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Games-As-A-Service is way more problematic than we think
- Thread starter BabyDontHurtMe
- Start date
OP
OP
My issue is that it could create an incessant vicious cycle of development crunch as long as the project remains fruitful in the eyes of management. I don't care if the game itself is poorly functioned. I just wouldn't play if that wete the case.
So why is that different from a game like New Vegas which was never called "GaaS"? Do we just like putting labels on games that never applied years ago?
Whenever I play a game and see that it has daily challenges or multiple currencies I want to stop playing the game
Look at this shit. This can't be real
You'd actually think the structure of a fighting game would be incredibly straight forward and simple right.
How the fuck - skip fight tokens - what even is this game?
OP
OP
Looks like Mortal Kombat 11. Yikes. Never saw it before and I cringe at it.
Only if it's used as a shorthand by someone unable to actually articulate what the problem is. The OP very clearly laid out her problems with Games as a Service, so the word is fine.
I didn't create the term so I can't answer that question for you. I think it's clear that FONV and FO4 were GaaS that lead up to FO76.
OP
OP
Let me ask this question then. Is a game with semi-regular updates for a brief period a service or a game that had updates?
Just a game that had updates and DLC. GaaS is totally different. An example of singleplayer GaaS is Far Cry 5 where there are weekly community challenges and new content added as reward for those challenges that keep people coming back to the game. AC Odyssey also has those challenges and the free episodic quest lines that release regularly to keep people playing alongside the major expansions.
Releasing a game and then a few DLC packs for it is not GaaS.
Op, before game as a service, devs didn't got vacation after a game released, they simply got fired. That's all.
Warframe and Path of Exile are about the select few that do this model right. Both get big updates with content that sometime even change the way the game is played.
I don't mind GaaS, I have about 500 hours in the PC version of Warframe and about 300 hours in PoE, when there arent any game I'm interested in I always go back to these two.
Warframe in particular saved DE from Bankruptcy and allowed them to even bring back people they had to let go.
There are good sides to GaaS, it's when greedy pubs get their hands on it that things get bad for the developers.
I don't mind GaaS, I have about 500 hours in the PC version of Warframe and about 300 hours in PoE, when there arent any game I'm interested in I always go back to these two.
Warframe in particular saved DE from Bankruptcy and allowed them to even bring back people they had to let go.
There are good sides to GaaS, it's when greedy pubs get their hands on it that things get bad for the developers.
IMO, the GAAS model is the best thing to happen to this industry. It encourages peak employment for longer periods of times. Instead of the traditional model of 18-24 month dev times where you get peak employment between months 12-20, a GAAS title will average peak employment well beyond the physical launch of the title. I've worked on both types of titles, and Ill take a GAAS title over a standard game with no future after launch any day of the week.
Now what I will agree with is that developers working their employees to the bone with insane hours needs to stop. Project management needs to improve, but GAAS isn't the problem here. Crunch existed well before this model began to trend upward.
Yeah, things are bad and they're only going to get worse unless gamers start speaking up and organizing. We need to leverage our influence and speak out against this.
I don't think the China model is the alternative to capitalism anyone is suggesting.
I assume most of that is story mode stuff. I guess you could say that Smash has had similar sub-currencies for a while, though oddly Ultimate cut down on a bunch of it.
But when the rewards aren't good you wouldn't be playing...because the game isn't fun enough to play it just for that, to begin with?
I know it's not quite so simple with progression systems and all but these daily and other scheduled rewards are among the worst and inherently flawed ones.
Crunch times happen across all IT-based fields - you only think it because it's reported by the games media (and there is an audience for that kind of news).
Blaming GaaS for crazy crunch is pretty ridiculous. The real culprit is shitty project management and bad management (in general).
Blaming GaaS for crazy crunch is pretty ridiculous. The real culprit is shitty project management and bad management (in general).
DICE is a union shop and gamers here on ERA hate the relative lack of content at launch and slow post-launch updates. Gamers here also hate Anthem's slow updates. Now they hate how Fortnite manages to keep the content flowing, even though devs are making about $400K a year there. What do gamers want?
In a non-GAAS game, if it sells poorly at launch it can mean huge layoffs.
In a non-GAAS game, if it sells poorly at launch it can mean huge layoffs.
Maybe stop generalizing? Things make more sense if you don't assign contradictory viewpoints to made-up hiveminds.
The effects of the model are probably more prominent in the mobile game industry where I work, since there needs to be a new event every 2 weeks or so. That being said, yeah, if more employees are hired or something is done to make work conditions better, then it doesn't necessarily have to be problematic.
I personally find the model stressful as a gamer though. I want to get the most out of my games, and at my own pace, but how can I do that when there's always new stuff, daily/weekly challenges, events, etc. to do? How can I comfortably move on to the next game I want to play if the game I'm playing is never done? It's pretty much not the model for me.
I personally find the model stressful as a gamer though. I want to get the most out of my games, and at my own pace, but how can I do that when there's always new stuff, daily/weekly challenges, events, etc. to do? How can I comfortably move on to the next game I want to play if the game I'm playing is never done? It's pretty much not the model for me.
To put the problem of crunch and poor worker protections in the games industry at the feet of GaaS is to completely miss the point and to cloud the true issues leading to these working conditions. A succesful campaign against GaaS would do precious little to bring devs what they truly need. This reeks of a personal agenda masquerading as concern for devs.
Issue is not GaaS, bad working conditions would exist even without it and always have. Issue is publishers/studios not having a robust development pipeline to support the game constantly post launch/work on sequels without draining their employees. I mention Ubisoft in every time I want to give an example of what good GaaS can do for the developers as well as the customers. Ubisoft is known to treat its employees very well and the people who work there are generally pretty happy. At the same time Ubi's post launch support can be considered to be pretty much one the best in the industry, while also having one of the best mtx model to support their GaaS structure. There isn't a single publisher out there that has had such a good grasp of mtx and GaaS model across so many games as Ubisoft. And they are able to do this because they have all the systems down perfectly.
Point being, Ubisoft has shown it's possible to have frequent post launch support AND unobtrusive mtx AND happy customers AND happy developers. It's just that most publishers/devs don't have their entire development pipeline set up for this or are unwilling to because it does cost a more overall and requires a full reorganisation.
Point being, Ubisoft has shown it's possible to have frequent post launch support AND unobtrusive mtx AND happy customers AND happy developers. It's just that most publishers/devs don't have their entire development pipeline set up for this or are unwilling to because it does cost a more overall and requires a full reorganisation.
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Strictly looking at it from a labour perspective, I think there are tradeoffs. If we're trying to avoid crunch, not turning your games into services is not necessarily an answer; we have plenty of examples of games that arrived as finished (or mostly finished) products only after weeks or months of sustained crunch. Stuff like the EA Spouse and Rockstar San Diego's well-documented struggles came from an age before GaaS was a significant phenomenon.
One potential way that GaaS can be better than the non-GaaS model is that it has a different rhythm than the traditional development cycle for games without a long tail of support. Big single-player games tend to have a pre-production phase with a smaller staff, then production phases where multiple departments suddenly bulk up (art, code and QA are obvious places), then hopefully a period of polish before release. Then the game gets released. If you work at a studio that has enough work and is organized enough to have multiple projects in different stages of development, then maybe most of the people who came on board during the production phases simply move to a project entering production elsewhere in the company. But often, there is no project for those people to move to, and the result is they get to look for another job.
Looking at games as ongoing services rather than discrete projects could potentially provide steadier employment for a greater portion of the employees working on the game. Artists, developers and QA people who would be laid off or in limbo after the release of a traditional game could instead continue to work on post-launch content. This is already the case for games with substantial post-launch DLC, but the cadence of the work could be smoother for service games versus DLC projects.
I'm not saying it definitely works that way; I definitely don't know enough about the industry to say either way. It's possible that the live support teams are much smaller, for example, meaning there's still a substantial number of people figuring out their next gig when a service game releases. It's also possible in cases like Fortnite that the developer sets an unsustainable pace for new content, and ends up prolonging crunch rather than providing stable long-term employment. But I do recall that massive hiring sprees followed by massive layoffs was a big part of the industry not so long ago. A service game requires ongoing support for months and hopefully years after launch, and that support needs to be provided by people who get paid salaries long after the initial production phases are over.
One potential way that GaaS can be better than the non-GaaS model is that it has a different rhythm than the traditional development cycle for games without a long tail of support. Big single-player games tend to have a pre-production phase with a smaller staff, then production phases where multiple departments suddenly bulk up (art, code and QA are obvious places), then hopefully a period of polish before release. Then the game gets released. If you work at a studio that has enough work and is organized enough to have multiple projects in different stages of development, then maybe most of the people who came on board during the production phases simply move to a project entering production elsewhere in the company. But often, there is no project for those people to move to, and the result is they get to look for another job.
Looking at games as ongoing services rather than discrete projects could potentially provide steadier employment for a greater portion of the employees working on the game. Artists, developers and QA people who would be laid off or in limbo after the release of a traditional game could instead continue to work on post-launch content. This is already the case for games with substantial post-launch DLC, but the cadence of the work could be smoother for service games versus DLC projects.
I'm not saying it definitely works that way; I definitely don't know enough about the industry to say either way. It's possible that the live support teams are much smaller, for example, meaning there's still a substantial number of people figuring out their next gig when a service game releases. It's also possible in cases like Fortnite that the developer sets an unsustainable pace for new content, and ends up prolonging crunch rather than providing stable long-term employment. But I do recall that massive hiring sprees followed by massive layoffs was a big part of the industry not so long ago. A service game requires ongoing support for months and hopefully years after launch, and that support needs to be provided by people who get paid salaries long after the initial production phases are over.
I would be playing but probably not as much as I'd like to if there's no incentive especially when my friends are offline.
What's the inherent flaw exactly? They're among the best features in modern gaming. Doing challenges is fun and refreshing. Sometimes I play Fortnite for hours only to do the challenges.
It's funny, in the early days of GaaS, it was seen as the antidote to mass layoffs at the end of big product releases. It was seen as a good way to maintain and nurture staff, and gave the opportunity to allow younger staff to gain leadership experience on less critical game content. Also it was seen as a way to minimize the boom/bust cycle that big game companies went through and allowed a more consistent and predictable income.
But alas...
But alas...
The inherent flaw is that they shouldn't be limited to daily events if they're fun because why would you limit something fun? And vice versa, why should you reward something that people don't find fun?
I regard all this time-gated and reward-incentivized game design trash for the above reasons as it's really just about tapping into people's addictive behavior. For a long time now, it has become the norm to the point where the lack of "rewards" makes it drastically more difficult to keep the audience engaged. It's essentially a must have now, one of no benefit for the players.
They're completely optional though. If you don't find them fun, feel free to skip them. I only do the ones I find fun. And they aren't limited. There are always new challenges. Always! That's why they're a good feature. Maybe no benefit for you but many people, me included, love them.
If my car has a fault - that's a problem to me. It's problematic.
If someone is being racist, sexist, or there's a culture of ongoing terrible working conditions, "problematic" seems like a horribly mild word.
I think it's better for developers in the long run. Games as a service means more steady work. Blame the crunch on the individual companies. You can't blame gaas for epics crunch.
Have you considered maybe its for a reason?
Predatory microtransactions and 7 dollar intros for one character, and the Towers of Time are so badly imbalanced they force you to use consumables to progress.
There's like 6 different fucking currencies.
Reminds me of every scummy mobile game...for a 60 dollar game.
Nah it's probably used for the Tower stuff.
There are some fights with bullshit modifiers.
Every generation there's some new "Worst new thing ever" in gaming.
Every generation it turns out not to be the case.
So you're saying the issues you've raised aren't universal?
But service games keep developers in paid employment for much longer. That's preferable to layoffs.
Spider-Man is so obviously not GaaS in the way it's being discussed, usually.
I'm so annoyed that I had to read that it was just then.
I know you can justify this as it can "technically" fall under that definition - but that just misrepresents the actual type of game we're talking about here.
People, please don't do this.
Yeah, it's a dishonest label. It doesn't help to label everything GaaS. I understand why people do it: because they don't want "GaaS" to be a dirty word, so they attach it to games that people like and can say "see you like GaaS"
But it makes things confusing. There is a clear difference between Anthem/The Division 2/Destiny 2: Forsaken and games like Sekiro/DMC5/RE2. We don't need a one-size-fits-all definition for games.
Because usually some workable balance is found after publishers/devs take it too far and there's a massive outcry. Stuff like DLC was a massive bogeyman around the time Bethesda put out shit like horse armor DLC. Lootboxes were a bogeyman around the time EA or Monolith pulled their crap and everyone hated it. It's stupid to dismiss criticism just because things were fine in the past after massive criticism.
Whenever I play a game and see that it has daily challenges or multiple currencies I want to stop playing the game
Look at this shit. This can't be real
That's a F2P mobile game in the disguise of a $60 retail one.
Disgusting.
You'd avoid playing some of the best games ever just because they're 'GaaS'?
