Games as a service (GaaS)

MutantScalper

MutantScalper

Dogmeat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service

Recently I saw this video a guy had made about loot boxes in some games, the game itself might be free but the loot boxes cost money to open up I guess. Got me thinking about the whole "games as service" -concept, not since WoW have I paid a monthly subscription for a game. Steam kind of mixes that up a little, creating a kind of game service.

The montly fee was kind of the reason why I quit playing WoW, just couldn't be arsed to keep paying it.

Any of you pay a monthly fee for a game or for loot boxes or something similar and do you see it as a viable model for games and gaming in the future?
 
I no longer see it as a viable model because it has overgrown into a rather stale and stagnant swamp. Also, it is mostly employed by large companies, whose method of production has become so inefficient as to be very, very expensive, and so this rather, in reality, bizarre method is employed and justified. It's a circle of stupidity and indecisive back-and-forth when you think about it. You only need remember Fallout 76 and you should be done.

In addition, it's market is so overly saturated, that even the slightest thought of spending a dime on anything of the sort has become so repulsive. It's time it goes away.

The only model in any of the modern games I know I can tolerate, and that I know works, is that of Warframe. This is not a shilling of the game, btw. But it is a rather principled method, and if you are patient, you can get 50% and 75% discounts on your real cash spending.
 
MutantScalper said:
Any of you pay a monthly fee for a game or for loot boxes or something similar and do you see it as a viable model for games and gaming in the future?
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Never.

*I had a free 10 day trial of WoW, that I abandoned, and let expire after 20 minutes of playing the game; simply never thought to play it again.
 
I'll always prefer my traditional single player games and/or couch co-op/versus or LAN able games. I won't particularly NOT play a game that is multiplayer only with always online connection with no LAN support but that definitely is a factor in how I see the game.

I think anything that gets continual updates, new content (free or paid), and is multiplayer/online only is a games as a service. I particularly enjoy one a lot at the moment, Dead by Daylight. It's a smaller company though so the profits they're looking for aren't as wild and the game doesn't have loot boxes. Hopefully, it never will.

I really don't want to see most games being live services because it's a ridiculous way for the majority of the market to be. Not every game can be a blockbuster single player game but not every game can be the next Fortnite, WoW, or League of Legends either.

I'll take what I can, I guess. Won't invest in the bad games in either category as much as I can. I truly do think there will be a better balance going forward especially when backlash controversies like Battlefront II (2017) went the way they did. The companies all want a decent GaaS to make them continuous profit off of mostly whales and the kids who have extra money. The market can't really sustain every major publisher making their own every year or so with the cost of them though.

I think as we see more console selling single player games like God of War, Spider-Man, Halo, Gears of War, etc. (think of these what you will but at one point they were selling points for a console if they aren't anymore) we'll see that people get more tired of releases that are GaaS that suck ass. Call of Duty moving towards GaaS and still wanting yearly releases will likely hurt them at some point. GaaS should last awhile if you want people to dump money into them.

Indie and crowdfunded games are where it's at if you're not into the console exclusives. I think we'll see more and more gems here especially if you aren't looking for insane graphic fidelity that AAA publishers *have* to include in all of their games.
 
in my opinion games are a product and should be treated as such. it should work as it always has.
you buy it, whatever you bought is on the disc/cartridge, what you bought is a finished product (fuck 7GB updates and other assorted garbage), you put it in, and then you play.

now we've got all this online only bullshit affecting single player games and they're getting constant updates fucking STOP IT. i just wanna buy a thing and then use it. it shouldn't be any different than buying a movie or a comic book. you buy it and its a finished product. Christ.

games as a service is a money grubbing concept born of greed and is not something that should be implemented ever.
 
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I pay $15 Origin premier access. It provides me access to most of their library and, so far, all EA published titles. I paid monthly for World of Warcraft but the recent expansion spurned me pretty badly - cancelled it almost within 1.5 months of its release.
 
If there was a Netflix for game I would pay for that. Games are increasingly becoming not worth the price and the headache to be buying each individual one, kinda like movies. Why would I wanna buy a bunch of box sets when I can just stream it?
 
Walpknut said:
If there was a Netflix for game I would pay for that. Games are increasingly becoming not worth the price and the headache to be buying each individual one, kinda like movies. Why would I wanna buy a bunch of box sets when I can just stream it?
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What ever happened to gamefly?
 
I already dislike the idea of GaaS but can tolerate it on some level for some games. I tolerate it enough for free to play games and Dead by Daylight (I consider it a GaaS). I am not looking forward to Netflix for games. There's a reason I try to obtain things in a fashion that I can play my music, movies, and games offline without any online checks. Despite the issues with GOG (some developers treating the customers as second-rate), I still prefer to buy from there since anything that isn't Gwent, I've been able to download it and hold onto the files and install them as I please.

If there was a Netflix for games, I'd likely use it if it were cheap as Netflix and Spotify are but it wouldn't be my primary way of playing. I like to own things I spend money on. I use Netflix for convenience and it lets me watch a good bit of things I may not actually want to collect and I use Spotify for my phone mostly since I don't want to have to shift my music files around to listen to something off my phone.
 
Walpknut said:
If there was a Netflix for game I would pay for that. Games are increasingly becoming not worth the price and the headache to be buying each individual one, kinda like movies. Why would I wanna buy a bunch of box sets when I can just stream it?
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for the satisfaction of physically owning something.

at that rate you may as well just use piratebay.
 
R.Graves said:
for the satisfaction of physically owning something.
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And the ability to resell it, give it away, etc. You actually have some control over the product. Streaming services and DRM services usually reserve the right to say no whenever they damn well please. If a game is suddenly not okay to be played by the population NO ONE can access it if it's off the gaming Netflix. If you have a hard copy of it, you own it still. Sure you don't have the intellectual property rights but you can plop it into a machine and play it.

I'm not about giving up my money just to get fucked over later.
 
I don't have such a need to physicaly own everything, specially with games which are not even physical objects and the disks and boxsets are just there to keep brick and mortar shops open. They are all files stored in the smalles thing on the box you just bought.

Why not use Pirate bay then? Well, I don't know Graves, maybe I want to support the people that made it?
I have no use for a bunch of plastic cases. I would gladly move on to fully digital libraries for my books too.

You say it's because you get fucked over later with digital, but with a physical disk or cartridge those just tend to stop working after a while. Forcing you to find replacements just to launch a piece of sofware contained within.
 
Walpknut said:
You say it's because you get fucked over later with digital, but with a physical disk or cartridge those just tend to stop working after a while. Forcing you to find replacements just to launch a piece of sofware contained within.
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I'm not saying you get fucked by digital, you get fucked by the service dude.
Everything eventually stops but if you can keep backups of the digital with a way to run it, and move it to new backups as those fail, you'll be fine. I was advocating for minimal DRM digital or physical, not physical only. Physical is also nice though. I just want to play my games and not have to log into some dead service that is preventing me from playing the game without doing extra work.
I wanna just have my files, double click to install it, play it. Not like DRM has really ever stopped piracy anyway, only screwed over paying customers in the long run.
 
Physical games are also much more expensive over here. THey can get as expensive as 80 dollars if the store feels like charging that much, while digital lets me pay the price that they go for in the US. And that's without mentioning how both the Sony and Nintendo stores love to NEVER reduce the price on anything, I can still find Zelda Majora's Mask for 3DS, a 4 year old game, going for the equivalent of 60 dollars. And what do I get in return? A piece of plastic with another piece of plastic inside. The worst offender was when I bought BOTW where they coincidentaly only had the "Explorer's Edition" so it went for 90 dollars, and what did I get? An ugly handbook with nothing useful inside.

Digital is the future.
 
Digital may be the future, but I've always been a "physical copy" kind of guy. It helps my local shops sell games pretty cheap. Failing that the pawn shops always have a thing or two that peak my interest.

Buying physical also saved me recently. GTA IV had 40% of it's soundtrack changed on digital copies (though I guess you could just mod the files back in) but physical copies were left untouched. Screwing with that much of a game's soundtrack can screw with the player's experience, it would for me anyway.
 
I'm not adverse to paying subscription fees if the game is good, has a community and at least some of the money is used for further development & community management.
I don't currently pay any subscriptions though.
I hate pay to win games or games with paying lootboxes far more than any subscription an sich.
To some extent I also hate games which make you pay for graphical upgrades to your character etc, but I can live with that design decision if it also means they are not selling weapons, armor, inventory space etc which affect gameplay.
 
So far, every attempt to use games as a service never seems to produce a worthwhile game. Also, always online and tied to a subscription of sorts have never been appealing to me.

Even a decent game like Hitman 2016 was most likely adversely affected by the decision to make it as such. So I see GaaS as a mistake that is here to stay for a while until the collective community can properly oppose it. But of course with games like EA's sports games that have an excessively large playerbase blind to how predatory these practices are, it'll be staying for a long while.
 
Walpknut said:
Digital is the future.
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I really don't care if it's digital or physical, I just don't want to have my shit revoked just cuz. I just want more games on GOG man. That's all I'm saying. Let me have the shit I paid for if I hold onto it myself.

If Sony bans you (for any reason and apparently it's not reversible) all your digital games are gone. You're done. No thanks. There's a reason I shop GOG first, then Steam on PC and physical first and digital second for consoles.
 
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