Help me understand the GaaS appeal for game developers

Game devs: I wAnt t0 MakE sKiNs f0r ThE resT Of mY LiFe!!!
giphy.gif
 
High risk, high reward.
But the chances of success are so low i dont get why so many studios even bother with their attempts. Do they seriously think they have a chance at going 1 on 1 with Fortnite or Destiny and win? :messenger_tears_of_joy:
More games should try to do a better version of Destiny. There is literally money in waiting for whoever can correctly figure out a Shooter MMO/Shooter Gaas without putting up too many money/time gates.

Destiny and Warframe should not hold an entire genre hostage.
 
Is it really highly risky relative to a 'normal' game release?

With GAAS you can put out a somewhat half-baked game and drip-feed content over time. If the game doesn't take off as expected you can still make some additional money on the players that bought it and then close it down and move on to the next thing.

Compared to making a content heavy singleplayer title that fails and then moving on to the next 5-6 year project, GAAS sounds like a less risky investment. Even if the failure rate might be higher you likely wont loose as much money as with the alternative (?). And even if you only have decent success you'll probably be raking in a lot more money than you would with a non-GAAS title. Not to mention the return you'll get if you're actually successful.
 
Last edited:
Much like kids who came up gaming with Atari, Colecovision, Intellvision and Nintendo NES, we too were conditioned to accept and expect certain things in gaming. 1980's arcades, asking for quarters etc.

Kids these days have been so conditioned with Battlepasses, Microtransactions, V-Ro-Bux, Loot Boxes, to the point they think it's normal for gaming. Just wait until they have disposable income in 5 to 15 years. That's what these companies are banking on.

Fortnight and Roblox have really done a number on kids, then they move on to the next tier of games with shit to buy (Apex, COD etc). Rarely is it a single player title. Anyone who has kids pretty much knows. this.
 
Last edited:
Long story short = Kids today are more interested in GaaS games and these games make more money than single player games over time.
 
Last edited:
This...

voz580@facebook.gif


...helps fund this

The-Matrix-Awakens-An-Unreal-Engine-5-Experience-1.gif
Right, and if you're a company man that's all well and good, but if you're an understaffed Fortnite Dev that gets told it's a privilege to work for Epic and not to expect bonuses that reflect their hard work, maybe not so much. GAAS are a cancer in this industry and you're pointing out a tumor.
Permacrunch is a thing now.
 
Right, and if you're a company man that's all well and good, but if you're an understaffed Fortnite Dev that gets told it's a privilege to work for Epic and not to expect bonuses that reflect their hard work, maybe not so much.
That's a bigger, more corporate/governmental problem. We all know how it can be solved, but until then we have to work within reasonable means around said issue.

GAAS are a cancer in this industry and you're pointing out a tumor.
I'm just pointing out the sales pitch.

I truly don't think Epic would be where they are today, as fast as they've gotten where they are, without Fortnite. It is what it is and we will have to learn to coexist with Gaas sticking around for the forseeable future. Many will come and go, but as a guy who frequented many MMOs during the MMO boom in the early 2000s, what's happening these last 5-7 years isn't new to me at all. Gaas are just the new sleeker, smaller versions of MMOs but with a way faster/sooner expiration date. Things will eventually even out with them the same way they did with MMOs.

Until then I'll try the ones I like and not play the ones I don't like, just like I did with MMOs.
 
The appeal is money

If Naughty Dog has a GAAS in one part of their studio making $200 million every year then it gives them more security to go to Sony and ask for $500 million for their next AAA game. It might even allow them to take more risks on that game.

That can also be expanded to Playstation Studios as a whole

At least thats the ideal for me
 
That's a bigger, more corporate/governmental problem. We all know how it can be solved, but until then we have to work within reasonable means around said issue.


I'm just pointing out the sales pitch.

I truly don't think Epic would be where they are today, as fast as they've gotten where they are, without Fortnite. It is what it is and we will have to learn to coexist with Gaas sticking around for the forseeable future. Many will come and go, but as a guy who frequented many MMOs during the MMO boom in the early 2000s, what's happening these last 5-7 years isn't new to me at all. Gaas are just the new sleeker, smaller versions of MMOs but with a way faster/sooner expiration date. Things will eventually even out with them the same way they did with MMOs.

Until then I'll try the ones I like and not play the ones I don't like, just like I did with MMOs.
Sure, and in that context you are absolutely right, on all fronts.

But in the context of a Fortnite dev, which is the OP's question, it means fuck all.
I got into a spat above with someone because they think GAAS are good for game devs, their creativity and the industry as a whole, haha. The reality, of course, is that senior devs build the thing and junior devs keep it alive making skins and events permacrunched into oblivion while others get to reap the rewards. Sounds awful, frankly.
 
Fortnite, League of Legends, mobile... some companies see what they do and it steals their sleep... But the reason why they are "banking" on it even when the market reacts negatively to that model is because those games were already in development for so long that it makes no sense to cancel them, since games are also too expensive to make and money was already spent, they just better try their best and hope for the best 🤷‍♂️
 
All you need are some big spenders on mtx, season passes, and loot crates and you can makes billions. But as T4keD0wN said above, it seems the chances of success are low. You hear about a lot of them that bomb.

The temptation is too great to ignore.

Everyone knows the big titles make billions, so every studio gets tempted with the "Well, even if we only achieve 1% of what Fortnite does that's $XXXXXX. It cant be that hard to carve out a tiny pie slice of the GAAS market".

I see that kind of responses all the time where I work. We dont do gaming products, but you sit in these meetings and some marketing people get out their fancy powerpoint slides (which they all seem to put a lot of time into slick graphics, animations and embedded videos) and will present market data.

The category is worth $1 billion, the top 20 products are these that hoard 70% of the sales. The other 80 crappy items are the rest of the $1 billion.

"Well, if we launch our products, we should be able to get about 1% per item. That's an average of $10 million per, since we think our products compare similarly against items #30-40"

It never goes beyond that. It's one part data skimming, one part throwing a dart.

I'd estimate 90% of the products I've seen pitched internally never achieve the targets the marketing managers state. All overinflated BS numbers.
 
Last edited:
Much like kids who came up gaming with Atari, Colecovision, Intellvision and Nintendo NES, we too were conditioned to accept and expect certain things in gaming. 1980's arcades, asking for quarters etc.

Kids these days have been so conditioned with Battlepasses, Microtransactions, V-Ro-Bux, Loot Boxes, to the point they think it's normal for gaming. Just wait until they have disposable income in 5 to 15 years. That's what these companies are banking on.

Fortnight and Roblox have really done a number on kids, then they move on to the next tier of games with shit to buy (Apex, COD etc). Rarely is it a single player title. Anyone who has kids pretty much knows. this.
Well said about conditioning.

Since I grew up playing games in the 80s, anything resembling mtx I avoid. No interest and not the norm for gaming for most of my life.

No different than game companies sticking to their guns. Gamers had big internet uproars on going digital, mtx, $70 US games, online needed to run a game etc.... Looks like gamers accept it if studios and publishers stick with it. Stick with it and gamers will always eventually accept.

It's a very hyped based industry with people having holes burned into their pockets. You'd think gamers would all wait for day one YT videos and reviews. By the time noon hits, Metacritic probably already has 30 reviews you can skim. By the time you get home from work or school, a big name game probably has 50 to read. And that excludes YT and Twitch videos to check out. But so many games end up being shit, but you still got tons of gamers PREORDERING DIGITAL games as if internet downloads have a limited quantity. Insane.
 
Last edited:
As others have mentioned, it's money. But also what we're seeing now was set in motion years ago, when times were different and both customer sentiment and regulatory sentiment towards Gaas was very different. In the 5 years since the games were seeing emerge now (and generally flop), and when they started development, we've seen huge consumer backlash, which feels like really got going with avengers and only snowballed since. The ones making money are still overwhelmingly still the same ones it's been for years, all the new ones are dying at launch left right and centre. Gamers who play them are heavily invested in the ones they are already playing, and not keen to switch. Older gamers (and those who were playing Gaas games when younger) don't have time for them as they are generally incompatible with adult life. The model was effectively reliant on hooking and manipulating kids, who had the time to play constantly, and were easily manipulated by the gambling mechanics into spending tons of money. Many of those kids have grown up now and will be churning out, whilst regulatory bodies have now stepped in making it much harder to replace them with the next generation (and harder to empty their pockets). Epic was fined billions for manipulating kids in Fortnite, multiple countries now consider loot boxes gambling (so 18+), china now requires any under 18 to link their national ID to play online, and for under 18s strictly limits game time to something equivalent to an hour per day (across all online games, ie not per game) AND severely limits monthly spend on microtransactions, whilst also not approving hardly any new western games for sale. All these things have happened in the last couple of years, long after the flood of failing launches were seeing now began dev, and long after the games were seeing announced now were greenlit.

At the same time, we're seeing some games that were clearly intended to be GAAS, microtransaction filled games release without stores, but their core being structured as tho they were. Redfall being one example where the leaks showed full stores etc. AND we're seeing the biggest games of the year, which are making big £££ being single player games. Along with demographic reports showing the biggest gamer demographic and industry growth sector being millennials. With the number of kids/young adults playing declining. I don't know about others here, but I'm an older gamer, and fortunately don't have kids, and have a wife who is happy for me to play games, so I still get a lot of PlayStation time, but most people I know would be lucky to play a few hours a week. They certainly don't have time to be addicted to a GAAS game.

So imo we will see things shift away from this nonsense, companies are too deep in to cancel it all now tho, and I expect we'll see many more failures and likely quite a few studios go under.

I agree with this. The perfect example and eye-opener for devs have to be the huge backlash that Suicide Squad got.

While this game should've been story and character driven like Arkham series, it mostly got bad impressions from being GaaS.

The worst part is that they all clearly want to be a Fornite clones. Same premise, style of game and whatnot. They don't even switch genres or style.

I don't see any Sony GaaS game being successful. If they make TLoU MP game like that, it's going to fail.
 
Wrong, wrong, wrong...


When publishers fund and distribute single player games, is it also not about money? Of course, it is, you guys are observing this through a single lens. GaaS isn't a genre nor is it just a way to monetize a property. It also enables developers a sustainable avenue to provide ongoing support in terms of servers, hotfixes, story dlcs and a variety in game content. To produce a product that grows with time into something far bigger than a single player experience could ever offer. Good GaaS games require substantially large sums of money to develop, they're also difficult to make and sustain. You guys undermine their value because you simply choose not to understand them, or you don't like multiplayer games in general.
I said recurrent cash flow.
 
Market expansion.

It is seen as a way to bring in more and more gamers, to move from Call of Duty mobile to premium games.

SP games are touching a ceiling at this point. Those who want to play them already do.
 
#1 Money and if done correctly can be great for a team. No need to keep releasing a series of games just update and patch in. Something like this would be good for a Madden or NBA2k instead of yearly releases of a "new game"
 
It's not just games, take a look at BMW's plans to tie your heated seats to a subscription. Almost all big companies don't want you to own anything because it makes so much money when the customer is dependent. Neflix was a great thing until everyone threw away their Blu-ray players.

A dependent customer is your b*tch and you can treat him that way.
 
What kind of demon posses these companies to bank on this dog shit genre that is both highly risky and with low rewards? 1 in 10 projects end in utter failure and end up dead within 2 to 3 years
are these developers so out of touch with reality that they don't see the endless lifeless corpses of dead GaaS games every fucking where they look?
is the cost for the development of this dog shit genre lower than a Single player project?
1 in 10 fail? It's more like 1 in 10 succeed, but even that is too high if success is staying popular for several years like Fortnite. Its the Venture Capital of games only without the portfolio to make it profitable for the publisher.

I am sure a lot of developers get pissed when their boss tells them their next project is a GaaS game. They now know they are having their careers gambled away on a likely failure and even if they get lucky and succeed, they will then have to support the same fucking game for years and years.
 
Most gamers want their games to last forever. Like buying or playing a game is some sort of investment on the future.

Gamers are dumb.
 
Ultimately its probably worth the risk and cost if you eventually break through.

As the IRA said to Thatcher (or GaaS developers will say to single player developers),

Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.
 
Top Bottom