Games

This was inevitable as soon as games started getting the budgets of blockbuster movies. No one wants to invest that much money into a project without getting some oversight and control in return.

Of course, very, very few people who have access to that kind of cash have any design sense whatsoever, and even fewer understand the creative process, or what makes games "good"... so they ask for shit that they think will be "safe" money-makers, and we get what we get: endless, samey, soulless shlock.

Live service games generate a constant income with minimal effort once it's live. It will only die if players stop spending money on such games.

Well, no.
Deep Rock Galactic has fully optional skin packs to make money and they're doing great.

Warframe has been chugging along for over a decade now and they're doing great. Beating the pants off of Destiny 2 for average player count.

The live service trick is that live service only works if the company actually cares about the product. Those two companies stand out because they legitimately care and have great communication with their communities.

There's always the option of just not buying a game when it releases.

But hear me out. Battle passes, dark patterns and FOMO.

Its the definition of "you dont own the game". You pay to get access to the service of playing the game and it wants to keep you playing as long as possible so you spend more money on micro transactions. They are constantly updated, usually as some form of "season", have daily login streak bonuses, etc. And after 2 years the game shuts down and you have nothing and can't play anything you paid for anymore.

Every live service game that fails or gets cancled is a good thing.

The worst thing about a live service game to me is that they only work when you can connect to the official servers. Many live service games have shut down and there is no offline mode to continue playing. Sometimes you still pay full price for these games. Sometimes games like The Crew, shut down after you spent money to play it and then The Crew 2 comes out so you pay full price for essentially the same game and the first one doesn't work anymore.

Game they keep updating with new content and microtransactions.

online multiplayer bullshit with monthly fees.

Basically a game that is continuously updated with new content. Lots of different models of it from MMOs to Fortnite to Diablo IV. Many of them are free to play with lots of microtransactions. They usually feature things like seasons and battle passes and loot boxes. They're almost always heavily monetized. The competition in the "genre" is incredibly fierce since most people probably only play a handful of them and friend groups usually all want to be on the same game. It's very hard to break into. Sony announced that they were making a big investment into the area a few years ago and news has been trickling out since that most of them have been canceled.

I was a professional developer in a wide range of gaming areas for about 20 years... Looking back, I can honestly say that 95% of the work I did ended up as a vapor... The 5% that made it to market were so fleeting...

I derived my satisfaction not from completing projects, but solving the underlying problems. That kept me very engaged.

But yeah, not everybody sees things this way.

Live service games that become successful can make billions of dollars, so everyone is trying to be the next big one. Having a ton of concurrent live service projects is the "throw shit at a wall and see what sticks" strategy. They expect most to fail but hope that the 1 that succeeds makes up for it and then some.

They probably started it at a time when analysis suggested it was what people wanted more of, and then during the probably what; 4 or 5 years it took to develop, interest waned?

I don’t think it was weird that they started on this; it was pretty weird that they didn’t pivot or cancel earlier.

Afaik they started development when overwatch was already successful. By the time development finished the hype was over and players had moved to other genres, and had very little interest in an overwatch clone.