Split gate shouldn't be included in this video at all. Small team free game with lots of features and no pushy mtx. For what it was it did a PERFECT job
Just like how two people said about great nations falling, with one I don't remember that well who once said about France (I believe it was Otto Von Bismark) "I believe the French are the strongest people in Europe. They've been trying to destroy themselves for a while, " and the other one being Zemo from Avengers Civil War, saying, "A nation toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one that crumbles from within? That's dead. Forever." Which was a quote from Machiavellio's "The Prince"
same with 'early access' its become an excuse for big companies to push out games faster that have bugs in them and say "its fine, its still early access after all"
Just stick to the Bungee titles, and ignore everything 343 produced. Not sure about you, but this is what I do with Star Wars and anything produced by Lucasfilm and Disney, and I live a satisfied life.
@@lusterlessnova3199Ignoring the 343 games may sound simple but with how long the company has been attached to halo it's just easier said than done. (Imo) You'll always be reminded one way or another, either through UA-cam or somewhere else.
I think the over saturation of live service gaming is going to kill so many IPs that we'll see another 1983-esque gaming crash take place, even for the IPs that are "too big to fail" as many put it. Overwatch 2 was the first live service game I sunk my teeth into with the whole battle pass + item shop combo and my experience was so bad that I'm thinking I should just avoid anything that calls itself a 'live service'.
Ironically killing so many IP's would just given them a chance for a latter better revival, if its done well and not by greedy peop looking for a quick buck like some many remasters today are.
I think gaming needs another crash honestly, I'm fed up of overmonetisation, timed rotating stores making it difficult to even buy the specific thing you want when you DO wanna spend a bit of money on a game, and the god awful, pathetic *_bullshit_* that is fomo with time gated battle passes.
@@TheAHuman try dredge, easily one of the best lovecraftian horrors I’ve played in a while, just don’t get the black stone dlc because the publisher forced them to make a paid dlc so there’s nothing in it.
@TheDaxter11 even if you own them physically have fun trying to play them forever. Your Xbox 360 won't last forever. Once they're all broken that's it
@@TheDaxter11 at least for some games you got GoG, so you can keep them even if the company closes. but i think your point still stands. even with GoG, once you lost the copy of the installationfiles...you're done.
The "don't get angry at devs" thing goes for customers too. Some devs lash out at disappointed customers on social media, saying that they shouldn't be "entitled" and all that.
The clowns saying that we shouldn't be entitled should think twice, we are the ones paying for their crappy games, if they don't want to even work hard to give a decent game then that's their problem. I won't reward them for their failures.
Once again, a very fair and agreeable video. Live Service games aren't necessarily a bad idea, but companies (particularly higher-ups) often forget to turn on the "passion, care, and ingenuity" switch and just churn out a soulless husk of an idea. Hopefully more companies will learn and go back to crafting games, live serve or not, with love and passion and not with cut corners and cash grabs.
i dont want to be a doomer but i think we've already gone too far with the whole milking the industry, the only way i see bigger companies going back to actual finished games is the collapse of the industry, sucks for the actual devs but the best thing to do is to hope it happens rather quickly
@@BobOrKlaus i actually think the answer is indie devs but the issue is not many wanna make a live game either bc its too much work, not their original plan, or not enough funding
@@RaidenKunii yeah, the big corpa has the money and does it wrong and the actual good indie devs cant do it due to lack of money, if it collapses again id imagine indie devs survive and rise to the top hopefully not going the same path the current suits did
The worst part about buying the pve is that it only gives you the first 3 mission and not any future ones. For 15 dollars you can get cosmetics you didn’t ask for and a half as promise from the past.
then you remember what 15 dollars bought you in witcher and yeah...... no comparison. its laughable. i dunno, different target, son i dont feel bad buying this type of dlc or the valhalla dlc giving me 30 hours more to play for 20 on sale cause people buy a cosmetic for that price......
I miss the days of buying a disc from walmart and having everything included no extra fees and having to play the game in interesting or different ways to earn cosmetics
I do want to point out that Multiversus went offline because the developers want to make the game more of a game They did not expect nor were they prepared for the attention Multiversus got so they hit the breaks in order to fine tune the problems and they are still working on it
There’s also the whole Discovery X Warner Brothers merger in the background that definitely didn’t help It’s the main reason I didn’t go into it like redfall or overwatch, that’s a retrospective that deserves its own video!
@@KindofBradAtThis and I’ll definitely be here to watch it That game had so many things going against it like it was insane I’d love to watch you cover em
@@KindofBradAtThis yeah that was the first video of yours that I watched but I must say judging from your other stuff you are a really compelling UA-camr
‘It’s built on trust.’ That’s the worst part. I’m willing to bet that somewhere in the EULA, it mentions something like Blizzard being in no way obligated to follow through on their promises when players purchase the game. Knowing corporate arm twisting.
I know not how I found this video but it was amazing, a lovely jaunt down the failures, and successes (god how did I sink 5k hours into tf2), of long slated games. I hope you continue to grow!
Yeah, so the problem is live service, then. And I know what you meant by that statement, but really stop and think; imagine me saying that about microtransactions and DLC. It applies there as well, but both have become issues of their own simply because they are easy excuses for Devs to nickel and dime customers or to take game staples like character colors and market them as paid cosmetics... As opposed to, say, PS2 Mortal Kombat Armageddon that, in the only version it ever got, included EVERY MK character to ever exist as well as their respective costumes, a cart racing minigame, a 3D open world story mode, AND a character creator. The only fighting game that has done something to the same caliber is Street Fighter 6 while every other fighting game, Mortal Kombat included, has: A. Gutted those elements completely B. Started making customers pay for them as secondary revenue sources (Tekken Bowl for example) Or C. Twisted those concepts into additional marketing schemes They aren't a system with which players can have fun, they are a system of convenience for content delivery. Left in the hands of devs, they will find a way to plaster a price tag on every inch of it just to make more money. So the problem IS the practice itself because they simply can't be trusted with it. Until they can, it should just be removed.
@@Impalingthorn I do believe that DLC and live services aren’t bad in and of themselves, however, as you said, they’re more often then not used to nickel and dime consumers. Let’s start with DLC, there are some games that add a substantial amount of new content to a game that you may already enjoy; this isn’t a terrible idea, having more of something you already like is a good thing, as long as it’s priced fairly, and it doesn’t feel like otherwise unused/premade content being sold back to you, which is sadly common, especially with AAA studios, especially making you pay for previously free content which I will get too in due time. Now, Live service isn’t a bad idea by it’s self, it’s how it’s utilized. On one hand it’s cool for a game world to constantly be changing and evolving. However, the problem arises when content, that should of been there day one, is marketed as an update; an notable example is Halo infinite, which didn’t have the series staple Forge creator until nearly a year after launch, despite being available in previous games on day 1. It’s these examples where I find myself not really liking live service games, as they far too often feel underbaked and lacking in content, of which is usually under the guise of, “it just launched, that stuff will come later,” despite the fact that said content should of been there from day one. In the case of sequels where they paywall previously free content, or not have that content period at launch, that just sucks in general. Content that use to be free should never be payed walked, especially in a sequel where the entire point is to expand the game, not take away from it only to sell it back to people. A example of this is PVZ 2, where they paid walled previously free plants, some of which being series staples, such as the chomper. Overall, I feel like the very idea of Live service or DLC isn’t innately evil, but unfortunately they’re practices being used by AAA publishers, who want nothing more then to line their wallets up and have a infinitely unsustainable flow of money come pouring in.
The live service model, and microtransactions at large, is a problem in itself because of the incentives it creates for companies. Expecting companies to handle it 'responsibly' is naive at best.
The funny part is the majority of these games are shooters because shooter fans are not exactly deep thinkers with stuff like this. The only shooters I even play anymore are single player or stuff like Team Fortress 2 or Quake. A lot of the best multiplayer games that are coming out these days are PVE focused, a few are shooters but the majority just aren't. Branch out and play other kinds of games people, there's so many great games out there so many people refuse to play because it has no gunplay. Just give other games a chance and you will find that original spark that made you play games in the first place, stop settling for husks of games you once loved and find something new to enjoy.
Glad to see a video where they don't blame the system, but the people behind the game itself. Too many awful greedy CEOs destroying the industry with shoddy garbage.
How do you turn a table top role playing game into a live action one? Where the people playing it have the freedom to make whatever story that want and have fun? As for board games, you either own it or you don't, I cant imagine trying to sell a board game dlc or an standard board game edition vs the ultimate edition, when you want people to try out the board game in the first place
@@ARStudios2000 Well, their plan was to have a virtual tabletop that they owned, aggressively push other VTT's out of existence, and have microtransactions for digital content. While also going back on their irrevocable open license and force third party content makers to bend the knee or get sued. Essentially, the same cycle of stupid-evil greed that capitalism inevitably produces. They backed down, but trust had been permanently destroyed for a lot of people, including mr.
@@halinaqi2194 The 6th edition (or "revamped 5e" or 5.5e or OneD&D or w/e they end up naming it) is going to be all virtual tabletop simulation mostly. Probably will still have book releases too, but because of the success of Roll20 thanks to Covid, they're trying to make their own virtual tabletop that will be stuffed with microtransactions. So lots of digital tokens and customizations and building sets for dungeon masters and probably a subscription service to use an AI dungeon master, etc. I'm personally planning to stop with original 5th edition being my last D&D collection, and will switch to DaggerHeart once that gets fully released.
The one thing that’s kind of just killed gaming for me is almost every series I grew up with has a battle pass or timed events, which I’m forced to download which takes up my hard drive space, that most I’ll never be able to unlock because I work full time and can hardly complete one pass let alone multiple. I’ve basically been playing only single player games lately and I haven’t looked back.
Yes. They basically make every game a daily chore, like some sort of second job, instead of you just playing when you feel like playing. I'm sticking to single player games thank you very much.
As someone who played a ton of Multiversus when the beta dropped, I was very disappointed to see how much it dropped afterward, and I hope that when the full game releases, they'll have figured out what went wrong and make things right, because I genuinely had fun with Multiversus, and it stinks to see it be considered "just another live service game."
I like live service for multiplayer games. The $0 initial cost means more players try it, meaning there is more UGC, faster queue times and potentially bigger eSports opportunities. That said, so many companies are doing it completely wrong right now.
In my experience, it's not worth it. When Halo Infinite brought in F2P players, it totally changed the vibe of the community. The new players were either very bad at the game (probably kids) or they were pretty good, but played like they were in another FPS (basically not using teamwork or tactics) I don't think skill level is important, though. This would be fine if they didn't also bring with them the toxicity from other games. It just ruined the fun for old fans and the newer people didn't stay anyway
The issue is locking characters and weapons/ equipment behind currency. Pokemon unite and overwatch 2 have competitive gamemodes and you cannot access every character from the get go as a new player. I cant play ramatra in ranked. In unite some players have higher leveled held items and others just happen to have the unite licenses that are meta for that balance patch. Some battle items are locked behind level progression, so a new player is at an inherent disadvantage to an older player.
"Here's your game sir!" "Hey thanks I've been waiting all year for- where's my content?" "What content?" "My content? My fully fleshed out, bug free content? Don't tell me you forgot the content you PROMISED IN THE TRAILERS!" "But that was just a..." "How am I supposed to enjoy this game without my content? Haven't you ever ONCE thought of your target audience?! You call yourself Triple A? Well I ain't buying!" *knock knock knock "Listen dude, I TOLD you I AIN'T paying for that!" "Well this one's FREE TO PLAY!" *Shoves micro-transactions and apology letter in face.
As Yahtzee said, people can’t play a game that uses all your time X2. The industry can’t sustain everyone trying to make a forever game, so most people will just stay with the ones they have put the most time into like back in the 2000s when WOW killed everything trying to compete with it.
😂 OOOOOOOOH what a roast ha ha🙃 But it definitely is true for lots of gamers being unable to get back to playing singleplayer games, simply because of the dopamine and stimulation overload in multiplayer live service games 💰☠️ unfortunately If you can't accept that fact of life then thats on you but ur one of the lucky ones lol buddy ✌️😂💦
@@curie1420 and thats why you must play indie singleplayer games, tons of fun for an okay price. Some you can replay a lot or speedrun and most of them get a lot of updates to fix bugs and major issues.
I’ve said this before but if AAA game companies keep doing this whole unfinished stuff indie games might come up behind them and leave them in the dust
Conceptually, I love the idea of live service games, but very few games have handled live service well. Deep Rock Galactic and Warframe are really it. I'm a destiny fan but dam it's cash hungry
Same but company’s greed the suits greed get in the way. That’s why I highly respect Epic and Fortnite cuz they do a lot for their game always improving always giving out free stuff and their prices aren’t ridiculous.
I do respect fortnite when it comes to live service games. The only thing money gets you is save the earth and cosmetics, and that's it. You can be the biggest whale in fortnite and constantly lose or never spend a dime and be an excellent player.
Good to see that you consider DRG, Splatoon 3, Sea of Thieves and even Fortnite great live service games! I play all of them a lot lol! They do certinately still have their own flaws (DRG does have little to none tho), I still have fun with them with my friends!
There’s very few game models that an inherently bad and pretending live service is something that’s blanket statement bad is super silly, ESPECIALLY when games like DRG, Splatoon, SoT, even Minecraft, prove that great live service can exist!
The publishers and suits aren’t the only ones to blame. The people who buy games and are even encouraging scummy business practices are just as much at fault, and there’s a lot of people like that in the casual gamer crowd, because they don’t care about these issues, hell they probably don’t even realize it’s problematic to begin with.
look at the recent meltdown of new diablo players learning about seasons. Or at street fighter 6 and it‘s attempt to lure people in with controls that a dead cat can use… It‘s all about the casuals and their money now, they ruined it!
we're just getting old bro. imagine your self as a child/teenager: you're used to games like CS that you buy once and then you can play on any server without additional cost and you even got custom gamemmodes that last to THIS day. you got everything with a one-time purchase. for childs/teenagers these days it's a completely different story. they grow up with gaming beeing like this. show them CS 1.6 and i'm confident that most of them will complain that there aren't any cosmetics. even if they know CS, they probably know it because of CS:GO and guess what...there's a sh*t ton of cosmetics...
@@j.w.213nd what's wrong with casual players exactly? Not everyone wants to play competitively, Some people just want to play a game for the story or game play.
@@j.w.213I'm gonna have to disagree with the sf6 argument right there. You should be happy that casual audiences are playing that game because that'll eventually mean more people will decide to be competitive and more competitive people will mean a bigger audience. Did you know that competitive nerds were casuals at one point? Crazy isn't it?
Your favorite youtuber is at fault, instead of having a goddamn brain. All they do is mindlessly tell their audience "BuY ThHINgS in THE GAME l00k at m3 i´m so CRINGE"
GOD TIER VIDEO. Sure we're all thinking it, but you put it into words and did an amazing job of preaching to the choir, and/or getting more people aware, while being very entertaining. Keep it up, man!!
the devs behind REDFALL didnt know what the game was supposed to be, Arkane literally has experience in immersive sims and singleplayer games. as their fan i remember there being interviews that they didnt want to name PREY well, PREY because that'd be staining the original game and the sales of the 2017 reboot would be terrible. as for REDFALL, they had 0 idea what they were making, they didnt like what they were making and lastly is the fact that it was a management decision at Bethesda that told them to make REDFALL without even asking the devs about it, even a simple question like: "do you like what you're making?" would suffice. but guess not 70% of original Arkane devs, behind games like Dishonored series and PREY have already left bethesda and now Arkane is just a name under Bethesdas ownership in all honesty, they got done very dirty
Live service needs to go honestly. Something these companies dont seem to understand its that the market for liveservice games is already oversaturated key players are already stablished and its really hard to draw players from the big live service games to your game
Easy solution: remove the stock market from the equation. It is the pressure of investors and other greedy people that causes almost all of this behavior. As one person said: ‘once you go public in the stock market your business goal is simply growth at all costs’ and this leads to the live service and unsustainable business models. That and live services are basically the loophole used to justify false advertising and fraud in the industry as a safe guard from getting sued by customers or the government so they can’t be held liable. The lack of any responsibility is absolutely gross.
If you're looking for a good point of reference, check how Deep Rock Galactic handles live-service and see where you could make improvements, because as of now that game is literally how live-service should be done.
“Live service” is the equivalent of a theme park. You pay for the admission ticket, you pay for the souvenirs, and you pay for whatever else is in the park. Then, the park shuts down and you never get to go there again. Or, they just shut down your favorite rides. I wish the live service model would die off.
Hold the phone, Fortnite is the good guy now? I mean, seems like the game has carved its own niche and stayed in there. As the crossover game, I respect how much it has succeeded. As long as it stays in its corner, I'm fine.
ngl before you said it was just you making this i thought you had like a million subs or something, everything from the takes to the transitions is spot on
I’m at the point where I will not play a game advertised as a “live service”. I have no desire to invest time into something that is just going to try to continually wring cash out of me
Blizzard just keeps making really stupid decisions that are 100% gonna bite them back. It sucks because I enjoy overwatch and realizing that they're not capitalizing on the game's potential of what it could be is really crushing. good video :)
I like the thought behind life service: An immersive world that keeps evolving with it's story. Destiny 2 is a life service game I play and I like what they're trying to do, regardless of quality of execution: running a set of content for a given amount of time, to be experienced as it releases, for not that much money, with some activities and things to explore along the way. (Yes the payment options are confusing as hell and the event passes are the greediest shit I've seen since). Some places change a little with the revolving seasons, and while I'm not a big fan of cutting content, I understand why it must be done (I had to redownload it recently and it was like 100GB or something and maaan, I don't want to imainge that number if they hadn't started the content vault). Still, the idea of having this massive world that keeps changing as teh story unfolds is something that interests me. And there's the other life service, like fortnite and LoL, that keep changing just enough to offer new experiences without really changing anything, or having story. Both work, separately. OW wanted both, and failed spectacularly. Some Games would just be better off as a one-time release. Life Service OW could have been great. We could have had a season on getting the band back together, slowly enlargening the roster of available characters, throwing us around the globe, going from defense to offense over the seasons, introduce the "second gens" like Lucio, Hana(D.Va) and Brigitte, who were never part of the original Overwatch. I'd have loved seeing them in a kind of hub, be able to interact with them in pairs, chatting about what is happening. Maybe bring in Talon, as Villains first who later decide to help out against the Omnics because there's no money to be made off corpses or something. What is Sombras masterplan? We could have observed it unfolding, even in life service. Yeah lol just a disappointed rant XD
@@KindofBradAtThis 👍 100% If it doesn't provide an interesting or enjoyable experience, it isn't worth wasting time on. We need to learn to only respect the Developers who respect our time.
I remember when companies made a fully fleshed campaing, multiplayer mode, coop mode, editor map, without any microtransaction, and without any predatory practice, no battlepass, no liveservice, no live connection while playing it, no shop. Just focused on making a fun and functional product day 1 at half or third the price of today's AAA. Sounds like I'm describing an unicorn in today's world.
It's so odd that in the current gaming industry Splatoon 3, of all things, is a role model for how to create a decent live service game. It isn't even giving players perfect updates. it's giving mediocre updates for free and in modern gaming that is considered good.
Honestly Deep Rock Galactic should be the main role model to create an actual good live service game. It has everything good that a love service game could offer, while not giving anything bad about it. Heck, even considering how mediocre the Season 4 is, it still shows how a live service game should be.
@@Otherface Yep thats the only other good live service game that I know. I just didn't mention it because I don't believe it was shown in the video. I do believe both games do live service well. Its just the most recent season of splatoon is lacking in content.
The SpongeBob meme doesn't really apply since we were told the "drink" would be this amazing thing with tons of "refills" whilst the SB character didn't order it
OW1 was created by "Old Blizzard" that was pulled of Warcaft at its height. They couldn't finish TITAN so they made what they thought was fun. OW2 is made by "Current Blizzard" with the goal to make money above all else.
I would argue "Micro-Transactions" is the worst word because without them live services would never have been a thing as all live services are built for the express purpose of sell them
im actually really sad abt what happened to overwatch 2, i think the campaign would have been really cool. now i dont even want to buythe crumbs theyre throwing us
@@KindofBradAtThis fr. theres so many characters whose stories i was really excited to see unfold and to see imagery like the older overwatch cinematics and trailers
Feels part of the issue stems from the players themselves. The number of people I’ve talked to that are perfectly fine with the company squishing out every cent never made sense to me
@@KindofBradAtThis It's baffling when you look what League of Legends made of its setting over the same time period. One successful spin-off game, another in the pipeline, and a critically acclaimed animated series.
Remember when Overwatch2 purposely removed things like gold metals, on-fire, enemy endorsements, player boarders, find-a-group, and HALF the of maps (including 2CP maps), only to turn around and slowly give some of them back later-on to get a positive reaction out of the community?? This seems a perfect example of how "good live-service games DONT withhold features, they add NEW ones." Blizzard removing content so they can literally just slowly sell the same game back. to us.
I will always point out when people say “it’s not the devs it’s just corporate” only goes so far, and Overwatch is one of the few cases where I truly believe its problems are both. The business side of things obviously isn’t the devs, but Overwatch has had horrendous balance since forever and the team has taken the lazy way out of everything. The issue is, this leads to the though, “Are they also just as willing to be lazy in other regards, too?” When one of the most surface-level impactful parts of the dev team seems so blatantly lazy, you’ve gotta wonder who else and how bad, and just how much really IS “just corporate”.
Interesting, my take was the opposite with Overwatch I in that Blizzard has clearly been a shell of itself for over a decade in search of larger profits over the quality of anything else! Who’s to say that OW2 isnt the way it was supposed to be because of a similar situation that Bethesda had with Zenimax? There’s a reason Geoff left Overwatch
@@KindofBradAtThis That’s all a fair point, but again, the lazy approach to game balance leads me to wonder where else they’re cutting corners on their end, and just how much of that is truly the higher-ups as opposed to the devs themselves. We’ve seen the balance team not wanting to do their job on multiple occasions in Overwatch 1 and 2 and taking a lazy nonfix way out. Role Queue, Kiriko, the blanket tank nerf in OQ that only served to make the meta the exact same but significantly worse, and so on.
Problem is, the solution is to get gamers to close their wallets, and we all probably know some people that will pay virtually any sum of money for cool optional, trivial pixels; no matter how much companies fuck with them. I'm convinced Destiny 2 is just a social experiment to test for how long they can scam addicts.
Completely agree but also against that point, a lot of these games are failing and completely disappearing because people ARENT playing and therefore spending. It’s basically a goldrush where, yea, a few studios struck gold but now most are showing up too late or with shitty shovels and, I don’t know what happens when you spend all your money on gold panning gear and end up empty handed but, it’s probably not the best
Live service is good...a potentually infinite amount of content and updates for free! And you just buy the extras that you like. What it ruins are the greedy corporations not doing it right!
Look I rag on Modern Minecraft a lot but historically, for the $20 I spent in 2011, Java 2011-2018 was one of the best examples of a GOOD live service ever seen
I don't think Live Service is a good thing, it inherently puts every content under a crunch deadline favoring consistent mediocre content over time consuming but carefully crafted content. If every game has infinite content we end up with the Warframe dilemma, I don't wanna play it cuz the amount of hours I need to put into it to finish the "tutorial" is nuts and I have other games I wanna play oh they all want to have infinite content. Just make a sequel less angry ppl screaming at you for missing features or delays and more time to make a proper game.
@@ryanw531 Can work, but if you screw up the sequel or change too much people will trash it even more or just straight up return to the old one and abandon the new. Dying Light 2 took a shit ton of hits, but managed to stay alive. Darktide (compared to Vermintide 2) currently is taking a shit ton of hits as well and they won't see good profit margins until 2-3 years later, depending how much they update the game
@@slyr0980 Yeah except Darktide is failing so hard right now because it was designed with all the Live Service Garbage, half the problems it is plagued with are things like artificial grind for gear stats and blessings, daily and weekly shops and contracts. the other half is balance and content which is also in VT2 but since VT2 doesn't have bull gear progression ppl can wait while playing the game.
@@slyr0980 I also hate the FOMO crap that want you to log on daily to do trivial tasks to not miss content most Live Service Games do, I can play XCOM2 when ever I fucking please and not miss a damn thing or come back to Witcher 3 years later and still have all the content, but not play LSG for a month and come back to have everyone ask you why you don't have the new event exclusive weapon that ended last week.
I liked the video btw Brad. I agree with all the points. This was something that I think the gaming community as a whole has been feeling. I think that's why Diablo 4 has been so awesome for me. There are just endless things to do and the game feels so completely polished.
tbh outside of the whole cringe factor a lot of people made it out to be, mad props for Fortnite being a actual (and only) solid triple A live service game
I genuinely believe that TF2 and Warframe are the only games that have successfully pulled off the live service model without being "too predatory" (looking at TF2 here with loot boxes).
Warframe has so many scummy ways of siphoning your plat it makes mobile games blush. Sure there is a fair f2p game underneath it if you dont have a job and have someone to tell you where the new player traps are but they are seriously charging like over 10 dollars for complete trash weapons to scam new players, they timegate everything in hopes that you want to spend your way past 72h craft times and the game literally sustains itself on insanely expensive fomo. Genuinely crazy it has a good reputation for its business model when its by far the worst thing about the game.
Imagine a tencent executive yelling at overwatch lead developers in chinese with the words "competitive", "value", and "profit" sprinkled in, that is overwatch 2.
you're joking around but that's genuinely part of the reason I made the channel Yea theres great video essay guys in the space but the people ACTUALLY talking about the problems in the gaming industry are 90% talking out of their ass ASAP so they get the most views INSTEAD of actually being nuanced and understanding what they're talking about
Take a look at Hi-Fi Rush. Dropped with no marketing but ended up successful because it was an actual finished fun product. Haven’t played a game that felt like an actual game for a while.
Exactly, notice how the most memorable and loved games of the past few years are the ones that respect the player and don’t treat em like a wallet to be shaken
@@KindofBradAtThisinstead elden ring puts them there and kicks them in the ribs whenever they mess up but award them with a cookie whenever they do a good job
The way you have gone about asking for a subscription has my respect and my sub. No sub % shaming, no desperate begging. Just being real. I look forward to more
Two things 1: I agree. Just care about how good the game is and you will make money. Kinda weird to mention it, but Nintendo makes so much money on each of their games because they care. Just do that. It’s not that hard. 2. I love your channel name I was actually dying for 5+ minutes. Plus one to the sub-counter.
As a Pokémon player, I can promise you that Nintendo does not care about polished games. They only care about franchises that have prestige, like Zelda.
Pokemon had prestige at one point as well. The original one was revolutionary for its time, an rpg game where you can play as around 150 different characters with their own stats evolution lines, weaknesses and strengths. Each new generation tried new things, johto had it so you can try Kanto after, hoenn had the battle frontier, sinnoh had the mining stuff and different weather effects. Unova had unique animations for each character and pokemon during battles, as well as world tourney. Pokemon went down hill ever since it went 3d, and i think its due to the team being rushed and experienced. They suddenly have to start creating 3d rigged models of over hundreds of pokemon, including characters and since its 3d they have to put more animations to not ruin immersion (the top down style of older games left things more abstract and it didn't break immersion the people couldn't look or move diagonally) We saw a massive decrease in quality since then. Nintendo and game freak noticed that despite that the games sell extremely well so they don't try, especially considering how much they did try with black and white and it wasn't that successfully financially. With the legend of Zelda and Mario, for some reason when a weaker title comes out, it actually sells less. Some Zelda titles don't sell as well if they aren't as good as others, so Nintendo knows that they have to try for those franchises next release, and they are likely different teams, different people, different design philosophy and dev process.
@@halinaqi2194 yeah there’s all that - and that Nintendo basically only releases Pokémon games because of the merchandising. The games don’t make anywhere close the what the brand as a whole makes. No point in making good games if what your selling is plushies.
@@grapesodeypopHow come i dont see you shitting on the pokemon company and game freak? Nintendo isnt 100% innocent here but the pokemon company and game freak hold like 80% of the blame
@@SERMareep2007 because we were talking about Nintendo, who publicly owns this brand and is partially responsible for releasing half baked games. I think game freak is easily just as much at fault, but it’s Nintendo’s golden reputation that’s at risk when these games come out so buggy.
@@Crono1973 there are literal games running for decades that are live service lol. It also has some of the most dedicated communities out there Dota2, CSGO, Runescape are all "Live Service" Games yet still has a strong community. Hell, even abandoned games still exist due to the love of community.
Companies that force developers to add things they weren’t intending at random intervals is like a waiter telling the chef what to make, then suddenly saying to add random ingredients to “make it taste better” and expecting the consumer to enjoy it when it isn’t even what they ordered anymore. The waiter doesn’t know jack about cooking, they just deliver the food, so in that regard, what would a company that DISTRIBUTES games know about making them. Remember, the higher ups in companies like bethesda don’t actually make the games, they tell people to make them, in a way they think their consumers would enjoy. Those people are usually at fault, forcing devs to follow their demands and trying to interject what they think is what the masses enjoy.
The idea of live service is fantastic, who wouldnt want extra content regularly added to a game they like? Problem is, it opened up the industry to a new level of greediness, and we're only just now seeing it fall apart for some devs
Did you know 1/10 people who subscribed after watching this found LOVE?
time to open ten new google accounts and subscribe ten times
Split gate shouldn't be included in this video at all. Small team free game with lots of features and no pushy mtx. For what it was it did a PERFECT job
you can do better than that, begging for subs is just pathetic
Damn, why’d I have to subscribe before this…
I like some live services, but to much of something usually ends up becoming bad.
At this point, I'm convinced that Blizzard is trying to destroy itself
Just like how two people said about great nations falling, with one I don't remember that well who once said about France (I believe it was Otto Von Bismark) "I believe the French are the strongest people in Europe. They've been trying to destroy themselves for a while, " and the other one being Zemo from Avengers Civil War, saying, "A nation toppled by its enemies can rise again. But one that crumbles from within? That's dead. Forever." Which was a quote from Machiavellio's "The Prince"
No, they are still raking in millions
Blizzard fanboys will continue to support them
At THIS point?
THIS is the point you're convinced of that?
So the past decade just wasn't convincing enough?
@@117johnpar Yeah, you've got a good point there.
It is. Those higher in blizzard are pretty much killing the game while the developers pay for the lost time.
The word “Beta” has truly lost all meaning
Thanks Andrew Tate
Nah, video game betas are more beta than ever.
same with 'early access' its become an excuse for big companies to push out games faster that have bugs in them and say "its fine, its still early access after all"
I wonder how long until people realize that the money that games like Overwatch 2 make go into funding NFTs, the Chinese Government, and Ai Animation
@@uria3679 don't worry brother it's not. Every penny you spend on ow2 goes straight to the CEOs bonus
Every time halo is brought up, it just hurts my soul. It's depressing knowing that greed gutted an amazing franchise.
Someone should check in mastercheif, we haven’t heard from him in awhile
Just stick to the Bungee titles, and ignore everything 343 produced. Not sure about you, but this is what I do with Star Wars and anything produced by Lucasfilm and Disney, and I live a satisfied life.
@@lusterlessnova3199Ignoring the 343 games may sound simple but with how long the company has been attached to halo it's just easier said than done. (Imo) You'll always be reminded one way or another, either through UA-cam or somewhere else.
I play forge in infinite and that's really it haha
never played a single minue of halo in my life but i feel for you bro
I think the over saturation of live service gaming is going to kill so many IPs that we'll see another 1983-esque gaming crash take place, even for the IPs that are "too big to fail" as many put it.
Overwatch 2 was the first live service game I sunk my teeth into with the whole battle pass + item shop combo and my experience was so bad that I'm thinking I should just avoid anything that calls itself a 'live service'.
dont want to be a doomer but i think the only way to get back to full finished games from big companied is such a crash, sad but probably true
Wipe the slate clean
Ironically killing so many IP's would just given them a chance for a latter better revival, if its done well and not by greedy peop looking for a quick buck like some many remasters today are.
I think gaming needs another crash honestly, I'm fed up of overmonetisation, timed rotating stores making it difficult to even buy the specific thing you want when you DO wanna spend a bit of money on a game, and the god awful, pathetic *_bullshit_* that is fomo with time gated battle passes.
learn, adapt, overcome. indie games or piracy are your best friends for now.
Most AAA games right now: "I know it sucks, has no content, filled with bugs but maybe we'll fix it later."
Indie games:
"Hey kids, how'd you like a game that's as deep as an ocean, made by one insanely talented and deranged workaholic who is going to die at age 35?"
Indie games: wanna play as italian with a heavy anxiety?
Most indie games are the same these days though: a quirky game with themes of depression and/or dead kids/people (mostly kids).
@@TheAHuman try dredge, easily one of the best lovecraftian horrors I’ve played in a while, just don’t get the black stone dlc because the publisher forced them to make a paid dlc so there’s nothing in it.
Mfs in this reply section really gonna pretend that indie games aren't the goat (they are)
This is why I'm happy with meaty single player adventures I pay once for and own forever.
You can't even say you "own" them forever anymore unless you get them physically, which is unfortunately impossible on PC.
@TheDaxter11 even if you own them physically have fun trying to play them forever. Your Xbox 360 won't last forever. Once they're all broken that's it
@@TheDaxter11 at least for some games you got GoG, so you can keep them even if the company closes.
but i think your point still stands.
even with GoG, once you lost the copy of the installationfiles...you're done.
@@TheDaxter11un fact a lot of games have day one patches that “finish the game” look at Pokémon BDSP literally not finished without the update
@@averyhaferman3474 That’s why game preservation and emulation is so important.
The "don't get angry at devs" thing goes for customers too. Some devs lash out at disappointed customers on social media, saying that they shouldn't be "entitled" and all that.
yup, execs want us at eachothers throats instead of seeing the obvious issue
The clowns saying that we shouldn't be entitled should think twice, we are the ones paying for their crappy games, if they don't want to even work hard to give a decent game then that's their problem. I won't reward them for their failures.
Once again, a very fair and agreeable video. Live Service games aren't necessarily a bad idea, but companies (particularly higher-ups) often forget to turn on the "passion, care, and ingenuity" switch and just churn out a soulless husk of an idea. Hopefully more companies will learn and go back to crafting games, live serve or not, with love and passion and not with cut corners and cash grabs.
Welcome to capitalism baby
i dont want to be a doomer but i think we've already gone too far with the whole milking the industry, the only way i see bigger companies going back to actual finished games is the collapse of the industry, sucks for the actual devs but the best thing to do is to hope it happens rather quickly
@@BobOrKlaus i actually think the answer is indie devs but the issue is not many wanna make a live game either bc its too much work, not their original plan, or not enough funding
@@RaidenKunii yeah, the big corpa has the money and does it wrong and the actual good indie devs cant do it due to lack of money, if it collapses again id imagine indie devs survive and rise to the top hopefully not going the same path the current suits did
The only way that is going to happen, is if Ukraine defeats Russia
The worst part about buying the pve is that it only gives you the first 3 mission and not any future ones. For 15 dollars you can get cosmetics you didn’t ask for and a half as promise from the past.
then you remember what 15 dollars bought you in witcher and yeah...... no comparison. its laughable. i dunno, different target, son i dont feel bad buying this type of dlc or the valhalla dlc giving me 30 hours more to play for 20 on sale cause people buy a cosmetic for that price......
100% an underrated channel, the editing and love you put in shows
The indie game of youtube
I miss the days of buying a disc from walmart and having everything included no extra fees and having to play the game in interesting or different ways to earn cosmetics
Don't attack devs, attack investors and higher ups.
I do want to point out that Multiversus went offline because the developers want to make the game more of a game
They did not expect nor were they prepared for the attention Multiversus got so they hit the breaks in order to fine tune the problems and they are still working on it
There’s also the whole Discovery X Warner Brothers merger in the background that definitely didn’t help
It’s the main reason I didn’t go into it like redfall or overwatch, that’s a retrospective that deserves its own video!
@@KindofBradAtThis and I’ll definitely be here to watch it
That game had so many things going against it like it was insane I’d love to watch you cover em
@@kruegerpoolthe13th I definitely feel I kind of owe it to that game, it’s definitely what kick started any sort of following on UA-cam for me
@@KindofBradAtThis yeah that was the first video of yours that I watched but I must say judging from your other stuff you are a really compelling UA-camr
Wait what's the context behind multiversus?, i thought its a competitor to smash or something
‘It’s built on trust.’
That’s the worst part. I’m willing to bet that somewhere in the EULA, it mentions something like Blizzard being in no way obligated to follow through on their promises when players purchase the game. Knowing corporate arm twisting.
I know not how I found this video but it was amazing, a lovely jaunt down the failures, and successes (god how did I sink 5k hours into tf2), of long slated games. I hope you continue to grow!
Clutz, I think I just fell in love with you
The problem isn’t live service, the problem is using live service as a excuse for not finishing the game before launch.
Yeah, so the problem is live service, then.
And I know what you meant by that statement, but really stop and think; imagine me saying that about microtransactions and DLC. It applies there as well, but both have become issues of their own simply because they are easy excuses for Devs to nickel and dime customers or to take game staples like character colors and market them as paid cosmetics... As opposed to, say, PS2 Mortal Kombat Armageddon that, in the only version it ever got, included EVERY MK character to ever exist as well as their respective costumes, a cart racing minigame, a 3D open world story mode, AND a character creator. The only fighting game that has done something to the same caliber is Street Fighter 6 while every other fighting game, Mortal Kombat included, has:
A. Gutted those elements completely
B. Started making customers pay for them as secondary revenue sources (Tekken Bowl for example)
Or
C. Twisted those concepts into additional marketing schemes
They aren't a system with which players can have fun, they are a system of convenience for content delivery. Left in the hands of devs, they will find a way to plaster a price tag on every inch of it just to make more money.
So the problem IS the practice itself because they simply can't be trusted with it. Until they can, it should just be removed.
@@Impalingthorn I do believe that DLC and live services aren’t bad in and of themselves, however, as you said, they’re more often then not used to nickel and dime consumers.
Let’s start with DLC, there are some games that add a substantial amount of new content to a game that you may already enjoy; this isn’t a terrible idea, having more of something you already like is a good thing, as long as it’s priced fairly, and it doesn’t feel like otherwise unused/premade content being sold back to you, which is sadly common, especially with AAA studios, especially making you pay for previously free content which I will get too in due time.
Now, Live service isn’t a bad idea by it’s self, it’s how it’s utilized.
On one hand it’s cool for a game world to constantly be changing and evolving. However, the problem arises when content, that should of been there day one, is marketed as an update; an notable example is Halo infinite, which didn’t have the series staple Forge creator until nearly a year after launch, despite being available in previous games on day 1.
It’s these examples where I find myself not really liking live service games, as they far too often feel underbaked and lacking in content, of which is usually under the guise of, “it just launched, that stuff will come later,” despite the fact that said content should of been there from day one.
In the case of sequels where they paywall previously free content, or not have that content period at launch, that just sucks in general. Content that use to be free should never be payed walked, especially in a sequel where the entire point is to expand the game, not take away from it only to sell it back to people. A example of this is PVZ 2, where they paid walled previously free plants, some of which being series staples, such as the chomper.
Overall, I feel like the very idea of Live service or DLC isn’t innately evil, but unfortunately they’re practices being used by AAA publishers, who want nothing more then to line their wallets up and have a infinitely unsustainable flow of money come pouring in.
that's literally the point of live service.
It absolutely is a problem considering devs have been planning "10 years" worth of content. Means we will be playing the same games for decades.
The live service model, and microtransactions at large, is a problem in itself because of the incentives it creates for companies. Expecting companies to handle it 'responsibly' is naive at best.
The funny part is the majority of these games are shooters because shooter fans are not exactly deep thinkers with stuff like this. The only shooters I even play anymore are single player or stuff like Team Fortress 2 or Quake.
A lot of the best multiplayer games that are coming out these days are PVE focused, a few are shooters but the majority just aren't. Branch out and play other kinds of games people, there's so many great games out there so many people refuse to play because it has no gunplay. Just give other games a chance and you will find that original spark that made you play games in the first place, stop settling for husks of games you once loved and find something new to enjoy.
Glad to see a video where they don't blame the system, but the people behind the game itself. Too many awful greedy CEOs destroying the industry with shoddy garbage.
I’ll never blame a game dev if I don’t have too, no one wants to make bad games
My favorite thing is that Hasbro is trying to turn DnD (a board game) into a live service game
Wh- how are they gonna do that??
How do you turn a table top role playing game into a live action one? Where the people playing it have the freedom to make whatever story that want and have fun?
As for board games, you either own it or you don't, I cant imagine trying to sell a board game dlc or an standard board game edition vs the ultimate edition, when you want people to try out the board game in the first place
@@ARStudios2000 Well, their plan was to have a virtual tabletop that they owned, aggressively push other VTT's out of existence, and have microtransactions for digital content. While also going back on their irrevocable open license and force third party content makers to bend the knee or get sued. Essentially, the same cycle of stupid-evil greed that capitalism inevitably produces. They backed down, but trust had been permanently destroyed for a lot of people, including mr.
@@halinaqi2194 The 6th edition (or "revamped 5e" or 5.5e or OneD&D or w/e they end up naming it) is going to be all virtual tabletop simulation mostly. Probably will still have book releases too, but because of the success of Roll20 thanks to Covid, they're trying to make their own virtual tabletop that will be stuffed with microtransactions. So lots of digital tokens and customizations and building sets for dungeon masters and probably a subscription service to use an AI dungeon master, etc.
I'm personally planning to stop with original 5th edition being my last D&D collection, and will switch to DaggerHeart once that gets fully released.
bro this channel really doesnt have the recognition it deserves, i thank the youtube algorithm every day for showing me this
Send the channel link to your mother, she’ll love me
Deep Rock once again showing how to do Live Service right.
drg my beloved
rock and stone
5:45 really appreciate the reference to Splatoon 3. Been playing it non stop since it released
Splatoon is slept on
The one thing that’s kind of just killed gaming for me is almost every series I grew up with has a battle pass or timed events, which I’m forced to download which takes up my hard drive space, that most I’ll never be able to unlock because I work full time and can hardly complete one pass let alone multiple.
I’ve basically been playing only single player games lately and I haven’t looked back.
Yes. They basically make every game a daily chore, like some sort of second job, instead of you just playing when you feel like playing. I'm sticking to single player games thank you very much.
As someone who played a ton of Multiversus when the beta dropped, I was very disappointed to see how much it dropped afterward, and I hope that when the full game releases, they'll have figured out what went wrong and make things right, because I genuinely had fun with Multiversus, and it stinks to see it be considered "just another live service game."
I like live service for multiplayer games. The $0 initial cost means more players try it, meaning there is more UGC, faster queue times and potentially bigger eSports opportunities. That said, so many companies are doing it completely wrong right now.
They’re a great thing that can be used horribly
@@KindofBradAtThis *is being used horribly, at least by AAA companies
In my experience, it's not worth it. When Halo Infinite brought in F2P players, it totally changed the vibe of the community.
The new players were either very bad at the game (probably kids) or they were pretty good, but played like they were in another FPS (basically not using teamwork or tactics)
I don't think skill level is important, though. This would be fine if they didn't also bring with them the toxicity from other games.
It just ruined the fun for old fans and the newer people didn't stay anyway
@@SpinningSideKick9000 sure but they still would contribute to UGC if they became dedicated enough
The issue is locking characters and weapons/ equipment behind currency. Pokemon unite and overwatch 2 have competitive gamemodes and you cannot access every character from the get go as a new player. I cant play ramatra in ranked.
In unite some players have higher leveled held items and others just happen to have the unite licenses that are meta for that balance patch. Some battle items are locked behind level progression, so a new player is at an inherent disadvantage to an older player.
"Here's your game sir!"
"Hey thanks I've been waiting all year for- where's my content?"
"What content?"
"My content? My fully fleshed out, bug free content? Don't tell me you forgot the content you PROMISED IN THE TRAILERS!"
"But that was just a..."
"How am I supposed to enjoy this game without my content? Haven't you ever ONCE thought of your target audience?! You call yourself Triple A? Well I ain't buying!"
*knock knock knock
"Listen dude, I TOLD you I AIN'T paying for that!"
"Well this one's FREE TO PLAY!" *Shoves micro-transactions and apology letter in face.
As Yahtzee said, people can’t play a game that uses all your time X2. The industry can’t sustain everyone trying to make a forever game, so most people will just stay with the ones they have put the most time into like back in the 2000s when WOW killed everything trying to compete with it.
The guy with the diet Dr Kelp was being unreasonable. I don't think the players are being unreasonable.
Single Player gamer to Multiplayer Gamer:
"Wow, sucks to be you."
😂 OOOOOOOOH what a roast ha ha🙃
But it definitely is true for lots of gamers being unable to get back to playing singleplayer games, simply because of the dopamine and stimulation overload in multiplayer live service games 💰☠️ unfortunately
If you can't accept that fact of life then thats on you but ur one of the lucky ones lol buddy ✌️😂💦
cant even enjoy single player games now, every new triple a release is broken ever since cyberbug
@@curie1420 and thats why you must play indie singleplayer games, tons of fun for an okay price. Some you can replay a lot or speedrun and most of them get a lot of updates to fix bugs and major issues.
Ever heard of DLC? Sure they can be great but they can also be overpriced garbage
@@curie1420 every single player game?
I’ve said this before but if AAA game companies keep doing this whole unfinished stuff indie games might come up behind them and leave them in the dust
Conceptually, I love the idea of live service games, but very few games have handled live service well. Deep Rock Galactic and Warframe are really it. I'm a destiny fan but dam it's cash hungry
Same but company’s greed the suits greed get in the way. That’s why I highly respect Epic and Fortnite cuz they do a lot for their game always improving always giving out free stuff and their prices aren’t ridiculous.
DRG devs are beyond based
I do respect fortnite when it comes to live service games. The only thing money gets you is save the earth and cosmetics, and that's it.
You can be the biggest whale in fortnite and constantly lose or never spend a dime and be an excellent player.
also splatoon but switch online kinda bogs it down a bit
Fall guys as well before they were aquired by epic
Overwatch 2 is the Spirit Airlines of the video game industry
Good to see that you consider DRG, Splatoon 3, Sea of Thieves and even Fortnite great live service games!
I play all of them a lot lol! They do certinately still have their own flaws (DRG does have little to none tho), I still have fun with them with my friends!
There’s very few game models that an inherently bad and pretending live service is something that’s blanket statement bad is super silly, ESPECIALLY when games like DRG, Splatoon, SoT, even Minecraft, prove that great live service can exist!
I like how in the "good live service games exist" part, the background was showing a bunch of bad live service games.
The publishers and suits aren’t the only ones to blame. The people who buy games and are even encouraging scummy business practices are just as much at fault, and there’s a lot of people like that in the casual gamer crowd, because they don’t care about these issues, hell they probably don’t even realize it’s problematic to begin with.
look at the recent meltdown of new diablo players learning about seasons.
Or at street fighter 6 and it‘s attempt to lure people in with controls that a dead cat can use…
It‘s all about the casuals and their money now, they ruined it!
we're just getting old bro.
imagine your self as a child/teenager: you're used to games like CS that you buy once and then you can play on any server without additional cost and you even got custom gamemmodes that last to THIS day.
you got everything with a one-time purchase.
for childs/teenagers these days it's a completely different story.
they grow up with gaming beeing like this.
show them CS 1.6 and i'm confident that most of them will complain that there aren't any cosmetics.
even if they know CS, they probably know it because of CS:GO and guess what...there's a sh*t ton of cosmetics...
@@j.w.213nd what's wrong with casual players exactly? Not everyone wants to play competitively, Some people just want to play a game for the story or game play.
@@j.w.213I'm gonna have to disagree with the sf6 argument right there. You should be happy that casual audiences are playing that game because that'll eventually mean more people will decide to be competitive and more competitive people will mean a bigger audience. Did you know that competitive nerds were casuals at one point? Crazy isn't it?
Your favorite youtuber is at fault, instead of having a goddamn brain. All they do is mindlessly tell their audience "BuY ThHINgS in THE GAME l00k at m3 i´m so CRINGE"
Blizzard straight up pulled a no man sky on us. AND WE FELL FOR IT.
GOD TIER VIDEO. Sure we're all thinking it, but you put it into words and did an amazing job of preaching to the choir, and/or getting more people aware, while being very entertaining. Keep it up, man!!
the devs behind REDFALL didnt know what the game was supposed to be, Arkane literally has experience in immersive sims and singleplayer games.
as their fan i remember there being interviews that they didnt want to name PREY well, PREY because that'd be staining the original game and the sales of the 2017 reboot would be terrible.
as for REDFALL, they had 0 idea what they were making, they didnt like what they were making and lastly is the fact that it was a management decision at Bethesda that told them to make REDFALL without even asking the devs about it, even a simple question like: "do you like what you're making?" would suffice. but guess not
70% of original Arkane devs, behind games like Dishonored series and PREY have already left bethesda and now Arkane is just a name under Bethesdas ownership
in all honesty, they got done very dirty
Live service needs to go honestly. Something these companies dont seem to understand its that the market for liveservice games is already oversaturated key players are already stablished and its really hard to draw players from the big live service games to your game
7:05 love this casual delivery of that line
It's times like this that make me really wish we still had TotalBiscuit around :(
I miss him every day
'because you didn't make indas GDP in the first quarter'
yup, that about sums it up perfectly
RIP Rumbleverse. A genuinely good live service BR game that felt unique in every aspect. Gonna miss that game.
Easy solution: remove the stock market from the equation. It is the pressure of investors and other greedy people that causes almost all of this behavior.
As one person said: ‘once you go public in the stock market your business goal is simply growth at all costs’ and this leads to the live service and unsustainable business models.
That and live services are basically the loophole used to justify false advertising and fraud in the industry as a safe guard from getting sued by customers or the government so they can’t be held liable. The lack of any responsibility is absolutely gross.
One day, I'm going to make the best Live-Service game in the world as a potential project. Now that's something to work on post-college.
If you're looking for a good point of reference, check how Deep Rock Galactic handles live-service and see where you could make improvements, because as of now that game is literally how live-service should be done.
“Live service” is the equivalent of a theme park. You pay for the admission ticket, you pay for the souvenirs, and you pay for whatever else is in the park. Then, the park shuts down and you never get to go there again. Or, they just shut down your favorite rides.
I wish the live service model would die off.
Hold the phone, Fortnite is the good guy now? I mean, seems like the game has carved its own niche and stayed in there. As the crossover game, I respect how much it has succeeded. As long as it stays in its corner, I'm fine.
ngl before you said it was just you making this i thought you had like a million subs or something, everything from the takes to the transitions is spot on
Battle bit remastered is great evidence that you can make a profitable game by just… making a good game and, well, selling people the game.
I’m at the point where I will not play a game advertised as a “live service”. I have no desire to invest time into something that is just going to try to continually wring cash out of me
Blizzard just keeps making really stupid decisions that are 100% gonna bite them back. It sucks because I enjoy overwatch and realizing that they're not capitalizing on the game's potential of what it could be is really crushing. good video :)
I do like one kind of live service game and thats tf2 cause valve gave us stuff but promised basically nothing
I like the thought behind life service: An immersive world that keeps evolving with it's story.
Destiny 2 is a life service game I play and I like what they're trying to do, regardless of quality of execution: running a set of content for a given amount of time, to be experienced as it releases, for not that much money, with some activities and things to explore along the way. (Yes the payment options are confusing as hell and the event passes are the greediest shit I've seen since). Some places change a little with the revolving seasons, and while I'm not a big fan of cutting content, I understand why it must be done (I had to redownload it recently and it was like 100GB or something and maaan, I don't want to imainge that number if they hadn't started the content vault). Still, the idea of having this massive world that keeps changing as teh story unfolds is something that interests me.
And there's the other life service, like fortnite and LoL, that keep changing just enough to offer new experiences without really changing anything, or having story.
Both work, separately. OW wanted both, and failed spectacularly. Some Games would just be better off as a one-time release.
Life Service OW could have been great. We could have had a season on getting the band back together, slowly enlargening the roster of available characters, throwing us around the globe, going from defense to offense over the seasons, introduce the "second gens" like Lucio, Hana(D.Va) and Brigitte, who were never part of the original Overwatch. I'd have loved seeing them in a kind of hub, be able to interact with them in pairs, chatting about what is happening. Maybe bring in Talon, as Villains first who later decide to help out against the Omnics because there's no money to be made off corpses or something. What is Sombras masterplan? We could have observed it unfolding, even in life service. Yeah lol just a disappointed rant XD
This video reached my recommended and i wasn't disappointed 10/10 would watch again.
Live Service normalized human hamster wheels.
It is the antithesis to the freedom and immersion GTA3 and Morrowind ushered in.
To put it simply, games shouldn’t just be services but experiences and pieces of art.
They’re the only form of truly interactive media
@@KindofBradAtThis
👍 100%
If it doesn't provide an interesting or enjoyable experience, it isn't worth wasting time on.
We need to learn to only respect the Developers who respect our time.
@@dragonhold4 completely agree! Really appreciate the convo dude, would love to see ya contribute in the discord, I love these conversations
@@KindofBradAtThis
Wouldn't mind taking a peek.
What's the Server?
[Edit]: I just saw the link in the banner
I remember when companies made a fully fleshed campaing, multiplayer mode, coop mode, editor map, without any microtransaction, and without any predatory practice, no battlepass, no liveservice, no live connection while playing it, no shop. Just focused on making a fun and functional product day 1 at half or third the price of today's AAA.
Sounds like I'm describing an unicorn in today's world.
It's so odd that in the current gaming industry Splatoon 3, of all things, is a role model for how to create a decent live service game. It isn't even giving players perfect updates. it's giving mediocre updates for free and in modern gaming that is considered good.
Honestly Deep Rock Galactic should be the main role model to create an actual good live service game. It has everything good that a love service game could offer, while not giving anything bad about it. Heck, even considering how mediocre the Season 4 is, it still shows how a live service game should be.
@@Otherface Yep thats the only other good live service game that I know. I just didn't mention it because I don't believe it was shown in the video. I do believe both games do live service well. Its just the most recent season of splatoon is lacking in content.
i can’t believe that Arcane, who made Dishonored, made Redfall. it feels like a spit to the face
live service more like dead service amiright fellas
The SpongeBob meme doesn't really apply since we were told the "drink" would be this amazing thing with tons of "refills" whilst the SB character didn't order it
I knew tf2 not getting an update for 4-5years is them not being a life service devs
For my friend group the MW2 raids are almost the only thing keeping us comming back and its been a lot of fun so far for an hour each time
OW1 was created by "Old Blizzard" that was pulled of Warcaft at its height. They couldn't finish TITAN so they made what they thought was fun.
OW2 is made by "Current Blizzard" with the goal to make money above all else.
Don’t you dare disrespect SpongeBob like that. He NEVER promised that diet Dr Kelp
If you are one of those people who pre-order, please reply to this comment. I would love to t-a-l-k with you.
I would argue "Micro-Transactions" is the worst word because without them live services would never have been a thing as all live services are built for the express purpose of sell them
im actually really sad abt what happened to overwatch 2, i think the campaign would have been really cool. now i dont even want to buythe crumbs theyre throwing us
Overwatch has such cool lore, characters, and potential, it doesn’t deserve this
@@KindofBradAtThis fr. theres so many characters whose stories i was really excited to see unfold and to see imagery like the older overwatch cinematics and trailers
Feels part of the issue stems from the players themselves. The number of people I’ve talked to that are perfectly fine with the company squishing out every cent never made sense to me
@@KindofBradAtThis It's baffling when you look what League of Legends made of its setting over the same time period. One successful spin-off game, another in the pipeline, and a critically acclaimed animated series.
Remember when Overwatch2 purposely removed things like gold metals, on-fire, enemy endorsements, player boarders, find-a-group, and HALF the of maps (including 2CP maps), only to turn around and slowly give some of them back later-on to get a positive reaction out of the community??
This seems a perfect example of how "good live-service games DONT withhold features, they add NEW ones." Blizzard removing content so they can literally just slowly sell the same game back. to us.
Ok but it will be better next time…………right? Right????
Overwat Pv3
I will always point out when people say “it’s not the devs it’s just corporate” only goes so far, and Overwatch is one of the few cases where I truly believe its problems are both. The business side of things obviously isn’t the devs, but Overwatch has had horrendous balance since forever and the team has taken the lazy way out of everything. The issue is, this leads to the though, “Are they also just as willing to be lazy in other regards, too?” When one of the most surface-level impactful parts of the dev team seems so blatantly lazy, you’ve gotta wonder who else and how bad, and just how much really IS “just corporate”.
Interesting, my take was the opposite with Overwatch I in that Blizzard has clearly been a shell of itself for over a decade in search of larger profits over the quality of anything else!
Who’s to say that OW2 isnt the way it was supposed to be because of a similar situation that Bethesda had with Zenimax?
There’s a reason Geoff left Overwatch
@@KindofBradAtThis That’s all a fair point, but again, the lazy approach to game balance leads me to wonder where else they’re cutting corners on their end, and just how much of that is truly the higher-ups as opposed to the devs themselves. We’ve seen the balance team not wanting to do their job on multiple occasions in Overwatch 1 and 2 and taking a lazy nonfix way out. Role Queue, Kiriko, the blanket tank nerf in OQ that only served to make the meta the exact same but significantly worse, and so on.
I love a live service concept. I hate corporate greed. The irony
When younger i wanted to Play WoW
Tried and found out for the first time "wait what You have to Keep paying?"
Is it still like that?
Problem is, the solution is to get gamers to close their wallets, and we all probably know some people that will pay virtually any sum of money for cool optional, trivial pixels; no matter how much companies fuck with them.
I'm convinced Destiny 2 is just a social experiment to test for how long they can scam addicts.
Completely agree but also against that point, a lot of these games are failing and completely disappearing because people ARENT playing and therefore spending.
It’s basically a goldrush where, yea, a few studios struck gold but now most are showing up too late or with shitty shovels and, I don’t know what happens when you spend all your money on gold panning gear and end up empty handed but, it’s probably not the best
putting the kazotsky kick at the beginning of the video was genius, that caught me off guard
It's a nice touch
This has 900 views? How is that legal it's better than 70% of other video essays
Know what isn’t legal? The countless acts I’ve committed in Kansas
Vote with your wallets. It's the only way to win, and even then companies still win.
Live service is good...a potentually infinite amount of content and updates for free! And you just buy the extras that you like.
What it ruins are the greedy corporations not doing it right!
Look I rag on Modern Minecraft a lot but historically, for the $20 I spent in 2011, Java 2011-2018 was one of the best examples of a GOOD live service ever seen
I don't think Live Service is a good thing, it inherently puts every content under a crunch deadline favoring consistent mediocre content over time consuming but carefully crafted content. If every game has infinite content we end up with the Warframe dilemma, I don't wanna play it cuz the amount of hours I need to put into it to finish the "tutorial" is nuts and I have other games I wanna play oh they all want to have infinite content. Just make a sequel less angry ppl screaming at you for missing features or delays and more time to make a proper game.
@@ryanw531 Can work, but if you screw up the sequel or change too much people will trash it even more or just straight up return to the old one and abandon the new. Dying Light 2 took a shit ton of hits, but managed to stay alive. Darktide (compared to Vermintide 2) currently is taking a shit ton of hits as well and they won't see good profit margins until 2-3 years later, depending how much they update the game
@@slyr0980 Yeah except Darktide is failing so hard right now because it was designed with all the Live Service Garbage, half the problems it is plagued with are things like artificial grind for gear stats and blessings, daily and weekly shops and contracts. the other half is balance and content which is also in VT2 but since VT2 doesn't have bull gear progression ppl can wait while playing the game.
@@slyr0980 I also hate the FOMO crap that want you to log on daily to do trivial tasks to not miss content most Live Service Games do, I can play XCOM2 when ever I fucking please and not miss a damn thing or come back to Witcher 3 years later and still have all the content, but not play LSG for a month and come back to have everyone ask you why you don't have the new event exclusive weapon that ended last week.
very happy you showed deep rock galactic and hunt: showdown as good examples honestly some of my favourite games out there.
Hold up what’s that at 7:38 🤨📸
It’s the reason I don’t play multiplayer too much anymore except for a few. I mostly play casual, indie and single player games now.
I liked the video btw Brad. I agree with all the points. This was something that I think the gaming community as a whole has been feeling. I think that's why Diablo 4 has been so awesome for me. There are just endless things to do and the game feels so completely polished.
Woah, this video is fantastic, one of the first times I'm glad to have clicked on a small recommended channel
We aim to satisfy here 👁️🫦👁️
tbh outside of the whole cringe factor a lot of people made it out to be, mad props for Fortnite being a actual (and only) solid triple A live service game
There's a few. League of legends, Destiny, FFXIV, Minecraft, all do well as live-service games, even though they have had ups-and-downs.
@@jackdixon6681 fair point
Everytime I hear the word battlepass or live service, item shop I have a psychotic breakdown
I genuinely believe that TF2 and Warframe are the only games that have successfully pulled off the live service model without being "too predatory" (looking at TF2 here with loot boxes).
TF2 has bot trading or steam market trading
OW does not
deep rock galactic
Warframe has so many scummy ways of siphoning your plat it makes mobile games blush. Sure there is a fair f2p game underneath it if you dont have a job and have someone to tell you where the new player traps are but they are seriously charging like over 10 dollars for complete trash weapons to scam new players, they timegate everything in hopes that you want to spend your way past 72h craft times and the game literally sustains itself on insanely expensive fomo.
Genuinely crazy it has a good reputation for its business model when its by far the worst thing about the game.
What about Fortnite?
Imagine a tencent executive yelling at overwatch lead developers in chinese with the words "competitive", "value", and "profit" sprinkled in, that is overwatch 2.
I am PRAYING for the day you blow up bro 🙏
You want me to EXPLODE?
@@ImJustBirdyFan wdym
Wow. A channel with a creator who has common sense takes like a normal gamer. Where have you been?!
you're joking around but that's genuinely part of the reason I made the channel
Yea theres great video essay guys in the space but the people ACTUALLY talking about the problems in the gaming industry are 90% talking out of their ass ASAP so they get the most views INSTEAD of actually being nuanced and understanding what they're talking about
Take a look at Hi-Fi Rush. Dropped with no marketing but ended up successful because it was an actual finished fun product. Haven’t played a game that felt like an actual game for a while.
What's funnier is that the "PVE" they're releasing has already been delayed. In only a matter of days after it was announced.
This makes me really appreciate games like Elden Ring. Endless content and not a damn microtransaction in sight.
Exactly, notice how the most memorable and loved games of the past few years are the ones that respect the player and don’t treat em like a wallet to be shaken
@@KindofBradAtThisinstead elden ring puts them there and kicks them in the ribs whenever they mess up but award them with a cookie whenever they do a good job
@@dragonslayermasterornstein83 hurt me more elden daddy
I've rewatched this intro so many times.
The way you have gone about asking for a subscription has my respect and my sub. No sub % shaming, no desperate begging. Just being real. I look forward to more
Two things
1: I agree. Just care about how good the game is and you will make money. Kinda weird to mention it, but Nintendo makes so much money on each of their games because they care. Just do that. It’s not that hard.
2. I love your channel name I was actually dying for 5+ minutes. Plus one to the sub-counter.
As a Pokémon player, I can promise you that Nintendo does not care about polished games. They only care about franchises that have prestige, like Zelda.
Pokemon had prestige at one point as well. The original one was revolutionary for its time, an rpg game where you can play as around 150 different characters with their own stats evolution lines, weaknesses and strengths.
Each new generation tried new things, johto had it so you can try Kanto after, hoenn had the battle frontier, sinnoh had the mining stuff and different weather effects. Unova had unique animations for each character and pokemon during battles, as well as world tourney.
Pokemon went down hill ever since it went 3d, and i think its due to the team being rushed and experienced. They suddenly have to start creating 3d rigged models of over hundreds of pokemon, including characters and since its 3d they have to put more animations to not ruin immersion (the top down style of older games left things more abstract and it didn't break immersion the people couldn't look or move diagonally)
We saw a massive decrease in quality since then. Nintendo and game freak noticed that despite that the games sell extremely well so they don't try, especially considering how much they did try with black and white and it wasn't that successfully financially.
With the legend of Zelda and Mario, for some reason when a weaker title comes out, it actually sells less. Some Zelda titles don't sell as well if they aren't as good as others, so Nintendo knows that they have to try for those franchises next release, and they are likely different teams, different people, different design philosophy and dev process.
@@halinaqi2194 yeah there’s all that - and that Nintendo basically only releases Pokémon games because of the merchandising. The games don’t make anywhere close the what the brand as a whole makes. No point in making good games if what your selling is plushies.
@@grapesodeypopHow come i dont see you shitting on the pokemon company and game freak? Nintendo isnt 100% innocent here but the pokemon company and game freak hold like 80% of the blame
@@SERMareep2007 because we were talking about Nintendo, who publicly owns this brand and is partially responsible for releasing half baked games. I think game freak is easily just as much at fault, but it’s Nintendo’s golden reputation that’s at risk when these games come out so buggy.
The only live service game that I think was done well is DRG
Live service isn't bad by itself. It's bad when greedy companies do greedy things and players fall for it.
No, it's bad by itself. You think the current shitshow happened by accident?
@@Crono1973 there are literal games running for decades that are live service lol. It also has some of the most dedicated communities out there
Dota2, CSGO, Runescape are all "Live Service" Games yet still has a strong community.
Hell, even abandoned games still exist due to the love of community.
Companies that force developers to add things they weren’t intending at random intervals is like a waiter telling the chef what to make, then suddenly saying to add random ingredients to “make it taste better” and expecting the consumer to enjoy it when it isn’t even what they ordered anymore. The waiter doesn’t know jack about cooking, they just deliver the food, so in that regard, what would a company that DISTRIBUTES games know about making them.
Remember, the higher ups in companies like bethesda don’t actually make the games, they tell people to make them, in a way they think their consumers would enjoy. Those people are usually at fault, forcing devs to follow their demands and trying to interject what they think is what the masses enjoy.
The idea of live service is fantastic, who wouldnt want extra content regularly added to a game they like?
Problem is, it opened up the industry to a new level of greediness, and we're only just now seeing it fall apart for some devs
>who wouldnt want extra content regularly added to a game
This is literally what updates do
*vibes to Cult of the Lamb music in the background*