likes of Destiny, Apex, Fortnite, FF14, etc that are success stories. On the other end you have the very quickly forgotten failures as well, such as Battelborn, Lawbreakers, Anthem, Avengers, Paragon, Gigantic, Monarch, Kill Strain, etc.

 

[The_Mike]

What's with the YouTube-style thread title?

"Elden Ring pro DESTROYS critic's reputation in BRUTAL takedown"

"Pachter says Sony is FINISHED, Microsoft will become gaming KING with Gamepass"

"Grandma FARTS in elevator and completely WRECKS everyone's sense of smell"

NGL I'd be interested in seeing the last one.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Isn't the next AC game a GAAS?

Unfortunately, I heard that as well. Looks like I'll be skipping that game of legitimate. Shame because I own most of the games and actually enjoy them.

 

[March Climber]

But that is no different from simple player games.
There are tons of games that didn't break even and are not even know by most gamers.

It is not a GAAS exclusive issue.

I think the difference lies in the budget put into each. GAAS have been known to be more expensive due to constant upkeep, continued development, and server usage.