The term “live-service gaming” has become a rather “dirty word” among most gamers. The reason for this is that over the last several years, numerous gaming companies have basically abandoned the “standard model” of releasing full video games at the start and then moving on to new projects in lieu of making “numerous updates and releases” that gamers either have to pay for or wait a long time to fully enjoy. As a result, the success of these titles is honestly hit-or-miss, with most entries in that brand being a “miss” recently. The head of the title Warframe, though, thinks that this has to do with the teams behind the games, not the games themselves.
This statement came from Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair, who talked with VGC about the state of live-service games and why many of them don’t work out. His conclusion? The publishers want “immediate success,” and when they don’t see it right away, they get rid of it without trying to build up on what they have:
“They think the release is make or break, and it’s not. They have a financial way to be persistent, and they never do it. It comes out, doesn’t work and they throw it away. Isn’t that a shame when you put so many years of your life into iterating on those systems or building technology or building the start of a community, and because the operating costs are high, you get terrified when you see the numbers drop and you leave. We’ve seen this with amazing releases that I think have massive potential, and I think they eject too soon.”
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Sadly, that’s not just true; there are numerous examples of this across multiple big-name developers and publishers, including EA, Platinum Games, and likely Ubisoft, with a certain pirate title that was released earlier this year. Oh, and let’s not forget Rocksteady, who was forced to jump into the live-service space with their DC Comics title about the Suicide Squad, only for it to be put out as a free game on Amazon Prime Day about six months after its highly-troubled launch.
Going back to Warframe, that title came out in 2013 and was a true live-service title. Digital Extremes didn’t have the biggest launch ever but made a quality game that they slowly built up, and it became something special. It’s been going for over a decade, has a convention dedicated to it, has a consistent player base, and even sponsored an episode of the internet show Death Battle that featured one of its characters! So, yeah, they know how to make a successful and long-lasting live-service game, and others should take note of it.
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