The gaming world, mainly on the developer/publisher level, is divided into two or three “camps” about what the future of gaming should be. There’s the mobile market, which Japan mainly dominates if you didn’t know, and then there are the “other ways” to make a game. Specifically, the focus is on standard video game design, regardless of genre, and then there’s the live-service model. The latter is easily one of the most controversial elements in game design today, and it’s caused many problems throughout the industry. One former producer of Dragon Age feels he knows why the live-service market is so volatile, and it might not be for the reason you think.
Mark Durrah used to work on not just Dragon Age but Anthem, the infamous live-service game that was supposed to be “Bioware’s next big hit” but instead turned into its biggest nightmare and failure. During a special YouTube video, Durrah broke down the “secret advantage” of games that weren’t a “service,” and one of those advantages is not having to go up against games that have been around for a long time and are constantly improving:
“When I’m trying to get you to pick up my forever game, what I have to think about is the fact that I’m not competing against that other forever game at its day of launch. I’m not competing with World of Warcraft on the day it came out; I’m competing with WoW at the last moment that the prospective player played that game. That game got better after its launch for that player.”
It’s true; one of the “benefits” of certain live-service games is that even after they launch, the developers keep putting out content to try and make it better and keep people interested. That was the other element of Durrah’s argument. If the game is good, and the gamer is invested, they’ll have a harder time switching over to another game:
“You’re competing with the inertia of the fact that people have already integrated this game into their day-to-day life. You need to be better enough than that game to make it worth the while of going to all the trouble of switching.”
That’s a unique way of looking at it, and yet, it’s true. When certain live-service games came out, they were great, addicting, and demanded to be played; players couldn’t get enough of them. Then, when things became more “about the money” than quality, we got things like Anthem, Concord, The First Descendant, and more, and gamers are tired of that.
