Ubisoft Thinks Games Are A Thing Of The Past: It's All About Live Services Now - General

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSQOJqikw8c[/media] [quote]On Monday morning I said publishers were going to embrace "live services" as their new flavor in 2018. That afternoon, Ubisoft told its investors how "live services" are their new flavor in 2018. In fact, they seem disinterested in games entirely... at least as we know them. Like clockwork, folks. These companies can be predicted like clockwork. Ubi's presentation: [url]https://www.ubisoft.com/en-US/company/investor_center/earnings_sales.aspx[/url][/quote]

How about no

Other than possible "oversaturation of games looking for your time and attention", tell me why this can be bad. Do you prefer games that are exhausted in handful of hours compared to another where you are given incentive to revisit after every content update?

[QUOTE=Noob4life;53128800]Other than possible "oversaturation of games looking for your time and attention", tell me why this can be bad. Do you prefer games that are exhausted in handful of hours compared to another where you are given incentive to revisit after every content update?[/QUOTE] I prefer games that I buy just once

So... not like Twitch?

I wouldn't mind a game with frequent updates and new stuff to see every so often, [B]as long as it isn't behind a paywall [/B] ...actually, isn't that part of the appeal of early access games

Welcome to Valve circa 8-9 years ago? Interesting seeing all this commotion about lootboxes and GaaS starting last year. Valve really were ahead of most western AAA devs. Not that I like it, but what can you do.

Nah, I'd rather just have a one and done game thats complete. I'm up for expansion packs and more but we're past that point. Fuck lootboxes, fuck character games, fuck skins, fuck cosmetics, fuck life time services. All of these things used to be god damn free. Now we have to suffer.

[QUOTE=Noob4life;53128800]Do you prefer games that are exhausted in handful of hours[/QUOTE] Yes? Among many other amazing games, this year I played Night in the Woods, Hellblade and Wolfenstein 2. Please, feel free to tell me how any of those games could be enhanced by being infinitely long.

I don't think games built and provided as a service are an inherently bad or impossible thing. This is basically what B-list MMO:s have been doing for over a decade; run a perpetual development cycle with frequent recurring content releases and high engagement with their respective community. The industry's reliance on "big hit or bust" is a known issue that makes innovation risky. The problem is I don't believe for a nanosecond that Ubisoft would do this for the benefit of players. Only their bottom line.

Video games were a mistake.

[QUOTE=jazzpunk;53128843]Welcome to Valve circa 8-9 years ago? Interesting seeing all this commotion about lootboxes and GaaS starting last year. Valve really were ahead of most western AAA devs. Not that I like it, but what can you do.[/QUOTE] I guess people didn't get [del]su[er[/del] super angry with Valve as at least they mostly do microtransactions smartly. While the big devs are being completely stupid and blind.

[QUOTE=Noob4life;53128800]Other than possible "oversaturation of games looking for your time and attention", tell me why this can be bad. Do you prefer games that are exhausted in handful of hours compared to another where you are given incentive to revisit after every content update?[/QUOTE] Immediate issue that's already noticeable in games that attempt this sort of stuff is that gameplay is affected negatively since parts are cropped out or made too long in order to give the player an incentive to return. When I played Assassin's Creed Origins I almost immediately noticed that some parts of the game, lauded by the devs and promoted as new or compelling features, are partly gimped in order to make way for timegated content. The random weapon drop system is obviously biased towards lootboxes seeing as a large quantity of weapons can realistically only be accessed via Heka Chests, including stuff that thematically should have been somewhere else in the game. For instance there are two (possibly more) weapons in this game which are First Civilization technology, and instead of obtaining them alongside the suit of armor for completing one of the longest running quests in the game, you can only obtain them through extremely rare drops or by buying a fuckton of loot chests. Not to mention all the stuff that is EXCLUSIVE to loot chests in terms of obtaining them through gameplay or have to be bought as DLC otherwise. This includes certain joke items like rainbow camels, giant cotton swabs and a mummified cat used as a mace which in previous games would have been completion bonus (see the cheats menu in some of the older games which had silly options like the ability to ride a unicorn). You can, of course, come back once a day for a timed mission to get a free lootchest, to try and get you to come back frequently. Besides this there is also the crafting system which requires a very rare item for very high tier upgrades which is only found one at a time in occasional containers which do not respawn. The only way to fully upgrade your gear is to trudge through the game meticulously looking for these tiny jewel boxes or to go to the lootbox merchant and buy them off of him, with a single of these items costing as much as a lootbox itself, and you need a lot of them to fully upgrade a single part of your gear let alone your entire equipment. BUT the lootbox merchant only stores 20 of these at a time and you can only get more if you return a week later in real time. If you want to fully upgrade your gear you're going to have to go through the entire worldmap and probably wait a couple real weeks to buy more of them off of the nomad merchant. The game [I]is[/I] hurt by the decision, because they have to somehow take away some content in order to add it in a way that holds your attention for a longer span of time. This is of course without mentioning the timed events like the god battles or whatever they were called which unlocked unique outfits, further limiting outfits which can be found by just playing the game as normal.

With how big the game is having to go through the entire world to find carbon crystals with only 10 to spare is kind of ludicrous. Especially since you can only buy a very limited quantity of them and that quantity resets once a fucking week.

I know people like to rag on it, but I well and truly do not give a shit if the form of monetization for a game is cosmetic only, whether that's lootboxes or not. It's where it starts affecting gameplay (unique heroes/classes, better weapons) and the acquiral of those that it gets iffy.

[QUOTE=TheBorealis;53128865]I guess people didn't get [del]su[er[/del] super angry with Valve as at least they mostly do microtransactions smartly. While the big devs are being completely stupid and blind.[/QUOTE] Also lack of console games. PC-only doesn't get as much attention and buzz.

[QUOTE=Jetamo;53128884]I know people like to rag on it, but I well and truly do not give a shit if the form of monetization for a game is cosmetic only, whether that's lootboxes or not. It's where it starts affecting gameplay (unique heroes/classes, better weapons) and the acquiral of those that it gets iffy.[/QUOTE] If it funds continued development and free substantive content then I am all for it. CSGO and Overwatch are brilliant examples. Maybe less so CSGO because Valve knew they'd accidentally created a legal unregulated casino and just pretended like they didn't know it was happening so they got their money. But you know, done properly it's all cool.

[QUOTE=Jetamo;53128884]I know people like to rag on it, but I well and truly do not give a shit if the form of monetization for a game is cosmetic only, whether that's lootboxes or not. It's where it starts affecting gameplay (unique heroes/classes, better weapons) and the acquiral of those that it gets iffy.[/QUOTE] TF2 being my favorite example. Yeaaaah the hats are killing the artstyle but as a lootbox system it isn't too horrible. Anything you can get from a box can be had through trading, the market, or just playing the game (if you count the near non-existent hat drops). Only problems come with those annoying tiered boxes they started putting in because the nicest stuff is always rare as fuck and goes for way too much on the market.

[QUOTE=Noob4life;53128800]Other than possible "oversaturation of games looking for your time and attention", tell me why this can be bad. Do you prefer games that are exhausted in handful of hours compared to another where you are given incentive to revisit after every content update?[/QUOTE] I prefer carefully crafted games designed with care over timesinks with shallow gameplay designed to be filled out with more shallow content over a period of months/years. Resident Evil 4 never got an update and that game is so well designed that I replay it over and over after all these years, I have like 70 hours on the HD version on steam plus countless more hours on the Wii and original PC release.

I think they have the right idea that games should be more long-term. I would rather have a company invested in a game for 3-4 years than deal with the same bullshit rehashed Call of Duty every year. Hell, even Ubisoft saw what happened when they tried to shit out Assassin's Creed games too quickly. But I also think there's a fine line to ride between releasing new titles consistently, and supporting existing titles for longer periods of time, and Ubisoft is riding too far to the latter. And, for that matter, long-lasting games only really work for predominantly multiplayer titles like Rainbow Six, and not singleplayer games like Assassin's creed.

[QUOTE=Amakir;53128901]I prefer carefully crafted games designed with care over timesinks with shallow gameplay designed to be filled out with more shallow content over a period of months/years. Resident Evil 4 never got an update and that game is so well designed that I replay it over and over after all these years, I have like 70 hours on the HD version on steam plus countless more hours on the Wii and original PC release.[/QUOTE] "Live services" is simply a moniker for "games that get additional development post-launch". There is no commandment stating that they must be padded with fillers and RPG elements turning them into pseudo-MMO. Games that get new content are also within the category for "services". For modern examples, Resident Evil 7 can be considered "service", while something like Cuphead is not (unless that starting pumping out new zones).

[QUOTE=Jetamo;53128884]I know people like to rag on it, but I well and truly do not give a shit if the form of monetization for a game is cosmetic only, whether that's lootboxes or not. It's where it starts affecting gameplay (unique heroes/classes, better weapons) and the acquiral of those that it gets iffy.[/QUOTE] I feel Overwatch does an all right job there. The regular 'events' include new temporary game modes and quite often permanent new maps and game modes, plus new characters are released. I can see why the limited availability of new cosmetic content really drives up sales, and I wish they'd add more permanent stuff (like the recent Blizzard World event), but as someone who has never spent a penny on the game after the initial purchase I can't complain.

[QUOTE=RichyZ;53128932]it seems like the overwatch and siege devs care more about making whale candy instead of balancing and improving their games honestly[/QUOTE] I can't speak for Siege, but Blizz have done much better at trying to balance OW recently, the game is in a far better state balance wise than it was a year ago. The balance is still far from perfect, but Blizz do try to improve it.

I disagree with Jim on this one. It seems like he is reading into it slightly wrong. Rainbow six siege is a "live service" game done right. For Honor and The Division could be better though. Instead of annually releasing games like call of duty they want to continue building on a solid foundation for years. I see nothting wrong with this idea.

There's nothing wrong with it, its called MMOs. The issue is when it hits singleplayer games.

[QUOTE=redBadger;53129029]I disagree with Jim on this one. It seems like he is reading into it slightly wrong. Rainbow six siege is a "live service" game done right. For Honor and The Division could be better though. Instead of annually releasing games like call of duty they want to continue building on a solid foundation for years. I see nothting wrong with this idea.[/QUOTE] The Division wasn't bad, to be honest - I mean, I stopped playing it and while it sucked [I]royally[/I] in the beginning, I do have to give props to Massive for sticking with it and redesigning everything from scratch and implementing it to the point where the game became good. However, that was a bit of a "too little too late" problem where things to improve the game were done far after the initial hype. The game itself saw a little bump when the Survival DLC launched and it was an excellent game mode (probably one of the best game modes I've seen). Problems were numerous, which I'll list below: a) [B]Poor world population[/B] - the artists really did a fucking A+ job on this game. It looked [I]gorgeous.[/I] Problem was that the single-player campaign was short and there was little end-game content or incentive to keep exploring the world. The sound design was good, although the repetitive dialogues got annoying as fuck [I]fast[/I]. This is the same issue I predicted (and later confirmed) in Ghost Recon: Wildlands. b) [B]No promo runs early on[/B] - Ubisoft were so focused on squeezing money that they seemingly refused to even do a single free weekend or cut price promo during the period it would've actually mattered. As a result, nobody wanted to pay full price for a game that they'd heard had a disastrous launch and were skeptical of the news that Massive was working on improving it. If anything, this game is a good example of the case where trust between consumer and player has eroded to the point where nobody was willing to believe that Massive were actually seriously reworking the game. c) [B]Marketed towards the wrong players[/B] - The game, especially the PvP Dark Zone had immense potential of being marked as a FFA zone full of raiders, looting and general mayhem. I've spent many a good few hours sitting on a point overlooking a pickup point, deliberately going rogue to steal gear. But in actuality, the game was very much a grindy RNJesus game, where the meta kept changing every month (sometimes every week) to the point where you were forced to keep running the same mission over and over again to hopefully get a weapon or armour with the 'god roll' for that week. This got old fast, with the very sparse addition of post-game missions. Honestly, it could've done sooooo much better if Ubisoft's handling of the situation was so entirely fucked that it'd definitely have gameplay peak players even now, if they weren't so goddamn greedy.

Only Ubisoft game I've played recently is Mario + Rabbids. With that game, smaller content updates (gamemodes, maps) have been free with just the bigger stuff as normal paid DLC. Honestly don't mind a system like that if that's what they're going for.

I agree with him but everytime I listen to Jim Sterling he sounds like a very upset condescending babysitter begrudgingly explaining something to you, the child.

[QUOTE=Vodkavia;53128929]monetization will almost always effect gameplay. When you add cosemetics to a game, the business people behind the dev will want more of that money and if its found to be a more efficient way to make money than improving gameplay; priorities will shift and gameplay will suffer. Overwatch is a prime example of that with game modes being taken out of the game purely so that they're only available when there's more lootbox garbo to peddle. unless your company behind your game is a saint, you can't really say cosemetics don't effect gameplay. One could even argue cosemetics, more specifically using the game as means of creating your own expression through your own unique character *is* a form of gameplay in of itself.[/QUOTE] Even then cosmetics can affect gameplay in competitive games. I used to hide out in the Open in Modern Warfare 2 because the ghillie suit was so good people would think it was a regular bush, and in the Metal Gear games wearing the right camo in multiplayer could make you practically invisible if you knew where to hide. It doesn't apply to all games, but cosmetics definitely can affect the gameplay of certain games. Plus, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, having a bunch of dumb meme skins can pretty much ruin the atmosphere of a game. It's hard to take Call of Duty seriously these days when people are running around with weed and pepperoni pizza weapon skins, or neon purple weapons. [editline]13th February 2018[/editline] [QUOTE=redBadger;53129029]I disagree with Jim on this one. It seems like he is reading into it slightly wrong. Rainbow six siege is a "live service" game done right. For Honor and The Division could be better though. Instead of annually releasing games like call of duty they want to continue building on a solid foundation for years. I see nothting wrong with this idea.[/QUOTE] The issue is when they take a game like Ghost Recon Wildlands and jam in loot boxes, or when the season pass only holds a handful of missions while the ingame store is selling weapon packs for €15 each. Games as service can mean good shit like expansions and new mission DLC, but it can also mean bullshit like charging €15 for a single horse skin in Assassin's Creed Origins.

I'm generally okay with 'games as a service' so long as that service pays for the expansion packs that come out and we aren't charged for them. But it very very very rarely is. Games as a service is Take this 100% completed game, sell 80% of it for full price, and dangle the other 20% as a long grind or paid RNG to keep people interested until we release a $30-$40 expansion with the exact same 80%/20% bullshit in that, too