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S2 Ep60: VGBD - Games as a Service
74 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they continue the ongoing Video Game Breakdown series with the discussion of a recent gaming model that's been taking off!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction to Soapstone Podcast
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm gonna run in the flesh
00:00:37
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Shake. I'm joined by my co-hosts, Always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going swell. That's good. Mm-hmm.
00:00:48
Speaker
Cool. I didn't have a thing. I was just going to respond and hope that you would just kind of jet off. Fill in content.
Evolution of Games as a Service
00:00:56
Speaker
This podcast is not about content. It's about character, the content of our character. But also in this case, it is about games as they exist as a service in current year. And some previous years. Yeah. It's been going on for a while actually.
00:01:17
Speaker
But it's probably more popular now than in the past. So for some people who are less aware, or for people who have the definition very slightly off, I feel like we should first define games as a service and what that actually is and what it entails. That probably makes sense. We should do that. Do you want to pull up Wiki quick or something?
00:01:37
Speaker
So in my mind, at least, and you can you can let me know if you think of something else. But games as a surface is the idea that you publish a game, it gets out there into the ecosystem, you probably are developing a community around it, and you continue to develop the game and then charge money and then various ways for content to support the game kind of going forward.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, so this kind of shows in some ways as skins or just cosmetics to get out of the games in a way of like, let's say a dota 2 battle pass, and you have these other unlockables and things that kind of incentivize you to keep playing and getting those unlockables.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah. Um, other things might be like a subscription service, such as an MMO, like World of Warcraft, where it's like, Hey, this is the game, but we'll periodically release new content and big expansions to kind of keep you coming back and interested. Yeah. Instead of just buying the game, you go through single player campaign. You're kind of kaput. Yeah, exactly. Not to say people do not replay single player games, but
00:02:46
Speaker
Nobody's getting money from me redoing Dark Souls, you know, right and it's also like It's interesting actually Dark Souls is an interesting example because there exists a quote-unquote kind of single-player game experience or like space where the incentive isn't a hundred percent like focused on multiplayer like an MMO and
00:03:09
Speaker
like focused on multiplayer. Yeah, you can do things solo, but that's not the point. And you pay money to be in a space with all of these other people. Something like Dark Souls, they provide a service in the form of like the servers, I would suppose. Or Dark Souls is actually peer to peer. But they may have login servers, things like that. And then support the game with updates. That's probably more of the classical single player experience.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, but it's usually in the form of like a patch to fix issues But not usually added content for the free sake of added content
00:03:48
Speaker
Right.
Traditional DLC in Games
00:03:49
Speaker
Dark Souls would have, um, they take kind of the traditional, now the traditional approach and release DLC and use that as their, um, their continued, uh, content for the game. Like distinct, large chunks of content that the player community will come back for.
00:04:11
Speaker
Um, and they kind of put that into the, like from the business side, that's part of the development cycle for a lot of single player games. Now is like, Hey, you finished massive factory, finished Dark Souls. You did whatever, uh, develop the base game. We shipped that let's immediately start in on the DLC. We'll release a couple of those. And then, um, we'll start working on the next game. Um, that's a lot more of a popular model in the single player space now.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah, but Dark Souls is not charged for those DLCs. So when Dark Souls 3 happened and there was like, um, the Ringed City, that was just something they added to the game. I think they actually did charge for it though. Did they? Yeah, it's just we, uh, a lot of times we went back and we picked the, um,
00:05:02
Speaker
The collection edition collector's edition or like scholar the first sin for Dark Souls 2 had all the DLC in it And then like game of the year edition I think for first one had all the DLC I remember what they did for the third one, but I Remember each DLC costing around like 15 20 bucks something like that. I
00:05:22
Speaker
Hmm. I will say like for something in bio shock those DLCs Definitely did cost money. They did cost money. Yeah, they were they did. I don't think they were as expensive I think there were things used to be relatively cheap In the DLC space 10 to 15. Mm-hmm usually getting at least a day's playthrough worth of content, right? Mm-hmm
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, there's kind of, uh, I think in the olden times and some games still carry this on. Um, but you would see expansion packs more and there usually wasn't that many, I think, uh, Diablo two. I mean, I'm, yeah, I'm immediately jumping to battle chest for Warcraft three Diablo two Starcraft.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah. And those are very substantial. Like those are large expansions to the game itself. Yeah. Diablo added a whole other act. I think there's two other character classes. Right.
00:06:17
Speaker
And then Starcraft obviously had lurkers case in point. Yeah, they added lurkers. There you go. That was the full expansion. Brood war, technically standalone expansion
Free-to-Play Models and Monetization
00:06:28
Speaker
is an idea that's been around for a while. But these are all kind of like the old style way of developing games. It's much more popular now to run games as a service. And I think one of the reasons for that is businesses need, I mean, money, right?
00:06:44
Speaker
I mean, I would agree that's true. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to, I would like to submit the idea that businesses need money approved. Um, but you know, uh, developers need money. If you're going to be paying people salaries, then it means that you're either making money off of sales and the traditional sense by constantly developing games, their expansion packs, um, and then new games, um, or, uh, the games as a service model.
00:07:12
Speaker
is really appealing, the idea that you develop a product, a game, and continually develop that game. So people are already familiar with the skill set. You don't need to come up with new IPs necessarily. You just add an expansion to Hearthstone, and then you say, hey, if you want, you can buy these cards.
00:07:30
Speaker
And Hearthstone is a good example of a, um, the free to play, uh, games as a service model, like, um, and that their, their money comes all, all entirely from the purchase of these packs, these cards. Um, and new expansions just bring old players back in. They drum up some interest for new players. Um, and yeah, I mean, it's taking obviously the card game model, which we've talked about before.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah. And that's the thing, like I'm not somebody who gives a shit about Hearthstone, but I've played enough Hearthstone just in a passive way. Cause Blizzard games are still fun. Right. Even if I don't love all of them, like, uh, here's the storm is never big on some time on it though. Uh, but with Hearthstone, I've definitely picked up some packs just out of, you know what? I played this game a little bit. I'd be willing to invest a little bit of money along with my time. Mm-hmm.
00:08:23
Speaker
And I probably spent 80 bucks on Hearthstone. Yeah. And it's a free to play game. I spent more than I would if I had just bought a, let's say a new title, I'd like 60. Yeah. Right. And that really is the trick with games as a service, is you're usually only a few steps away from spending a lot of money, should you wish to.
00:08:45
Speaker
there's only so much money you can spend legally and according to the terms of service for Diablo 2 right by the game by the expansion yeah there you go um Hearthstone you can spend a lot of money on and when I played it I spent hundreds of dollars over the course of my play time
00:09:02
Speaker
a lot on a lot of packs and um like i'm taking a break from it now i'm not really spending any money on it the last money i spent on it was like for single player adventures things like that but i thought we're we're fun and why not you know support it if i like the idea so like is this a model you things you like just in the way as far as like business practice or is this something that you dislike as far as
00:09:25
Speaker
If you have like that itch and they're like, Hey, you, here's like a whole gallon of back scratch. It's actually itchy. It's itching powder. Right. Well, that's the problem is like modern companies have this sort of.
00:09:46
Speaker
That's actually a great analogy. I'm going to break that down a little bit. I like when people can buy back scratchers. I hate when companies throw itching powder at you to motivate you to buy back scratchers. There's a popular Activision patent. I think it was Activision. I'm almost totally certain it was Activision.
00:10:08
Speaker
that people were talking about where they patented the idea of in a competitive game you put people up against people that are ranked higher than you or better players higher elo personal skill whatever and should you buy purchase microtransactions buy an item buy weapon you then put place that player against
00:10:32
Speaker
lower level weaker opponents let you dominate with them a while and Then restart the loop. Oh Wow, that's kind of dirty. That's that's the itching powder
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like a man you kind of feel like a weak little we go punk. Don't you? Mm-hmm. You should drink this Super cool the beer is all the bros are drinking come hang out the big boys. Yeah It's it's honestly super super shady. I like when games provide you a convenience, but don't just they don't change the
00:11:07
Speaker
the power dynamic. I know there's dissenting opinions on that. Some people, I think, can make a strong argument that cosmetics in themselves are content. It might not make you better at the game, but seeing your character look cool, have cool animations. Can the animator enjoy it? Exactly.
00:11:25
Speaker
It's content in its own way. Even if that content doesn't mean that, you know, you have an advantage over your opponents. It, like you said, it enriches your enjoyment and it gets you more invested in the game. And sometimes things just look really cool. Like people buy things because they're cosmetic all the time. We can go back and talk about Dota 2 if you'd like. So like, since we mentioned the Battle Pass already,
00:11:56
Speaker
That obviously has things in it. You get stuff as you level, whether it be skins or tokens or other ways to level up your battle pass or just cool map stuff, whatever. But then they have like these milestones for like at level 255, you get this cool tiny skin. I'm like, Oh, neat. At like 300, you get this. At 500, you get this. I'm like,
00:12:18
Speaker
Man, I'm not sure not playing a dota that fast or that frequently and winning that off into complete quests and a level up the thing. Yeah. I think that that may, you could make an argument that that's some, some minor form of itching powder. You're not like, I would say, yeah, it's the difference between what you have and what you could have that sells a lot of, um, battle passes, a lot of levels, a lot of season passes and other games, things like that.
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of the, as far as incentivization, it is incentivizing. I feel like incentive, incentivization is the word. Yeah. Impregnation. Right. Impregnation in your mind. It always provides a way for you to achieve that normally. Right.
00:13:06
Speaker
but you really have to grind at it. And they usually pace away where it's like, you're, you'd have to sink serious time and optimizations as far as planning out your quest. And I'll do this here to complete these two sub objectives at once. And then I'll also versus, Oh, let me just spend like 15 bucks. Right. And you can close a major gap. Right.
00:13:28
Speaker
And for me, I'm going to do a split in Dota 2 because I definitely want to play with people. I might play some extra on my own. Just try and level it up. But I don't have the time, patience, or energy to do everything. But at the same time, if there's like a skin for a character I really want that's kind of gated behind a higher level, I want to invest in it a little bit. Right. Whether or not that's a good idea. That is that itching powder in a way.
00:13:56
Speaker
Yeah. And there's, I feel like this is separate from the whole loot boxes gambling argument we've been over in the past. Like you can go back, listen to like our DLC episode or, um, our loot box episode. Can we reference other episodes in every single episode? I do. Yeah. And if you go back in the sort of first episode, we actually reference our zero with episode. Yeah. We have a continuity going on. It's establishing the lore of the soapstone podcast.
00:14:19
Speaker
We're a fucking linked list of episodes. The previous episodes won't exist if we don't reference them in the current episode. Right. This is how we remind people that there's more than just the latest episode. That's how you get them. The number should also give it away. No, that's arbitrary. Oh, man. Someone pointed out one of the numbers is wrong. Go back, listen to all our episodes, find out where the number is wrong, and you win a prize. And the prize is accomplishment for having
00:14:46
Speaker
We might mention your name on the podcast and say it's one nice thing about you if I found out which which numbers are out of order Because I remember that honestly, yeah, I didn't know either I reordered them in the new series But because I was gonna start over if Season two was gonna start over at like episode one or whatever. Oh, yeah and then I went back changed my mind and I kept the episode number increasing and
00:15:12
Speaker
Cause it allows it to be a unique identifier, regardless of the season. So you kind of get best of both worlds. But yeah, we're not talking about loot boxes necessarily or the gambling effect they're in. And that whole debate. And I mean, I feel like that's, that's all valid. But a lot of games running as a service.
00:15:32
Speaker
This is how they make their money. This is how they pay their developers. If you're a gamer, which is a weird word now, I guess, then you should be in favor of developers getting paid. People need to make their money somehow. You can't have literally everything for free.
00:15:50
Speaker
But there also has to be a balance. Like you were mentioning Dota 2. Sometimes I've spent considerably more money than I should have back when I spent money on Dota 2 cosmetics because I wanted like those Enigma bracers for Blackhole or something like that.
00:16:09
Speaker
It is in its own way, you know, kind of, kind of skeevy, like a little bit. It's a little bit slimy to be like, here's all the cool stuff you don't have. Give us hundreds of dollars and you get it. It's fully within their rights, but as a consumer, you also get to choose what's okay and what's not. I mean, it's kind of the same way where you.
00:16:30
Speaker
I mean, I guess any marketing, they want to make their thing look bright and shiny and cool. And if you want to cool people, you will buy and or use this product. Oh, look at those people who like drinking a Heineken and having a grand old time. I was like, that's not everybody fucking hates Heineken.
00:16:49
Speaker
I think another interesting aspect here is we've talked about cosmetics. Something Valve has also started to do a little bit more is attach features to their battle passes. Are you talking about as far as the custom game modes that come up?
00:17:04
Speaker
I mean, the custom games, that's a really good example of it. I don't think that those have been massively reviewed well by the community, but- And they're a pissy community. Some are fun, some are kind of lackluster. Yeah, and it's something you can buy into. I'm talking more about community desired features, things like, I think they had a role queue or something like that initiated, like that you only had access to if you'd
Content Delivery Models in Gaming
00:17:30
Speaker
purchased.
00:17:30
Speaker
a battle pass or specific ranked queue modes that were only available to you if you had the pass. And that's when it starts to get a little bit more sketchy to me because you are locking gameplay methods kind of behind these paywalls. But it's up to the consumer to decide what you really are fine with.
00:18:00
Speaker
Um, and they'll continue to make 25 to $30 million of like every year for the international. That's not going to change. Yeah. They have their core audience for sure. I would say honestly, though, I'm fine with DOTA's model. Partially that is definitely biased because I enjoy the game. I follow some of the community and like the pro team, pro scene. I'm invested in that world for sure.
00:18:28
Speaker
And so like every time it comes out, unless it's like pure garbage, I'm going to invest some money, invest some time and a little bit of extra money because I'm dumb and or not sober at the time. And it seems like a cool idea. Right. Some other things I would say are less.
00:18:44
Speaker
viable in my eyes are things where, I mean, we have to go back to talk about something like Fallout 76 or No Man's Sky or something where it's like, hey, here's the base game. And people are like, where's the rest of the game though? And then those were kind of like dumpster fires where like a lot of patches happened to get to a more stable state. I'm trying to think of another game that's kind of
00:19:14
Speaker
They released something, but a lot of it's gated behind probably something at EA space. Yeah. Like, uh, I mean, obviously battlefront two is notorious for microtransactions and some other things. I think it's, I think you could make a strong argument that the rise of games as a service has opened the door largely to incomplete games, uh, shipping with the idea that, um,
00:19:40
Speaker
They will be completed and that you shouldn't judge them until they kind of are completed. Well.
00:19:48
Speaker
So an example of an iterative game that I'm going through currently is Hades, right? It's in beta. I got it at like a flat price of like either 20 or 30 bucks and They keep adding stuff to it. Yeah, I don't get charged each time. I own the game So any updates that I get just they come in for free Yeah, it's almost like a Kickstarter plus really because you have access to the game It's the well I say that
00:20:13
Speaker
Has actual terms early access, right? Yeah, I think that's a better way to say Because that's what people call it. It's what the industry calls it but I Mean that I feel like that's fine for for some developers. Like I there are people who are against it entirely Mm-hmm. I mean like we've talked we've had thoughts on on early access before But some developers use early access as a games as a service
00:20:41
Speaker
mode essentially this idea that like they're going to have income early allows them to kind of fund the game and then they Continue to fund development by drumming up interest through the entire duration And then they have a finished product at the end That's kind of novel as far as the history of games is concerned
00:21:00
Speaker
It used to be a large barrier of entry to like start making a game or to get a game to go gold, to actually ship it, have it on a disc. You had to be able to sustain yourself through the entire process just based off of investors or your publishing company or what have you. And it's not necessary anymore if you can drum up enough hype to run your game as a service, as a super giant has with Hades.
00:21:26
Speaker
But would you prefer playing Hades now and you get these iterative updates and kind of keeps having you go back or would you rather have, let's say Hades is completed in nine months.
Funding Through Early Access
00:21:39
Speaker
It's a full fledged game has, let's say 30 hours of content.
00:21:44
Speaker
And you just digest that at whatever pace, but you've asked everything at once. It's actually kind of a loaded question because I think most people would prefer the final game. If you were just never to be aware of the game until it was actually announced, people like having the final game. Bethesda has actually, to their credit, they've done that in the past.
00:22:07
Speaker
They've been like, hey, here's a new game. It's available. This queue for get hyped. Like they've done that with fallout multiple times. Yeah. And I think that's, that's awesome. You get to immediately caching your hype.
00:22:20
Speaker
for money by the game and and run with it and play it completely out. The trick I think with developing games as a service, not necessarily for the Hades model, Hades is probably doing it in a relatively healthy way where they've specifically designed the game to be built on these layers where they can continue to add more content. It's not like they're going to go back and be like,
00:22:45
Speaker
Oh, and now we've added combat and update for or whatever, right? Like the games there, it's entirely playable. Uh, it's just being fleshed out, but there are games. Um, and you see these on things like, um, like Patreon or, uh, other subscriber based services where the developers almost have a disincentive to put that cap on the game. Uh, because there's people who are paying monthly for its development. I feel like that's a.
00:23:15
Speaker
It's really cool that exists Like it is cool that like you can be a part of a community and like fun that and see that happen It's part of the joy of like back in games. Mm-hmm like Psychonauts 2 is something I'm a backer for it's like 20 bucks 25 bucks. I think nothing crazy, but you don't pay monthly
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah. I thought you were about to say, but I actually do. Shafer just has my back account. But I mean, as far as it is cool to be invested in that, whether it be like games or anything else you're like actively contributing to, yeah. With your Patreon for like, Sir Action Slacks to fund his schemes. I feel is the only way to put that. Yeah, scheme is probably a good word for it. Um, evil plans.
00:24:05
Speaker
Midas mode that's basically where yeah But Like that's really cool, but you I feel like it has to be marketed up front like hey, this is exactly what this is Because obviously I and anybody else would hate you get something. It's like hey, I
00:24:23
Speaker
Here's this complete game. You're like, cool. I'm going to pre-order that. I'm really excited. And then it's kind of not. And then you still have to pay extra money for DLCs or other content where it's like, oh, this now kind of makes an actual game versus a half-assed remodel, Assassin's Creed, or something like that.
00:24:43
Speaker
And I feel like game critics largely, they still pick up on that for AAA games, for single player games that launch. If you launch and you don't have any content, you've got day one DLC, that's a lost fight. That'll continue to happen. No one's gonna deduct too many points for it.
00:25:02
Speaker
but like they'll still critically pan games that are incomplete at launch it's the games that have this continual development cycle that are you know taking money from people's accounts each month for patreon or whatever those are the ones where the developer is less incentivized to actually put a cap on it get it out the door like a mario cap or something like that
00:25:25
Speaker
Whips hat into the wall But that's that's that's kind of like maybe perhaps a fringe Side of games as a service I think games as a service has largely exploded because of how profitable it is and how much more money you can get off somebody and
00:25:44
Speaker
if You are not limiting their purchase option options to just 50 I guess $60 across all consoles now For the the price tag of your game and the all-in-one It is crazy. I was listening to somebody else's podcast on YouTube talking about a similar subject aka the same one and they were saying that I think the division two sold X amount of copies and
00:26:12
Speaker
And then the fact that they had or were utilizing some of the games as a service model, they got an additional like 45% on like the second release of content for that game, which is crazy.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, it's news. It shouldn't be really be news to anyone that free games make considerably more money than paid games on average, which sounds insane, but it's not at all. Like obviously you have Wells, you have people who will drop a lot of money on things. You have GTA shark cards. Like that's where rockstar just gets a stupid amount of their money. It's people who just buy currency and they're mostly single player games that have like a multiplayer component. Yep.
00:26:57
Speaker
And yeah, I mean it's an interesting trend.
Successful Games as a Service Models
00:27:02
Speaker
I don't know if it's entirely healthy from my perspective. I don't think it betters the community in any way. Yeah.
00:27:11
Speaker
There's actually, I can think of another example for Games as a Service. We've already talked about Blizzard a little bit. We've talked about their loot boxes for Overwatch in the past. We had an episode on Starcraft, but we didn't talk about the co-op necessarily. That is actually what I would believe to be a good example of Games as a Service in the form that they have people who are still developing Starcraft co-op commanders.
00:27:40
Speaker
And you can play them up to like level five and there's 15 levels total as they're like unlocking skills and things. And once you get up to level five, it's like, hey, give us five dollars and you now own the commander. You can level them out the rest of the way. If you started playing Starcraft right now and you're like, I'm super addicted. I'm going to buy all of these. That would actually be like a lot of money. It would be basically like the price of trying to think of how many others are. Yeah, another Starcraft.
00:28:07
Speaker
Well, I mean, there are some like base commanders who are free, right? Yeah. And you can play all of them up to level five. So like, I think you get the first three with no purchases, three or four with no purchases. And then you would need to buy the rest. But that doesn't bother me as a professional gamer, because I have a lot of fun in the mode. I get to try out the commanders before I commit to buying them. There's there's been one that I played and I was like, ah,
00:28:34
Speaker
Got the level five. I'm not really feeling it. Like I'm gonna I have more fun with other characters. I'm not gonna buy this one it was haunted Horner for the uninitiated and Your description of it made me not want to I was like, okay. Yeah, I just haven't tried yet
00:28:51
Speaker
But the same way you're willing to spend some money on Dota periodically, unlock that quest content, unlock some of those game modes, custom modes, cosmetics, things like that, I'm perfectly fine throwing $5 each quarter maybe or something like that at Starcraft to play the latest Commander.
00:29:14
Speaker
It's just, it's fun. I enjoy the game and for the time spent in it, that cost is quite low to me. Imagine if I spent any money in Binding of Isaac or Dota 2. The game's literally free. That game saves you money every time you play it, Binding of Isaac. It's true. I think it costs, for all the games, maybe 30 bucks total. But yeah, it's... How many hours do you have in Binding of Isaac now?
00:29:44
Speaker
This isn't going to be a legitimate number, I'll say. This is a very skewed number because a lot of times I wouldn't close out games. Yeah. But it's like around 3,000. Yeah, 3,000. Higher than Dota, which is probably around like 2,500. Look, we're getting into the years, basically, that you've had finding a Isaac Open. It's kind of funny. But just keep pumping that number up.
00:30:06
Speaker
But again, it goes back to the, I have the initial investment, but when new stuff is added, if it's a game or game mode that I already kind of enjoy, I'm much more likely to go back to it. Oh, they had a new character in Dota 2. How the fuck do they fit into the meta? How's it gonna change the pro scene? How's it gonna change the pub scene? What skins are they gonna get when the next thing comes out? And like, I'm super on board.
00:30:33
Speaker
Right. You can actually use free content as a boost to your paid content for games as well. Like when MMOs are kind of cheating as an example, but when an MMO expansion comes out, subscriber numbers surge in response to that, because there's people who were invested in the game want to see the new content.
00:30:56
Speaker
but people who were like, this might not be saying like, oh, that actually seems kind of cool. I'm gonna check it out. Yeah. Or like, you're making money from the expansion cells, but you're also making secondary money from the actual subscriptions. And there are some games that actually release free content, very, so like on our list, we have games like Path of Exile and Warframe, two games that have tremendous amounts of free content.
00:31:25
Speaker
And they use that to push their, well, they don't use that to push their microtransactions. That sounds aggressive, but they keep their audience engaged so that they're available for the microtransactions.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah, like Path of Exile has a metric fuckton of cool ass cosmetics that people have made. Or if you're doing like late game shit, you might want more inventory space. You can like trade around as high level and end tier items. Right. But I think you start out with three pages worth of inventory.
00:31:58
Speaker
like in the stash yeah yeah yeah and i mean those are like some convenience things you could argue some of like that falls under gameplay but i mean i i think it's fine it's not predatory to the extent that some games run with it
00:32:16
Speaker
And I prefer the paid model with a very solid base game That isn't like and here's the gate where we're just gonna squeeze you until you spend money Not a fan of that at all I would much rather be enjoying the game so much that I want to spend money on it
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah, which is where I feel that like cosmetics fit into the scene nicely. If I'm enjoying the fuck out of this game, I'm more likely to throw some money at it for further enjoyment. Look at my cool dude. He has like a dildo necklace or whatever it may be. Great.
00:32:57
Speaker
What would you say is the most egregious example right now of predatory games as a service? I think so. I don't have an example from a game, but I have an example of the situation the game would set up. And that's one where they, and this is very popular. It's very popular. You open with a free game.
00:33:18
Speaker
that, uh, doesn't have any like limitations on it as far as your, your gameplay mechanics, uh, that you feel that you experience until it reaches a point where you're already committed to the game. You're having fun. You're in that initial video game endorphins rush or whatever, where you're enjoying yourself. And then they hit you with a gate and they're like, be so much better if you threw some money our way.
00:33:44
Speaker
It's like, Hey, you've been left clicking furiously. Wouldn't it be great if the sensor bar went away and like, you got me. It's, it's the kind of, the issue there is it's the opposite of what I was saying before. It's just their front load, kind of the enjoyment in the content. And then they force you to pay to finish out that endorphin rush. Um, the game hasn't proven itself yet.
00:34:10
Speaker
It's like going through a quest and you're like, oh, here's the boss battle. The end of this quest that I've worked for. And, and the demo was like, all right, you're done. And you're like, what the fuck? Like it's the full blue ball. Exactly. And it's effective. It's an effective strategy to get people to spend money. Um, the other thing that really bothers me, um, Russell's, my Jimmy's is, um,
00:34:37
Speaker
There's a couple, uh, publishers who have been pushing microtransactions for single player games more.
00:34:45
Speaker
Um, and that's, that's something I don't want to see caught catch on at all. Like, please no. I don't understand it from the context of a single player game. Cause usually if I get like a cool skin and overwatch or something that I got from a loot box, I don't really buy loot boxes just for like playing and like leveling up very, very slowly. I've got one or two cool things. It is fun to like play with your friends and show it off.
00:35:13
Speaker
Yeah. Like, oh, you got that cool thing? That looks so cool. Did you all get to play the game? Awesome. Great. Right. But if I'm doing something like, again, Dark Souls is not the best example. Let's say I'm playing Sonic Adventure Battle 2. That'd actually be hilarious with cosmetics. Right. The graphics are so shitty.
00:35:31
Speaker
but Like that I feel should be just a part of the game. I don't see why you'd go back like oh, well we added these holographic Sims skins. Yeah Yeah, yeah, I'm totally gonna cover all the babies in this like why I
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, one of the examples we had here was Deus Ex Mankind Divided, I believe it was, had purchasable praxis in the single player mode where you could just open up the Squeenix store and spend real money and get more skill points. That's really sketchy in a game where you could literally also just cheat. Like, this isn't like cheating in a multiplayer game. This is cheating in a single player game, which I feel like has different ethics.
00:36:19
Speaker
In order to just get skill points the game also just threw plenty of them at you And you're basically saying hey Some of our people some of the people playing this game are gonna have poor impulse control Or they just won't have the time or they'll just want an easier experience let's uh, let's catch some dumbasses with a quick pay to win and see who we see who bites and
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like you're literally spending money on something that goes away when you create a new save The idea of that is just mind-boggling to me and hey jake, uh, not all save slots are free. We talked about that, right? Yeah That's yeah exactly right. It's one of my favorite egregious examples of what the actual fuck did How did nobody say this is a bad idea your consumers in audience base might not appreciate this but um
00:37:09
Speaker
Was it two years ago now that Metal Gear Survive was like, hey, it's pretty standard for every game to have at least three save slots. This one had one and you could buy up to three at the cost of $10 per
Profit vs. Experience in Gaming Platforms
00:37:26
Speaker
save slot. Check my math on that.
00:37:28
Speaker
And that's kind of the issue I think with games as a service is there's nothing wrong with making money, large asterisk, but if your game exists as a platform for you to make money in the future,
00:37:44
Speaker
and it doesn't stand on its own like you're so far removed from this idea we had of buy a game own a game you're buying a product you're having fun with it that it becomes its own issue when people are trying to make money off of you
00:38:00
Speaker
Yeah. And the other thing is, again, you're not being transparent as far as saying upfront, Hey, at this price point, you will get all of these things. Yeah. Like back in the day, if you got a sound old as fuck now, if you bought like a physical game for like a game store, maybe you got something that was used. Your bubble gum and your game. That's all I kept the box closed is the, the adhesives of the gun.
00:38:27
Speaker
A few penny candies. But you have that physical copy. And I still have, if you look over that box against the wall. Look to the wall, viewers. For the audio listeners. Like I have, it's a combination of like PS4 games, PS2 games, and a couple of GameCube games. But a lot of those I've had for a long time, or I re-bought them because the original got destroyed.
00:38:54
Speaker
But those are things that I have and I have solid value for and nobody can fucking take from me and it has Everything consolidated into one package, which is the game Yeah, do I wish that they went back and added content onto it? Maybe for some right, but it kind of cheapens the experience and it's like having a Star Wars movie and you're like Hey, we're gonna make some changes
00:39:19
Speaker
Right. Yeah, they just kept making Star Wars movies. They really just never stop. They should just made one one Star Wars movie. There you go. Done. Controversy old thing. I don't actually hold that opinion, but still Yeah, it's how far we've come from that to the point where? Games as a service like you have a box you have a box you can always go back to you can play those games whenever you want and
00:39:41
Speaker
Even the games that exist as games of a service that we enjoy So like Path of Exile in comparison to Diablo 2 Hmm, maybe a bad example Diablo 2 still have to sign in to battle.net for but
00:39:56
Speaker
You can lose everything you've spent money on in Path of Exile if they're ever just like, hey, company went under and we're going to drop it. A lot of people would just lose significant investment monetarily that they like have spent money on cosmetics. There are other games that I'm not trying to pick out that one game. This is an example.
00:40:15
Speaker
Um, but any game that exists as a service, you, you can lose all of that, like immediately. Overwatch doesn't have a single player component. If it ever drops, then, you know, all of that money, it's gone. Um, and that's, you know, something that I don't think people think about a lot, especially since games have, well, you don't expect things that are in the cloud gaming space to fail because it's in the cloud. But I feel like in a more.
00:40:45
Speaker
middle ground space for the average consumer you might have like an online gaming service like Xbox live or other things just like hey yeah online doesn't exist anymore like you have these uh free games you might have access to and maybe it's like a rotating cycle oh yeah maybe you just have it as long as you have the subscription going but then once that's gone
00:41:09
Speaker
It's gone. Yeah. It's not something that you were transactionally like saying, Hey, I will give you this. You will give me this. We're good. Yeah. They're not coming back like, Hey, uh, I got this new stuff. You want to try it? Yeah. It's like, it's hard not to make the comparison to drug dealers because I know it's a money hungry or very capitalistic aspect of it. Yeah. Which again is a good incentive for the company's decision, but I feel we'll always
00:41:39
Speaker
or typically will adversely impact the community or the consumer. Yeah. And you can make a strong argument. Like you're talking about, um, Xbox live PlayStation plus, like there's all services that give you access to a lot of free games. You could save money if you're planning on buying all of those games, but you don't own them. And like you said, as soon as your subscription lapses, you lose access to them. That is the definition of games as a service.
00:42:05
Speaker
Yeah, fuck netflix Yeah games as a service netflix, um, but Yeah, it's it's it's a line kind of the consumer has to decide when Enough is enough like what people are comfortable with and what the market can bear to make things sound way more Sophisticated than they actually are for this for this podcast and the the reality of it is um
Monetization Strategies in MMOs
00:42:33
Speaker
Like a lot of games on the list here that fall under games as a service, MMOs, like I've had fun with them, a lot of fun with them. Those are games as a service, things that I don't own in this new modern, brave new world in the gaming space that maybe go away someday. I've still had fun with them and I feel like I've, yeah.
00:42:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's like maybe Hearthstone a little bit less. I spent too much money for the fun I got out of Hearthstone, but even games like Dota where I spent a lot of money eventually, I got tons of fun out of it. And if Dota completely dropped off the face of the world tomorrow and just was completely inaccessible and all the money I spent on it was irretrievable, I would still probably say
00:43:23
Speaker
The worth. Yeah. Hashtag worth. Maybe, maybe I wouldn't have gotten the bracers. Maybe I wouldn't have got the Enigma bracers, but overall I had a fun experience and it's kind of like, like a movie theater, right? That isn't a temporary experience. You see the movie, you spend a lot of money, had a good time and you're done. Maybe that's okay. You know, maybe it's okay.
00:43:48
Speaker
Is it okay? If I can ever hate saying the phrase, it depends. It's like, I can't make up my decision. Well, it's a good phrase. Like there's an argument that can be made in both cases for almost most situations, right? Yeah.
00:44:07
Speaker
So I'd say in one case, yeah, with like a movie, I'm totally fine. Like I know I'm getting into, and also for me, it's not something that I'm going to want to re-experience. Yeah. For me, it's like a one-time deal.
00:44:22
Speaker
Whereas with a game, if it's a game that I enjoy, it's not single player and has replayability, whether it be something RNG happens, maybe there's events and maybe like an MMO space, something seasonal or like DLC to bring me back. What's your theme? Yeah. Gib dire tide, please.
00:44:49
Speaker
Again, it just harkens back to whether or not I enjoy the game in that space. Um, if it was like aggressively monetization hungry, and I'm not feeling that that's something that I would personally opt out of. Um, and probably would also condemn to a degree, but I can't really speak for other people as far as what they feel works for them.
00:45:14
Speaker
Right. That's probably why they're so successful is because that line exists in a different place for each person. But like, you're always going to have people who that line is like right under their shoes and every fucking trip over it, you know?
00:45:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's and many games have an entire tiered set of microtransactions or what have you to appeal to the entire group. Like, yeah, you can spend, I don't know, maybe like 15, 10 bucks on loot boxes, probably 10 bucks on the minimum and overwatch. But you could also spend 80 bucks like a fail swoop and get like an overall bonus to the number of boxes you get or something like that. Right. So.
00:45:55
Speaker
The fucking uh, do you remember when the bonus cards were just for like, oh you've gotten 10 hoagies This one's on us. Right? Yeah, the punch cards Yeah, it's like literally here's like a 10 value thing over this many times. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, why aren't we getting hoagies for playing video games? That's my question. I just want to be rewarded for all my uh Trihardery. Yeah No, I think that's fair
00:46:20
Speaker
No, I'm saying I have three arteries. No. Tri artery. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a very interesting space. And I mean, we'll find out where this goes in the future. Like are all games going to turn into this kind of support the IP single release sort of cash crap. There have been games actually. This is another point where the fact that a game has come out as a service has actually prevented single player content for coming out.
00:46:48
Speaker
Good example, this is going back to WoW. Also, The Old Republic. These are two MMOs that basically single-handedly prevented single-player content from ever being developed for the games because the business executive decided it would probably correctly, it would be more financially viable to dump everything into this service.
00:47:13
Speaker
So how much, how much does that bother you that IPs that you care about could turn into a single game run as a service that never makes like a huge technological jump kind of falls behind the times. Um, and is maintained in that state as opposed to a new release.
00:47:34
Speaker
I'm trying to think of a game I like now. Right. Our actual set of games that we play is kind of like condensed down a bunch. A theoretical example would be maybe they don't develop Dota 3 because Dota 2 sticks around. Maybe that works because of how, where we're at with technology too.
00:47:55
Speaker
I feel that they can keep adding onto that kind of ad infinitum. It's evolved so much. Like if you watch some OG videos, you're like, what the fuck? And it has changed a lot. So I'm fine with that in that space. It definitely impacts like IPs I care about you. Like you mentioned fallout 76, the idea that they may not develop another fallout game because they would rather have it be DLC for 76 hurts me deeply.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah, because I was going to get this point anyway. I feel like they've lost like the heart of the narrative. We're just like, Oh, well if they want that single player old fallout shit, they can just, we'll eventually give that to them. But it's different from buying moral wind for like 20 bucks and going and having that fucking full ass RPG experience. Yeah.
00:48:47
Speaker
So if I take a game series that I love like Bioshock mm-hmm and that Bioshock infinite had two DLCs burial, let's see was one hmm And then there was another one that would count up to two I remember what the other one is a barrel of season I remember
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I know that there is, there's been several DLCs for that series, but it has been blocked off. It hasn't been like, we'll never make another Bioshock because of the Bioshock MMO is eating all the content. But like for me, I like having that standalone content. Yeah. That I can look back at and kind of like a piecemeal. I watched this movie. I really enjoyed that movie. I watched like 10 years ago.
00:49:35
Speaker
It stood on its own. It had content that I appreciated and nothing else can tarnish that. Fuck you, subreddits. But like it will live on in that space. You can't go back and edit it. You can make your commentary this way or that, but that was it. That was my experience. And I'm not, you're not going to water down things by like,
00:50:01
Speaker
Well, we should probably have a sixth season, guys, because it's still making money.
00:50:07
Speaker
That actually happens in single player games too. This is watering down this addendum to make more money. A lot of single player games have a multiplayer component and that's where the microtransactions come in. That's where the, as a service, like how we get a little bit more money out of this game really comes in to varying levels of craziness, but like mass effect Andromeda.
00:50:34
Speaker
I mean, there already evokes a lot of thoughts, right? But it had a multiplayer mode, which was fine, I guess. Some people actually really got into it and that you could buy loot boxes or whatever for it. Had nothing really to do with the single player content. It may have had some microtransactions that were optional.
00:50:53
Speaker
But a lot of games run that model now where it's like, hey, single player that opposes like that hits our core base multiplayer, and we'll throw some microtransactions in there. And at the end of the day, they end up making a lot of money off of the microtransactions and the service part that's built on top of the single player.
00:51:12
Speaker
It's not full on MMO. This is now our IP is just maintaining this MMO. I wish, I wish there was another Knights of the Old Republic, but I'm not so much a fan of the MMO and there won't be as long as the MMO exists.
00:51:30
Speaker
We crap on Bethesda a lot, I think. And rightly so. Yeah, I was going to say. But like one thing they've kind of done in this space that I don't hate is because the game hasn't come out yet and they haven't given me a reason to hate it yet, is they have the Elder Scrolls Online
Balancing Single-Player and MMO Experiences
00:51:47
Speaker
and they're still developing Elder Scrolls 5, 6. 6. 6, yeah. There's a V. I was like, what is the V? That's a 5. Thanks, Grand Theft Auto.
00:51:59
Speaker
Yeah. So they're developing the single player game and they're not letting the fact that they have a MMO take away from their single player IP. Exactly. Yeah. Which they probably will do for fallout and I will remain sad.
00:52:18
Speaker
Yeah, it does look like it's going that way. And I feel that overall the games, the service will definitely persist. I want to say more so in the triple a space because usually the indie space model has been, yeah, we, I don't mean this in a negative way, but like crap out small games. Yeah.
00:52:38
Speaker
They're kind of like, here's this tight little idea. Here's some cool music to go with it. Here's this fun experience. And it's like a small package. They're not trying to get you with these over the top cinematics and adding in these Hans Zimmer scores to your call of duty or try and introduce like a multiplayer aspect.
Challenges for Indie Developers
00:53:01
Speaker
They also in the indie space, they a lot of times can't afford the service. They can't like, they literally don't have the complexity to throw multiplayer into their game. They can't, you know, maintain a community, turn it into a sub MMO or something like that.
00:53:14
Speaker
I kind of like that you brought up the indie space, though, because we have had this discussion about how AAA space is done, games as a service, all of that. There's this weird niche that exists of games that stay under development for almost forever, essentially, and they continually get better.
00:53:36
Speaker
Not always indie games, but it seems like a lot of the time that's the case. Where they're technically games as a service, but they don't make microtransaction money. And I can think of some right off the top of my head. Dwarf Fortress. Yeah, Dwarf Fortress. Very popular. Dwarf Fortress is an amazing example. I was actually going to go for Minecraft and you went for the more hipster of the two. Sorry. But yeah, like as I've said on many previous podcasts, got Minecraft for like
00:54:05
Speaker
20 bucks in college. The other day it was fucking riding on dolphins. What up? It's magical. It's a completely different game than what it was at launch. I mean, obviously Microsoft owns Mojang now, so you can't really file them under indie.
00:54:22
Speaker
But I mean, like when they have expanded in that space, they've made separate games. There's going to be the Minecraft co-op dungeon crawler. Yeah. They had some telltale Minecraft. Yeah. The story one, the telltale. Yeah. How are they doing by the way? Um, man. Stark humor. But yeah.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, like Microsoft, I was going to say Microsoft Minecraft hasn't had an expansion. They probably could have sold one. They literally could have been like, Hey, here's another expansion. It's 20 bucks. And I would have bought it. Yeah. And I probably would have bought it too. And I respect them for not doing it and just continuing with free content and living off of the cells of the sales of literally everyone in the entire world owning Minecraft.
00:55:15
Speaker
How would you feel if let's say Minecraft alpha, I hear the songs already, um, 20 bucks, right? Let's say a couple of years down the road, you have Minecraft three six or something. Yeah. How would you feel if that was charged at 30 bucks? Because X amount of content has been added in that timeframe.
00:55:37
Speaker
Like they re-release it with all of the content or this is all of the content. It's not included in the original version. Plus all of this is now $30.
00:55:50
Speaker
I would say like if you bought the initial game at that initial price point, you're still getting the updates. If you buy in now, you get the current game. You still continue to get the other updates, but because you didn't get it at base where it was kind of less content, would you be willing to pay more at that point? I think this actually exists. I think the price for Minecraft has changed over the years. I think it's gone up a little bit. It's like five or 10 bucks, something like that in the US.
00:56:19
Speaker
I remember the first time I bought it I had to convert to euros because I couldn't buy it with US dollars. So I think I ended up spending more. It was a long time ago, I can't remember.
00:56:33
Speaker
I mean, they can pick whatever the price is, I guess. That doesn't bother me too much. I think the consumer at that point can make the decision. Minecraft has always been a really good $4 purchase for the time we can get out of it and the full mod community and all that nonsense we've covered in the dedicated podcast episode on the soapstone.
00:56:52
Speaker
Um, but, but yeah, like other games exist in that space. Uh, factorial is not 1999. It's $20 on the dot for some reason. And that has been under development since the dawn of time. I think there's like big bang. And then there's just a developer who's like hammering rail tracks together and made factorial. Um, like star bound Terrario just very, very recently announced that they were going to stop development.
00:57:22
Speaker
I thought that game was done years ago. Like, I'm scared to think about starting a Terraria. It's like when you go on a vacation, you're like, oh, that was nice. And you come back to the office and you see somebody there, you're like, hey, you got it a little bit early. They're like, I haven't left. Yeah.
00:57:40
Speaker
Yeah. And I, I feel like out of all of these kinds of note, these paths developers can take, perhaps this is the most, the most noble path. Maybe that doesn't make it the correct path, but the most consumer centric path is.
Continual Improvement Without Monetization
00:57:56
Speaker
I will continue to support my game. I will make it so good, so worth it and generate continual hype to the point where the sales never drop off. It's not like a AAA shooter title where sales start.
00:58:12
Speaker
three weeks later, or the following Christmas. It would probably want to be sales spike and then end and it's done. I think Jimmy has an Xbox. Stop it grandma. It's not even my name. Got a classical Gameboy. Stop buying an Xbox games.
00:58:30
Speaker
I think that's probably, that's a hard path to take. And AAA studios can't really do it because they have so many mouths to feed, so to speak. And the executives have so large of mouths. But, you know, for any, any companies, any studios, people like people who make Terraria Starbound, they can sustain that, you know, for like all they can live off of continual sales of a game sales. I don't know why I can't say that.
00:59:00
Speaker
of a game that has already been published, came out years ago, and is continually made better. So it's cool. I like that that exists. Yeah, but it is that noble path, as you were saying. I know it's not.
00:59:20
Speaker
Viable for a lot of people. Yeah, I'd like mm-hmm as a consumer bystander and somebody's not in the industry. It's idyllic, right? Yeah Because I would love for people to make games just for the sake of I have this passion This would be a really fucking cool thing and I made it and other people shared in my joy and passion. Yeah Undertale and all the other games I like Only my games are good
00:59:45
Speaker
Right. It's the craftsmanship of it. It's like, you can't, you can't let go of the game because to you, it's not complete. It's not done. There are tons of things that I do not.
00:59:56
Speaker
like necessarily because it's just not how i'm wired but i can appreciate when it's fucking made well yeah and you don't need to be an expert in the space to be like oh god that's actually that's really gorgeous that's beautiful yeah you spend a lot of time and care put into this yeah you can if you want to make money off of it more power to you i'll definitely but like i have
01:00:17
Speaker
points to the other corner of the room. I showed you the wood etching I got from Etsy. That was definitely laser cut. No human is that perfect. But it's gorgeous and the craftsmanship I really love. So it's likely I might get other stuff from that vendor because they have an awesome product.
01:00:37
Speaker
Yeah. And it stands on its own and I'm fine if you add microtransactions in some ways that are cosmetic and might further play your experience. Um, cause maybe you just want to like look cool while you're doing cool shit. That's fine. Um, as long as it's not done in a predatory fashion, right? And it's not paid to win just cosmetic.
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, as recent news. It's better when things are not the option of predatory advantage. It's been interesting 2019. Yeah. I think we'll always have a soft spot for that noble path, those developers that do just with ridiculous levels of dedication and honestly nonsense continue to release updates for the games that we care about and then charges nothing for them.
01:01:32
Speaker
Good on you. I wish more people could sustain that. Thank you Stardew Value for multiplayer like a year or two after the launch. Just like, yeah, let's just add it to the game. Let's just rewrite it. They brought in one developer. They're just like, this is the multiplayer guy. So I'm sure he had a fun time.
01:01:53
Speaker
He just rubs two copies of the game together and multiplayer. But they, they probably funded that a little bit because it came out on the switch, which is a good idea. So any other thoughts on the, the space of games as a service? I think we've, this is pretty much, I think we could just take like the transcript of this podcast and actually upload it to Wikipedia instead of the opposite, which is usually what we go to.
01:02:20
Speaker
We just copy things from Wikipedia. We're like, let's read this. Just imagining, you know, like the, uh, uh, how many steps to get back to, um, was it Hitler on Wikipedia? Like following the links up at the top. How many links, how many links to Hitler?
01:02:39
Speaker
A variation of the Kevin Bacon game for sure. We're just reading consecutive Wikipedia articles. It's a very different podcast. And you keep doing control F Hitler for some reason. Oh man. But yeah, that's games as a service. I think we pretty well covered our opinions on it. Curious what your guys' opinions are. If you have those, feel free to send them in at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com.
01:03:07
Speaker
or drop them on Facebook, facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. We are always happy to hear from listeners. And if you have any ideas, you know, send those in as well. Seriously, we do like and appreciate any type of feedback, whether it's on the episode, whether it's your experience on the topic or your comments on that.
01:03:30
Speaker
Or hey, if you don't want to hate it, just throw us a like to let us know that you listened or that you didn't listen, but you appreciate that we try. Right. Exactly. Well, the trick is if they threw us the like, does that mean they got this far in the podcast? I feel like that would count as listening at this point.
01:03:46
Speaker
I feel like they see that there's a post and they like it they just they might like it and not listen to it yeah but if you did listen this far you better press the like button yeah also what's wrong with you well anyways until next time we'll see you in the next one