Far Cry 7 Is A Live Service Game Similar To Assassin's Creed Infinity - Report

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zamardii12

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I'd be more OK with it if they required SMS or something else to make an account to slow down the cheaters - some probably do.

I mostly play Apex Legends and while the game is great, there are a lot of cheaters and since it's free to play, there is nothing to keep them from coming right back.
 
Truth be told, with the speed they'd release new entries in those franchises - they may as well be live service games.
 
Armenius said:
Damn, at least cleanup that URL before sharing.
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Seriously?

giphy.gif


For tainting your precious internet with a long URL that literally only requires you to click just like every other link... :ROFLMAO:
 
I have 0 familiarity with the Assassins Creed series.

Anyone care to explain what is meant by a "live service game"?

Since I only play static offline single player games these days, I'm guessing this will be something I will hate, and thus cause me to abandon the series but I can't find details as to what this actually implies anywhere.

That said, if I don't play Far Cry 7, I don't think it will be the end of the world. I like big open world single player games, but I was really starting to tire of the "exact same game in different geographical settings with a new story" anyway. It was time this franchise got a shakeup. "Live service" seems the fundamentally wrong way to go, but it is what it is.

If they don't want me as a customer, I am fine with that.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
I have 0 familiarity with the Assassins Creed series.

Anyone care to explain what is meant by a "live service game"?
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I believe that Destiny 2, and The Division 2 are examples of live service games. Basically endless looter shooters with occasional special events and expansions with additional content to extend the life of the game.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I have 0 familiarity with the Assassins Creed series.

Anyone care to explain what is meant by a "live service game"?
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I think that checks all boxes for being born under a rock, not just living under it 🙃

First search result:

A "live service" game (LSG) is a game designed with the sole purpose of keeping people playing for as long as possible in the hopes that those players will pay for microtransactions.
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zamardii12 said:
* Halo Infinite
* Assassin's Creed Infinity
* Far Cry Everlasting
* Call of Duty Unending
* Mortal Kombat Eternal
* Ghost Recon Interminable
* Elder Scrolls Inexhaustible
* Fallout Boundless
* FIFA Forever

Welcome to gaming as a service. The NEXT LEVEL of entertainment!!!

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/f...assassins-creed-infinity-report/1100-6497943/
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It ain't the next level Ubisoft is just being Ubisoft and typically a decade behind everyone else on stupid.
"Live service" is on the way out because the consumer base has rabidly hated it. It has not yielded the returns expected for anyone whos tried it.
 
Flogger23m said:
Well that is likely the end of Far Cry for me. Haven't played 6 yet, but shame to see that is essentially the end of the series. Seems to be how Ubisoft is going forward.
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Far Cry 6 is great if you aren't expecting anything different to the Far Cry formula and liked the previous entries.
 
M76 said:
I think that checks all boxes for being born under a rock, not just living under it 🙃
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1.) I don't play third person games. No exception.

2.) I don't play games in a fantasy setting. No exception. Historically accurate games are cool with me. Scifi is cool with me. But as soon as you start entering Fantasy elements into a story, I check out.

So, I never even bothered with Assassins Creed. It has nothing that interests me.

A "live service" game (LSG) is a game designed with the sole purpose of keeping people playing for as long as possible in the hopes that those players will pay for microtransactions.
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I clicked through the article, and followed the links which just dumped me on twitter. Then I searched for Assasins Creed Infinity and started to read about that, and didn't get much from that either.

I didn't realize that the term "Live service game" was established terminology, so I didn't even try googling that, thanks.


I have to wonder what brainless fools are actually making this model profitable for them. I mean, they wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't paying off, so someone must be buying it.

I have to admit that if you have ever bought a fake digital item for an in game character using real money, and you were over 12 when you did it, I have absolutely no remaining respect for your intellect. None at all.

I've never used a microtransaction of any kind, and never will. The mere presence of microtransactions results in me not playing a game. I don't want to have any part of that.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
1.) I don't play third person games. No exception.

2.) I don't play games in a fantasy setting. No exception. Historically accurate games are cool with me. Scifi is cool with me. But as soon as you start entering Fantasy elements into a story, I check out.

So, I never even bothered with Assassins Creed. It has nothing that interests me.
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The dedicated ive service version of AC is not even out yet, just rumored at this point.
Zarathustra[H] said:
I clicked through the article, and followed the links which just dumped me on twitter. Then I searched for Assasins Creed Infinity and started to read about that, and didn't get much from that either.

I didn't realize that the term "Live service game" was established terminology, so I didn't even try googling that, thanks.


I have to wonder what brainless fools are actually making this model profitable for them. I mean, they wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't paying off, so someone must be buying it.

I have to admit that if you have ever bought a fake digital item for an in game character using real money, and you were over 12 when you did it, I have absolutely no remaining respect for your intellect. None at all.

I've never used a microtransaction of any kind, and never will. The mere presence of microtransactions results in me not playing a game. I don't want to have any part of that.
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Pushing back against live service games has been an ongoing uphill battle for years now. So it's a bit strange that you never even heard the term. i never engaged in microtransactions in games either. I don't care if they exist, as long as the game is enjoyable without them.
 
zamardii12 said:
Far Cry 6 is great if you aren't expecting anything different to the Far Cry formula and liked the previous entries.
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I'll tell you this much. You certainly can't play more than a couple in a row. It starts getting really tiresome.

Far Cry as a series was one I didn't get into until relatively recently.

I never thought of the series much but got bored and had run out of Steam back log games and I found tolerable.

I played the first one and hated it, but it was suggested to me that the rest were different, so then I played 2, 3, 4, Primal, 5, and New Dawn in order almost (but not quite) back to back, and after a few of these, the formula really starts getting too repetitive.

I haven't started 6 yet, in large part because it requires an Origin launcher install and account. No way I'm creating that shit. I got a free Far Cry 6 code, but I'm holding off to play the game until Denuvo gets cracked (which is taking unusually long for this one!)

I have no problem paying for games and do, but whenever a single player game requires me to install a launcher, or create an online account I go into full on protest mode and justify protest pirating it.

I bought every game I played from the launch of Steam in 2003 until 2019 when I bought Far Cry 3 and it forced a Origin launcher install and prompted me to create an account in order to play. I said "fuck that", requested a refund from Steam immediately, and torrented it instead.

Fuck this manipulative shit. I should be able to buy a game in the store of my choice and unless it is multiplayer, it should run without any interent connection or account, and it sure as hell should not require me to sign up for stores or launchers I don't want to use. If they do that, I guarantee I'll pirate it in protest. I don't care if anyone agrees.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
1.) I don't play third person games. No exception.

2.) I don't play games in a fantasy setting. No exception. Historically accurate games are cool with me. Scifi is cool with me. But as soon as you start entering Fantasy elements into a story, I check out.

So, I never even bothered with Assassins Creed. It has nothing that interests me.


I've never used a microtransaction of any kind, and never will. The mere presence of microtransactions results in me not playing a game. I don't want to have any part of that.
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Seriously though, what games do you enjoy playing? Most recent game purchase? I wouldn't think you would play any single game listed in the OP list right, regardless of what economic structure they handle it with?

edit: btw this isn't meant as an attack, i genuinely am curious.
 
M76 said:
The dedicated ive service version of AC is not even out yet, just rumored at this point.

Pushing back against live service games has been an ongoing uphill battle for years now. So it's a bit strange that you never even heard the term. i never engaged in microtransactions in games either. I don't care if they exist, as long as the game is enjoyable without them.
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Maybe I've avoided them because it has only been in regards to the type of games I hate thus far.

All the examples given were Free 2 Play fast paced multiplayer "battle royale" nonsense. Any news story that mentions those, I generally just skip, which is probably why I've never heard the term "Live Services Game" before.
 
Darunion said:
Seriously though, what games do you enjoy playing? Most recent game purchase? I wouldn't think you would play any single game listed in the OP list right, regardless of what economic structure they handle it with?

edit: btw this isn't meant as an attack, i genuinely am curious.
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None of these series interest me in the slightest. I've never played them, and never plan on playing them:

* Halo Infinite
* Assassin's Creed Infinity
* Call of Duty Unending
* Mortal Kombat Eternal
* Ghost Recon Interminable
* Elder Scrolls Inexhaustible
* FIFA Forever

The exception of the series mentioned by op would be Fallout and Far Cry. Fallout was not my favorite series, but I have quite enjoyed them. At least 3, NV and 4. I never played the old isometric ones, and had no interest at all in Fallout 76. Far Cry gets repetitive, but it is a nice open world experience, usually with a rich story.

Way back I was a counter-strike addict. Played almost nothing else from ~1999 to ~2005. After that I used to play Red Orchestra almost exclusively. When the Red Orchestra 2 community more or less collapsed and my "clans" server went offline I briefly tried to go back to Counter-Strike, but found that I hated Global Offensive and it's microtransactions. Counter-strike in general felt silly, unrealistic and fast paced after getting used to Red Orchestra, so I essentially stopped playing multiplayer games all together, and reverted to almost exclusively playing open world single player story driven titles, with the occasional break for Sid Meiers' Civilization series, which I have been playing since it first launched when I was 11. Realism (current or historical) or sci-fi are my preferences, but there are only so many titles so I have slid into other adjacent genres as well.

- Half-Life / Black Mesa
- Far Cry Series (at least 2+, the first one was trash)
- Fallout Series (3, NV, 4)
- Deus Ex Series (original, HR, MD) (These are some of my all time favorites)
- Metro Series (2033, Last Light, Exodus)
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R Series (These are also some of my all time favorites)
- Bioshock series (1, 2, Infinite) (A little too far fetched for my tastes, but they filled my time)
- Dishonored Series (The closest I've ever gotten to the "fantasy" genre. Not really up my alley, but it passed the time)
- The Outer Worlds
- Prey (2017)
- Singularity
- Dying Light (and "The Following" DLC) (I usually find Zombies eyeroll inducing, but this was surprisingly well made and enjoyable)
- Wolfenstein reboots (New order, Old Blood New Colossus) (A little run and gun and basic for my tastes, but not too bad)
- Crysis Remastered (Again, not really my style, but it passed the time)
- Borderlands 1 (not a huge fan, but it has been passing the time. Played it as a single player without the co-op element)

I tried to like the Witcher series and Skyrim, but really wound up absolutely hating both.

My planned upcoming queue (in no specific order, and some of them, when they launch) looks something like this:
- Rest of the Borderlands games
- Far Cry 6
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Dying Light 2
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2

I have a very specific style of game I play. Everything else is just a hard pass.
 
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Zarathustra[H] I can appreciate a lot in that list. Does paint a better picture of what you like. My original thought was pegging you for a CS and old school rainbow six and ghost recon player. I do enjoy a shooter where I can think of my own way to approach something. Probably what I do like about the far cry series as well.

I do miss the old CS servers though, i tried cs-go and something felt different and wrong. Not sure if it was just I changed too much or the game did.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
None of these series interest me in the slightest. I've never played them, and never plan on playing them:

* Halo Infinite
* Assassin's Creed Infinity
* Call of Duty Unending
* Mortal Kombat Eternal
* Ghost Recon Interminable
* Elder Scrolls Inexhaustible
* FIFA Forever
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Not sure if anyone caught the joke, but I just looked up "infinite" in a thesaurus and applied it to all the other gaming franchises. Wasn't meant to be taken seriously.
 
Darunion said:
Zarathustra[H] I can appreciate a lot in that list. Does paint a better picture of what you like. My original thought was pegging you for a CS and old school rainbow six and ghost recon player. I do enjoy a shooter where I can think of my own way to approach something. Probably what I do like about the far cry series as well.

I do miss the old CS servers though, i tried cs-go and something felt different and wrong. Not sure if it was just I changed too much or the game did.
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Yeah.

I think its a little of each.

CS has had the competitive element to it almost from the very beginning. I was never one of the clan/match types, but I did enjoy the semi-serious public servers. I ran two of the biggest Public CS servers on the east coast in the early days when I was in college. You know, where people try to play the game objectives and still have fun, and don't get all super serious about it.

That element seems mostly gone these days.

I feel like CS:GO is either competitive and intense (if you even have to drop off, or god forbid your system hangs or you drop connection, you get penalized) or the more casual game modes are dumbed down, and it's just a bunch of people fooling around doing stupid stuff for their "streams" or begging people to trade skins with them. It also feels less than a community than it used to.

I blame a few different things.

Official Servers and Auto Matchmaking:
Back in the day in order to play online you had to find a good community server you liked. Once you did, you started to log on more often, got to know the regulars, etc. And you had to not be too much of an ass because you didn't want to get yourself banned. Server admins were often on playing themselves, and you didn't want to piss them off. I think it resulted in each server becoming a happy little community. Much like the local bar depicted in Cheers when people yelled his name when Norm walked in the door.

Official servers have ruined a lot of that. There is very little oversight. Sure you can report asshats, but it rarely feels like it does anything. The owners of the official servers are Valve themselves, and they certainly don't have employees online most of the time in most games to stay on top of things. That and because each match is automatically assigned, you have complete rando's ervery time you play. You don't get to know the regulars and build that sense of community.

Now, some might say, "There still are community servers if you want to play on them", and yes, that is true, but because it is so much easier to just click the auto-matchmaking button when you want to play, most people never explore the community servers, resulting in community servers usually being a vast wasteland of empty servers. I think the fact that people were forced to play on community servers or not play at all, made the community and the game better.

Streaming:
I feel like streaming has contributed to the problem by creating incentives for people in non-competitive games to just oof around and do silly things they hope in vain will turn them into some sort of streaming superstar. Thinking about an audience has taken away a part of the enjoyment of the game and it has lowered the entire mood in game, IMHO.

Skins, trading and microtransactions:
Oh man, you can barely log on to a game without hearing people on the voicecomms begging people to trade skins with them. And then when you shoot another player, you find their ridiculous pink camo- AK-47 on the ground. It's annoying in more ways than one.
 
zamardii12 said:
Not sure if anyone caught the joke, but I just looked up "infinite" in a thesaurus and applied it to all the other gaming franchises. Wasn't meant to be taken seriously.
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The joke was understood. I think Darunion was just using that as an example of popular games, since you did pick some of the more popular ones.
 
Zarathustra[H] Yea you probably right. When you used to tell your buddies "hey come play on xx server, much nicer group there!" and it would propagate. You play with same people enough times and you start to have to alter your strategy because you have to avoid being predictable.

I can't really get there again likely because I don't even talk to random people anymore lol. Too many 10 year olds making comments about what they did to my mother lol.

Games as service I will say I do enjoy Destiny 2. It is probably my favorite action gunplay feel. It is nice that the game keeps evolving so instead of just a bunch of games where you have to start over "go grab that pistol , now press this to look down its sights" each new one in the series.

And it is nice finding people in the wild doing their own things, makes the world feel more organic. At least until someone keeps running you over with a bike >.<

For streaming, yea I leave whatever match it is if I find someone posting links or "say hi to all my viewers!". Yea screw that, git off mah lawn.
 
zamardii12 said:
Seriously?

View attachment 413222

For tainting your precious internet with a long URL that literally only requires you to click just like every other link... :ROFLMAO:
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You made the mistake of sharing something on the internet. :D

I'm happy people are still contributing to this section so I can get my [H]ard news.

As to the OP - this sounds horrible. I would never purchase anything like this. I'm also much older than most gamers that would.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
You made the mistake of sharing something on the internet. :D

I'm happy people are still contributing to this section so I can get my [H]ard news.

As to the OP - this sounds horrible. I would never purchase anything like this. I'm also much older than most gamers that would.
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I want people to share news, too, but the original link had a unique tracking ID in it. If you get a link from Twitter or Facebook the least we can do is post a clean URL here.
 
zamardii12 said:
Far Cry 6 is great if you aren't expecting anything different to the Far Cry formula and liked the previous entries.
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Yeah that's like the only reason why I like the FC series. Bad guy says hi at the beginning, something unexpected happens which changes the reason why you're there, and then go kill everything in sight except good guy npcs, difference is how the advancement system works, and whether or not there are "quicktime" events which thankfully have ended in fc4
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yeah that's like the only reason why I like the FC series. Bad guy says hi at the beginning, something unexpected happens which changes the reason why you're there, and then go kill everything in sight except good guy npcs, difference is how the advancement system works, and whether or not there are "quicktime" events which thankfully have ended in fc4
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Yeah I don't mind the formula much, it would use tweaking. I just don't want excessive RPG/collecting stuff (became a problem in New Dawn).

I suppose Ubisoft moving all games to a live service means Splinter Cell will stay dead. Thankfully, I suppose. Was still hoping they'd put out a traditional SC game as it would standout from the rest of the lineup.
 
This is, unfortunately, the inevitable form most established AAA game series will take over the next few years: it's a much safer investment. Right now, there are periodic gaps and lulls in a series revenues generation as the next title is being developed: going forward, Devs/publishers will be able to maintain a captive community from which they can constantly sell content.

It's just too tempting for publishers to not create a continuous platform from which they can generate ongoing revenue. In addition, look out for even more tie-in marketing e.g. events, merch, movie/TV as the point is to hold the consumer in the throws of an IP and not let go in the same way Blizzard, Fortnight, Minecraft do. And they can essentially rely on the momentum of the gaming community to keep thing going much in the same way a multi-level marketing community works.

Even the fickleness of gamers won't save us from this transition to live service since they can just scale development and marketing up and down in accordance with demand (in lieu of developing massive sink-or-swim titles).
 
Just preorder Tom Clacny's Extraction that game is going to rock. Out in January skip the rest.
 
harmattan said:
This is, unfortunately, the inevitable form most established AAA game series will take over the next few years: it's a much safer investment. Right now, there are periodic gaps and lulls in a series revenues generation as the next title is being developed: going forward, Devs/publishers will be able to maintain a captive community from which they can constantly sell content.
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Or they'll loose their core audience, if they haven't already.
harmattan said:
It's just too tempting for publishers to not create a continuous platform from which they can generate ongoing revenue. In addition, look out for even more tie-in marketing e.g. events, merch, movie/TV as the point is to hold the consumer in the throws of an IP and not let go in the same way Blizzard, Fortnight, Minecraft do. And they can essentially rely on the momentum of the gaming community to keep thing going much in the same way a multi-level marketing community works.
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So basically spray and pray.
harmattan said:
Even the fickleness of gamers won't save us from this transition to live service since they can just scale development and marketing up and down in accordance with demand (in lieu of developing massive sink-or-swim titles).
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FFS, live services are the sink or swim titles, they literally bank on player retention. And most live service games fail at retaining even a fraction of their player base.

A regular single player campaign driven title is a guaranteed investment, it was demonstrated numerous times recently that the core audience will buy them, even if there is a massive campaign against the game. Sure with a regular game there is zero chance of getting GTA online money. And that is the key. Greed and wishful thinking. Publishers and investors want their own gta online, or fortnite, or whatever. Unfortunately in reality most will only get their anthems or avengers. The avengers has shown that no matter how successful a franchise is behind your game, if it's crap it's crap.
 
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disappointing but not surprising...when they announced that the next Assassin's Creed game would be live service the writing was on the wall
 
M76 said:
Or they'll loose their core audience, if they haven't already.

So basically spray and pray.

FFS, live services are the sink or swim titles, they literally bank on player retention. And most live service games fail at retaining even a fraction of their player base.

A regular single player campaign driven title is a guaranteed investment, it was demonstrated numerous times recently that the core audience will buy them, even if there is a massive campaign against the game. Sure with a regular game there is zero chance of getting GTA online money. And that is the key. Greed and wishful thinking. Publishers and investors want their own gta online, or fortnite, or whatever. Unfortunately in reality most will only get their anthems or avengers. The avengers has shown that no matter how successful a franchise is behind your game, if it's crap it's crap.
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They should tread carefully when it comes to pissing off their fanbase with this shit.

Take Deus Ex Mankind Divided as an example. The publisher, Square Enix, forced Eidos Montreal to add some microtransactions to it last minute.

This got such bad press that it seriously hurt launch sales, with many boycotting the game. It resulted in the planned additional two titles in the series quietly being canceled.

By going this route on an established series, there is a good chance they will lose a significant portion of their existing fan base. They are going to have to make up that loss with new players, or this will go very badly for them.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
They should tread carefully when it comes to pissing off their fanbase with this shit.

Take Deus Ex Mankind Divided as an example. The publisher, Square Enix, forced Eidos Montreal to add some microtransactions to it last minute.

This got such bad press that it seriously hurt launch sales, with many boycotting the game. It resulted in the planned additional two titles in the series quietly being canceled.

By going this route on an established series, there is a good chance they will lose a significant portion of their existing fan base. They are going to have to make up that loss with new players, or this will go very badly for them.
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If I remember correctly MD's problem was the various pre-order and vendor exclusive bonuses that pissed people off, including me. And I think they backpedaled in the last minute but by then the damage was already done. Which is a shame as MD was a much better game than human revolution was. And now it's just up in the air with a half finished story.
 
M76 said:
If I remember correctly MD's problem was the various pre-order and vendor exclusive bonuses that pissed people off, including me. And I think they backpedaled in the last minute but by then the damage was already done. Which is a shame as MD was a much better game than human revolution was. And now it's just up in the air with a half finished story.
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I completely missed it at the time, but apparently they set something up where you could pay extra for praxis points.

I never noticed, and if I had, I would just have ignored it anyway, but I heard that this pissed off a lot of people.

And yeah, I agree it is a real shame, it's a rich world with a great story, and its a shame it is unlikely to be wrapped up at this point :(
 
M76 said:
Or they'll loose their core audience, if they haven't already.

So basically spray and pray.

FFS, live services are the sink or swim titles, they literally bank on player retention. And most live service games fail at retaining even a fraction of their player base.

A regular single player campaign driven title is a guaranteed investment, it was demonstrated numerous times recently that the core audience will buy them, even if there is a massive campaign against the game. Sure with a regular game there is zero chance of getting GTA online money. And that is the key. Greed and wishful thinking. Publishers and investors want their own gta online, or fortnite, or whatever. Unfortunately in reality most will only get their anthems or avengers. The avengers has shown that no matter how successful a franchise is behind your game, if it's crap it's crap.
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I agree with that assessment. It's going to be blood and tears when the majority of those properties that switch to live service die a slow death due to their fanbase giving up. They'll be some winners, of course, but most will fizzle out or just become shells. The draw to a live service model is too strong however since every publisher and dev now want to get in early and investors get fizzy in the britches over subscription models. And I'm sure most of them are banking that, even if they lose 80% of their subscribers, they can just leave a game to languish while it takes income from the remaining few (quite a few MMOs have been doing this for years).

Well, I suppose in 10 years we can look forward to reboots of properties that die on the vine.
 
polonyc2 said:
didn't anyone learn from the disaster that was the Avengers game...
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There's a whole business around selling spaceship model assets in a "game" that will never be finished.

There's another Fantastic 4 reboot in the works.

Star Wars Episodes 1-3, 5-8 exist; 4 mediocre-awful shows bastardizing the "Star Trek" label.

So, no.
 
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