You were originally talking about HyperScape, not Hyenas. Technology in a studio is typically shared between projects. So it’s somewhat likely that Ghost Recon, HyperScape, and this FarCry 7 multiplayer game contain some of the same codebase. Certainly not a guarantee but it’s more likely than not.
That said, Wildlands is still up, the sequel did poorly for a number of reasons, pushing out a sequel to a live service game is always risky, especially within a 10-year period. Live service games are expected to be continuously updated. Overwatch 2 is a great example of how to mismanage your well-received live service game. Overall, Ghost Recon Wildlands is still making enough money to keep it afloat. Breakpoint went too far in monetization and overall too fast in title iteration.
Ubisoft, like many giants, isn’t going to give up on GaaS games any time soon. If anything you’ll see more and more. GaaS isn’t how I want to see the future but I don’t see a games industry future without GaaS being fairly dominate. I don’t think anyone sees them as a guaranteed money-printing machine. There are far better and safer investments than games to get money-printing machines. Real estate is a big one. Ubisoft is still a company of artists but equally, those artists are putting money first because we live in a capitalistic society where rent needs to be paid first and foremost.
Overall, though, I don’t see the industry destroying itself. It’s certainly in a squeeze right now simply due to consolidation. The mass layoffs we are seeing are because a bunch of giants have been buying up companies and expanding. Now the major companies have lots of IPs and brands to work with, they are cutting everyone that doesn’t fit the exact future needs of monetizing those IPs. In the grand scheme of things, it’s actually beneficial to the growth of small indie studios. Now that talent is likely to start and contribute to small indie studios. Hopefully with the business knowledge that corporate structures are only good for those on top. Maybe we’ll see the growth of cooperative studios.
You were originally talking about HyperScape, not Hyenas.
You say tomato, I say…it works better when spoken.
Ubisoft, like many giants, isn’t going to give up on GaaS games any time soon.
Like the above, I’m just saying there are only room for so many. Remember how everyone wanted a World of WarCraft? And everyone wanted a Call of Duty? And everyone wanted a League of Legends? And everyone wanted a PUBG? Those games, and like two of their competitors in most cases, are still around, but there just isn’t enough room for more when you’re the Nth battle royale (HyperScape) or extraction shooter (Far Cry). No one can predict the future, and my own biases are informing what I’m taking away from my own observations, but you have a problem where the audience now knows that when you sink money into a live service game, it’s likely dead in a year, and you’re out of pocket $X with nothing to show for it when the servers are gone.
Overall, though, I don’t see the industry destroying itself.
No, it actually is. Not the entire industry but the live service end of it and the games they created. They’re designed with kill switches, self-destruct buttons, or whatever other metaphor you like. They’re burning down the library on their way out the door, which is why, short of YouTube footage, I don’t see how this can be anything other than a semi-dark age for the medium. Semi because plenty of games are not bound to servers or some other form of planned obsolescence, but a lot of high-profile releases most certainly are, and they’ll be lost to time. Meanwhile, games from 30 years prior still live on and can be enjoyed by people who weren’t even born yet when they released.
I’m totally with you on some studios shrinking, other studios forming, and the circle of life continuing. My prediction for the industry was way faster than the reality of things, but I foresaw that studios like TinyBuild, Embracer, Devolver, Anna Purna, and the like would inevitably come to be and grow, because there are games that the big AAA publishers just don’t make anymore, and people still want to play those games.
you have a problem where the audience now knows that when you sink money into a live service game, it’s likely dead in a year, and you’re out of pocket $X with nothing to show for it when the servers are gone.
Absolutely but that’s also the same with every other endeavor. The issue here is risk vs innovation. All of the games you named are iterations. Everquest, Medal Of Honor, Dota (WoTC), and even PuBG started out as a Day Z mod. The big studios are looking for the least amount of risk with the most amount of innovation. They hope they can tweak things. Games that aren’t still around can still be fairly profitable. Even if it’s just profitable enough to get investments to lift your studio up.
That said I don’t see GaaS going away because it creates consumer buy-in. You put data and accounts into the databases. It means you aren’t just a one-time customer, you are a statistic. You are just a part of this large group that has its hooks directly into your email, and credit card, and can market to you. It’s why so many storefronts are popping up. It forces loyalty, especially when you consider cross-game promotions which may become a thing. They’ve certainly been trying to find a path forward on that with NFTs and blockchain crap.
No, it actually is. Not the entire industry but the live service end of it and the games they created. They’re designed with kill switches, self-destruct buttons, or whatever other metaphor you like. They’re burning down the library on their way out the door, which is why, short of YouTube footage, I don’t see how this can be anything other than a semi-dark age for the medium. Semi because plenty of games are not bound to servers or some other form of planned obsolescence, but a lot of high-profile releases most certainly are, and they’ll be lost to time. Meanwhile, games from 30 years prior still live on and can be enjoyed by people who weren’t even born yet when they released.
Ah, okay as someone who has worked on numerous titles that can no longer be played, I totally see your point here. It’s not that the industry is dying though. It’s history isn’t able to be preserved. This might suck to hear but I’ve worked with multiple large names from the 90s and they have built great studios, that they are now using to target GaaS games. They’ll point to games they made before as inspiration and I’ve pointed out how you can still play those games and GaaS games can be created to be preserved. They just don’t care. Multiple times I’ve seen people say “We are worried about building a game now, not when we can no longer support it. We’ll worry about that when we are shutting down.” Like they don’t already know that there isn’t money to worry about those things when they shut down. With one of them, I worked for 3 years on building a backend we could securely release to the public but they shut the game down 3 months after release without releasing anything. They don’t care to release things so that people can still play them. If they shut them down, they see them as failures. No matter how much money they already made.
That’s precisely the thing I hope we’ve finally hit a turning point on, and that we have some evidence that we’ve hit that turning point. The metaphorical landfill filled with dead games as a service got so many more games this year. Especially because so many of these games are designed to monopolize your time, perhaps they’ll realize there isn’t enough time on earth to dedicate to this game when it’s already being dedicated to 100 other games. Then they can come to the conclusion that there’s more money to be made in 5 short experiences than 1 game that you’re intended to play indefinitely.
I hope so too but I feel like we’ve not hit there yet. In some ways the sort of online, account creation requirement will grow and grow. To play single-player games now, you need to login to some random service.
Yeah, that’s why I stopped buying EA games and why I didn’t buy Tony Hawk. I’m not alone in the forums when asking about that stuff, and we’ll see how much momentum that carries.
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You were originally talking about HyperScape, not Hyenas. Technology in a studio is typically shared between projects. So it’s somewhat likely that Ghost Recon, HyperScape, and this FarCry 7 multiplayer game contain some of the same codebase. Certainly not a guarantee but it’s more likely than not.
That said, Wildlands is still up, the sequel did poorly for a number of reasons, pushing out a sequel to a live service game is always risky, especially within a 10-year period. Live service games are expected to be continuously updated. Overwatch 2 is a great example of how to mismanage your well-received live service game. Overall, Ghost Recon Wildlands is still making enough money to keep it afloat. Breakpoint went too far in monetization and overall too fast in title iteration.
Ubisoft, like many giants, isn’t going to give up on GaaS games any time soon. If anything you’ll see more and more. GaaS isn’t how I want to see the future but I don’t see a games industry future without GaaS being fairly dominate. I don’t think anyone sees them as a guaranteed money-printing machine. There are far better and safer investments than games to get money-printing machines. Real estate is a big one. Ubisoft is still a company of artists but equally, those artists are putting money first because we live in a capitalistic society where rent needs to be paid first and foremost.
Overall, though, I don’t see the industry destroying itself. It’s certainly in a squeeze right now simply due to consolidation. The mass layoffs we are seeing are because a bunch of giants have been buying up companies and expanding. Now the major companies have lots of IPs and brands to work with, they are cutting everyone that doesn’t fit the exact future needs of monetizing those IPs. In the grand scheme of things, it’s actually beneficial to the growth of small indie studios. Now that talent is likely to start and contribute to small indie studios. Hopefully with the business knowledge that corporate structures are only good for those on top. Maybe we’ll see the growth of cooperative studios.
You say tomato, I say…it works better when spoken.
Like the above, I’m just saying there are only room for so many. Remember how everyone wanted a World of WarCraft? And everyone wanted a Call of Duty? And everyone wanted a League of Legends? And everyone wanted a PUBG? Those games, and like two of their competitors in most cases, are still around, but there just isn’t enough room for more when you’re the Nth battle royale (HyperScape) or extraction shooter (Far Cry). No one can predict the future, and my own biases are informing what I’m taking away from my own observations, but you have a problem where the audience now knows that when you sink money into a live service game, it’s likely dead in a year, and you’re out of pocket $X with nothing to show for it when the servers are gone.
No, it actually is. Not the entire industry but the live service end of it and the games they created. They’re designed with kill switches, self-destruct buttons, or whatever other metaphor you like. They’re burning down the library on their way out the door, which is why, short of YouTube footage, I don’t see how this can be anything other than a semi-dark age for the medium. Semi because plenty of games are not bound to servers or some other form of planned obsolescence, but a lot of high-profile releases most certainly are, and they’ll be lost to time. Meanwhile, games from 30 years prior still live on and can be enjoyed by people who weren’t even born yet when they released.
I’m totally with you on some studios shrinking, other studios forming, and the circle of life continuing. My prediction for the industry was way faster than the reality of things, but I foresaw that studios like TinyBuild, Embracer, Devolver, Anna Purna, and the like would inevitably come to be and grow, because there are games that the big AAA publishers just don’t make anymore, and people still want to play those games.
Absolutely but that’s also the same with every other endeavor. The issue here is risk vs innovation. All of the games you named are iterations. Everquest, Medal Of Honor, Dota (WoTC), and even PuBG started out as a Day Z mod. The big studios are looking for the least amount of risk with the most amount of innovation. They hope they can tweak things. Games that aren’t still around can still be fairly profitable. Even if it’s just profitable enough to get investments to lift your studio up.
That said I don’t see GaaS going away because it creates consumer buy-in. You put data and accounts into the databases. It means you aren’t just a one-time customer, you are a statistic. You are just a part of this large group that has its hooks directly into your email, and credit card, and can market to you. It’s why so many storefronts are popping up. It forces loyalty, especially when you consider cross-game promotions which may become a thing. They’ve certainly been trying to find a path forward on that with NFTs and blockchain crap.
Ah, okay as someone who has worked on numerous titles that can no longer be played, I totally see your point here. It’s not that the industry is dying though. It’s history isn’t able to be preserved. This might suck to hear but I’ve worked with multiple large names from the 90s and they have built great studios, that they are now using to target GaaS games. They’ll point to games they made before as inspiration and I’ve pointed out how you can still play those games and GaaS games can be created to be preserved. They just don’t care. Multiple times I’ve seen people say “We are worried about building a game now, not when we can no longer support it. We’ll worry about that when we are shutting down.” Like they don’t already know that there isn’t money to worry about those things when they shut down. With one of them, I worked for 3 years on building a backend we could securely release to the public but they shut the game down 3 months after release without releasing anything. They don’t care to release things so that people can still play them. If they shut them down, they see them as failures. No matter how much money they already made.
That’s precisely the thing I hope we’ve finally hit a turning point on, and that we have some evidence that we’ve hit that turning point. The metaphorical landfill filled with dead games as a service got so many more games this year. Especially because so many of these games are designed to monopolize your time, perhaps they’ll realize there isn’t enough time on earth to dedicate to this game when it’s already being dedicated to 100 other games. Then they can come to the conclusion that there’s more money to be made in 5 short experiences than 1 game that you’re intended to play indefinitely.
I hope so too but I feel like we’ve not hit there yet. In some ways the sort of online, account creation requirement will grow and grow. To play single-player games now, you need to login to some random service.
Yeah, that’s why I stopped buying EA games and why I didn’t buy Tony Hawk. I’m not alone in the forums when asking about that stuff, and we’ll see how much momentum that carries.