[PCGamer] The pressure to constantly update games is pushing the industry to a breaking point
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GaaS os one dimension of the problem. Another is that some games cultivate a culture of "one game" deliberately or by accident. This means that people expect all their variety to come from one place.
Instead of playing something else, people demand the one thing they know should change as soon as boredom sets in.
Instead of playing something else, people demand the one thing they know should change as soon as boredom sets in.
Yeah, it certainly's not good when there's some people declaring some GAAS games as dead just because they don't have new content every week
Maybe its just me, but its okay to take a break if you feel bored, then come back to play and grind whenever you feel like it
Oh, I agree. There's nothing wrong with iterative development, and I know that many companies use two week sprint cycles. But my company wasn't doing it sensibly. And yes, our upper management had a habit of setting unrealistic goals because they were the kind of assholes who thought routinely ruining their workers' lives to meet their deadlines was good leadership.
My company was even more fucked than my example. We spent a few months pushing out one release a week. It wasn't even anything terribly big each release, but the sheer pace of it and the fact that there was no room to catch your breath after the previous release was really grueling.
Yup I agree so I wonder why Apex's own battle pass has the incentive to play it as much as you can or else you won't earn enough Apex dollars to afford the next battle pass.
It will happen due to oversaturation. People can only play 1 GaaS game at a time , 2 max.
The reason you don't see more AA+ development is those areas require a niche of devoted fans, and most of those niches are filled.
Usually it's a hot take. Usually it's someone with no experience saying, "Hey if they just cut costs they'd be fine", as if nobody at that company or every other company had ever thought of doing that. You did come up with an explanation though, which is good. The problem is, as you noted, who goes first? Nobody wants to go first because they'll get crushed by the other publishers, and ironically, if one or two publishers did that then GaaS might not result in a "breaking point" or "bubble pop" or whatever worst case scenario people are forecasting, so they would have screwed themselves. Then there's the question of whether gamers would accept more of such AA+ games as you call them, rather than expecting them to launch at $40 say. I don't think games like Wolfenstein II or Dishonored 2 were big successes, or Prey.
FromSoft are a success, true. They have their niche. Platinum has long been a well respected developer, however they were on the verge of going under if Nier Automata hadn't been a big success for them. Telltale had a niche too, and they went under. It seems like a lot of people would just wait to get the entire season for $5-$10, because why not, it's the same game as it was at launch. Nintendo is a whole different situation. As a first party, they earn far more per unit sold than third parties, and they have an edge on their platform with brand recognition and software development, because their consoles have unique controls and features which suits a single platform developer better than a multi-platform developer. Even so, they still have some horrific crunch tales in their history.
GaaS stations are an all-around failure, for developers and consumers. It's time to go back to what works best.
Do these games have such horrible replay value that a constant weekly stream of new stuff is necessary to keep people engaged? Im genuinely asking here.
And Mods probably definitely played a factor in the past. I remember loving for example Threewave maps getting added to games like Q3A back in the day. Just 3-5 maps was enough to enjoy for humongous stretches of time.
And Mods probably definitely played a factor in the past. I remember loving for example Threewave maps getting added to games like Q3A back in the day. Just 3-5 maps was enough to enjoy for humongous stretches of time.
This is false. People can play all GaaS games they're interested in at the same time. That's why it's a good model and better than the traditional releases for consumers. I play at least 10 GaaS games regularly.
GaaS aren't going anywhere. Oversaturation isn't a thing and won't be.
I appreciate the long post you wrote, but "fear of the competition" is inherent to the economic system we find ourselves in. Capitalism structures the behavior and decision-making by individuals and companies to such an extent that it is simply impossible to ask them to scale down or pare back. The only way out of the current "crisis" is a financial collapse as if running into a brick wall (much like climate change) or change the entire structure that motivates and mandates companies to pursue as large profits as possible every financial quarter.
CEOs, boards of executives, shareholders, investors, will never "pare back" and we are delusional if we think they can be convinced given the system we find ourselves in.
The thing is, the whole crux of this "crisis" is that current AAA games production is not sustainablly profitable. Consumers will not pay more than $60 for a retail game. And you simply cannot continue to budget in everything and the kitchen sink at the grandest scale and the most bleeding technological edge at the price. Nevermind that eventually the labor issue is going to explode, because high-skilled programers simply do not have to put up with an industry where they are overworked, underpaid and abused.
Thus, it really is like a game of chicken. Your competitors might hold out in Crazytown longer than you, and that could put a temporary dent in your profits. But, whoever doesn't pull away from the edge before it's too late will explode; and do you really want to take that risk?
In sum, the problem is no matter of "the inherent drivers of capitalism", so much as it is symptomatic of the myopic, apathetic, and relentlessly short-term orientation of the modern leadership culture of large corporations. How we fix that, I don't know. So long as shareholders insist on seeing immediate gains at the expense of future ones, and corporate boards promote and hire top management who are willing to sabotage the future of the company to eek out slightly better numbers for the current quarter and then quit with a golden parachute, the status quo will be maintained.
It's bizarre, but people have basically trained themselves to be idiots who no longer even act in their own financial self-interest. They're failing the Marshmallow Test and I don't understand how investors this wrongheadedly reckless still have money to set on fire.
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Yeah fan made skins and replacers for the guns in counter strike source
I'm sick of updating games. It takes forever for me, and I sometimes can't play the games while doing so.
Yeah let's blame consumers who have had no choice but to accept the change in direction of game development, and when publishers then cannot keep their end of the bargain and the consumers rightfully express disappointment and anger, it's the consumers' fault for having unrealistic expectations. Not cultivated by the publishers seeking to constantly milk a game at the expense of their workers' health.
I used to buy some stuff here and there to support certain games, but since now I'm constantly juggling between several online GAAS when they drop new content (man I despise that word) I just don't bother anymore. I'm time strained already between PUBG, Apex, Warframe, CSGO, Fortnite and BF5, I and can't certainly support them all. Those last two are almost dropped already, and if I ever decide to finantially support any one of those games, it will probably be Warframe.
There is only so much time and money.
There is only so much time and money.
I say make as complete off a game that you can make initially. Publishers need to back off and allow these devs to do their thing. If it needs updates because of say a battle royal genre then you have to know what you signup for.
Gaming industry with its never ending greed has cornered itself into this situation. The industry spent years pushing propaganda about "the greatness" that is GaaS, so naturally consumers have certain expectations when they buy GaaS.
Gaming industry is the only entity to blame here. Blaming consumers in this situation is pathetic stance to take.
Gaming industry is the only entity to blame here. Blaming consumers in this situation is pathetic stance to take.
That's how I feel with a lot of GaaS games I've played more recently, the service part for some seems to be the "we'll finish the rest of the game" part of development. There are far, far too many products releasing way too early and unfinished which likely backfired in their own face.
Finish the game, release it and don't hold back content in attempt to make it out like there are things coming and being added.
We've got a decent load of examples of games like this now and it's usually the higher ups at fault.
Nah, it's 100% on CEOs and suits. They want to keep your attention so they keep pushing out more and more stuff so you wont get bored and buy some other game.
They want you hooked into their economy and theirs only.
No one is picketing outside of Epic or EA demanding content while burning effigies and barricading the doors.
It's comical seeing gamers refuse to take any responsibility for this market they have helped to create. When gamers complained about ME3's ending, they got a new ending. When gamers complained about SWBF1 having no campaign, they got a campaign in the sequel. When gamers complained about MTX in the sequel, they got them removed. But gamers have nothing to do with anything the publishers do! Never mind the obvious fact that publishers get successful by giving the market what it wants. When a GaaS game does well, it's because that's what gamers want: more, more more. When a SP focused $60 game bombs because gamers refuse to spend $60 on something that's "only 10 hours long, wait for $20 or less", that's on gamers too. How many times do we see forum topics here or elsewhere bemoaning the lack of games like X and Y, then when one comes it doesn't sell? People cried about getting a Mirror's Edge sequel for years, and EA can barely give it away at $10. Look at Fortnite vs Apex, the former dominates on Twitch thanks to constant updates, the latter gets complaints from gamers about taking too long to release new content. Gamers caused this.
Erm, regarding Fortnite and Apex, not sure how that's the gamers' responsibility considering EA opted to enter that market knowing exactly what it will take to compete with Fortnite. People demanding more are realising that EA released an inferior product as far as ongoing support is concerned.
Regarding your other points - the 'gamer' has every right to complain about a product they're unsatisfied for which they've spent money. Not sure how complaining about things that are then fixed - by all intents, the developer/publisher failing to understand their audience - is the gamers' fault. The notion that publishers are only serving a market is also a fabrication, considering the fundamental underpinning of capitalist economy is to create new wants in order to keep pursuing more profit. This is hardly a gamer-related issue, and frankly, I'd rather have gamers complain about shit all the time than allow publishers leeway considering they will never do what is in the interest of the consumer or their developers - but their bottom line.
Publishers did this shit to themselves in their greedy quest for all the money, and now their poor employees have to suffer for it. Shameful and exploitative industry.
Epic has some of the best talent in the industry, and they've been hiring like crazy, and they've been crunching a lot, and EA is supposed to compete with that without crunching too? That's a huge ask.
You sound like you know nothing about the streaming business if you think this is true.
Epic have set the gold standard for other AAA developers on console/pc and I don't think they can keep up. It's why I think fortnite will remain super popular for years. Is it known how many employees epic have working on fortnite?
This is some individualistic thinking right here. There are a lot of people trying to pin the blame for this on either consumers or developers, but the primary driver behind these trends is, and always has been, profit. This is the fundamental driving force of capitalism, and it's killing workers. The pressure on workers to produce more content is mirrored by the pressure on consumers to buy more things and compete with other consumers. Kids end out internalizing this system and start bullying one another to assert their class status. This persists into adulthood, which is how you get fully grown "hardcore gamers" ragging on "casuals" for ruining the game industry because they don't have the same amount of time and money to spend on games. These categories are constructed because they're profitable.
Seeing Fortnite eclipse everyone else in terms of update schedule is rather frustrating, because very few developers can keep up with that, if any. If Respawn doesn't have a chance to be able to keep pace, what hope to other studios have? Hell, what chance do, say, indie devs have?
Monetizing "creation content" wouldn't be a bad idea, especially for in-game content creation tools like map editors - it's kinda what Nadeo was doing with Trackmania 2. Release the game with mapmaking tools and a base environment/content set to play with, and then release new sets of content as DLC. It would be a really cool way of monetizing new map content without splitting the community like map packs of old did. Sure, it would be harder to do on PC, but it would make a lot more sense on consoles. And if a map is really that good, there's a chance that it might end up in the official matchmaking rotation - Valve has been known to do this for community-made maps for TF2 and CSGO.
I'd also like to blame Fortnite for inventing the Battle Pass. Granted, battle passes are way better than loot boxes, but they're still frustrating in how they demand a lot of time instead of luck.
Finish games before releasing them. The console industry managed this for 20 years. Day one patches incentives getting the game out the door asap with the intention of fixing in later and this is bad for consumers and bad for development crunch. GAAS could be the death of a lot of great software creators I just question if it's even sustainable.
Same here, if it's not part of the core experience then I'm uninterested I don't care how great some DLC is I just can't be bothered with it especially once I've finished a games story. I'd rather play a bunch of different games across genres than GaaS titles
Hard for me to see this as a problem. Consumers have been demanding this of online games for generations and developers are responding to that market pressure as they should. The only concern I can see is consolidation but that's a thing that has already been happening independent of GaaS titles.
Find another way to lower dev costs and kill two birds with one stone.
Find another way to lower dev costs and kill two birds with one stone.
This demand has existed generations before Fortnite. This generation started out with folks pointing out the lack of content in Destiny BEFORE the game even released. And they were right, Destiny and many other games still have a content issue. Fornite, and GTA before it, just happens to actually keep its audience engaged.
I'm also very oldskool. I buy many games and play through each one once before moving on to the next. I couldn't care less about GAAS games and luckily there's still an abundance of more traditional games to play. The industry is doing it to themselves by pursuing that type of player.
I love Monster Hunter World and that's the only service type game (online with content drops) I play. It has been great so far.
I love Monster Hunter World and that's the only service type game (online with content drops) I play. It has been great so far.
That's the biggest and only problem really.
Fortnite shouldn't be looked at as the norm
Looking at the latest anthem, fallout 76, battlefield and battlefront, don't those roadmaps pretty much screwed because they first need 2 months to fix everything from launch?
It takes faaaaar longer than 2 months to complete the unfinished games pushed early.
• Battlefront II got there, eventually.
• BFV will never get there, DICE abandoned it
• Anthem is still prototyping the rework, unclear if it will ever launch
• Fallout 76's latest Expansion is alright, the game is worthy of re-review
On top of all these things, publishers THEMSELVES are pushing their promises of 10-year plans... They want the lifestyle engagement. Publishers don't want to give an inch when it comes to *potential* revenue from the modding or user-driven modes of play.
1. Launch complete games, not early-access version
2. Don't promise the support you aren't willing to give
3. Don't build the mechanics which force players to play 100h+ every month to unlock fleeting items.
4. Release the modding tools if you aren't willing to deliver content
CoH2 community partnered with game's developer and started prototyping their own maps, balance changes and whatever content modding tools allowed to produce. The result is a wonderful, 7+ year long game still receiving new maps and balance changes with the minimal developer's effort.
Tbh my solution to this has simply been to ignore GAAS games, or only buy them if I'm satisfied with the content in them at that time.
I'm not going to grind a battle pass for 200 hours, and I don't care about skins or some random 20 minute side quest being added to Assassin's Creed Odyssey a year after release.
The one GAAS game I play regularly is Apex Legends, but I'd be playing that even if it wasn't getting updates at all. I'm there for the core gameplay which is excellent. Other than that I just focus my attention on other games (lately, FFVII Remake, DQ11, Persona 5 Royal, etc) that feel complete from the get-go.
I'm not going to grind a battle pass for 200 hours, and I don't care about skins or some random 20 minute side quest being added to Assassin's Creed Odyssey a year after release.
The one GAAS game I play regularly is Apex Legends, but I'd be playing that even if it wasn't getting updates at all. I'm there for the core gameplay which is excellent. Other than that I just focus my attention on other games (lately, FFVII Remake, DQ11, Persona 5 Royal, etc) that feel complete from the get-go.
Valve did this with TF2, and I feel it worked pretty well for them at the time. Community made maps and items/skins if I remember it right, and valve would publish them as big updates. Along with some minor official stuff.