@@xJohnwheatiesx One could argue that playing video games is wasting time anyway. You don't exactly get much out of video games unless you're part of an esports competition or something. I very much can blame the corporations since they're the ones pumping out these piles of garbage. Publishers are pressuring studios into making and maintaining these live service dumpster fires, I very much can blame them for that.
Responsible parents that refuse them their credit cards would do a huge difference. If I ever have children, I will never allow them anywhere near a live-service game.
@@MrTytyjohn64 Fortnite shouldn't be played by children in the first place, and this comes from someone who watched uncensored anime like DBZ as a kid.
@@kraosdadafusfus8034 I remember begging for a Pet pet park membership and my mom said no because it was a waste of money I have no clue why these parents are throwing away money on vbucks
@mrheroprimes more parents need to start telling their kids "no" more often. These generations of kids are insane with the behaviour and sense of entitlement.
I’m sure ROI-starved suits that have never even played a video game just look at Fortnite and the item store with all the wacky cosmetics and think “wow people must really love this game because it has an in game store. They must really love buying stuff”
Everyone just wants to copy the success of Fortnite without actually trying, and also they don't seem to understand once someone is all in on a certain live service game, it's kind of impossible to get that same person to switch to a new one, especially with how busy life has gotten for many of us now
Also, if the game isn't the biggest thing to come out in the last 10 years, they instantly abandon it instead of committing to the process. Knowing this, why would I play your not insta-hit game when you'll abandon it in a few months?
Multiplayer games are fun but i miss the days when it was just the icing on the the cake and games had both single and multiplayer modes live service games are basically the equivalent of just eating icing
@@evandaymon8303Its garbage both at high and low-dosesh lol, OW1 was great, but OW2 turned it into just another live-service garbage slop, literally the embodiment of, neutral concept, bad execution lol, before it was just great execution as far as monetization goesh and wentdzszh. 💀
@@latsaspege2021he can't say anything cause they track his digital footprint they don't want anything leaking as a epic games concept artist here cause I see it alot
Don't forget that all of these live service games are made with teams of psychologists to manipulate your behavior patterns. It's so insidious, and so many of these 'games' are turning into something more akin to slot machines or gambling habits. You know... addictions that *can ruin lives.*
I've recently booted up SoulCalibur 2 and 3 on my PS2. It's crazy how many characters were unlockable, when the "modern" entry (SC6) has less characters and all (but single broken one) initially-locked are DLCs. That's after few years of post-launch support and even then with less content than SC2 or SC3 had on disc. I'm actually moving backwards in time with each "new" game I want to play and now I can finally appreciate how good many of these old games were despite objectively worse fidelity.
this is a funny one cuz we have basically moved past the point where you could have actually gambled for cosmetics back in the early days of eververse in destiny. the monetization still sucks though@@EchoDoctrine
Everytime i see a new live service announced with all those promises i always get reminded of a quote from Marques Brownlee, "never buy a product for the promise of future updates, buy it for what it is now"
I don't even think live service is inherently bad. But oversaturation. Laziness. And profit forward business practices make live service bad. Helldivers proves that. But since the helldivers method doesn't maximize profits by allowing premium currency to be found while playing normally. Companies won't copy them.
Live Service is definitely inherently bad, there will never be a large enough market for 90% of them to operate at max profit potential, regardless of how few companies make them or how good they are. Live-Service is almost exclusively a poor-farm/life support only fit for studios with no other way to make a game or truly massive MMO's that need to be made over time. The profit/loss completely fools investors and CEO's and plays them for fools. The problem is "max profit" is really a cash out of time and volume of both developers required and customers needed. This means as volume increases, even if it increases by ONE Live-Service, the entire market shrinks as does the profit generated, and when the volume decreases you also lose potential customers as they realize the entire market is time limited and not worth investment. Further every game made attempting compatibility that doesn't need it requires otherwise useless accountants and securities to protect in-game banking data, ballooning development time and resources even if you later decide you don't need it.
Helldivers is one of the very small few that done live service right. That is make the game for gamers and not for suits and investors paying the publishers and devs. Game first then micro later. I also love that there's no fomo (at time of this writing it may changed) that's also a issue with live service in general fomo. It just sucks that they do that and lock content away because you weren't there to collect it
@evandaymon8303 I don't think fomo is a huge issue so long as it's not paided items but if there's a limited time item.that can only be got by playing during a certain time that's fomo done in a alright way Sucks but gets people to play more
Half the problem is that ALL live service games want ALL of your time. They realized that more time spent in the game often translates to more attachment, more inertia to overcome to drop a game and more willingness to spend increasingly unreasonable amounts of money for cosmetic items. As a result, they started to build in more and more FOMO mechanics, grinds and daily/weekly/seasonal unlocks and chores to do to keep you in the game. Overwatch was kind of perfect when it came out. Engaging, highly polished gameplay, a ladder system and custom games so casuals could enjoy it, a cheap entry price so it didn't kill the bank, free unlocks that only required playing to get and most of the rewards were easy to unlock regardless of what game mode you wanted to play or how many, if any, friends played with you. Contrast that with games now and you've got all sorts of BS you have to grind daily or weekly just to keep up. You're not nerfed for not doing it, but you lose out on a ton of stuff if you don't so it FEELS bad. Worse, many games actually now require those grinds for resources you need for your characters to stay up to date or viable. Since they want you to log in daily and stay as long as possible, there's a ton of that stuff, so each game is basically competing to be your "forever game" and obviously there's a limited amount of hours a day to go around. Instead of making a good game that's fun enough you WANT to log in, they make a game that feels like it punishes you for not logging in or not spending enough hours, all in pursuit of boosting their daily active user count and hopefully flipping that switch to justify that 60 dollar skin to yourself. What happens instead is that most of these games crash and burn once the shine rubs off and people realize how much of a boring treadmill the end game is. All the development time and money wasted because the C-suite couldn't accept that their game might have a shelf life and might potentially not be the next Big Thing. All or nothing mentality. The same thing holds true for that FOMO stuff, actually. I only ever bought a season pass once. My friends wanted me to play something else halfway through, I played with them, we got sucked in, by the time I realized I hadn't unlocked everything in the pass I no longer had enough time to unlock it because the pass was intentionally designed to make it all but impossible to unlock unless you hit daily and weekly quests during the entire duration. The stuff was lost unless I decided to pay up to unlock the remaining levels with yet more money. You only have to be in that position once to quickly realize that it's a terrible deal, especially when you look at what you unlocked for free (the first few levels of the pass usually contain garbage nobody sane would spend any amount of money for to pad out the "rewards"), how much of what remained between you and what you actually wanted was likewise filler trash and how much you'd have to spend in addition to actually get what you wanted out of the pass to begin with. It's a suckers bet. A system intentionally designed to lock you in as a player for the next three months with the illusion of a great deal. I'm willing to put some money down on a bet that they'd sell more season passes if they allowed people to grind them out over however long it takes instead of trying to force people to play (insert arbitrary market-researched number here) hours a day on the schedule the dev team decided on was optimal. As it is, I'd rather miss out on the few items I want in any given pass than lose my passion for the game a month into a season and feel obligated to play the damn game like a job to unlock the rest of the rewards I paid for. Haven't bought a pass since and I'm not planning to because I refuse to be in that situation again. I'm not throwing good money after bad and I'm not letting the devs obligate me to clock in for my mandatory fun time. I'll play because I'm having fun and if the only way to get anything approaching reasonably priced cosmetics for the game depends on me no-lifing it regardless of how much fun I have to prove worthy of this season's selection of skins, I'd rather do without.
You mentioned that No Man's Sky was set-up for failure by Sony. Thank you. THANK YOU. So, so, so many people either don't remember -- or conveniently leave out -- this fact when discussing NMS. If Internet Historian's documentary on NMS is to be believed, then the bulk of the blame for NMS's atrocious launch should be placed at Sony's feet, not Hello Games. And there was also the fact that Hello Games' boss Shaun Murray had virtually no media training at the time, and Sony did him no favors when they didn't give him a trained PR person who could handle the interviews and press junkets.
Sony are and always have been one of the bad guys, although they are getting a lot worse at hiding it recently, but they have such a large number of rabid loyal fanboys and girls defending everything, that it constantly gets overlooked. (there is one in the reply to your comment)
I remember just buying a game and beating it, then there was optional multiplayer and it was very fun, to play when I wanted to play. Now you have to keep up and play all the time if you dont want to miss exclusive limited event items… Not so fun.
Online games have replaced "social gathering" rituals of times past. I'm old enough to remember arcades before they got overrun by coin pushers. Arcade games were a total waste of time and money, as were most things at the Mall..... but its the thing all the young people would do to hang out and spend time together. Whats both sad, but also funny in a deeply ironic, dark way..... when things moved more online, people lost the ability to socially interact in person. And the span of the last 10 years or so, that in-person social anxiety has bleed into the online space. And now we have a steadily growing population of people who are losing the ability to interact with people online, and some actively refusing to interact with others within a purpose built online social space. Its like the old cyberpunk dystopia where they predicted people would become isolated and would pivot all social interactions into cyberspace; but then someone said "hold my beer", and now want to isolate themselves in cyberspace too by yelling at people to get out of the proverbial chat room.
The answer to your comment is simple. Back then from what you remember, you were playing single palyer games with optional online modes. And the games you're referring to today are online probably mmo games, that require constant conenction. There are no such thing as limited exlusive timed event items in Ultrakill, Dark souls 3, Baldur's Gate 3, and all the actual single player games. If you don't find them fun, I recommend playing single player games
@@Sakuna451 Well I do play multiplayer games, but it is a clear as day that the focus shifted, before you could earn skins by playing the game and you could infact buy skins when you wanted in most games if they had micro. But these days with battle passes you always have like 1 month before the unlockables are gone, basically it requires you to basically have a second job to unlock everything…
17:43 This has been the real reason I've never gotten into live service games. I generally prefer more single player, story focused games. Rigth now I'm slowly making my way through the Persona 3 remake, mainly as I am an adult with a job and other hobbies/interests. I may only get an hour or two to game a week as I'm more focused on my priorities. So a game that needs almost as much time as my job while wanting money I'd rather spend elsewhere and phasing out content every couple of weeks is an instant turn off for me. I'd much rather a game like Persona where I can put the game down for a few weeks and not feel like I've wasted my time or money (i.e. battle pass) because I couldn't play it for one reason or another.
Reload was fantastic! Persona overall is a great long-term game because of how it works in a calendar format. Turn on the game, log a few days, maybe put in a couple floors in Tartarus then go back in when you have time. Very much comfort games for me lol.
My problem with live service games is that they normalized the idea of "post launch content update", nowadays even a finished one-time purchased game has a roadmap. Sure, it's nice to have more contents for your favorite game, but it also means that now the companies have excuse for putting less in the game and it's no longer a full experience on release. I'm the kind of person with a very short interest span and I usually put a lot of time in a game within a short period of time then completely lose interest and never go back, which means that I would not have the chance to experience the "full game" while I still have the interest.
Heh, $500 not only in general is too much, but it's apparently also a skin in some kind of honor of an actual player, who is known for NOT using alternate skins.
Yes the ahri skin honors Faker, who famously never uses skins even though pros have every skin available to them, and he was uncomfortable using it in a tournament environment, basically showing he still hasnt used it
Riot already made like 200 bucks skin before, I don't know what this buzz about. League's community will eat anything, they're on too late stage to quit.
Bro, this is kind of a random tangent, but you touched on it a bit in the intro. Gaming used to be a place to meet people. I've been gaming a long time. Im in my mid 30s for reference. I used to have tons of friends and liked to go out socially and hang, but my life just doesnt allow that like it once did. But im a chatty dude. I like to talk. So when i hop on a match i always ask my teammates, "yo anyone got a mic?" Im not exaggerating when i say 90% of my teammates refuse to speak. I know everyone might have their reasons for not engaging with that aspect of the game. Idk. Im high. Im just rambling a thought i had while watching. People used to go out of their way to talk to others. Even if it was just shit talking. People used to find someones tag, look them up, and send them voice clips. It was awesome 👌 Great video +1sub
Totally get this. I love voice chatting in games but people rarely want to. For example, Fortnite, I think it’s a lot of fun, but only when I’m playing with friends. If they aren’t available, I just don’t play because most random people don’t use a mic, and you can’t work as a team that way.
I think socializing in games in general is just dead or dying and I'm not really sure why. Even WoW and elder scrolls online feel like single players games sometimes cause nobody really actively engages in the world or with each other unless absolutely forced to (like raiding for example).
The "issue" is that whenever something gets as popular as gaming has gotten it turns from a close nit community thing into a mainstream thing that is full of both the good and the bad. I remember just 12 years or so ago you'd still hide the fact you enjoy videogames on social outings because of the fear of being judged for it so when games like WoW and AION offered these online spaces for us to meet, chat and game it was always a close nit community where everyone knew a couple of people on a server who made a name for themselves. Nowadays everyone and their children are gaming, which is great because it's no longer an exclusively nerd thing to do and with more players games have gotten bigger and better but at the cost of the familiarity and increased toxicity. Even I who recently started engaging in voicechat more in certain co-op focused games find myself often not wanting to because I rather put on my own music or a podcast in the background, or simply because it's a cointoss if another player is going to make or ruin my day.
Lobbies being disbanded after every round now, grief reporting, AI detecting if you say a naughty word, no mic-only playlists, kids insisting on using cross-game chat even though they’re all playing the same game… these are all things that have ruined the fun in online gaming We didn’t know how good we had it during the PS3/360 era
In my opinion, live service games should be approached with caution and used in moderation. It's better to focus on creating one enduring live service game that can grow and evolve, rather than multiple short-lived ones. It's important to launch the game with a significant amount of content. Quality should always take priority over quantity, and it's also beneficial to include an offline mode. Additionally, knowing when to end the game is crucial. There are valuable lessons that can be learned from past MMOs and manga/anime adaptations.
@@nman551 nothing about live service games on a conceptual level requires them to have bad monetisation practices. Live service is one of the oldest kind of online multiplayer game ever made. At least as older than WoW. Your problem doesn't lie with "Here is a game that receives constant free updates with occasional paid content" because if it did you'd have problems with all games since the beginning of the millenia. Your problem is with the monetisation practices. You're talking about money. That's monetisation practices, not general game design.
"services are fleeting, but art is everlasting. Games shouldn't be services, they need to be everlasting pieces that have heart because games are art and art outlives all of us" As a game developer who just went through a cancellation of an awesome single player game and now thrown into live service development.....the ending of the video hits hard Thanks for making this ❤
@@A1stardan At this point I'm getting tired of people making excuses for devs. It's been like a decade of this nonsense. a) Do you believe every company that's started, their suits/execs weren't devs themselves? Easiest example to point to is Harada. He was once the main dev for Tekken and is now one of the highest level suits for NamCo, although most people don't know that. b) Even if we were to assume that the suits are to blame for things, it is usually for bad MTX. Tons of games for the last decade have shit gameplay. You can say that "oh, that's because they focus more on the MTX than the gameplay." That's untrue, your cosmetic/MTX team isn't your gameplay team. Also, at a certain point, having more designers on a team doesn't make a better game (more chefs in the kitchen and all that). People are just making shit games period, CoD is an easy example of such. What prevents them from designing a good game? They only sell skins, so what prevents them from having a good game? Devs? That franchise literally has multiple studios dedicated to it round the clock. I am tired that the go-to excuse for shit games is always "it's the execs fault!" If a character in a game I like to play is buggy or a broken mess, is that the suits fault? If the game is delayed to high heaven but is still shit when released, is that the suits fault as well? Development is a cooperative process, and to act like it's only the suits fault when it fails, and it's only the devs credit when it succeeds is one of the most stupid things being propagated for the last decade.
@@aveshlutchman8573 I can't fully agree because you seem to have a very weird idea on what suits and devs can / can't do. I don't work as a game developer but I do work as a software engineer and the development process is quite similar as most things tend to work on a priority based system. For example, there may be that really annoying bug that players encounter every now and then but it isn't high up in the queue compared to this new game defining feature. It's in every developer's interest to finish off things that are in priority before fixing bugs unless those are an actual priority itself, or they may actually get sacked. Bringing in more developers could work, but that's up to management and not developers. In these huge corporates, devs are only told to do what they should be doing. I can choose to fix 3 bugs over the next day, but if stakeholders want me to look into creating a proof of concept for a new feature, then they have the final word - no ifs or buts. If a game's design is terrible at its foundation, its not necessarily the designer's fault when management could've assigned several playtesting sessions throughout development to ensure the game is actually well designed and fun to play. Portal 2 could've ended up as a disaster if Valve wasn't so persistent with their focus on playtesting - the game originally had no portals despite it being called Portal 2, how boring could that have been? The CoD example is also odd because you follow it up with a "why not design a good game?" when this is ultimately a subjective take. I despise modern CoD but you cannot deny that it is one of the most profitable and popular games out there in the market and for any sensible exec looking at the stats, there's no major reason to change so much if it works for them and brings in the money while also having a massive audience, same as how Minecraft currently is. As you said, development is a cooperative process. If management fails, its on them more so than the developers. It's especially true for large scale AAA studios like Ubisoft and Activision with 10k+ employees working on a single game. If teams cannot coordinate because of terrible management, there will be issues. I assure you that most developers in these fields want the rest of the world to see their work at their best unless they want to sabotage their projects, and most of the time its not in their control. Why are indie companies like Re-Logic so successful? How about New Blood Interactive and their developers? Even Valve back then was at the top of the industry with their games because the people they put in management are developers at heart. You mention Harada and yet some of his recent games under his management went on to succeed commercially and in reception. id Software was founded by developers and managed by developers, and most of their games were banger after banger that defined an entire genre. There are blunders here and there which I won't ignore, but there's much more damage from management who don't belong in games than developers who do. There's a nice quote from Steve Jobs about letting sales people into product management roles when they shouldn't be and I still think it holds up to this day in relation to the games industry.
Deep Rock Galactic is probably an example of a successful live service game. The season pass isn't locked behind a paywall, most of the cosmetics can be unlocked just through gameplay (with the exception of a handful of weapon/armor skins as DLC), and the most recent seasonal update made it possible to access and go through previous season passes in order to get rewards that'd be otherwise unavailable, at no IRL-currency charge at all.
I quit FFXIV last year during Endwalker’s patch cycle. I think much of that game’s success post relaunch is because they made sure it was a Final Fantasy first, MMO second. It has one of the best stories in the franchise, amazing music, and great art direction. Endwalker capping off the original story-thread started in ARR meant I could more easily walk away from a live service without FOMO. God I spent so much money on that game over the years. I don’t miss it!
Flow still makes me tear up 🥹🥹 I’m very much in the same boat; It was a great narrative send-off but I won’t be going back with Dawntrail because I want to preserve that memory without anything else potentially tainting it. I hope the people that do play it enjoy it though! I also hope my boy Alphy has lots of good times.
What happened to Overwatch and it's "sequel" was heartbreaking. I'd love to go back and play OW1 again, but the live service model makes that impossible.
Here’s a fun fact for you: Overwatch 2 IS Overwatch 1. All they did was file restructure the hell out of the game. There no other reason I earned a Hanzo spray on “Overwatch 2” with scatter arrow.
@@zSTALKn No it's not, 6v6 is dead, the free loot boxes you get from leveling up is dead, there's a battle pass now, OW2 is not, and will never be OW1. At best its a shitty reskin since the out of bounds spots on certain maps are still there.
I've been saying this for a long time: Devs who try to copy fortnite with their live service model always tend to forget why fortnite was so successful
There's some live services I've enjoyed - Warframe, Apex Legends, Darktide (to some extent) DRG - but that leads into a couple of the problems with the live service gold rush: 1. A live service has to be _better_ than the few live services a dood already plays, so infinitely better that it can eclipse them. 2. It's probably not gonna be - most of this shit keeps getting released in buggy, unfinished states. 3. Live services are better at giving an atmosphere (WF, Apex, Helldivers, Destiny) than giving you a real story about your character and how they interact with the world. How am I gonna have a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end, if the business model assumes the game can't end?
If we think of it this way, call of duty has basically become a subscription service. You pay $80 a year for the same game with slightly different skins, or in MW3's case, $80 for extra skins and guns
the same OGs who wrote how to kill batman the way he was killed in SSKTL? the same OGs who wated to make it a multiplayer live service game and just jumped the ship when the game was not as good as they hoped? THOSE OGs?
I see you don't know the truth. It was Sefton's idea much to the worries of those working for him and when he saw what was coming he dipped. So OG rocksteady is the reason the game sucks and now there's only a clean up crew.
Another downside to live service gaming is that the developers behind these type of games can change the rules and settings via each seasons. An example of a game that does this is Apex Legends. They hit the nail on the head of its replay value, but the rules change once in a while and creates near-impossible challenges to overcome.
Great video glad UA-cam pushes smaller creators now the whole game industry has been extremely aggregating especially live services they’re 100% the worst
HOLD ON THE gameplay for anthem was fun the mech suits were really fun to fly it was more the lack of content cuz the mechs were amazing. everylthing else was kind of whatever cuz i didnt really pay attention cuz i had so much fun flying around and being the suit lol
We've gotten plenty of solid single player games and people complain . This is the damage love service has done to the gaming community. No one can play a story game and enjoy it for what it is. Always needs dlc or more content. Thays why trash games like ow, fortnite, cod have so many players. They get fed bits of things to do and they eat that crap up.
Exactly. I'd very much rather have a great single player game that I can beat once and be satisfied with as opposed to a live service game that keeps trying to draw me back with little snippets of "content" every 2 weeks. I just want a complete, well rounded experience instead of having to spend all this extra money on season passes for cosmetics and other pointless extras.
Now why would you buy a single player game and only beat it once? If the game is good why not beat it multiple times or return to it every now and then? Buying and beating a single player game only once its really a waste of money in my opinion@@teamtx1578
I still have no idea why people needed every single player game to be endlessly replayable or be over 50+ hours to be worth it. I was baffled when people were saying how short Spiderman 2 was. It seemed like the usual length of a narrative driven single player game. The community complains about greed, but I think they are just as greedy and want more for less.
What’s the problem with live service games? That the companies ordering these kinds of titles don’t ask for a video game, but for a monetization system instead.
No shout-out to my Warframe bros? Damn, it's really under the radar, huh? No lootboxes, you just buy what skin you like; seasonal pass that only involve gameplay, not money; a player-to-player trade system that can incentivize F2P players to stay completely F2P by selling their stuff to those that *have* paid money; and all the story quests after 11 years of development are still accessible to this day. And it's still going. We're getting a new cinematic quest this month and we're waiting on another big quest coming either at the end of 2024 or maybe early 2025. This is a live service game that I started spending money on because I genuinely think the devs deserve it.
Former warframe and destiny 2 player. I have 1500 hours in both of them. Warframes has way worse grind compared to destiny 2. Atleast destiny 2 grind is fun. The boss battle sucks as well. Warframes just doesn’t respect your time just like bungie doesn’t respect your wallet. I would recommend players who are doing job to go into destiny 2 because of limited time availability. I would recommend young guys and college kids warframe because it is light on your wallet.
@@BrokeBillionare here 3k h player Warframe is the best live service game, reason is simple it's has a FREE BATTLE PASSES 😂 Problem with the game is DE not so good at introducing the game to new players. You need spend 200h + beat new war and unlock steel path to get the REAL CONTENT.
@@BrokeBillionare This is great advice personally. Warframe clearly is made for players who are willing to be patient and grind and don't have a lot of money to throw around like us for reasons that I won't detail here but the learning curve is a huge turn off as DE despite their best efforts, have done very little to make the early game easier. That's why my brother has told friends of his that do work 9-to-5's and one's in college though on break because it's summer now to not bother as the game is hard to explain and these guys aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer to retain the info told to them very well so that's a problem in itself and unfortunately finding the right content creators to break this stuff down is even rougher too but there's some good ones out there like MCGamerZ as he does build videos that have been very helpful to my brother.
@@BrokeBillionareI think the grind is part of the enjoyment to most of the players. One of my favorite memories in gaming is unlocking Ivara after running through a single spy mission ~100 times IIRC over the span of a week. Putting so much effort into earning my gear made it feel a lot more special, and that experience is part of the reason I still come back to the game years later. I think it’s unfair to say the grinding is an objective negative when it’s so clearly part of the core value proposition of the product, a product that clearly works.
When the Concord cinematic trailer started I got interested, it looked good, it looked like a fun creative sci fi world, like it could be another game like Guardians of the Galaxy, but now with an original IP. But then the gameplay started and I saw what kind of game it was and said "welp nevermind"
That cinematic trailer was dreadful. Awful attempts at humour, generic characters and an irritating gutter tier American tone to it. Then, the gameplay somehow looked even worse than the horrible cinematic trailer.
Pretty much exactly how I felt. I was ready to wait for reviews and grab it on sale if it turned out to be decent and then the gameplay was revealed and there wasn't a chance in hell I'd be going anywhere near it.
I hate live service games, while i appreciate the constant updates to the games what it also encourages is the devs caring more about how to extract as much money from you as possible. As a result the gsmeplay suffers, you will also have stupid FOMO concepts like exclusive seasonal skins, battle passes, time-limited challenges, shop that only has certain items available for a limited time forcing you to regularly check the shop. As a boomer this is pretty stressful and I hate buying battle passes because I hate grinding, i dont like the feel of being pressured to play a certain game or else my money would be wasted. These predatory practices are ruining multiplayer games for me and is one of the ressons im enjoying indie titles a lot more.
The problem isn't really the live service itself. It's companies all betting on the live service over everything. A bad example would be Suicide Squad KTJL (yeah cuz that game turned out "well" didn't it? Repetitive level/gameplay design loop) A good example would be helldivers 2 and old halo games. Because they actually focused on making a good game first and then release content later with it's live service. Regardless, if they focus quantity over quality, there's a chance players ain't gonna stick around with it's live service
We only have so much room in gaming for live service games. I just play Helldivers at this point (played Destiny only before). Most people I know only have time for 1 live service for a reason
Gaming isn't dying because it's "starting to get less fun" it's dying because of greed, almost every crappy live service is pumped out for the sake of fuelling the executives' avarice
@@Karthik-pn2yj True, I’m getting real tired of the “gaming is dying” “gaming isn’t fun anymore” crowd. I only recently played Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia and Ultrakill and they both have kept my attention since then. I’ve even emulated older SMT games like Strange Journey and the old Etrian Odyssey games. These games have kept my attention for literal days, the problem is that so many don’t want to step out of their comfort zone and stick with the unfinished buggy AAA games.
Funny how there is no mention of Valve aside from that one jab when they also played a pretty big role in video game monetization practices. Of course, this is on top of the gambling and black market issues Steam has.
One thing No Mans Sky has that I've always appreciated? You can play it offline. Sure, it started as an offline game, technically speaking, but I enjoy the fact that even now that it's got more online components, you can still disconnect from the internet and play the game perfectly fine. It's just. Nice. A refreshing change of pace from a lot of games nowadays that demand you be online 24/7 or they won't even let you see the main menu - looking at you, Diablo 2. I'd return it if I hadn't bought it digitally. EDIT; Also; I've always thought that WARFRAME should be the live service people aspire to mimic. Thriving playerbase, healthy economy, players that trust the devs because the devs regularly communicate with the players through constant streaming, devs that play their own game and regularly STREAM themselves playing their own game, constantly trying new things to see what sticks and expanding on what does, willing to apologize and roll back things that don't pan out, a section of the market DEDICATED to player-made cosmetics - say what you will about your feelings towards that kind of grind, but you can't deny that it's objectively a very healthily made game. Digital Extremes cares about its game AND its players, and more people should follow their example.
great video. i think one way it went wrong is when studios stopped releasing finished live service games and tried to justify it because they add content frequently. i would be happy to pay for micro transactions in a game that is finished and good to support the devs, but nowadays it’s either unfinished or predatory 🤷♂️
I have always hated subscription games. The cost/benefit ratio *for the player* stinks unless you treat them as a full time job, and that's a highway to burnout. My purchase of Minecraft, on the other hand, has been $30 for nigh on 14 years of fun now. Or, taking a game that isn't riddled with Marketplace shenanigans, my little old PSP Final Fantasy Tactics has given me almost a decade of fun for a measly $20. The time pressure of a subscription kills the fun in games. Now, I've worked as a game developer, and I understand the money guys just LOVE rent-seeking schemes, but as is true of any other industry, rent-seeking ultimately kills the service on offer because it's inherently lazy... and that's even before you layer on CEOs who have political axes to grind and who actively hate gamers. The AAA game space has been infested by activists and people who don't even understand Business 101, let alone what makes a good game. It will be interesting to see things collapse, even as I mourn my former career.
When I see that stuff in a game and I think "yeah they're gonna force me to log in every day for the events, the dailies, the weeklies etc. etc." I just stop playing. Meanwhile I waste 500 hours on a game that doesn't have any of it, and I log in every day because I wanna play the game.
I'll be honest here. The sole reason why Wow wasn't defeated back then, was not because it was superior, but because it was older, had frequent updates and people had already invested too much on it. That's the reason why subscription games are so addictive. You're forced to pay monthly to play, so you're consistently investing money into the game. Free to Play games can't compete with that. There were a couple of games that wee indeed better than WoW. Guild Wars 2 for example should've decimated WoW completely, it's simply that much better of a game. But it never managed to kill wow. Because at that point people were playing WoW not because it was good, but because they were addicted
Been gaming since genesis and GBC. Live service and mobile gaming are the 2 biggest cancers this industry has ever faced. You don’t know you’re living through the golden years till it’s over (90’s/2000’s). As much as I love the 360 and PS3 gamings downward trend started with these consoles and iPhone in general.
Pure facts Its by far the worst thing that happened to gaming I remember people gatekeeping and complain about DLC back then now FUCKIN GAMBLING CASINO is normalized in games F these modern frauds "gamers"
Same. I really wish more games will simply keep all the good rewards behind the actual game. Elden Ring is a magical experience because if you beat the hard boss, YOU GET THE REWARD. In Destiny 2, you kill the raid boss (WITH SIX PEOPLE. SIX) and have a CHANCE to unlock the reward. It took me 27 Last Wish raids for 1K Voices exotic, each run took ABOUT AN HOUR. Absolute joke.
Damn that sucks for you there has literally never been a better time to be a gamer the last 5 years alone has had amazing games with more on the horizon and it's so easy to play old games. You can literally just ignore the games you don't like and you'll still have an overwhelming number of great games to play each year
I agree with your comment. But do you know what it's like to live in poor countries growing up never holding a controller, or a mouse and a keyboard? Maybe these developers who made good games in the PS2 era as people keep saying, should have made games for mobile phones. Because as it stands, the people who identified that a lot of people only have mobile phones to play games, are the ones who make predatory games. We have developers making "good" games pushing the boundaries of technology, making it so your PC is now outdated, making it so that each game cost 70$ and a console coting 400$ While we have thse other "predaotry' devs, making 100 mb games that can instantly be downloaded and played on any phone for people to have fun. You talk about not knowing you've lived through the golden years til it's over. But have you considered you're living a golden life when others literally can't touch any of these games?
11:05 I literally bought fortnite for the save the world mode and then they pivoted towards the Battle Royale and that's when I stopped playing the game. It was no longer the game I had purchased. Luckily they refunded us who purchased the game when they decided to pivot towards the Battle Royale but I still felt cheated because I thought I was going to get a really cool survival tower defense game what's different characters who had different abilities. And instead I ended up with just a shooter.
@@S_raB agreed . The monetization really makes me feel like i am not being manipulated though, which is refreshing . Sucks that people cant enjoy the game thouogh thats obvious
I'm not sure NMS qualifies as a "live service" game (just because you showed it and then talked about "live service"). For me, this term usually means a game for which you either pay a subscription to play, or that has heavy in-game monetization and/or paid-for DLC, seasons etc. NMS has none of that. Everything they delivered since the first release was free. It's really something else in this day and age... But I do heavily agree with the sentiment of this video. Live-service games are, to a large degree, a cancer to gaming.
It’s definitely not a live service but I think it’s still related enough to be brought up with the topic new stuff might be free but they are actively adding somewhat major stuff to shake the game up the same way actual live service games do I think NMS is the model they should follow and stop being so scummy
One thing No Man's Sky shows is that subscriptions/game passes/microtransactions are not needed in the slightest to keep a game getting ongoing support far into the future. Any game that has them beyond their initial purchase price is just gouging players for more money.
Im a student learning to become a developer, and thank you for making this video. Yes, I absolutely despite the rise of live service, not only because of it being explotative and filled to the absolute brim with microtransaction and being built around monetization and not fun, but its also the reason why so many game devs go into development and just go make these games instead of making actual good games that are enjoyable. Like in my country, live service games are popping up like fungi. Every new studio wants to make these damn games, every studio wants nothing but money. There's nothing wrong with wanting money, but when it gets in the way of making fun, and when devs get so blindfolded by that sweet sweet $ that they forget what gaming are for in the first place, I cannot simply just sit there and watch. Like literally, this country haven't made a single game that takes the world by storm and is popular like titles such as Ace Combat, undertale or Spider-Man on PlayStation. So I do want that after my education, I start up my own studio and make a game that would really take off, instead of just filling the market with more live service trash garbage. And like Im not entirely against live service. It can be fun if done right. Like Bloons Tower Defense 6 is sort of live service but its fun, upon launch the game already offers tons of content to players. And it only gets better as new contents like maps, towers, heroes and modes arrives. And they make actual content and events so there's something for players to engage without them feeling like they have to grind unlike some of the "games".
I've been screaming to the heavens for years that live service is an immediate game killer. Nothing turns me off to a prospective game than Live Service. Helldivers 2 was completely ruined by the always online live service campaign that was forced upon an otherwise phenomenal arcade style horde shooter game
The gaming industry is repeatedly asking the question of “how much are people willing to pay” and no matter how egregious they get, there will almost always be a large enough subset of the playerbase willing to pay enough to make up for any bad PR they get.
Great video. Yeah, I hate seeing $20-30 dollar skins in games. Plus the fact that their currency options aren't always the exact amount you need to purchase a skin to force you to buy the next currency tier is scummy as hell.
Sony's first party games always succeeded a good amount over time. Its nuts they decided going all in on woke and live service would help them, as well as going third party, eliminating the need to own a playstation
Live service itself isn’t bad, it’s the mobile game like live service that is a problem. Tons of expensive microtransactions, tons of grinding, more focus on making money than making a good game. There are live service games that are good, overwatch before the overwatch 2 update was great imo and I had tons of fun with it, I paid $60 and was able to earn skins just by playing with free updates and events. Helldivers 2 is a great live service game despite them having problems with nerfs and balancing stuff. Honestly I think concord could be a good replacement for overwatch to me at least since it’s not a free to play game so I’m hoping there’s no $20 skins and can actually earn skins and stuff in game because that stuff is what ruined overwatch 2 for me. Yes I know it’s oversaturated and all but I liked playing overwatch and I don’t really have a good replacement for it right now because all clones of it are free to play garbage with tons of microtransactions.
Just a reminder that this year has been a gold mine for underrated indies no matter what type of games you are into and any money you spend on them will mean far more to the devs than to a AAA developer.
In a sense. I can't be mad at the games nowadays. Seeing as lot of games are free because you either play it and like and support it, or you dont like it and you go back to what you are playing.
My biggest issue is that live service is monopolizing great AAA studios that could make amazing single-player games instead. We're missing on many potential classic games since 5 to 10 years.
I saw your first video when it came out and was shocked bc the quality was so good I assumed you’ve been doing this for years. This is your 3rd video and honestly can’t wait to see you fully flourish and grow. You’ve found your niche keep going. But don’t be scared to also try something new whenever you feel like it.
I freaking hate battle passes. Havent heard of a game at launch and you wanted that sweet skin to buy? Well too bad it's gone forever! And you can't even count on the community to callout these stupid practices because they're going to sit on their exclusive cosmetics they dont even use as reputation points.
Man Brack was the worst Blizzard could happen, he let himself to be overrun by the activision execs, he made some of the most stupid decisions with their games, and of course, some of the most stupid comments, like with the WoW classic sever qu4estion.
Bruh... You brought up Destiny 1, but you didn't even mention when Bungie forced everyone to buy the base game AGAIN, not once, but TWICE for them to have access to the DLC expansions. So crazy that no one seems to remember that, even people that make videos about things thst went wrong. Destiny 1 was the last dollar I will ever give to Bungie. Never forget.
Good video. These games are mainly focused at casual gamers and kids who ask their parents for 10 bucks here and there. Over the course of a year, it adds up to a couple hundred bucks etc... greed is killing gaming which is why it is so important to support the smaller studios.
@@dronerecorderm8055Only if you look at "giants" of the pat that overinvest. Looking deeper you get stuff like Deamon Turf', 'Blooson Tales' and 'Animal Well'. One just has to look around.
@@dronerecorderm8055if you think creativity is dead you need to engage with a bigger variety of games and even just art in general, you're not even close to being right
It's as if companies try to separate the monetization from the gaming experience and then come up with ways to maximize it. You can't separate it. F2P makes it a little easier but we're humans with limited time and more and more limited money. They try to hold both hostage to trade for what we really want. A good game. A good community. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
At least I can say I have been immune to even Fortnite and it's crap. I have long since given up on any kind of game that has any sort of BS within it. As soon as I see even the smallest thing about a game that goes against my standards I drop it and never look at it again within a moments notice. And these days, my tolerance level is very low.
I don't mind live server depending on the game, like some things with hell divers . You pretty much helped the story continue or ruined it but for other games it just mostly a pain
6:42 I honestly get why he said what he said. Keep in mind he probably had heard this from hundreds of thousands of people. You'd be kinda fed up too lol. Like imagine putting effort into making something better only to hear people go "We wanna play the older shitter version". People HAVE to get over their nostalgia and rose tinted glasses of the past. It would also be a good idea to dump entitlement over creative works too tbh. Like I am very tired over people thinking that someone speaking like this about something they made is rude. A creative will always say their older works are terrible regardless of who it is or what medium they choose. This is just a man who's tired. If you want a creative who doesn't care, Emil is an excellent example. I will never forgive him for saying he didn't need to make a centralized document. I want him to publicly come out and state he is a terrible writer, and a failure of a man for his hand in Starfield.
I disagree with the inclusion of Helldivers 2 as an example here. If anything it's the rare exception where a live service model is actually core to the experience and is to the benefit of players. But yes, f*ck live service models.
There’s absolutely no such thing as the live service genre. Horror is a genre. Action is a genre. Why service is a business model buy forever is a business model free to play is a business model. There’s no relation between them and the genre again shooter is a genre. RPG is a genre there’s subdivisions of like all of them there’s five action RPG, for instance JPG, there’s arena shooters there’s battle Royale shooters. Those are genres and some genres live services a genre. It’s a business model and whether the game is good or bad doesn’t really depend on the business model. It depends on the developers and the management above the developers and quite frankly, it almost literally always depends on whether it’s a AAAgame or an independent game which genres
Yes it does lmao These games rely on the monetization they use You have to be -40 iq to no see that Loot boxes garbage like fifa ect impact the gameplay directly thats not even a debate And battle pass are also a scam but you are too brainwashed to not see it
The moment I see "live service" or any other term that means the same thing, I don't play the game. I'll just keep playing 15-20 year old games. They're better in nearly every way, anyway, and provide actual enjoyment and gameplay, and I can play them forever without worrying about when the servers will shut down and I can no longer play a fucking single player game. They're a full package with a full experience. I've been bitching about this stuff fkr over a decade now, and irritates me how long it's taken for people to brain up and realize how shitty live service and similar models are for the gaming industry and the consumer.
Thank you for this video! I’ve almost got tied into Diablo 4 and my friends “YOU NEED TO MAKE A NEW CHARACTER AGAIN” ordeal. I saw that and thought to myself that “why would I spend so much wasted time building out the same stuff back to back for some lame game that is clearly battle/season pass spammed. The FOMO was real ever since it came out but I managed to survive without it and I’m better off because of it.
Im honestly sick of it. Even games i would never expected to be a live service somehow show up on my doorstep. And I try my best to avoid a lot of them. Theyre so mainstream now, its gotten to the point where a State of Play or Xbox Games showcase comes around i joke about it as "More Live Service games! Yay!"
I don't like how companies are putting more and more money into live service and see the revenue grow as reason to spend even more into live services. Whatever you spend most of your money on will be the bulk of your growth.
Live service games aren't made by the developers of said games. They are made by a team of psychologist and monetization experts who design every aspect of the game. All the developers do is bring the vision created by said psychologists and monetization experts to life.
Good video man. I too constantly pled to my friends to not buy passes or skin bundles. I tell them you could have saved that cash for lunch or a discounted steam game. They claim they couldn't help themselves and I have started to direct them to therapy. Like if u choose to pay for a digital skin pack vs saving that for gas ⛽. Then u deserve to be stranded on the road. GG.
So as a long-time gamer from 1987, I can tell you right now that the problem itself isn't Battle Royale and live service games. The problem is is when naturally a game becomes popular. All the other gaming companies hit the Xerox button and direct clone that game without understanding why that particular game worked and sold well and then we end up with a ton of disasters where things get over saturated. Happens over and over again. When I was a little kid there was a huge glut of platforming mascots because Sonic and Mario were popular. Then the FPS genre took off on console with Halo and now all the sudden everyone's trying to compete with Halo and Call of Duty and now fortnite and similar games have taken off so everyone's xeroxing them. This is exactly why I'm afraid of GTA VI because I'll never forget when GTA 3 came out and all of a sudden there was a ton of either shitty open world games games that copied the GTA control scheme and camera even though the genre didn't suit it and or tried to have the same sort of humor and gritty pop art style but just absolutely failing. My fear is that when GTA 6 comes out, whatever thing that makes that game unique and stand out is going to be Xerox to death for the next 5 to 10 years. Be surprised if all of a sudden game companies start basically making hyper realistic open world games that have a lot of built-in social media functions cuz that's what it looks like. GTA 6 is going to turn into oh and every protagonist is going to be a couple and they're going to have a man and a woman working together because that's the only reason why people like GTA all of a sudden.
Dont force me to waste my time... Make me WANT to waste my time instead.
@@skycatlive1576 facts
The key to a successful live service. And every other type of game and media in general I guess.
Wonder why it's forgotten so often.
This!
@@TripplesmokeThe person you just replied to has over 1.6K videos holy crap
@@xJohnwheatiesx One could argue that playing video games is wasting time anyway. You don't exactly get much out of video games unless you're part of an esports competition or something.
I very much can blame the corporations since they're the ones pumping out these piles of garbage. Publishers are pressuring studios into making and maintaining these live service dumpster fires, I very much can blame them for that.
Kids are growing up thinking this is normal, and sadly it will become the norm if the new generation of gamers let them do this
Responsible parents that refuse them their credit cards would do a huge difference. If I ever have children, I will never allow them anywhere near a live-service game.
@@MrTytyjohn64 Fortnite shouldn't be played by children in the first place, and this comes from someone who watched uncensored anime like DBZ as a kid.
@@kraosdadafusfus8034 I remember begging for a Pet pet park membership and my mom said no because it was a waste of money I have no clue why these parents are throwing away money on vbucks
@@LiamFitzpatrick-pzzzt No it's called setting limits and knowing when to put your foot down as a parent Knowing when to tell your kid no.
@mrheroprimes more parents need to start telling their kids "no" more often. These generations of kids are insane with the behaviour and sense of entitlement.
Every company wants their own Fortnite but don't want to take the time to understand why people like Fortnite.
I’m sure ROI-starved suits that have never even played a video game just look at Fortnite and the item store with all the wacky cosmetics and think “wow people must really love this game because it has an in game store. They must really love buying stuff”
for everything that makes fortnite trash it at least has a decent game play loop one of the only good things about battle royals
hit the nail on the head🎯
People like Fortnite?
Exactly. Even free to play, Fortnite is just a fun game
This random guy appears in my youtube feed and starts spitting facts
Easily earned my sub. UA-cam algo doing its job for once.
Yeah thank god someone had to say it.
Yes same i instantly subbed before I even played the video! These games need to die! 95% fail rate!!!!
right. lol UA-cam algorithm getting it right for once.
literally out the gate throwing haymakers & connecting
Everyone just wants to copy the success of Fortnite without actually trying, and also they don't seem to understand once someone is all in on a certain live service game, it's kind of impossible to get that same person to switch to a new one, especially with how busy life has gotten for many of us now
Lobbying for 4 day work week could give them better returns than more live service games.
@@Gnidel^This
@@Gnidel Holy shit, BAAAAASED
Their only hope is that the game people are already playing ruins itself and people start jumping ship.
Also, if the game isn't the biggest thing to come out in the last 10 years, they instantly abandon it instead of committing to the process.
Knowing this, why would I play your not insta-hit game when you'll abandon it in a few months?
It’s crazy how similar all these “live service” games looks! Even when they have different art styles, they all still feels the same.
Recycled garbage
you need your eyes checked out
@@PurpleFlyingLion18so we can see more garbage clearly?
there are good live service games. but good luck finding them
and if a live service is paid. it should be considered a scam
@@T-Trux if you think helldivers and fortnite feel the same and look the same. Then yeah you need new eyes
Multiplayer games are fun but i miss the days when it was just the icing on the the cake and games had both single and multiplayer modes live service games are basically the equivalent of just eating icing
Which may taste great but that stuff can get very nauseous at high doses
@@evandaymon8303Perfect analogy here man.
Fortnite no longer has a single player it was abandoned years ago
@@evandaymon8303Its garbage both at high and low-dosesh lol, OW1 was great, but OW2 turned it into just another live-service garbage slop, literally the embodiment of, neutral concept, bad execution lol, before it was just great execution as far as monetization goesh and wentdzszh. 💀
@@nman551Also it wash supposed to be free lmao. 😂
Game Dev here, and an artist. thank you for this video btw.
what game are you working on?
@@latsaspege2021 I work at Turn 10. i cant say any more than that.
@@latsaspege2021he can't say anything cause they track his digital footprint they don't want anything leaking as a epic games concept artist here cause I see it alot
Get dat mf money bro 😎
No need to ask someone if they are an artist, they will TELL you that they are ;)
Don't forget that all of these live service games are made with teams of psychologists to manipulate your behavior patterns. It's so insidious, and so many of these 'games' are turning into something more akin to slot machines or gambling habits. You know... addictions that *can ruin lives.*
Cough Destiny 2 cough
Bungie had a team of analysts and psychologists working hard to perfect their hamster wheel
I've recently booted up SoulCalibur 2 and 3 on my PS2.
It's crazy how many characters were unlockable, when the "modern" entry (SC6) has less characters and all (but single broken one) initially-locked are DLCs. That's after few years of post-launch support and even then with less content than SC2 or SC3 had on disc.
I'm actually moving backwards in time with each "new" game I want to play and now I can finally appreciate how good many of these old games were despite objectively worse fidelity.
this is a funny one cuz we have basically moved past the point where you could have actually gambled for cosmetics back in the early days of eververse in destiny. the monetization still sucks though@@EchoDoctrine
Preach it brother !
Sounds like a skill issue just don't get an addiction
Everytime i see a new live service announced with all those promises i always get reminded of a quote from Marques Brownlee, "never buy a product for the promise of future updates, buy it for what it is now"
@MrSpiritstealerYeah I think this was in context of a smartphone with major promised features not available at launch
Mark ass brown lee is a wise man
“Ah wood wawnt fortnait and mark ass barownie”
“Graaaaahahaw, oh that’s hot, that’s reeeeaaaally hot”
@@terribletimes902he recently said it again on apple's promise on apple intelligence for the iphone 16, which wont be available at release
@@layers5255Oh, the memories 😭
I don't even think live service is inherently bad. But oversaturation. Laziness. And profit forward business practices make live service bad. Helldivers proves that. But since the helldivers method doesn't maximize profits by allowing premium currency to be found while playing normally. Companies won't copy them.
Live Service is definitely inherently bad, there will never be a large enough market for 90% of them to operate at max profit potential, regardless of how few companies make them or how good they are.
Live-Service is almost exclusively a poor-farm/life support only fit for studios with no other way to make a game or truly massive MMO's that need to be made over time.
The profit/loss completely fools investors and CEO's and plays them for fools. The problem is "max profit" is really a cash out of time and volume of both developers required and customers needed.
This means as volume increases, even if it increases by ONE Live-Service, the entire market shrinks as does the profit generated, and when the volume decreases you also lose potential customers as they realize the entire market is time limited and not worth investment.
Further every game made attempting compatibility that doesn't need it requires otherwise useless accountants and securities to protect in-game banking data, ballooning development time and resources even if you later decide you don't need it.
And Helldivers doesn't use fomo, understand the micro in microtransactions, and add new stratagems for free.
@USMCSANDIEGO usually the team that makes cosmetics and the team that does bug fixes are 2 separate groups
Helldivers is one of the very small few that done live service right. That is make the game for gamers and not for suits and investors paying the publishers and devs.
Game first then micro later.
I also love that there's no fomo (at time of this writing it may changed) that's also a issue with live service in general fomo. It just sucks that they do that and lock content away because you weren't there to collect it
@evandaymon8303 I don't think fomo is a huge issue so long as it's not paided items but if there's a limited time item.that can only be got by playing during a certain time that's fomo done in a alright way
Sucks but gets people to play more
Half the problem is that ALL live service games want ALL of your time.
They realized that more time spent in the game often translates to more attachment, more inertia to overcome to drop a game and more willingness to spend increasingly unreasonable amounts of money for cosmetic items.
As a result, they started to build in more and more FOMO mechanics, grinds and daily/weekly/seasonal unlocks and chores to do to keep you in the game.
Overwatch was kind of perfect when it came out. Engaging, highly polished gameplay, a ladder system and custom games so casuals could enjoy it, a cheap entry price so it didn't kill the bank, free unlocks that only required playing to get and most of the rewards were easy to unlock regardless of what game mode you wanted to play or how many, if any, friends played with you.
Contrast that with games now and you've got all sorts of BS you have to grind daily or weekly just to keep up. You're not nerfed for not doing it, but you lose out on a ton of stuff if you don't so it FEELS bad. Worse, many games actually now require those grinds for resources you need for your characters to stay up to date or viable.
Since they want you to log in daily and stay as long as possible, there's a ton of that stuff, so each game is basically competing to be your "forever game" and obviously there's a limited amount of hours a day to go around.
Instead of making a good game that's fun enough you WANT to log in, they make a game that feels like it punishes you for not logging in or not spending enough hours, all in pursuit of boosting their daily active user count and hopefully flipping that switch to justify that 60 dollar skin to yourself.
What happens instead is that most of these games crash and burn once the shine rubs off and people realize how much of a boring treadmill the end game is. All the development time and money wasted because the C-suite couldn't accept that their game might have a shelf life and might potentially not be the next Big Thing. All or nothing mentality.
The same thing holds true for that FOMO stuff, actually. I only ever bought a season pass once. My friends wanted me to play something else halfway through, I played with them, we got sucked in, by the time I realized I hadn't unlocked everything in the pass I no longer had enough time to unlock it because the pass was intentionally designed to make it all but impossible to unlock unless you hit daily and weekly quests during the entire duration.
The stuff was lost unless I decided to pay up to unlock the remaining levels with yet more money.
You only have to be in that position once to quickly realize that it's a terrible deal, especially when you look at what you unlocked for free (the first few levels of the pass usually contain garbage nobody sane would spend any amount of money for to pad out the "rewards"), how much of what remained between you and what you actually wanted was likewise filler trash and how much you'd have to spend in addition to actually get what you wanted out of the pass to begin with.
It's a suckers bet. A system intentionally designed to lock you in as a player for the next three months with the illusion of a great deal. I'm willing to put some money down on a bet that they'd sell more season passes if they allowed people to grind them out over however long it takes instead of trying to force people to play (insert arbitrary market-researched number here) hours a day on the schedule the dev team decided on was optimal.
As it is, I'd rather miss out on the few items I want in any given pass than lose my passion for the game a month into a season and feel obligated to play the damn game like a job to unlock the rest of the rewards I paid for.
Haven't bought a pass since and I'm not planning to because I refuse to be in that situation again. I'm not throwing good money after bad and I'm not letting the devs obligate me to clock in for my mandatory fun time.
I'll play because I'm having fun and if the only way to get anything approaching reasonably priced cosmetics for the game depends on me no-lifing it regardless of how much fun I have to prove worthy of this season's selection of skins, I'd rather do without.
You said it all. Bravo 👏 👏
You mentioned that No Man's Sky was set-up for failure by Sony. Thank you. THANK YOU.
So, so, so many people either don't remember -- or conveniently leave out -- this fact when discussing NMS.
If Internet Historian's documentary on NMS is to be believed, then the bulk of the blame for NMS's atrocious launch should be placed at Sony's feet, not Hello Games. And there was also the fact that Hello Games' boss Shaun Murray had virtually no media training at the time, and Sony did him no favors when they didn't give him a trained PR person who could handle the interviews and press junkets.
how anything of this is Sony's fault?
Was he lying his ass off on TV due to a lack of PR training? Did he really need someone to tell him not to lie about what features his game has?
Sony are and always have been one of the bad guys, although they are getting a lot worse at hiding it recently, but they have such a large number of rabid loyal fanboys and girls defending everything, that it constantly gets overlooked. (there is one in the reply to your comment)
@@vault29aua-cam.com/video/O5BJVO3PDeQ/v-deo.htmlsi=aknv5A3Qv8XsEH7p
Soyny ruined something, no big surprise. #SonyCheck
Thank you for addressing the elephant in the room I.e. the ‘consumer’. These business practises stop when we no longer indulge them.
Be the start then?
I remember just buying a game and beating it, then there was optional multiplayer and it was very fun, to play when I wanted to play.
Now you have to keep up and play all the time if you dont want to miss exclusive limited event items… Not so fun.
It's a chore now to see a number go from 100 to 110
Online games have replaced "social gathering" rituals of times past. I'm old enough to remember arcades before they got overrun by coin pushers. Arcade games were a total waste of time and money, as were most things at the Mall..... but its the thing all the young people would do to hang out and spend time together.
Whats both sad, but also funny in a deeply ironic, dark way..... when things moved more online, people lost the ability to socially interact in person. And the span of the last 10 years or so, that in-person social anxiety has bleed into the online space. And now we have a steadily growing population of people who are losing the ability to interact with people online, and some actively refusing to interact with others within a purpose built online social space. Its like the old cyberpunk dystopia where they predicted people would become isolated and would pivot all social interactions into cyberspace; but then someone said "hold my beer", and now want to isolate themselves in cyberspace too by yelling at people to get out of the proverbial chat room.
@@freelancerthe2561why would I want to interact with a real person on the thing I'm playing to get away from real people
The answer to your comment is simple. Back then from what you remember, you were playing single palyer games with optional online modes.
And the games you're referring to today are online probably mmo games, that require constant conenction. There are no such thing as limited exlusive timed event items in Ultrakill, Dark souls 3, Baldur's Gate 3, and all the actual single player games. If you don't find them fun, I recommend playing single player games
@@Sakuna451 Well I do play multiplayer games, but it is a clear as day that the focus shifted, before you could earn skins by playing the game and you could infact buy skins when you wanted in most games if they had micro. But these days with battle passes you always have like 1 month before the unlockables are gone, basically it requires you to basically have a second job to unlock everything…
Playing xenoblade was a mistake because i notice that every video essay uses its music
Ain't no way
17:43 This has been the real reason I've never gotten into live service games. I generally prefer more single player, story focused games. Rigth now I'm slowly making my way through the Persona 3 remake, mainly as I am an adult with a job and other hobbies/interests. I may only get an hour or two to game a week as I'm more focused on my priorities. So a game that needs almost as much time as my job while wanting money I'd rather spend elsewhere and phasing out content every couple of weeks is an instant turn off for me. I'd much rather a game like Persona where I can put the game down for a few weeks and not feel like I've wasted my time or money (i.e. battle pass) because I couldn't play it for one reason or another.
Reload was fantastic!
Persona overall is a great long-term game because of how it works in a calendar format. Turn on the game, log a few days, maybe put in a couple floors in Tartarus then go back in when you have time. Very much comfort games for me lol.
@@TestingTriangles i mean honkai star rail is live-service single player story driven jrpg and its already better than p3 could ever be.
@@vault29ai like hsr, but personas story is better imo
@@gavinattalahadiyan325 they called it peakacony for a reason....
Unfortunately for you the modern games industry couldnt care less about someone who plays less than 3 hours of games a week
This guy saw a trailer of concord and immediately knew that it was a horrible idea. Little did he know how right he was
My problem with live service games is that they normalized the idea of "post launch content update", nowadays even a finished one-time purchased game has a roadmap.
Sure, it's nice to have more contents for your favorite game, but it also means that now the companies have excuse for putting less in the game and it's no longer a full experience on release.
I'm the kind of person with a very short interest span and I usually put a lot of time in a game within a short period of time then completely lose interest and never go back, which means that I would not have the chance to experience the "full game" while I still have the interest.
Heh, $500 not only in general is too much, but it's apparently also a skin in some kind of honor of an actual player, who is known for NOT using alternate skins.
Yes the ahri skin honors Faker, who famously never uses skins even though pros have every skin available to them, and he was uncomfortable using it in a tournament environment, basically showing he still hasnt used it
Riot already made like 200 bucks skin before, I don't know what this buzz about. League's community will eat anything, they're on too late stage to quit.
Bro, this is kind of a random tangent, but you touched on it a bit in the intro.
Gaming used to be a place to meet people. I've been gaming a long time. Im in my mid 30s for reference. I used to have tons of friends and liked to go out socially and hang, but my life just doesnt allow that like it once did. But im a chatty dude. I like to talk. So when i hop on a match i always ask my teammates, "yo anyone got a mic?"
Im not exaggerating when i say 90% of my teammates refuse to speak. I know everyone might have their reasons for not engaging with that aspect of the game. Idk.
Im high. Im just rambling a thought i had while watching. People used to go out of their way to talk to others. Even if it was just shit talking. People used to find someones tag, look them up, and send them voice clips. It was awesome 👌
Great video
+1sub
Totally get this. I love voice chatting in games but people rarely want to. For example, Fortnite, I think it’s a lot of fun, but only when I’m playing with friends. If they aren’t available, I just don’t play because most random people don’t use a mic, and you can’t work as a team that way.
I think socializing in games in general is just dead or dying and I'm not really sure why. Even WoW and elder scrolls online feel like single players games sometimes cause nobody really actively engages in the world or with each other unless absolutely forced to (like raiding for example).
The "issue" is that whenever something gets as popular as gaming has gotten it turns from a close nit community thing into a mainstream thing that is full of both the good and the bad.
I remember just 12 years or so ago you'd still hide the fact you enjoy videogames on social outings because of the fear of being judged for it so when games like WoW and AION offered these online spaces for us to meet, chat and game it was always a close nit community where everyone knew a couple of people on a server who made a name for themselves.
Nowadays everyone and their children are gaming, which is great because it's no longer an exclusively nerd thing to do and with more players games have gotten bigger and better but at the cost of the familiarity and increased toxicity.
Even I who recently started engaging in voicechat more in certain co-op focused games find myself often not wanting to because I rather put on my own music or a podcast in the background, or simply because it's a cointoss if another player is going to make or ruin my day.
Lobbies being disbanded after every round now, grief reporting, AI detecting if you say a naughty word, no mic-only playlists, kids insisting on using cross-game chat even though they’re all playing the same game… these are all things that have ruined the fun in online gaming
We didn’t know how good we had it during the PS3/360 era
In my opinion, live service games should be approached with caution and used in moderation. It's better to focus on creating one enduring live service game that can grow and evolve, rather than multiple short-lived ones. It's important to launch the game with a significant amount of content. Quality should always take priority over quantity, and it's also beneficial to include an offline mode. Additionally, knowing when to end the game is crucial. There are valuable lessons that can be learned from past MMOs and manga/anime adaptations.
I dont buy live service on principle. It might be the most mind blowing game ever and it still wont get a cent from me.
Godspeed
SAME!!!
All this does is leave the causes of the problem without competition. Live service aren't inherently bad.
@@zaferoph it is bad it’s a giant money making machine for companies not devs
@@nman551 nothing about live service games on a conceptual level requires them to have bad monetisation practices. Live service is one of the oldest kind of online multiplayer game ever made. At least as older than WoW. Your problem doesn't lie with "Here is a game that receives constant free updates with occasional paid content" because if it did you'd have problems with all games since the beginning of the millenia. Your problem is with the monetisation practices. You're talking about money. That's monetisation practices, not general game design.
Single player gamer to Multiplayer gamer:
“Wow, sucks to be you.”
Indeed
I get so much angrier at a multiplayer game than a single player game where I died cause I was too cocky.
Then there's live service to some singleplayer game for some reason
"services are fleeting, but art is everlasting.
Games shouldn't be services, they need to be everlasting pieces that have heart because games are art and art outlives all of us"
As a game developer who just went through a cancellation of an awesome single player game and now thrown into live service development.....the ending of the video hits hard
Thanks for making this ❤
Ouch my condolences on your struggle.
When Fortnite first blew up I remember thinking “this is going to ruin the industry for us, the players”
me too, I think a lot of ppl were wondering what this game meant for the future solely because of how popular it became.
Live service is fine, and even good for specific genres, you can argue.
The issue is that devs want to apply live service to EVERYTHING.
Not devs, the SUITS
@@A1stardan At this point I'm getting tired of people making excuses for devs. It's been like a decade of this nonsense.
a) Do you believe every company that's started, their suits/execs weren't devs themselves? Easiest example to point to is Harada. He was once the main dev for Tekken and is now one of the highest level suits for NamCo, although most people don't know that.
b) Even if we were to assume that the suits are to blame for things, it is usually for bad MTX. Tons of games for the last decade have shit gameplay. You can say that "oh, that's because they focus more on the MTX than the gameplay." That's untrue, your cosmetic/MTX team isn't your gameplay team. Also, at a certain point, having more designers on a team doesn't make a better game (more chefs in the kitchen and all that). People are just making shit games period, CoD is an easy example of such. What prevents them from designing a good game? They only sell skins, so what prevents them from having a good game? Devs? That franchise literally has multiple studios dedicated to it round the clock.
I am tired that the go-to excuse for shit games is always "it's the execs fault!" If a character in a game I like to play is buggy or a broken mess, is that the suits fault? If the game is delayed to high heaven but is still shit when released, is that the suits fault as well?
Development is a cooperative process, and to act like it's only the suits fault when it fails, and it's only the devs credit when it succeeds is one of the most stupid things being propagated for the last decade.
Not its not fine
Its there to make you spend as much and take all of your time so you cant play better stuff
And all of them have piss poor gameplay
@@DOGEELLLnope
some live service games(that are free to play) are good
you just won't hear of them when you play generic fps game #6243
@@aveshlutchman8573 I can't fully agree because you seem to have a very weird idea on what suits and devs can / can't do. I don't work as a game developer but I do work as a software engineer and the development process is quite similar as most things tend to work on a priority based system. For example, there may be that really annoying bug that players encounter every now and then but it isn't high up in the queue compared to this new game defining feature. It's in every developer's interest to finish off things that are in priority before fixing bugs unless those are an actual priority itself, or they may actually get sacked. Bringing in more developers could work, but that's up to management and not developers.
In these huge corporates, devs are only told to do what they should be doing. I can choose to fix 3 bugs over the next day, but if stakeholders want me to look into creating a proof of concept for a new feature, then they have the final word - no ifs or buts. If a game's design is terrible at its foundation, its not necessarily the designer's fault when management could've assigned several playtesting sessions throughout development to ensure the game is actually well designed and fun to play. Portal 2 could've ended up as a disaster if Valve wasn't so persistent with their focus on playtesting - the game originally had no portals despite it being called Portal 2, how boring could that have been?
The CoD example is also odd because you follow it up with a "why not design a good game?" when this is ultimately a subjective take. I despise modern CoD but you cannot deny that it is one of the most profitable and popular games out there in the market and for any sensible exec looking at the stats, there's no major reason to change so much if it works for them and brings in the money while also having a massive audience, same as how Minecraft currently is.
As you said, development is a cooperative process. If management fails, its on them more so than the developers. It's especially true for large scale AAA studios like Ubisoft and Activision with 10k+ employees working on a single game. If teams cannot coordinate because of terrible management, there will be issues.
I assure you that most developers in these fields want the rest of the world to see their work at their best unless they want to sabotage their projects, and most of the time its not in their control. Why are indie companies like Re-Logic so successful? How about New Blood Interactive and their developers? Even Valve back then was at the top of the industry with their games because the people they put in management are developers at heart. You mention Harada and yet some of his recent games under his management went on to succeed commercially and in reception. id Software was founded by developers and managed by developers, and most of their games were banger after banger that defined an entire genre. There are blunders here and there which I won't ignore, but there's much more damage from management who don't belong in games than developers who do.
There's a nice quote from Steve Jobs about letting sales people into product management roles when they shouldn't be and I still think it holds up to this day in relation to the games industry.
Deep Rock Galactic is probably an example of a successful live service game.
The season pass isn't locked behind a paywall, most of the cosmetics can be unlocked just through gameplay (with the exception of a handful of weapon/armor skins as DLC), and the most recent seasonal update made it possible to access and go through previous season passes in order to get rewards that'd be otherwise unavailable, at no IRL-currency charge at all.
And if you do want to support the devs at Ghost Ship Games, they have cosmetic packs that don't cost too much. DRG is how you do live service right.
I quit FFXIV last year during Endwalker’s patch cycle. I think much of that game’s success post relaunch is because they made sure it was a Final Fantasy first, MMO second. It has one of the best stories in the franchise, amazing music, and great art direction. Endwalker capping off the original story-thread started in ARR meant I could more easily walk away from a live service without FOMO. God I spent so much money on that game over the years. I don’t miss it!
Flow still makes me tear up 🥹🥹 I’m very much in the same boat; It was a great narrative send-off but I won’t be going back with Dawntrail because I want to preserve that memory without anything else potentially tainting it. I hope the people that do play it enjoy it though! I also hope my boy Alphy has lots of good times.
@TestingTriangles, you miss the game dead by daylight
And honestly, that game is its own case study
Dawntrail is crap, so be happy
What happened to Overwatch and it's "sequel" was heartbreaking. I'd love to go back and play OW1 again, but the live service model makes that impossible.
*its
Never got got the hype behind Overwatch 1. It was very fun with friends but not much else and the characters are all bland
Here’s a fun fact for you: Overwatch 2 IS Overwatch 1. All they did was file restructure the hell out of the game. There no other reason I earned a Hanzo spray on “Overwatch 2” with scatter arrow.
@@zSTALKn No it's not, 6v6 is dead, the free loot boxes you get from leveling up is dead, there's a battle pass now, OW2 is not, and will never be OW1. At best its a shitty reskin since the out of bounds spots on certain maps are still there.
@@thesongofthelinnet can you read the entire comment before saying something stupid thanks
I've been saying this for a long time:
Devs who try to copy fortnite with their live service model always tend to forget why fortnite was so successful
There's some live services I've enjoyed - Warframe, Apex Legends, Darktide (to some extent) DRG - but that leads into a couple of the problems with the live service gold rush:
1. A live service has to be _better_ than the few live services a dood already plays, so infinitely better that it can eclipse them.
2. It's probably not gonna be - most of this shit keeps getting released in buggy, unfinished states.
3. Live services are better at giving an atmosphere (WF, Apex, Helldivers, Destiny) than giving you a real story about your character and how they interact with the world. How am I gonna have a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end, if the business model assumes the game can't end?
If we think of it this way, call of duty has basically become a subscription service. You pay $80 a year for the same game with slightly different skins, or in MW3's case, $80 for extra skins and guns
Remember the RockSteady OGs left years ago. Nothing but a shell of its former self
the same OGs who wrote how to kill batman the way he was killed in SSKTL? the same OGs who wated to make it a multiplayer live service game and just jumped the ship when the game was not as good as they hoped? THOSE OGs?
I see you don't know the truth. It was Sefton's idea much to the worries of those working for him and when he saw what was coming he dipped. So OG rocksteady is the reason the game sucks and now there's only a clean up crew.
Another downside to live service gaming is that the developers behind these type of games can change the rules and settings via each seasons. An example of a game that does this is Apex Legends. They hit the nail on the head of its replay value, but the rules change once in a while and creates near-impossible challenges to overcome.
Yeah I’m fortnite they’ll bring back things we hated like THE BOOGIE BOMB
Great video glad UA-cam pushes smaller creators now the whole game industry has been extremely aggregating especially live services they’re 100% the worst
HOLD ON THE gameplay for anthem was fun the mech suits were really fun to fly it was more the lack of content cuz the mechs were amazing. everylthing else was kind of whatever cuz i didnt really pay attention cuz i had so much fun flying around and being the suit lol
Facts!
We've gotten plenty of solid single player games and people complain . This is the damage love service has done to the gaming community. No one can play a story game and enjoy it for what it is. Always needs dlc or more content. Thays why trash games like ow, fortnite, cod have so many players. They get fed bits of things to do and they eat that crap up.
Yesh its like "ooh piece of candy! Ooh piece of candy!" Instead of getting the whole bag
Exactly. I'd very much rather have a great single player game that I can beat once and be satisfied with as opposed to a live service game that keeps trying to draw me back with little snippets of "content" every 2 weeks. I just want a complete, well rounded experience instead of having to spend all this extra money on season passes for cosmetics and other pointless extras.
Now why would you buy a single player game and only beat it once? If the game is good why not beat it multiple times or return to it every now and then? Buying and beating a single player game only once its really a waste of money in my opinion@@teamtx1578
Facts lol people play trash 24 7
I find it funny how bad the gamers taste has gotten over time
Its like instead of evolving it just go backwards
I still have no idea why people needed every single player game to be endlessly replayable or be over 50+ hours to be worth it. I was baffled when people were saying how short Spiderman 2 was. It seemed like the usual length of a narrative driven single player game. The community complains about greed, but I think they are just as greedy and want more for less.
What’s the problem with live service games? That the companies ordering these kinds of titles don’t ask for a video game, but for a monetization system instead.
No shout-out to my Warframe bros? Damn, it's really under the radar, huh?
No lootboxes, you just buy what skin you like; seasonal pass that only involve gameplay, not money; a player-to-player trade system that can incentivize F2P players to stay completely F2P by selling their stuff to those that *have* paid money; and all the story quests after 11 years of development are still accessible to this day.
And it's still going. We're getting a new cinematic quest this month and we're waiting on another big quest coming either at the end of 2024 or maybe early 2025. This is a live service game that I started spending money on because I genuinely think the devs deserve it.
Former warframe and destiny 2 player. I have 1500 hours in both of them. Warframes has way worse grind compared to destiny 2. Atleast destiny 2 grind is fun. The boss battle sucks as well. Warframes just doesn’t respect your time just like bungie doesn’t respect your wallet.
I would recommend players who are doing job to go into destiny 2 because of limited time availability. I would recommend young guys and college kids warframe because it is light on your wallet.
@@BrokeBillionare here 3k h player Warframe is the best live service game, reason is simple it's has a FREE BATTLE PASSES 😂
Problem with the game is DE not so good at introducing the game to new players. You need spend 200h + beat new war and unlock steel path to get the REAL CONTENT.
@@BrokeBillionare This is great advice personally. Warframe clearly is made for players who are willing to be patient and grind and don't have a lot of money to throw around like us for reasons that I won't detail here but the learning curve is a huge turn off as DE despite their best efforts, have done very little to make the early game easier. That's why my brother has told friends of his that do work 9-to-5's and one's in college though on break because it's summer now to not bother as the game is hard to explain and these guys aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer to retain the info told to them very well so that's a problem in itself and unfortunately finding the right content creators to break this stuff down is even rougher too but there's some good ones out there like MCGamerZ as he does build videos that have been very helpful to my brother.
@@BrokeBillionareI think the grind is part of the enjoyment to most of the players. One of my favorite memories in gaming is unlocking Ivara after running through a single spy mission ~100 times IIRC over the span of a week. Putting so much effort into earning my gear made it feel a lot more special, and that experience is part of the reason I still come back to the game years later. I think it’s unfair to say the grinding is an objective negative when it’s so clearly part of the core value proposition of the product, a product that clearly works.
@@BrokeBillionare Warframe does respect my time
When the Concord cinematic trailer started I got interested, it looked good, it looked like a fun creative sci fi world, like it could be another game like Guardians of the Galaxy, but now with an original IP. But then the gameplay started and I saw what kind of game it was and said "welp nevermind"
You're the only one. When we all saw it. We called it a fortnite knock off or overwatch meets marvel (which isn't a compliment)
@@watchmehope6560 Especially since Overwatch meets Marvel is a different game called “Marvel Rivals” (A game showed in the SAME showcase!)
That cinematic trailer was dreadful. Awful attempts at humour, generic characters and an irritating gutter tier American tone to it. Then, the gameplay somehow looked even worse than the horrible cinematic trailer.
Pretty much exactly how I felt. I was ready to wait for reviews and grab it on sale if it turned out to be decent and then the gameplay was revealed and there wasn't a chance in hell I'd be going anywhere near it.
I don't like the idea of my games being on a time limit til the servers shutdown, that's why I only really play offline single player games.
I hate live service games, while i appreciate the constant updates to the games what it also encourages is the devs caring more about how to extract as much money from you as possible. As a result the gsmeplay suffers, you will also have stupid FOMO concepts like exclusive seasonal skins, battle passes, time-limited challenges, shop that only has certain items available for a limited time forcing you to regularly check the shop. As a boomer this is pretty stressful and I hate buying battle passes because I hate grinding, i dont like the feel of being pressured to play a certain game or else my money would be wasted. These predatory practices are ruining multiplayer games for me and is one of the ressons im enjoying indie titles a lot more.
The problem isn't really the live service itself. It's companies all betting on the live service over everything.
A bad example would be Suicide Squad KTJL (yeah cuz that game turned out "well" didn't it? Repetitive level/gameplay design loop)
A good example would be helldivers 2 and old halo games. Because they actually focused on making a good game first and then release content later with it's live service.
Regardless, if they focus quantity over quality, there's a chance players ain't gonna stick around with it's live service
I agree with you, I’m sick of this repetitive trend, particularly after I watched the live Summer Game Fest.
We only have so much room in gaming for live service games. I just play Helldivers at this point (played Destiny only before). Most people I know only have time for 1 live service for a reason
Gaming isn't dying because it's "starting to get less fun"
it's dying because of greed, almost every crappy live service is pumped out for the sake of fuelling the executives' avarice
You think greed doesn't cause games to become less fun? Greed ruins many things so why not fun factor?
just play better games and stop complaining
gaming isn't dying
you are only playing bad games made by these AAA companies
@@Karthik-pn2yj I ain't doing that but okay
@@Karthik-pn2yj
True, I’m getting real tired of the “gaming is dying” “gaming isn’t fun anymore” crowd. I only recently played Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia and Ultrakill and they both have kept my attention since then. I’ve even emulated older SMT games like Strange Journey and the old Etrian Odyssey games. These games have kept my attention for literal days, the problem is that so many don’t want to step out of their comfort zone and stick with the unfinished buggy AAA games.
Funny how there is no mention of Valve aside from that one jab when they also played a pretty big role in video game monetization practices. Of course, this is on top of the gambling and black market issues Steam has.
One thing No Mans Sky has that I've always appreciated? You can play it offline. Sure, it started as an offline game, technically speaking, but I enjoy the fact that even now that it's got more online components, you can still disconnect from the internet and play the game perfectly fine. It's just. Nice. A refreshing change of pace from a lot of games nowadays that demand you be online 24/7 or they won't even let you see the main menu - looking at you, Diablo 2. I'd return it if I hadn't bought it digitally.
EDIT;
Also; I've always thought that WARFRAME should be the live service people aspire to mimic. Thriving playerbase, healthy economy, players that trust the devs because the devs regularly communicate with the players through constant streaming, devs that play their own game and regularly STREAM themselves playing their own game, constantly trying new things to see what sticks and expanding on what does, willing to apologize and roll back things that don't pan out, a section of the market DEDICATED to player-made cosmetics - say what you will about your feelings towards that kind of grind, but you can't deny that it's objectively a very healthily made game. Digital Extremes cares about its game AND its players, and more people should follow their example.
great video. i think one way it went wrong is when studios stopped releasing finished live service games and tried to justify it because they add content frequently. i would be happy to pay for micro transactions in a game that is finished and good to support the devs, but nowadays it’s either unfinished or predatory 🤷♂️
I have always hated subscription games. The cost/benefit ratio *for the player* stinks unless you treat them as a full time job, and that's a highway to burnout. My purchase of Minecraft, on the other hand, has been $30 for nigh on 14 years of fun now. Or, taking a game that isn't riddled with Marketplace shenanigans, my little old PSP Final Fantasy Tactics has given me almost a decade of fun for a measly $20. The time pressure of a subscription kills the fun in games.
Now, I've worked as a game developer, and I understand the money guys just LOVE rent-seeking schemes, but as is true of any other industry, rent-seeking ultimately kills the service on offer because it's inherently lazy... and that's even before you layer on CEOs who have political axes to grind and who actively hate gamers. The AAA game space has been infested by activists and people who don't even understand Business 101, let alone what makes a good game. It will be interesting to see things collapse, even as I mourn my former career.
When I see that stuff in a game and I think "yeah they're gonna force me to log in every day for the events, the dailies, the weeklies etc. etc." I just stop playing.
Meanwhile I waste 500 hours on a game that doesn't have any of it, and I log in every day because I wanna play the game.
This is why I play Warframe. Free to play and all the content can be obtained with playing. Oh, and it’s fun to play. No season pass to miss.
I'll be honest here. The sole reason why Wow wasn't defeated back then, was not because it was superior, but because it was older, had frequent updates and people had already invested too much on it. That's the reason why subscription games are so addictive. You're forced to pay monthly to play, so you're consistently investing money into the game. Free to Play games can't compete with that.
There were a couple of games that wee indeed better than WoW. Guild Wars 2 for example should've decimated WoW completely, it's simply that much better of a game. But it never managed to kill wow. Because at that point people were playing WoW not because it was good, but because they were addicted
Been gaming since genesis and GBC. Live service and mobile gaming are the 2 biggest cancers this industry has ever faced. You don’t know you’re living through the golden years till it’s over (90’s/2000’s). As much as I love the 360 and PS3 gamings downward trend started with these consoles and iPhone in general.
Pure facts
Its by far the worst thing that happened to gaming
I remember people gatekeeping and complain about DLC back then now FUCKIN GAMBLING CASINO is normalized in games
F these modern frauds "gamers"
Same. I really wish more games will simply keep all the good rewards behind the actual game. Elden Ring is a magical experience because if you beat the hard boss, YOU GET THE REWARD. In Destiny 2, you kill the raid boss (WITH SIX PEOPLE. SIX) and have a CHANCE to unlock the reward. It took me 27 Last Wish raids for 1K Voices exotic, each run took ABOUT AN HOUR. Absolute joke.
Damn that sucks for you there has literally never been a better time to be a gamer the last 5 years alone has had amazing games with more on the horizon and it's so easy to play old games. You can literally just ignore the games you don't like and you'll still have an overwhelming number of great games to play each year
I agree with your comment. But do you know what it's like to live in poor countries growing up never holding a controller, or a mouse and a keyboard? Maybe these developers who made good games in the PS2 era as people keep saying, should have made games for mobile phones. Because as it stands, the people who identified that a lot of people only have mobile phones to play games, are the ones who make predatory games. We have developers making "good" games pushing the boundaries of technology, making it so your PC is now outdated, making it so that each game cost 70$ and a console coting 400$ While we have thse other "predaotry' devs, making 100 mb games that can instantly be downloaded and played on any phone for people to have fun. You talk about not knowing you've lived through the golden years til it's over. But have you considered you're living a golden life when others literally can't touch any of these games?
There are way more good games coming out now than ever. You just have to ignore the AAA dumpster fires.
You know what's wild? I said this 10 years ago when this started. I immediately said this is fucked. Fortnite is fucked. Pubg. Fucked. All of em.
Yeah. I don't play live service games. Not enough time and not enough money.
And your burger comment made my hungry.
boring gamer
@@gamerbeast3616 youre a skill issue gamer
@@gamerbeast3616fraud🤣
When people say they are still playing wow. I was like "who?" Thats like myspace era. I had to think for it for a bit, "what came before facebook".
11:05 I literally bought fortnite for the save the world mode and then they pivoted towards the Battle Royale and that's when I stopped playing the game. It was no longer the game I had purchased. Luckily they refunded us who purchased the game when they decided to pivot towards the Battle Royale but I still felt cheated because I thought I was going to get a really cool survival tower defense game what's different characters who had different abilities. And instead I ended up with just a shooter.
helldivers is a good example of how a live service can actually be to the benefit of the player imo
Unless you don't want or cannot create a PSN Account
@@S_raB agreed . The monetization really makes me feel like i am not being manipulated though, which is refreshing . Sucks that people cant enjoy the game thouogh thats obvious
Sony is the king
of butchering any hope of a successful title under their name. Little big planet, anyone?
I'm not sure NMS qualifies as a "live service" game (just because you showed it and then talked about "live service"). For me, this term usually means a game for which you either pay a subscription to play, or that has heavy in-game monetization and/or paid-for DLC, seasons etc. NMS has none of that. Everything they delivered since the first release was free. It's really something else in this day and age...
But I do heavily agree with the sentiment of this video. Live-service games are, to a large degree, a cancer to gaming.
pretty much this nms is NOT a live service at all
It’s definitely not a live service but I think it’s still related enough to be brought up with the topic new stuff might be free but they are actively adding somewhat major stuff to shake the game up the same way actual live service games do I think NMS is the model they should follow and stop being so scummy
He was talking about games making a comeback. NMS def fits that bill.
@@Nytrusdeathcyde its definetly a live-service game. live service means indefinet support.
One thing No Man's Sky shows is that subscriptions/game passes/microtransactions are not needed in the slightest to keep a game getting ongoing support far into the future. Any game that has them beyond their initial purchase price is just gouging players for more money.
Im a student learning to become a developer, and thank you for making this video. Yes, I absolutely despite the rise of live service, not only because of it being explotative and filled to the absolute brim with microtransaction and being built around monetization and not fun, but its also the reason why so many game devs go into development and just go make these games instead of making actual good games that are enjoyable.
Like in my country, live service games are popping up like fungi. Every new studio wants to make these damn games, every studio wants nothing but money. There's nothing wrong with wanting money, but when it gets in the way of making fun, and when devs get so blindfolded by that sweet sweet $ that they forget what gaming are for in the first place, I cannot simply just sit there and watch. Like literally, this country haven't made a single game that takes the world by storm and is popular like titles such as Ace Combat, undertale or Spider-Man on PlayStation.
So I do want that after my education, I start up my own studio and make a game that would really take off, instead of just filling the market with more live service trash garbage.
And like Im not entirely against live service. It can be fun if done right. Like Bloons Tower Defense 6 is sort of live service but its fun, upon launch the game already offers tons of content to players. And it only gets better as new contents like maps, towers, heroes and modes arrives. And they make actual content and events so there's something for players to engage without them feeling like they have to grind unlike some of the "games".
I've been screaming to the heavens for years that live service is an immediate game killer.
Nothing turns me off to a prospective game than Live Service.
Helldivers 2 was completely ruined by the always online live service campaign that was forced upon an otherwise phenomenal arcade style horde shooter game
The gaming industry is repeatedly asking the question of “how much are people willing to pay” and no matter how egregious they get, there will almost always be a large enough subset of the playerbase willing to pay enough to make up for any bad PR they get.
Great video. Yeah, I hate seeing $20-30 dollar skins in games. Plus the fact that their currency options aren't always the exact amount you need to purchase a skin to force you to buy the next currency tier is scummy as hell.
Sony's first party games always succeeded a good amount over time. Its nuts they decided going all in on woke and live service would help them, as well as going third party, eliminating the need to own a playstation
Live service itself isn’t bad, it’s the mobile game like live service that is a problem. Tons of expensive microtransactions, tons of grinding, more focus on making money than making a good game. There are live service games that are good, overwatch before the overwatch 2 update was great imo and I had tons of fun with it, I paid $60 and was able to earn skins just by playing with free updates and events. Helldivers 2 is a great live service game despite them having problems with nerfs and balancing stuff. Honestly I think concord could be a good replacement for overwatch to me at least since it’s not a free to play game so I’m hoping there’s no $20 skins and can actually earn skins and stuff in game because that stuff is what ruined overwatch 2 for me. Yes I know it’s oversaturated and all but I liked playing overwatch and I don’t really have a good replacement for it right now because all clones of it are free to play garbage with tons of microtransactions.
Yes but china play mobile trash thats the thing
They have the worst taste in gaming history
Just a reminder that this year has been a gold mine for underrated indies no matter what type of games you are into and any money you spend on them will mean far more to the devs than to a AAA developer.
In a sense. I can't be mad at the games nowadays. Seeing as lot of games are free because you either play it and like and support it, or you dont like it and you go back to what you are playing.
My biggest issue is that live service is monopolizing great AAA studios that could make amazing single-player games instead. We're missing on many potential classic games since 5 to 10 years.
I saw your first video when it came out and was shocked bc the quality was so good I assumed you’ve been doing this for years. This is your 3rd video and honestly can’t wait to see you fully flourish and grow. You’ve found your niche keep going. But don’t be scared to also try something new whenever you feel like it.
16:50 especially now after concord 😅
Anytime I hear XBC background music I know the video essayist has experienced peak RPG and subsequently knows their shit
I freaking hate battle passes. Havent heard of a game at launch and you wanted that sweet skin to buy? Well too bad it's gone forever! And you can't even count on the community to callout these stupid practices because they're going to sit on their exclusive cosmetics they dont even use as reputation points.
video quality and writing direction alone are already top notch yet under 1k subs? Hella underrated my friend. Great video!
Man Brack was the worst Blizzard could happen, he let himself to be overrun by the activision execs, he made some of the most stupid decisions with their games, and of course, some of the most stupid comments, like with the WoW classic sever qu4estion.
I still play xbox 360 games. I am aware of modern gaming and how horrible it is and it hurts seeing where gaming has gone.
Live service went bad when it mixed with microtransactions and players who chose to try and live that game only.
Bruh...
You brought up Destiny 1, but you didn't even mention when Bungie forced everyone to buy the base game AGAIN, not once, but TWICE for them to have access to the DLC expansions.
So crazy that no one seems to remember that, even people that make videos about things thst went wrong. Destiny 1 was the last dollar I will ever give to Bungie.
Never forget.
Becuase its not true?, im confused, what do you mean?
Good video. These games are mainly focused at casual gamers and kids who ask their parents for 10 bucks here and there. Over the course of a year, it adds up to a couple hundred bucks etc... greed is killing gaming which is why it is so important to support the smaller studios.
yes plz stop copying fortnite industry needs to be more creative
(and overwatch)
@@basedboy6848I’m sorry to say this but creativity is dead :(
@@dronerecorderm8055Only if you look at "giants" of the pat that overinvest.
Looking deeper you get stuff like Deamon Turf', 'Blooson Tales' and 'Animal Well'. One just has to look around.
@@dronerecorderm8055nintendo exists.
@@dronerecorderm8055if you think creativity is dead you need to engage with a bigger variety of games and even just art in general, you're not even close to being right
It's as if companies try to separate the monetization from the gaming experience and then come up with ways to maximize it. You can't separate it. F2P makes it a little easier but we're humans with limited time and more and more limited money. They try to hold both hostage to trade for what we really want. A good game. A good community. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
At least I can say I have been immune to even Fortnite and it's crap.
I have long since given up on any kind of game that has any sort of BS within it. As soon as I see even the smallest thing about a game that goes against my standards I drop it and never look at it again within a moments notice. And these days, my tolerance level is very low.
it doesn't need to go and it won't go. it is what most players want, even if a lot of us dont.
I don't mind live server depending on the game, like some things with hell divers . You pretty much helped the story continue or ruined it but for other games it just mostly a pain
6:42
I honestly get why he said what he said. Keep in mind he probably had heard this from hundreds of thousands of people. You'd be kinda fed up too lol. Like imagine putting effort into making something better only to hear people go "We wanna play the older shitter version". People HAVE to get over their nostalgia and rose tinted glasses of the past. It would also be a good idea to dump entitlement over creative works too tbh.
Like I am very tired over people thinking that someone speaking like this about something they made is rude. A creative will always say their older works are terrible regardless of who it is or what medium they choose. This is just a man who's tired. If you want a creative who doesn't care, Emil is an excellent example. I will never forgive him for saying he didn't need to make a centralized document. I want him to publicly come out and state he is a terrible writer, and a failure of a man for his hand in Starfield.
They don’t need to go. They need to be done right.
I disagree with the inclusion of Helldivers 2 as an example here. If anything it's the rare exception where a live service model is actually core to the experience and is to the benefit of players. But yes, f*ck live service models.
There’s absolutely no such thing as the live service genre. Horror is a genre. Action is a genre. Why service is a business model buy forever is a business model free to play is a business model. There’s no relation between them and the genre again shooter is a genre. RPG is a genre there’s subdivisions of like all of them there’s five action RPG, for instance JPG, there’s arena shooters there’s battle Royale shooters. Those are genres and some genres live services a genre. It’s a business model and whether the game is good or bad doesn’t really depend on the business model. It depends on the developers and the management above the developers and quite frankly, it almost literally always depends on whether it’s a AAAgame or an independent game which genres
Yes it does lmao
These games rely on the monetization they use
You have to be -40 iq to no see that
Loot boxes garbage like fifa ect impact the gameplay directly thats not even a debate
And battle pass are also a scam but you are too brainwashed to not see it
The moment I see "live service" or any other term that means the same thing, I don't play the game. I'll just keep playing 15-20 year old games. They're better in nearly every way, anyway, and provide actual enjoyment and gameplay, and I can play them forever without worrying about when the servers will shut down and I can no longer play a fucking single player game. They're a full package with a full experience. I've been bitching about this stuff fkr over a decade now, and irritates me how long it's taken for people to brain up and realize how shitty live service and similar models are for the gaming industry and the consumer.
I 100% agree if I go to get a video game and it says Internet required it’s a scam and a fraud
6:58 He can smell a discord moderator from a mile away.
Thank you for this video! I’ve almost got tied into Diablo 4 and my friends “YOU NEED TO MAKE A NEW CHARACTER AGAIN” ordeal. I saw that and thought to myself that “why would I spend so much wasted time building out the same stuff back to back for some lame game that is clearly battle/season pass spammed. The FOMO was real ever since it came out but I managed to survive without it and I’m better off because of it.
Live service games and publishers chasing “easy money” will be the cause of the next video game market crash.
Im honestly sick of it. Even games i would never expected to be a live service somehow show up on my doorstep. And I try my best to avoid a lot of them. Theyre so mainstream now, its gotten to the point where a State of Play or Xbox Games showcase comes around i joke about it as "More Live Service games! Yay!"
I don't like how companies are putting more and more money into live service and see the revenue grow as reason to spend even more into live services. Whatever you spend most of your money on will be the bulk of your growth.
I've always hated the idea of a live service game
Live service games aren't made by the developers of said games. They are made by a team of psychologist and monetization experts who design every aspect of the game. All the developers do is bring the vision created by said psychologists and monetization experts to life.
Good video man. I too constantly pled to my friends to not buy passes or skin bundles. I tell them you could have saved that cash for lunch or a discounted steam game. They claim they couldn't help themselves and I have started to direct them to therapy. Like if u choose to pay for a digital skin pack vs saving that for gas ⛽. Then u deserve to be stranded on the road. GG.
So as a long-time gamer from 1987, I can tell you right now that the problem itself isn't Battle Royale and live service games. The problem is is when naturally a game becomes popular. All the other gaming companies hit the Xerox button and direct clone that game without understanding why that particular game worked and sold well and then we end up with a ton of disasters where things get over saturated. Happens over and over again. When I was a little kid there was a huge glut of platforming mascots because Sonic and Mario were popular. Then the FPS genre took off on console with Halo and now all the sudden everyone's trying to compete with Halo and Call of Duty and now fortnite and similar games have taken off so everyone's xeroxing them. This is exactly why I'm afraid of GTA VI because I'll never forget when GTA 3 came out and all of a sudden there was a ton of either shitty open world games games that copied the GTA control scheme and camera even though the genre didn't suit it and or tried to have the same sort of humor and gritty pop art style but just absolutely failing. My fear is that when GTA 6 comes out, whatever thing that makes that game unique and stand out is going to be Xerox to death for the next 5 to 10 years. Be surprised if all of a sudden game companies start basically making hyper realistic open world games that have a lot of built-in social media functions cuz that's what it looks like. GTA 6 is going to turn into oh and every protagonist is going to be a couple and they're going to have a man and a woman working together because that's the only reason why people like GTA all of a sudden.
1:55 Every other year ... Destiny: 😂😂😂😂