Absolutely!
Games as a service is a scam.
I mean, MMOs were supposed to be continuously supported and developed during the enrollment period. Earlier iterations of the model had live DMs running encounters, active continuous releases to expand the game world and advance the storyline, and robust customer support to address the bugs and defects. Also, just maintaining the servers necessary to support that much data processing was hella-expensive on its face.
Games as a service don’t need to be a scam.
But eventually, the studios figured out they can do the MMO business model on any game. Justifying a fee for Everquest was a lot more reasonable than justifying it for a glorified Team Fortress knock off. Or a freaking platformer.
But they are a scam
Games as a service can be okay, in some situations. Ones we very rarely see due to (primarily) publisher greed.
If you’re paying for the game itself, at any point, GaaS is stupid and extremely exploitative.
If they choose to go that route however, the game needs to be free to play with separate monetization. They need to mebe things that are completely optional and don’t affect gameplay.
This is because we feel we paid for something that expects nothing in return.
When you pay for a game that includes add ons and microtransactions, all of a sudden we‘re back to being a marketing target, and we implicitly know we‘re pushed to spend money.
We play games to escape the real world…
More than that. When you buy a game with microtransactions in it, you’re volunteering to be a marketing target and paying for the privilege. Publishers aren’t trying to get everyone to buy mtx, only the people who bought the game. You’re giving them money and saying, “yes, I want to be targeted, please.”
I appreciate the sentiment but the (very shitty) reality is single player games don’t come any where near the profitability of these multiplayer games in the current climate. Like no where even remotely close in terms of effort to profit. You can straight up clone call of duty every year, or add a few maps to fortnite, or add a new operator to siege, and monetize every tiny fraction of the game thru micro transactions and people will keep on playing and keep on paying.
Single player games operate pretty much the opposite. You buy it once. Play thru it. Beat it. And generally never touch it again unless maybe some dlc comes out and you might add a few more hours to it and then never think about it again.
I say this as a giant fan of single narrative games, it’s just a much smarter business move to pump out shitty online multiplayer games.
Fortnite was released in 2017, last year it netted almost $6 billion.
Call of duty has been dog water for like a decade. Its been the best selling game every single year since 2009 unless Rockstar releases a game (and Hogwarts legacy randomly dominating one year).
World of Warcraft came out in 2004. Last year they announced they had over 7 million active subscribers… Over two decades later.
Apex legends came out in 2019, last year it made over $3 billion.
The list goes on and on and on. You just can’t compete with weirdos obsessed with showing off a wizard hat on their character in an online game or busting open a loot box to get a new weapon skin or something.
single player games don’t come any where near the profitability of these multiplayer games
True, but they are still very lucrative. You can make them, release them, generate a healthy surplus, and roll that into making the next game with plenty of cash to spare.
Also, you don’t have half your dev team stuck supporting a legacy release, constantly fixated on juicing engagement and monetization. There’s a lot less overhead involved in a single-iteration.
Fortnite
Call of duty
World of Warcraft
Apex legends
Had truly phenomenal marketing budgets. It’s the same thing with AAA movies. 25-50% of the budget goes to marketing, on a title that eats up hundreds of millions to produce and support.
You didn’t need $100M to make BG3. You didn’t need an extra $25-50M to get people to notice it and pony up. These bigger titles have invested billions in their PR. And that’s paid out well in the end. But it also requires huge lines of credit, lots of mass media connections, and a lot of risk in the face of a flop.
For studios that can’t fling around nine figures to shout “Look At Me!” during the Super Bowl, there’s no reason to follow this model of development.
Minecraft is the
most popularbest selling game of all time, and the single-player mode is still being updated. Granted, many people play on multiplayer servers, but still.On the one hand, you’re right that the market for micro transaction laden multiplayer games is much larger than single player games. On the other hand, the market for people who want single player games is still very large. You showed that yourself mentioning Rockstar games and Harry Potter.
So while many publishers want a piece of that larger pie, every publisher trying for it just leads to over saturation and greater odds that a game will fail entirely. So there is still incentive for publishers to release large single player games even if the pie is smaller since there may be less competition making it easier to stand out. And what the article is saying is that, within that pie, one way to stand out is to avoid micro transactions. And since it’s discussing single player games specifically, I don’t see a lot of relevance for bringing up multiplayer games that exist in a different part of the gaming world.
Reading the article, where did you get “audience rewards” == “maximal extraction of cash from the audience”?
IMO having a very profitable game that will comfortably fund your studio for the next 5-10 years AND that has universal critical acclaim and a devoted fanbase is reward enough. You didn’t lose because you didn’t make the most money out of all your competitors.
Different games have different audiences. Some people want arcade slop and slot machines to play with friends, they were never going to play BG3 or E33 anyway.
Important to the conversation as well is the fact that plenty of live-service games have recently failed spectacularly. Remember Concord? Within the industry, that is a clear signal that very high budget online slop isn’t as risk-free as previously assumed, which makes ambitious narrative-driven single player games an interesting diversification strategy for studios.
It’s not either or. Executives could spend 100M€ on “nearly guaranteed” online slop, or 80M€ on online slop and 20M€ on a good narrative game. And the critical and commercial success of games like BG3 and E33 are definitely moving the needle.
Especially when micro-economically, there are diminish returns when scaling dev teams. It’s kind of obvious but the first million euros does a lot more for a project than the 100th million. That further strengthens the case for a move away for big players from ONLY funding live-service slop.
If I go to the steam page for a singleplayer game and see a bunch of paid DLC content, I usually skip it. Look at Stellaris, for example
Depends on how old the game is and how big the DLC is IMO. Rimworld, for instance, has quite a few DLCs now, but they are all well worth it if you like the base game. OTOH if a game just has cosmetic DLC or the DLC is coming out super near release that’s a red flag.
Rimworld’s DLCs are kinda assumed purchases for the modding scene, too. I feel like this drives a lot of their sales TBH.
This describes just about all Paradox games made in the past 15 years, sadly. They release with a barebones concept, then slowly drip-feed content for 5-30 bucks a pop, each one usually sitting at “Mostly Negative” because it doesn’t fundamentally add or change anything most of the time, and the times it does- meh. Crusader Kings 2 was my bread and butter for a long time. Played Crusader Kings 3, and it felt like almost every helpful mechanic that existed in CK2 was stripped, and then added on again over the course of years. It was so infuriating, that I just don’t buy their titles anymore.
It really sucks cause their gamea are really good too and nobody else makes anything like that, so we’re stuck dealing with paradox’s crap. Same story with the total war games.
Vampire Survivors is an exception.
At the very least, you can still pirate it and play cracked multiplayer with friends.
I made the mistake of buying the game year ago, and bought a bunch of DLC at 50% or greater sales, and now the sunken cost fallacy has taken hold on me, and I still want to buy more . . . . (at least I’m broke so I can’t right now hehehaha)
The game files are already downloaded in the steam version at least. One could, hypothetically, unlock those dlcs even on a normal copy. Steam would have no way too detect that either. Supposedly. In Minecraft.
Complete games. They are called complete games.
Thing is, I’ve seen funbucks stuffed into various single player games over the years. The first was probably Mass Effect 3, but some of the Assassin’s Creed games have it too.
But who are they for? Who buys them? They’ve never really felt like anything that would be useful. It’s usually just some crappy cosmetics, or something you can get through normal play. It’s like they’ve been stuffed in at the request of management, but also like nobody has ever checked up on what they actually put in, or whether anybody bought it…
Who buys them?
- People who dont game buying a present who just go “oh deluxe version, not that much more expensive, lets treat them”
- wealthy people that just pick the priciest option
- people with completitionist tendencies
- streamers and wannabe streamers for whom the extra cost is a trivial operating expense
- children and others that dont understand the value of a dollar
- people whose primary draw to the game is the photomode
- “i like game, I want more game therefore I pay more” (yes this logic is terrible when applied to microtransactions)
The type of monetisation that especially confuses me as a guy brought up on pre-internet era gaming is any kind of pay to win. You’re buying a game then paying extra money so you don’t have to then go through the tedious task of actually playing the game.
I’ve had a few games come with a handful of items for some reason, and very quickly learned to never use them.
Pre order now and ruin the game!
The same thing has always confused me about CCGs. Why spend hundreds of dollars to be able to play them at all, when you can just get Dominion and know that the game is both fair and varied?
I too grew up gaming in the pre internet era, and I love pay to win. My favorite is when they just let me press A and the rest of the game just unfolds and plays itself while I watch.
The game industry was assaulted by the MBAs long ago. They have this financial concept of leaving money on the table. That if you aren’t skinning your customers alive for all they have then you are losing money.
Then there was that infamous power point slide that got leaked where, basically, the plan is to use games to bring in audiences then use gambling techniques to hook on whales then cash them for eternity. Thus “live services games” were born.
It feels like uncreative, predatory shit because it is. It’s a finance people idea, not a creative game developer idea.
I think the last few years has left them struggling with the reality that landlords and supermarkets also have that concept, and when it’s a choice between having a roof, food, or entertainment, then they’re way down the list.
Who buys them?
Play Nice by Jason Schreier mentions that the “Pay to Win” style of monetization is very popular in Chinese markets.
I’d wager that, since other markets strongly oppose that, public companies focused on profits over player sentiment needed to find a middle ground. (That dichotomy is the main focus of the last half of the book)
We revolted when Battlefront 2 had loot boxes at the center of game progression, so companies hoping to make the most money in both markets need to make the purchasable items either purely cosmetic or only helpful in early game progression (starter packs).
Gamers reward good games
Unfortunately, they also reward bad games.
Exactly. You make good MMORPG and money will come in droves too. Same for RPG or fuck it, even poker game on crack. Just make good games, but it’s not as easy as it sounds… No one just clicks “make game bad” and often the Microtransactions are dictated by whatever publishing deal they have.
He’s right
There’s a difference between a game made with passion and a game by EA/Ubisoft.
And Multiplayer games like Helldivers 2
Shoutout to FromSoft still having Bloodborne servers ready for me on my very first runthrough 10yrs after launch
It is my favorite software as a service model.
They run a continuous story based experience that is extremely well done. They do offer the ability to buy in game credits, but if you play regularly there is no reason to as they show up frequently in game. Their cosmetic store only has a few items, but they cycle around so there will always be another chance to get them.
And when the devs did fuck up the gameplay, they admitted it and changed course. When Sony forced them to add in the PlayStation login the devs supported the players in pushing back and we now have an official review bomb cape.
I love the game, but I’d like to point out that baldur’s gate 3 does have a single microtransaction, it gives you a custom dice skin, a tie in item from divinity original sin and a bunch of low level potions. It costs 12CAD.
I will point out that this is mainly just a way to get the free preorder bonus though, and has no real gameplay effects. The dlc also contains a digital artbook, digital soundtrack and some character sheets. I feel like that is quite a bit more than the normal micro transactions, though I still somewhat see your point
Let’s not forget about the two extra bard songs, which was the only reason I got it lol.
Unfortunately, that’s not sufficient to keep that bullshit out of big-budget single-player games. Publishers can force it upon developers - and will. Once a few games get away with it, the cult of executives will figure they’re losing money if they don’t fuck you as hard as possible.
Nice, now release Judas >:(
Making inoffensive microtransactions is such a tightrope walk. Just putting an up-front price is so much simpler on their end.
Yup I do not buy single player games that have monitizacion, indiana jones game was so far game of the year for me
