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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example: (Gaming)

by cheapLEY @, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 18:19 (1801 days ago)

Colin Campbell published a story today over at Polygon. It is a look at development at Epic surrounding Fortnite.

It's not a surprising story. Fortnite became far more successful than anyone expected, and the developers working on it are working in a state of perpetual crunch to keep up, lest a brief lull in content sends players looking elsewhere.

I think it highlights the dangers of "games-as-service." I have certainly felt disappointed in Bungie's development pace, both in terms of patches and sandbox updates and in amount and pace of new content releases. Stories like this one really do make me take a step back and realize what I am asking for when I wish for more content and updates at a quicker pace.

More so, however, it really makes me question whether games-as-service is even a good model to be chasing in the first place. There's no denying its profitability, so there's also no surprise that it has become the de facto goal for publishers.

It makes me sad, though. Developers are stuck in a loop that seems inescapable. Players will always burn through content faster than developers can make it, and will always be unsatisfied by any amount of content.

I'm tempted to say that Epic should hire more developers, but there is certainly a point at which just throwing more people at the problem won't actually solve anything. But, also, at a certain point, Fortnite has become the primary example that many players hold up as "doing it right" in terms of content pace, and that seems dangerous for the industry as a whole. If the market leaders are in a state of perpetual crunch, competitors will surely have to do the same thing, and maybe even at a worse pace in attempts to keep up.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 20:30 (1801 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by Ragashingo, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 20:45

Yeah. I never liked the games-as-a-service model outside of Destiny. For instance, I've long refused to play any iOS game that requires a network connection. Mostly, that's because I do not a game to lock me out if the internet is down. But, I can't remember the last time that a game that required a network connection didn't also have tons of micro transactions. It's been kinda a win win over the years.

It has been nice the past couple of years though. Yes, things like Fortnite are widely played and generate a ton of money, but story based games like Spider-man, God of War, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider, etc have been pretty strong and widely praised lately. As much as the games stuck in endless crunch have risen to prominence, it is gratifying to see the reactions from players and the gaming press when something like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is announced to cheers at the absence of micro transactions.

Also, take a look at what Apple is doing with their upcoming Apple Arcade service: They are putting tens or hundreds of millions of dollars down to fund the development of over 100 high quality mobile games that include no ads or in-app purchases. If those games are good enough and the service is a success, perhaps we'll see a nice shift away from timer based "pay more to keep playing" games that have topped the charts for the last several years.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by cheapLEY @, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 21:03 (1801 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Oh, you're not wrong.

Folks lamenting the "death of single player games" have always been wrong. It really is the best time to be playing games--there are so many options no matter what your taste is.

But I do think the games as service model is just too alluring for big companies chasing profits. It doesn't even seem like a game of that model has to be particularly good to make boatloads of cash, and I do not think it's putting the industry in a good place.

Then again, we see reports of crunch and awful work conditions on stuff like Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3, or any number of more "traditional" games, so I'm not sure it matters.

The business surrounding making games is absolutely fucked. It's just depressing.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 21:41 (1801 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Sure, we've heard of bad crunch before, but, as bad as it was, the crunch on Witcher 3 or those other games is over now. At some point a lot of those people who were asked to crunch completed their work and got the chance to breath and really think about their future. It sounds like developing under crunch is, in some way, as addictive as playing something like Destiny of Fortenite. And if the development never ends the workers are always pushing themselves to take another one for the team.

It makes me sick to think of people stuck working on something like Fortnite on an endless basis. We've got to be getting close to the point where the game has been receiving rapid updates on a constant schedule for longer than most games standalone games were in development, period. That's just insane.

It makes me wish for the good old days. Remember when the Master Chief said he was going to finish the fight? Some people threw their controllers at their screens, but I was elated. It meant there would be another Halo. That it would take three years before the story was wrapped up didn't bother me.

It's also interesting, because back then I was a Halo player who played other games too. For a while I was a Destiny player that played other games to. Now though, I'm a gamer who rotates between new games and old, familiar games, and them back to Destiny for a while before starting the cycle again. It feels so much nicer to cycle to whatever I feel like playing instead of wishing and demanding than any one game be updated right now.

Look at my gaming in the last few weeks:
- Some Destiny for Season of the Drifter and about three days of The Revelry.
- About a week and a half to replay and finally beat the main and DLC story of Horizon: Zero Dawn.
- About two days to beat Surtr and Valraven and to cross the bridge in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
- A couple of hours in Gravity Rush 2. Just long enough to dock with Jirga Para Lhao. (I want to play it more but I can only can't yet, because...)
- Yesterday I started what I intend to be a full play through of Dad of War, because even though I beat it once, I did not beat all the Valkyries. I intend to do so this time...

That feels so much better than running a bunch of heroic Strikes in an effort to push my Destiny power level up the final 10ish points to reach 700...

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by cheapLEY @, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 22:19 (1801 days ago) @ Ragashingo

I feel you. I really do worry about the state of perpetual crunch in live service games. It really does seem like no one is winning (besides the rich guys at the top who have enough money anyway). Developers get to spend their every waking moment at work, and players get half-baked mediocre content every month or two. Like, let’s be real here. The Dawning, The Festival of the Lost, The Revelry. They are neat little events, but is that really compelling content? Would we not be better off to skip that shit and let Bungie take more time to make genuinely great stuff? I hate to #codywasright this, but I’d be far more interested in just getting a Forsaken every year, even if it means a year long gap between releases.

I’m out of Destiny right now. I don’t anticipate going back any time soon. Start of next season at the earliest, maybe not even then. I like Destiny, but it is almost nefarious in the way it asks for a mile when I give it an inch. It is simply not possible to play Destiny casually, and I’m really not interested in giving it all the time it asks for.

I just stated Dragon’s Dogma for the first time and am loving it. I also started a new play through of God of War (I really want to Platinum that game—I only need to do the Niflheim stuff, beat all the Valkaries, and mop up a few collectibles I think). That Red Dead article yesterday has me sort of wanting to jump back in to that game, too.

I also have Vampyr and Prey waiting on Game Pass. And I’ve been slowly making my way through The Master Chief Collection again. I can’t wait to play through all of Reach when it finally gets added.

Not to mention I discovered three days ago that Hulu has all of Stargate SG-1 available. (:

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Mini-events

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 07:40 (1801 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I feel you. I really do worry about the state of perpetual crunch in live service games. It really does seem like no one is winning (besides the rich guys at the top who have enough money anyway). Developers get to spend their every waking moment at work, and players get half-baked mediocre content every month or two. Like, let’s be real here. The Dawning, The Festival of the Lost, The Revelry. They are neat little events, but is that really compelling content? Would we not be better off to skip that shit and let Bungie take more time to make genuinely great stuff? I hate to #codywasright this, but I’d be far more interested in just getting a Forsaken every year, even if it means a year long gap between releases.

I personally love the mini-events. They aren't anything extra special, but I enjoy them every time. Not just for the content, but for the idea of them. I mean, I think they went over the top with the decoration this year and I love it. And yes, I just said that about a video game main hub. I even showed the wife who has basically no interests in games.

Most people might say that it adds nothing to the story, but I still see these mini events as the WW2 Christmas day where war stops for one day and we remember something before all the fighting. I like that. Sure, I've only played for about 2-3 days, but that doesn't matter. I don't have to play constantly for 3 weeks to enjoy the content. And if people think that is what it takes to enjoy content then... I don't know, just like, my opinion.

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Mini-events

by Malagate @, Sea of Tranquility, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 08:44 (1801 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

I really like the events, too. I don't mind (I actually prefer) that they attempted to have this event make a difference in EVERY activity (although Nevin made a good point to me about the consistency that Comp players look for, which I can't really argue with). I just think they need a touch more work. There were some things that were a bit short-sighted in execution, but I think their heads and hearts are in the right place. And rather than actual content drops, I think if they curated the Crucible experience a little more closely, it would do a lot to make Destiny continue to feel rewarding without requiring a grueling pace for content.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, April 23, 2019, 22:26 (1801 days ago) @ cheapLEY

The business surrounding making games is absolutely fucked. It's just depressing.

Unionize. Charge more.

Steps to solving the problem.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Harmanimus @, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 01:07 (1801 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Unionizing is probably the biggest key. Because the problem almost always seems to lie at the management-and-higher levels. We’d be hard pressed to see raised game prices (albeit I am not so majorly impacted by them and would not mind) given the current economic state of the world.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 08:24 (1801 days ago) @ Harmanimus

Unionizing is probably the biggest key. Because the problem almost always seems to lie at the management-and-higher levels. We’d be hard pressed to see raised game prices (albeit I am not so majorly impacted by them and would not mind) given the current economic state of the world.

Games are adjusted for inflation the lowest price they have ever been. We could go to 80 dollars and be roughly where we were in the 16 bit era.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by cheapLEY @, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 09:56 (1800 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I mean there were instances of SNES games being priced at $80 or $100 even back then.

More expensive games and more time between releases would be just fine with me. Games as service is basically the exact opposite of that.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by kidtsunami @, Atlanta, GA, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 06:49 (1801 days ago) @ Cody Miller

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 05:52 (1801 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I'm tempted to say that Epic should hire more developers, but there is certainly a point at which just throwing more people at the problem won't actually solve anything.

Let's be honest. They don't do that because they've already reached the point of diminishing returns on the numbers of developers.

They do it because it's most profitable to do it with as few people, working as many non-overtime-eligible hours as possible, for the lowest wage the market will let them get away with.

And it's not just Epic, it's most of them.

Games-as-service has just turned the crunch boom-and-bust cycle into constant crunch.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Harmanimus @, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 14:55 (1800 days ago) @ narcogen

Article goes over Epic paying substantially over bottom market price, as well as having trouble hiring people even though they are trying. So I don’t think that is the case here.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, April 25, 2019, 06:28 (1800 days ago) @ Harmanimus

Article goes over Epic paying substantially over bottom market price, as well as having trouble hiring people even though they are trying. So I don’t think that is the case here.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that management... simply aren't to be trusted blindly on such statements.

I'm sure that those people believe what they are saying, but they are also not examining their assumptions at all.

What we're suggesting here is that Epic Games-- the company that developed, licenses, and supports the Unreal Engine, which powers quite a few successful games in the market-- is unable to recruit enough qualified developers to work on what has (rather unexpectedly) become their flagship game, despite (they claim) paying "over bottom market price" which if you think about it, probably means below average market value, but not the *bottom*.

So my questions would be:

What is their median dev salary-- and what are they broken down by discipline, and how do they compare to industry medians?

How much experience are they looking for? How much training and professional development are they willing to do?

I would not be surprised if what this comes down to is that they want people who are experienced, already know all of Epic's preferred tools, are willing to work long hours for less than median pay, and are unable to keep enough of these around to fill the content pipeline without crunching. But as long as it continues to be more profitable to do that than to raise salaries, provide training, or increase head count, they will do so.

Absent labor organization, this is nearly always what happens-- the pressures that would normally cause head counts and salaries to rise get pushed back, and the result is crunch.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Harmanimus @, Thursday, April 25, 2019, 10:31 (1799 days ago) @ narcogen

The hiring bit might be from the spokesperson (which doesn’t invalidate either perspective in this case) but, per the article, the greater earnings are from the anonymous sources, to include discussions of people operating on high turnover for, at-the-time, high pay.

Sure we don’t have it granular, but the implication on employee compensation is that it is exceptionally high for the industry but that doesn’t necessarily make up for the workload.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, April 25, 2019, 11:26 (1799 days ago) @ Harmanimus

The hiring bit might be from the spokesperson (which doesn’t invalidate either perspective in this case) but, per the article, the greater earnings are from the anonymous sources, to include discussions of people operating on high turnover for, at-the-time, high pay.

Sure we don’t have it granular, but the implication on employee compensation is that it is exceptionally high for the industry but that doesn’t necessarily make up for the workload.

Everyone I know in high stress positions in the film industry would take less money for a more sensible schedule. Everyone.

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Um... then why are they in high stress positions?

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, April 25, 2019, 12:01 (1799 days ago) @ Cody Miller

- No text -

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Because there are no low stress positions

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, April 25, 2019, 12:46 (1799 days ago) @ Ragashingo

- No text -

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Harmanimus @, Friday, April 26, 2019, 02:36 (1799 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I know lots of folks who actively seek high stress positions for shorter durations because of the higher pay often afforded them. It all depends on circumstances. Some people are fine working 3 months of hell of 9 months off.

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Why games-as-service suck, and Fortnite's bad example:

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 08:45 (1801 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Games as service is slightly different for competitive multiplayer games. Nothing about the idea is inherently compromising to those types of games creatively. For games with large cooperative multiplayer elements, it is devastating creatively.

Given the human cost, it just doesn’t seem like a good goal for either type of game.

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An Observation on "games as a service" .

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 13:37 (1800 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I've not played all the games out there that are under the "games as a service" umbrella. I don't know how true my observation is. That said, I noticed recently that -as far as I can tell- ALL "games as a service" games have what we call "grind".

At the core of it all, how is such a grind any different then what these Game Devolopers are going through? I'm currently just becoming more and more convinced here that this model is not meant for humans, but machines. That comes across at first a touch on the melodramatic side, but the more I read about these stunningly abominable conditions, I can't help but see some parallels.

I tried to play Destiny 2 recently for the The Revelry Event Activity, and yea, there was fun... but then I saw all the "hours" I had to put in to get the cool stuff. In the past, I'd plan my time to do stuff I (sometimes) didn't want to do so I could get the cool stuff. It didn't before, but now it sounds like another job to me.

I'll end with this, this observation reeks gray. It is most definitely not a simple black and white observation. In fact, I might not be an Observation at all, but instead an example on how perception can change your outlook.

In whatever the truth may ultimately be, I hope a design change can take place that can help balance out a model that increasingly feels to me to be structurally imbalanced, both in the work required to keep up, and the time needed to play it.

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An Observation on "games as a service" .

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 18:28 (1800 days ago) @ INSANEdrive

In whatever the truth may ultimately be, I hope a design change can take place that can help balance out a model that increasingly feels to me to be structurally imbalanced, both in the work required to keep up, and the time needed to play it.

That's the whole problem and what journalists and writers should have seen from the beginning. It always takes longer to make something than to play it. You spend 2 years on a game and someone finishes it in 10 hours.

Your game as a service then necessarily means:

1. Working crazy hard to make new shit because otherwise the content is not rolled out fast enough.
2. You create a grind so that players can stay busy playing the old shit over and over because it's impossible to make stuff fast enough

It's just a bad idea for everyone.

I say it's not so bad for competitive multiplayer games, because those games can have a depth to them because of the human opponents that keeps players fairly occupied until new content is ready.

So why people don't make games at a normal pace, release them, let players enjoy them for however long they enjoy them, and then move on is beyond me. Like, there's a bazillion games out there. We can stay occupied until your next one comes out.

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An Observation on "games as a service" .

by Harmanimus @, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 18:47 (1800 days ago) @ Cody Miller

I’m not saying it’s executives and upper management, but I’m saying it’s executives and upper management.

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An Observation on "games as a service" .

by stabbim @, Des Moines, IA, USA, Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 18:48 (1800 days ago) @ Cody Miller

So why people don't make games at a normal pace, release them, let players enjoy them for however long they enjoy them, and then move on is beyond me. Like, there's a bazillion games out there. We can stay occupied until your next one comes out.

The only possible explanation is that those games are making more money despite the worse experience all around. Someone is looking at the books and seeing bigger numbers coming from those games. That won't mean that only those games get made, but sometimes there'll be a choice in front of someone, and they'll choose the one that's likely to generate bigger numbers.

I can only think of two scenarios where that business model suddenly makes less profit. One is players just abandoning them en masse, which is possible but not likely, for reasons explained here:

Just kidding. Mostly I've just been on an Archer quips kick.

The other, maybe, is that games employees finally manage to unionize. The games-as-a-service model might get more expensive to produce, either through higher wages or through unions simply refusing to put up with the hours. I can't actually say that'll make the model unsustainable - that's impossible to know without specific numbers. But it would necessarily make production more expensive by SOME degree.

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