Key Points
- She addresses that no studio is safe from being shut down, and that the quality of the games they produce is irrelevant.
- AAA Singleplayer and Live Services games are both incredibly risky, but taking the risk with Live Service games is preferable because they produce a tremendously larger and continuous monetary gain over Singleplayer games, which is why publishers have continued, and will continue, to make Live Service games, despite recent failures.
- We have entered a "Time War" where everything is now competing for your time. Social Media, mobile gaming, streaming, movies, shows, etc etc. Many AAA games are being developed with the mindset of keeping you engaged day after day, spending more money, to keep you away from other things that can take your money and attention.
- Indie Games are not the answer to this problem. Indie game studios shut down all the time, you just don't hear about it like you would a Tango Gameworks or Arkane Studios. It is very difficult for Indie Games to get funded and find a publisher.
- Great Singleplayer games like BG3, ER, and TotK are not going away. We'll always get them. But they will become more and more the exception to the rule as time goes on.
So I was sitting for a few days on these points and here's my issue with them:
Ad1. "the quality of the games they produce is irrelevant." - this is a bizarre statement pointing out to serious problems with the business model, if true. Does there exist data pointing out to lack of correlation between quality of the game (as reflected in e.g. Metacritic score) and sales? Yes, there will be cases where a mediocre game sold a lot, a great game didn't sell very well - can we say these are"exceptions to the rule"?
Ad2; "but taking the risk with Live Service games is preferable because they produce a tremendously larger and continuous monetary gain over Singleplayer games, which is why publishers have continued, and will continue, to make Live Service games, despite recent failures." - first of all, it's not "they produce", they MIGHT produce if successful i.e. are quality games, have speedy development, constant content being produced, etc. The industry clearly favors the model that if something is not a huge hit you abandon it quickly e.g. Suicide Squad or Redfall. However you have data proving the opposite e.g. FFXIV, Cyberpunk 2077 - even after bad launch as long as you commit to improving the title it will become successful. I am sure fixing the existing title is a fraction of money that goes into developing a new Live Service game from scratch.
This also doesn't take into account smaller SP games, made on smaller budgets. Again (and from PM perspective it's probably the right choice) - top of the industry seems to accept only 5-year-dev-time, $200mln budget development model for SP games e.g. God of War, Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, etc.
Ad3. "Many AAA games are being developed with the mindset of keeping you engaged day after day, spending more money, to keep you away from other things that can take your money and attention." - this is exactly the argument on why you shouldn't make new Live Service game your next development - you are trying to compete in incredibly crowded market, with well established actors already. Also - once people get invested in their game of choice they tend to stick with it for years.
Ad4. "It is very difficult for Indie Games to get funded and find a publisher." - yes, because all the major publishers prefer the model described above. It is still however possible to self-fund an indie game and create an innovative gameplay experiences, which is not possible in case of AAA model, thus limiting maximum the risk due to investment involved. The reason why all AAA games feel more or less the same.
Ad5. "Great Singleplayer games like BG3, ER, and TotK are not going away. We'll always get them. But they will become more and more the exception to the rule as time goes on." - this is again a strange statement knowing what we already know about the industry:
- That Live Service landscape is extremely competitive
- That in order to develop a LS game you are in the end betting a studio's future, if you don't succeed (and data points out you won't) studio will get closed and you as a dev will lose your job
- Then why on earth as a talented game designer you would go work for a studio making a Live Service game?