Support NeoGAF

[64bitmodels]

However, they didn't have a uniformly bad attitude towards games. Once they purchased a PC for me, they saw that it had a wider variety of mentally engaging games, and those time restrictions were largely eliminated -- so long as I was playing games that used my mind. So I could play for longer if I played complex flight simulators, world simulations, real time strategy games with maps, chess simulators, all kinds of things.

They regarded it as their parental responsibility to ensure my games were mentally developing, rather than quick satisfactions that just sink you into a state of repetition without thought. And I'm grateful for it... the breadth of things I learned and found long-term engagement with was quite wide, and paid off over the years.

I 100% agree with them that this matters, that there are qualitative differences between types of games and their impact on the brain or even the soul of the person.

Every video game requires you to use your brain. Some of them more than others sure, not every game is the same. But most Multiplayer games (GaaS is a model, not a gameplay style) are not something that can have you easily turn off your brain, like that.

A lot of shit can be said about Fortnite but at the end of the day the game still requires you to have quick wits and knowledge of player interactions, how systems work, and other stuff to help you get by the game. It's not some brainless slop that you can win by mashing buttons. It's the nature of a lot of multiplayer games really, one of the hardest things in the universe is to properly compete with another human being. It's also why Fighting games are awesome

 

[Guilty_AI]

It's really disappointing to see so many people miss the point here. I am not shitting on the monetary explotation of GaaS or its addictive strategies to get people stuck in the game. I am not shitting on the GaaS games because they are quite fun for me.

I am angry because GaaS gets so successful that it turns companies into shells of their former self who focus on updating the same fucking thing over and over again with nothing new to excite people who... want something new. I am pointing out that 7 year old games have the highest MAU of any modern video game and that this is a problem, we should be championing new good stuff when they come out so new legends can come up instead of the same stuff we were hyped for a decade ago

There are some companies who use their success to fund their other games, like Nintendo who could just as easily coast off of Smash, Mario Kart and Pokemon, but use that cash to fund newer IPs and sequels in their old franchises. But it's disappointing to see many others succumb to this same boring routine of making new content for the same old same old. It is a stagnation objectively

Like it or not, the average person prefers to stay in their comfort zones rather than experience new things. It's why even people who usually buy and play new games will still veer into the same genres and IPs most of the time, why they buy a new Assassins Creed to this day often when they themselves think their games gone to crap.

Then, its not like we don't have new things, so i'm generally happy with what we have today. It's also worth mentioning the market for new IPs or unusual types of games isn't necessarily small, just extremely fragmented.

 

[Felessan]

Not really.

The industry overwhelmingly invested into traditional SP games from 1970 - 2018. They did this because that's where the players & money were.

Only just recently has investment into Live Service multiplayer met or eclipsed the old model. Rapid change is taking place that's easier to see when you pull back the lense.

Industry started invest heavily into MP with the rise of MMO and multiplayer-heavy games that happened in yearly 00s (with widespread of internet itself). MP-only titles dominate PC market for years, back from mid-00s.

There's no one on planet earth who thinks Blizzard isn't investing more into multiplayer/Live Service today than the early 00s.

Make it mid-90s and it will be true. By yearly 00s Blizzard already had Starcraft (heavy multiplayer) and was ready to launch WoW (strictly Live Service).

 

[lughnasadh123]

I am the "younger" generation you moron

You're absolutely not.

 

[64bitmodels]

You're absolutely not.

I'm 17 dude. That's about as young as it gets on this site

 

[SmokedMeat]

I can give props to Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Splatoon because they at least have the nerve to update their franchise with a new entry every couple of years. You can go back and talk about what previous games did right, and different aspects of different games you liked. You don't get much of that with GaaS. You're stuck on the latest update, and you have to keep hearing about the same exact game for years upon years upon years.... it's stagnant. We don't get new multiplayer games because they can just keep updating the old ones, and people will keep playing.

You’re playing and hearing about the exact same game with Splatoon/CoD/Battlefield as well. They just have you duped into thinking that because you handed them $70, you’re getting something new.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Question: if GaaS didn't exist, would the industry be more creative right now, with genre-defining games and gameplay/story innovations?

With the current talent pool at videogame studios? For real?

I think the order of the factors is wrong. Chasing GaaS is a consequence, not the cause.

 

[64bitmodels]

You’re playing and hearing about the exact same game with Splatoon/CoD/Battlefield as well. They just have you duped into thinking that because you handed them $70, you’re getting something new.

Nah not really. Something like the 1918 setting in Battlefield 1 isn't something that wouldn't work as well in a GaaS model
COD Infinite Warfare (as much as people dislike that game) is also a game that wouldn't have worked with GaaS considering how much it uprooted the general game direction to go sci-fi
Splatoon changed up the aesthetic a lot with 3 and each entry gives you a new singleplayer campaign with new weapons.

 

[Dane]

So you're saying that these games are timeless?

Well, yes, they're well received constantly updated games, some to critical acclaim.

You're using a table showing top games by MAU. Of course they're going to all be GaaS games. Every other game out there people play through once or twice and then move on to something else.

Even if your premise was not based on faulty data, how does this prove stagnation? There are a lot of amazing games that aren't GaaS being released every year. They're just not going to show up in a table of top 10 games by MAU.

The graph was made by Circana (NPD) and both Mat Piscatella and Chris Dring indicated that the spending in the industry is being shifted from non Gaas games to them, its almost like gacha whaling but in the industry.

allow me to also yell at clouds, and I am indeed middle aged.... but I'm also a parent, and that's more important

Yes, trash like Fortnite is making children objectively and tangibly stupider (just like Youtube/TikTok addiction, for the shitty parents who let their kids have unrestricted phones).

Yes, they don't know better because they've fallen into the hole of quick gratification. These quick ephemeral always-online entertainments are designed ot plug kids in and make them feel something is happening, give them FOMO if they aren't on the latest season, which is the same loop but with more cynical corporate skins thrown in based on even more braindead franchises like Marvel.

Yes, they'd be better off if restricted from these games. Gaming can--and for many used to be--a medium where you can extend your mind by taking on a vast array of different kinds of challenges, each of which requires a unique kind of thinking. I remember kids who were into PC games in my generation, and most of them spent many hours learning challenging genres: real time strategy, world simulations, very difficult role-playing franchises like the early Gold Box, complex flight simulators, etc.

Today, if a kid is a self-professed "gamer," that sadly means 90% of the time that they just plug into the corporate brain-melting feed from call of duty / fortnite, and sit in their chair doing the same thing month after month, with barely a single brain cell engaged.

It is sad; parents who shrug at it are as responsible as these companies for ruining a generation; and objectively the kids caught up in this (and we all know that Fortnite etc makes its bank off of literal kids lacking self control more than anything) are living substantially dumber lives as a consequence.

I've been a PC gamer for decades too and honestly, a lot of the PC centric genres were relegated to niche by the late 2000s, it wasn't until few years ago that there has been a uptick interest in the mainstream for these games.

I've played Fornite once and couldn't even grasp the idea of being able to build these stacking forts that quickly, Minecraft is Lego as a game, and Roblox is a very modifiable games with game types of all kinds. And kids love to spend money on these complex games while teenagers to adults spend on Call of Duty Warzone.

It's somewhat of an oddity, kids are playing complex games but completely full on Skibidi (which is basically a 00s gmod shitpost revival) and dopamine on everything else, including being illiterate with Windows, I wonder if these games /actually makes things less worse than it would be without them, they would be otherwise on these nonsensical "youtube kids" shorts and Tiktok 24/7.

 

[Laptop1991]

Question: if GaaS didn't exist, would the industry be more creative right now, with genre-defining games and gameplay/story innovations?

With the current talent pool at videogame studios? For real?

I think the order of the factors is wrong. Chasing GaaS is a consequence, not the cause.

Not right now no, but they would have to get better at it and improve a lot over time, or they wouldn't sell many games or make up for the loss of money Gaas brings in, in fact i would be all for that scenario in the long run.

 

[drganon]

I'm 17

That explains a lot.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Industry started invest heavily into MP with the rise of MMO and multiplayer-heavy games that happened in yearly 00s (with widespread of internet itself). MP-only titles dominate PC market for years, back from mid-00s.

That might be when the hose was turned on, but it didn't really start flowing until around 2017 when Overwatch, PUBG, and Fortnite landed. Today, roughly half (maybe more) of the industries investment is into Live Service.

Make it mid-90s and it will be true. By yearly 00s Blizzard already had Starcraft (heavy multiplayer) and was ready to launch WoW (strictly Live Service).

Blizzard is way bigger today than they were in the early 00s.

 

[lughnasadh123]

I'm 17 dude. That's about as young as it gets on this site

Fair enough.

 

[Loomy]

The graph was made by Circana (NPD) and both Mat Piscatella and Chris Dring indicated that the spending in the industry is being shifted from non Gaas games to them, its almost like gacha whaling but in the industry.

Doesn't matter who made the graph. Using it as evidence of stagnation is still drawing a poor conclusion based on poor interpretation of the data.

Also, live service games that are still in the top 10 for MAU 3-7 years after launch is a good thing.

 

[Felessan]

That might be when the hose was turned on, but it didn't really start flowing until around 2017 when Overwatch, PUBG, and Fortnite landed. Today, roughly half (maybe more) of the industries investment is into Live Service.

It’s when share of gaas first time became large (i.e. more than 25% of market)
When SP PC market died due to piracy, it’s was replaced by gaas. And it happened in mid-00s
PC market roughly 80-100% of console market, but 80% of it is Gaas (dont listen to pc master race, SP market on PC is kinda small, around 7-8 bil compared to 25 bil gaas pc market and 35 bil console market). And conversion of PC market to a market of live services happened long time ago - wow is a 2004 game, league of legend 2009 game, dfo 2009 etc
From 2012 mobile took off and started expand heavily and mobile is 99% gaas
Gaas got 50% (worldwide) somewhere around 2015-2017 and now it has around 75% share of total revenue

You probably looking into something like US market where gaas adoption was slow and not so much visible to mainstream and there yes paradigm shift happened much later than worldwide, especially compared to Asia

 

[Guilty_AI]

It’s when share of gaas first time became large (i.e. more than 25% of market)

When SP PC market died due to piracy, it’s was replaced by gaas.

PC market roughly 80-100% of console market, but 80% of it is Gaas (dont listen to pc master race, SP market on PC is kinda small, around 7-8 bil compared to 25 bil gaas pc market and 35 bil console market).

Gaas got 50% (worldwide) somewhere around 2015-2017 and now it has around 75% share of total revenue

The numbers mason, where do they come from?

 

[Dane]

Doesn't matter who made the graph. Using it as evidence of stagnation is still drawing a poor conclusion based on poor interpretation of the data.

Also, live service games that are still in the top 10 for MAU 3-7 years after launch is a good thing.

They're quality games that manage to keep up, the issue is that the money that would be spread into other releases in the year are being concentrated in those few games. But i'm not going to blame them for something that not even the industry would expect to happen a decade ago.

 

[Wildebeest]

There's no one on planet earth who thinks Blizzard isn't investing more into multiplayer/Live Service today than the early 00s.

In relative terms, Blizzard would have to invest an unrealistically large amount of money into developing products to have the same status as industry leaders as they did in the early 00s. The budget for Star Citizen, which hasn't released, is like more than ten times the budget for WoW, and looks like total trash as a game, nothing like as good and polished as WoW did back in the day. So we are looking at Blizzard having to spend something like multiple billions of dollars, starting ten or so years ago, to come out with a game as prestigious and market leading as WoW was back then.

 

[Felessan]

The numbers mason, where do they come from?

Newzoo for example
There are bits and pieces everywhere ready to pick up. PC market for example estimated at ~40bln, and Steam revenue is at ~9 bln and Steam has dominant share of SP PC gaming. Simply DOTA CS and LOL already almost half of SP PC gaming revenue and there are literally behemoths in China and Korea (point Tencent Netease Nexon etc) that still have huge revenue from their PC games.
80% of current revenue for GaaS is a simple math - 99% of 120bln mobile market, 75% of 40bln PC market, 30% of 40bln Console market gives you total share of 80%. Market sizes are from 2023 GNS segment pres.
If you look at global picture and know a history - GaaS was already a huge thing in Asia in 00s - things like Legend of Mir had 200mil users way before Fortnite made it happens in western hemisphere 15 years later.

 

[bender]

I'm 17 dude. That's about as young as it gets on this site

 

[BattleScar]

It's funny. A lot of games like chess have stayed the same for centuries.
Nobody asks for football to receive balance patches or new maps or new content or gameplay overhauls. Maybe a few changes to rules here and there.

If people are happy playing familiar games like they are watching/playing familiar sports or boardgames then let them have their fun.