The amount of genuinely good and successful live service games is so minimal that it’s actual insanity seeing AAA execs trying to reinvent the wheel and failing every time.
It’s interesting because the live-service formula is kind of antithetical to what they want. They essentially want a low-effort low-cost perpetual money-printing machine. They really should just invest in actual money printing machines and churn out fake money, because that’d be a more successful endeavour.
The live-service games that live on do so because of a constant investment and commitment to the game and the community it harbours. The moment people think the writing’s on the walls, they jump ship.
It’s just so bizarre to me that they want people to invest time and more importantly, money into the game, when they themselves aren’t willing to do so.
The live-service games that live on do so because of a constant investment and commitment to the game and the community it harbours. The moment people think the writing’s on the walls, they jump ship.
This especially. Just as an example, I sunk way too much time into Destiny 2, and recently picked up Warframe after putting D2 away last year, and the difference between the studios behind them both is night and day. The former feels like an abusive relationship, built on constant FOMO, removing content, and constantly skirting around the community’s numerous issues with the game’s systems and sandbox (and that’s all on top of Bungie/Sony execs treating the actual devs like garbage).
The latter feels like a game where the players are genuinely treated as the game’s lifeblood and rather than nickel and dime them for every last thing, the devs give them what they want. Not to mention literally everything in the game minus community-created cosmetics can be earned without spending anything at all.
These sorts of comparisons are all over the place. PoE2 compared to Diablo 4 or post-Krafton Last Epoch for example. You can’t just pump out a live service game and hope shit sticks, you need to foster a community around it.
I think Digital Extremes, at least currently, is still very aware of what made them successful.
John Bain for example spoke out about the games potential very early, earning them a big influx of players, and they’ve previously stated that Warframe wouldn’t have been a thing if not for him. I guess it can be particularly contrasted with the fact that Warframe was kind of a Hail Mary project for the studio. They’d pitched it around for a while but no publisher responded positively. When they were running out of money they just said “fuck it” and went to work on it, publisher be damned.
I’ve been playing on and off for years now, since around the release of The Second Dream. It makes me really happy to see that they’re doing well. I hope they’ll continue to do well, and do well by the community.
The amount of genuinely good and successful live service games is so minimal that it’s actual insanity seeing AAA execs trying to reinvent the wheel and failing every time.
It’s interesting because the live-service formula is kind of antithetical to what they want. They essentially want a low-effort low-cost perpetual money-printing machine. They really should just invest in actual money printing machines and churn out fake money, because that’d be a more successful endeavour.
The live-service games that live on do so because of a constant investment and commitment to the game and the community it harbours. The moment people think the writing’s on the walls, they jump ship.
It’s just so bizarre to me that they want people to invest time and more importantly, money into the game, when they themselves aren’t willing to do so.
This especially. Just as an example, I sunk way too much time into Destiny 2, and recently picked up Warframe after putting D2 away last year, and the difference between the studios behind them both is night and day. The former feels like an abusive relationship, built on constant FOMO, removing content, and constantly skirting around the community’s numerous issues with the game’s systems and sandbox (and that’s all on top of Bungie/Sony execs treating the actual devs like garbage).
The latter feels like a game where the players are genuinely treated as the game’s lifeblood and rather than nickel and dime them for every last thing, the devs give them what they want. Not to mention literally everything in the game minus community-created cosmetics can be earned without spending anything at all.
These sorts of comparisons are all over the place. PoE2 compared to Diablo 4 or post-Krafton Last Epoch for example. You can’t just pump out a live service game and hope shit sticks, you need to foster a community around it.
I think Digital Extremes, at least currently, is still very aware of what made them successful.
John Bain for example spoke out about the games potential very early, earning them a big influx of players, and they’ve previously stated that Warframe wouldn’t have been a thing if not for him. I guess it can be particularly contrasted with the fact that Warframe was kind of a Hail Mary project for the studio. They’d pitched it around for a while but no publisher responded positively. When they were running out of money they just said “fuck it” and went to work on it, publisher be damned.
I’ve been playing on and off for years now, since around the release of The Second Dream. It makes me really happy to see that they’re doing well. I hope they’ll continue to do well, and do well by the community.