Support NeoGAF

[Nirolak]

I felt this amazing diagram deserved its own thread.

There are many other great diagrams and images in the PDF itself, like the below: https://www.ubisoftgroup.com/comsit..._180216-site_tcm99-239259_tcm99-196733-32.pdf

 

[Emitan]

.

 

[ashecitism]

ARPU?

 

[StrikeFirst117]

.

Cannot unsee anymore, thanks for that.

 

[Nirolak]

ARPU?

Average revenue per user.

 

[Steel]

I love how in the second pyramid you have a bunch of copy and paste dudes with goatees and one little girl with pigtails randomly on top.

 

[Tempy]

I read service games and immediately thought of SEGA.

 

[Davito]

My god this cracked me up so good.
With that said, I'm still interested to read the pdf.

Thanks!

 

[Vhalyar]

ARPU?

ARPUn, which is what you use to reel in the Whales and Minnows.

 

[Deleted member 126221]

Eww. It's missing an arrow of me getting the hell out of that cycle. I'll leave it to the army of goatee-sporting dudebro clones, thank you.

Come on Ubi, can't you at least release Beyond Good and Evil 2 before starting this infernal cycle?

 

[m_dorian]

Thanks Ubi.

Good plan.

Hope it works.

ARPU=0 for me.

 

[bluexy]

Mmm, I love it when my video game design principles are driven by ARPU.

 

[ashecitism]

Average revenue per user.

Thanks!

 

[tuxfool]

Come on Ubi, can't you at least release Beyond Good and Evil 2 before starting this infernal cycle?

Don't worry. They'll release it as a 3d person Hero Shooter.

 

[Bolivar687]

Grrr... "virtual" cycle!?

 

[Makonero]

The neckbeard/goatee armies of Ubisoft will rise up and conquer the world

with ARPU

 

[Ombala]

But value for who?

 

[Lime]

For some reason this is so dystopic

 

[Anno]

Dota, GW2 and Path of Exile have definitely sold me on the game-as-service model when done well so I'm really interested to see where everyone takes it with all these upcoming games. I think you could even do single player games well, though they probably have to be of the mechanics-heavy nature.

 

[JazzmanZ]

All one needs is Powerful connections, Wisdom of concepts and Courage to work overtime

 

[The Technomancer]

These feel like charts I would be shown at an Amway meeting

 

[CHC]

This is very weird and culty.

 

[Geg]

Everyone jump in the G O A T E E P I L E

 

[Real_Madrid]

For some reason this is so dystopic

This indeed. Every game as a service, 'share with your friends' popup every 5 seconds, DLC and microtransactions everywhere...

 

[Palette Swap]

This somehow feels like a parody of the kind of slideware you'd make for investors.

I guess this is the Abstergo version.

 

[Evolution of Metal]

Honestly you only need to look at the state of Heroes VII to understand how little fucks Ubisoft gave just three months ago. R6 also had some terrible issues like hit registration, low tick rate and bugs... That game is at least fixed where H7 is probably forever a garbage.

 

[kAmui-]

Just to think somebody gets paid (probably quite well) to come up with stuff like this.

What does DAU stand for? Daily active users?

 

[jblank83]

Just thinking about the potential engagement levels is getting me so hype.

Thank you, Ubisoft.

 

[Nirolak]

Just to think somebody gets paid (probably quite well) to come up with stuff like this.

What does DAU stand for? Daily active users?

Yes.

 

[CecilRousso]

For some reason this is so dystopic

Indeed.

But at the same time, it only matters if you follow the largest publishers.

There's an ever growing middle class of devs now that services us who have little interest in this games a service crap.

 

[Visualante2]

nsfw Plaid video

 

[Compsiox]

Honestly you only need to look at the state of Heroes VII to understand how little fucks Ubisoft gave just three months ago. R6 also had some terrible issues like hit registration, low tick rate and bugs... That game is at least fixed where H7 is probably forever a garbage.

I also feel like they don't care about the hackers in the higher ranks of Seige.

 

[SRTtoZ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6-u8OIJTE

 

[DrWong]

It's like the graph comes directly from the next "kult" part of the AC meta story.

And now we're just missing the archi-villain,Bolloré, who want the power of the holy ARPU/DAU GRAPH for his own sect.

 

[CanUKlehead]

I read service games and immediately thought of SEGA.

Me too!

So I immediately got sad after.

 

[Jito]

This is right approach for the Division that Bungie failed at with Destiny. With Destiny there's poor live team support and a poor feed of content for the game which was promised before launch. If Ubisoft can actually support the Division with continued content updates then props to them.

 

[Goldrusher]

I love how in the second pyramid you have a bunch of copy and paste dudes with goatees and one little girl with pigtails randomly on top.

Pyramid?

 

[kAmui-]

Wait. Does this mean that they are working on Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Watch Dogs movies? Was this known before?

 

[Nirolak]

Wait. Does this mean that they are working on Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Watch Dogs movies? Was this known before?

Yes. Tom Hardy stars in the Splinter Cell one.

I'm not sure the other two have went anywhere yet.

 

[Quicknock]

For some reason this is so dystopic

Capitalism in action, folks.

As gross at this seems for a lot of people, this is the inevitable end result of a system that's entirely focused on self-maximizing. Don't like it? Well, you know where the problem is...

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

For some reason this is so dystopic

DLC is peace
Content is slavery
Microtransactions is strength

 

[kamineko]

looks like serious business for sure

 

[stb]

LOL, big business amirite? /s

While I totally see the fun in being jaded by stuff like investor presentations, the concepts represented by this diagram are 100% reasonable.

- Live Content for Activities should/will drive DAU (daily active users).
- Engagement in Activities should/will drive time spent by those DAU.
- Engagement in the Content should/will bring a return on investment.
- All those things together should/will drive ARPU (avg revenue per user), creating value for the company.

Arguing against this means you disagree that "games as a service" need new content in order to keep users engaged and willing to spend money on an ongoing basis (e.g. expansions, microtransactions, etc.), thereby increasing the AVERAGE amount users spend.

You only need to look to Destiny's lack of ongoing content to see why this is true.

EDIT: I also don't see why anyone would make fun of the slide about having editorial, marketing, sales, and development all on the same page to contribute to user engagement. Would you rather the marketing people be ignorant about what is going on with development?

 

[Dame]

This indeed. Every game as a service, 'share with your friends' popup every 5 seconds, DLC and microtransactions everywhere...

This is deeply disturbing and riddled with corporate PR buzzword speak to make it seem easy to swallow.

"engagement" and "value" have me puzzled as to their next money-making prospects.

The time spent bit has me wondering how they'll needlessly pad their features for game time. Pardon the doom & gloom sentiment. It's just that these pervasive business practices can lead one to becoming so cynical. It's clear they aren't driven by the art that the developers working for them are. Then again, that is a corporation.


This world is so surreal sometimes. Feels like living in a running parody where you're the one who just doesn't get it.