After the talk about Hellgate 2 and how they’ve handled this aspect (in a positive way), I realized I’ve been subconsciously avoiding any game billed as live service game for many years now. It’s like the demand too much time or attention or something (not sure what).
How do you all feel about these types of games nowadays?
Never played one. Don’t intend to. My gaming time is so limited that I have no interest or ability to play something where part of the game is keeping up with the treadmill.
Where it makes sense I do.
Magic Arena is a terrific “games as a service” game. New sets are added on the same day as paper magic, and there’s new draft formats going on every two weeks. Compare it to the duels of the planeswalker games back in the day, that weren’t games as a service.
What I hate is developers trying to shoehorn it into games that work perfectly well without it. For that, I would rather a DLC/Expansion model for continued support. Otherwise leave me alone and don’t make me connect to a server and login to my singleplayer game.
Depends on the game.
It’s like anything else, it depends. Some GAAS games it feels like they spend more time and effort trying to figure out how to keep players locked in and paying money. Others feel like they just keep adding on to games that I’m enjoying and happy to get more of.
Gaas that I enjoyed:
Destiny (1) - Daily and weekly missions were great until the expansion came out.
DiRT Rally 1 & 2 - I enjoyed the daily and weekly races for a year or two each.
There might have been others, but I can’t think of any right now.
Would Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor be considered a GAAS since it’s currently always online?
Oh yeah, the most recent Trackmania is also a good one.
I’ve played my share of mmos, so sure.
The season model works really well for some games to continue adding content and keep them fresh.
But as others have said, it depends, don’t shoehorn it Into games that don’t benefit it
MMOs? Sure, that’s kinda the point. Deep Rock Galactic? Sure, they do it right. A few others maybe as well, PoE for example.
Anything else that is battle pass oriented or forced online for what is really a single-player game? No. But then, outside of MMOs and co-op games like above, I’m not really into multiplayer competitive games which seem to be the majority of ‘games as a service’. And even then, I prefer the olden days of doom/quake where the ‘extra content’ was just homemade maps. The game was complete as purchased.
If it’s done right, yes. It’s hard to do it right.
This video from 2019 covers it from the aspect of single player games, if I remember right. And from that aspect, Ross Scott covers it pretty damn well. I don’t play MP games, so I have no clue on that aspect, but turning SP games into GAAS seems very wrong to me, especially from a preservation viewpoint. Ross is still fighting that battle, most recently with regard to The Crew.
Edit: During that first video, Ross first explains how he arrives at his definition of games as a service, which is:
I don’t play multiplayer games and I am still pissed off about shutdown of Crew (which I played entirely solo) so no. Would much prefer if the money, time and talent went into singleplayer premium games.
Yeah, sure, at least some. DRG is a favorite of mine, and other similar coop shooters like Vermintide, Payday 2, etc. I will eventually buy Helldivers 2.
And years ago I played a lot (two years) of Smite. And more than 100 hours of Paladins. I don’t play PvP anymore but that’s not related to GaaS.
BTW
Helldivers, not Hellgate :P.
Also, I’m not sure they handled this aspect in a positive way, a basic thing would be to only offer microtransactions that are cosmetic in nature, but from what I know, there are equipment with effect on the gameplay (they can be argued that they are sidegrades, not upgrades, but still, it’s gameplay variety under a paywall). It’s all in a grey area because you get a bit of premium currency by playing the game, but it isn’t clear how much you get, and how much grind it supposes.
But taking in account this isn’t a f2p game, it rubs me in the wrong way.
Can we argue that any Paradox game with more than 12 dlcs is a GAAS? Any Paradox enjoyer here?
Hell, Crusader Kings 2 is basically a f2p game, the game is free, the monetization is mtx/dlc.
Arma 3 is another GAAS game, it and its dlc has been their main source of income for 11 years, and because of that they have been updating the game for 11 years.
D&D is GAAS. For the Emprah? GAAS. Battletech? GAAS. Any CCG ever? GAAS.
GAAS are fine as a concept. Problem is that they’re mixed with a bunch of junk, servers that need to stay up, FOMO to make sure you pay, trying to consume all your time, numbers go up because monkey brains like bigger number , etc.
Hah, yeah, if anything nerds have a long experience with this model!
Yep, the problem is less Games as a Service, and more Games as an Addiction, with game designers making a series of decisions to make their game as addictive and exploitative as possible. From one thousand progression systems because we like to make numbers bigger, to ‘dailies’, to battlepasses with FOMO tactics, to random pulls, to etc. It’s the model forged in the fires of f2p mobile games.
I also think some big games have given GaaS a bad name, and not because the points above but because the games weren’t just very good?, games like Avengers, Anthem, and now Suicide Squad, because they all fall under the same trap of trying to have their cake and eat it too, they want to be your AAA cinematic game with story but also at the same time a GaaS and it doesn’t work; making a game of a single type is already hard enough, but they somehow try to make a game excellent that can cover both ‘types’ and it ends up being mediocre.
I’m not wild about having to wait for the Helldivers 2 community grind to get access to different planets to play on, as it makes that meta-layer progress seem quite arbitrary. I would prefer a personal strategy layer, something similar to TW:Shogun 2’s avatar conquest mode.
I do like having my games get updates and having a reason to come back to them, whether it’s the dedicated support of Arcen always working on an AI War, or a rough launch eventually getting polished and adding new events like No Man’s Sky, or long term expansions like Guild Wars 2. I’m quite willing to pay for games with exceptional support, even F2P ones (Dota 2 for example).
The part of “live service” that immediately sucks is when you have an otherwise good game that becomes a dumpster fire of server issues and disconnects and lost progress because of an online requirement in what’s otherwise a PvE co-op game, in order to sell hats or push DLC or whatever.
A lot of these games would benefit hugely from having proper offline single player and modding, but that doesn’t fit in the usual business model of selling overpriced skins and other crap to whales.
What I hate to see is good games that die just because they didn’t get a big enough playerbase to generate cash for funding new content, active dev teams, and running pricey servers. I still want to play Gigantic and Lawbreakers for instance.
Also terrible are unfinished games that go live for the cash, but don’t take off, and sink because they didn’t offer enough or weren’t ready, similar to Early Access launches that are just fishing for hits. It absolutely makes sense for them to get that feedback and stop spending on a lost cause, but it sucks for their players, and developers, and we’re all wary from watching these failures happen.
Another big problem is that more isn’t always better (see TF2, for example, or Rainbow 6: Siege) and change for the sake of change can eventually pollute and sour a successful title. Take Destiny 2 for instance, eventually removing paid content and confusing new players because it got so bloated. Increasingly unfitting and garish skins also seem to be the norm.
Ultimately I just want to buy and play good games, rather than worry about whether the community and developers will invest enough to make/grow/keep something good. There are exceptions, the rare unfinished indie games that are absolutely worth supporting, but those don’t come with an expiration date.
With live service games, it’s sort of a rent-seeking hostage-taking relationship, as in “keep paying us … or else”.
Like many things, as everyone has already said, depends on how well it is done and whether the model is suited for the game in question.
Yeah, the lines get blurry. Some people would say no, it requires a server/online component instead of something you play locally but I think they’re close to GaaS, personally.
NMS blurs it even further because there is an online component but the zero monetization is almost unheard of.
I don’t necessary mind GaaS. I’m completely over the seasonal model though. I’m just not interested in grinding out a bunch of content I’ve already seen every three months to get to the new content.