Mass Effect Andromeda is abandoned by EA. A big warning sign for the "Games as a Service" Culture.

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

This in my eyes is just one of those "you get what you deserve" kind of situations for anyone who supported them. If you buy it, they will keep doing it. Just play other things. There's definitely tons of less "popular" or "big name" series out there that don't pull this crap.


But no, people will just play this because it has the name Mass Effect, so of course they'll get taken advantage of.

I agree. Right from the start when games started to become a service rather than a full product to buy, people warned about what the future would hold if we went down that path. Always online games that could be taken offline and thus made unplayable. Publishers deciding that they don't want a game to be played any more so they get removed entirely. Or in this case, a game with tons of problems that gets cut loose before everything that was hinted at or promised is released.

This is not the gaming experience we need/want, but it IS the gaming experience we deserve because people keep buying into it. Because "omg, new shiny game with tons of hype! I can't NOT buy it! Who cares about the future, I want to play this right now!"

I mostly agree but I deny that entire experience and hence do not deserve it. My main point is that there are alternatives for those with the predisposition to seek them out.

The main issue is that people get hyped over mediocre games and complain but play them anyways instead of trying something different for a change. That being the case, I can't really feel sympathy for the easily-manipulated, compromising populace.

At the same time, I wish for the truly deserving stuff to do well, which it is doing, mind you (stuff like Nier Automata did way better than the original Nier), so we just need to spread the word I guess.

 

[CaitSeith]

Not only are our games carved up so to get a complete experience, but now we only get a complete experience if the higher ups deem it profitable.

Haven't you still realized that's how always have been with AAA publishers? Instead of canceled DLC's, it was canceled sequels.

 

[RaikuFA]

It could've been worse. You could have owned Fallout 3 for PS3.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

You stop going. And frankly, a lot of other people stop as well. Of course they'll be shuttered down after a month or two of this, not getting the funds they are accustomed to.

But their direct damage to themselves (causing damages to us consumers) were brought on by stupid practices. It's not that we don't want to pay for our meals. We love the food. We love the experience. But it's that when we pay, we just want the entire dish. I don't want to have to come back in two months time for the potatoes, half a salad, and some dressing.

Here's where your analogy breaks down. The scenario you describe is obviously not what is commonly happening in the gaming industry. For the most part, people are still going to the restaurant. Most of these developers are not "damaging themselves." On the contrary, they are likely making more profits than they were before they instituted these new practices. Otherwise, under pressure from stockholders, they would ditch those practices and go back to the old way of doing things or try something different.

Consumers may not like it, but in the business world, it's never a "stupid practice" if it works, i.e. increases profits.

If sales were enough, ME:A would be golden. It's sales helped drive EA. But it's not still a studio. If EA really cared about their ip, you give it to a Rank-A team. Not a support studio. You quality test the hell out of it and pause it if it's not meeting expectations, not ship it out and hope on pre-orders and day one sales to carry you though. Because word of mouth will kill you.

These are all stupid practices. The Studio isn't around because of it. And yes, it made profit. But unrepeatable profit short term from a singular product at a singular time is not worth long term future profit that can be made from the same product handled correctly. The best Business Practice is creditability and A Good Name. They ruined Bioware's name, and the Mass Effect IP for the at least foreseeable future. And if they go back to it, they have to overreach meaning more money and more time than before to get us back in.

That is not smart.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

This has also happened with Mankind Divided, if anyone cares to remember. That didn't have that much negative PR, only slightly disappointing sales and a shitty few Squeenix enforced business practices (including splitting the game in half). So now the story is not concluded, ended with a cliffhanger/twist and they shelved it to work on something superhero related cos that's where the monies at, kiddos! Complete story arc? Hell no!

Oh and Hitman. Which I'm guessing will have no bloody conclusion now too. 6 levels and no satisfying finish. The game just peters out with a sad dying whimper and of course nothing gets resolved, only more empty promises held behind their idea of some sequel hook. I was legitimately interested to see a conclusion of some sort there, but nevermind.

Oh but that was just the first season, you see!? Agent 47 will always return, because it's like, in his nature to eventually "finish the job". Until then you'll just have to, uh, bear with it...!

 

[EternallyBored]

I would challenge your assessment of Andromeda being an example of "games as a service". Bug fixing is bug fixing, that wasn't even mostly EA's fault, the studio tried to push some big plan with No Man's Sky style procedurally generated planets and it was the main Bioware office that had to step in and actually get something released after they spent over a year of their dev time on the initial dumb design. We got a buggy game not because of games as a service but because Bioware tried to bite off more than they could chew and had to basically cobble together what they had during the last year and a half.

The Quarian ship not coming in DLC is also not an example of games as a service, this was not some essential story portion cut from the game, the Quarian ship is not a part of the main arc, each ship has a pathfinder and you play as the human pathfinder not the Quarian pathfinder, your responsibility for their ship is ancillary to the main plot. In a book the fate of the Quarian ship could easily have been spun as a sequel hook or as an unanswered mystery, it was not a missing chunk of the game necessary to the main story arc. It sucks that it is missing, and the whole species ship thing comes off like an excuse for them not to model the minor Mass Effect races like the Quarian and Hanar, but their inclusion was not in any way essential to telling the main story or conflict that was in the game.

Games as a service are those that charge you monthly, require internet access to even sign on, are hidden behind bizarre social media features or trying to integrate themselves into some sort of unified platform that charges you a monthly fee like a cable bill. Games as a service are those free to play games that hinge their content on you paying them periodically in order to retain a playable experience, I.e. You need to buy card packs to keep up with the community otherwise the game becomes almost unplayable as the community passes and crushes you., or the content itself is a skeleton supported by community driven transactions in various capacities, in order to maintain the community you actively have to pay or you either lose access to the content, or are partitioned off in a way that makes the game barely playable..

Andromeda is a $60 game, you get the full game, the Quarian stuff is not essential to the main plot, the bugs are not there by design for you to pay to fix them later. It's just a regular mediocre game that lost support due to poor sales, it's not an example of "games as a service" or why that model is potentially very bad for the consumer. Andromeda' problems are more about EA's corporate culture, diluting the Bioware brand by sticking studios under the Bioware label and transferring in employees not used to Bioware's own work, and even Bioware's own fault in pitching a game based on unrealistic expectations of the capacity of procedural generation, and allowing one of their studios through poor oversight to tinker with it for too long before refocusing the project on actually releasing a game and not a tech demo.

 

[EternallyBored]

This has also happened with Mankind Divided, if anyone cares to remember. That didn't have that much negative PR, only slightly disappointing sales and a shitty few Squeenix enforced business practices (including splitting the game in half). So now the story is not concluded, ended with a cliffhanger/twist and they shelved it to work on something superhero related cos that's where the monies at, kiddos! Complete story arc? Hell no!

Oh and Hitman. Which I'm guessing will have no bloody conclusion now too. 6 levels and no satisfying finish. The game just peters out with a sad dying whimper and of course nothing gets resolved, only more empty promises held behind their idea of some sequel hook. I was legitimately interested to see a conclusion of some sort there, but nevermind.

Oh but that was just the first season, you see!? Agent 47 will always return, because it's like, in his nature to eventually "finish the job". Until then you'll just have to, uh, bear with it...!

If it's any consolation, when IO was let go by Square Enix, they managed to work out a deal to retain control of the Hitman IP, so last I heard they are still working on season 2.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Not only are our games carved up so to get a complete experience, but now we only get a complete experience if the higher ups deem it profitable.

Haven't you still realized that's how always have been with AAA publishers? Instead of canceled DLC's, it was canceled sequels.

Here's the difference. I still get a completed iteration if it was just a canceled sequel. I didn't get parts of chapters taken out of my experience back then.

Let's say the Modern Crunchy was a trilogy back in the early 2000's. The first Modern Crunchy (MC) was complete chapters 1-3, MC 2 was 4-6, and MC 3 was 7-9. If MC 3 was canceled because of poor sales of MC 2... well, that sucks. The story will never complete. But at least I got all of the chapters, 1-6, from my purchase of the first two games.

The situation today is that we get maybe 80% of chapter 1 now, 65% of Chapter 2, and who knows how much of Chapter 3 now. It's a promised idea with your 'initial buy-in' instead of delivered in full when you bought the game day one. They will give us the rest for the low extra cost of a season pass of 25 extra dollars.

So back in the day, I would have received 66 percent of the story for MC 1 and 2. Now, I might get 47 percent for two of the games if MC 2's sales were bad enough that they didn't even fulfill their season pass? It still comes out to be less product for the same amount of money. And sometimes, more so if season passes are cut short if Developers abandon their IPs.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

this was a mismanaged project given to the B team.

But we have to ask ourselves why did EA decide to give one of their most prized IP's to Bioware's B team?

It's because they thought that it would sell regardless of the quality. EA doesn't give a fuck about the quality of their games. If they think that the game will sell on name alone, they'll do whatever they can to reduce the costs of developing the game. And if it fails, that's fine too. They'll just blame someone else, kill the franchise and move on to milk another IP.

EA is practically known for doing that. And despite all of their promises every time something like this happens, they keep doing it over and over again because they know that most gamers are stupid and they have very short memories. And they will keep doing the same thing until people learn to ignore their games like they don't exist.

EA has always been hands off until the game that will make or break the core company itself. They actually don't give a shit until you do terrible in sales and then they will give one last chance to not fuck it up. Of course, given the trend of studios, the apt response by the CEO is give them the finger and destroy the company, blame it on EA and deploy the golden lifeboat.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I would challenge your assessment of Andromeda being an example of "games as a service".

Again, I'm simply going by what the company said itself. I'm copying and pasting as I mentioned this before.

They branded it a "live service [http://kotaku.com/sources-bioware-montreal-downsized-mass-effect-put-on-1795100285]"

When reached for comment, publisher Electronic Arts sent over the following statement, attributed to BioWare Montreal studio director Yanick Roy:

"Our teams at BioWare and across EA put in tremendous effort bringing Mass Effect Andromeda to players around the world. Even as BioWare continues to focus on the Mass Effect Andromeda community and live service, we are constantly looking at how we?re prepared for the next experiences we will create."

If they didn't want me and others to consider it a Live Service, then they shouldn't have labeled it as one. And to your further point

Andromeda is a $60 game, you get the full game, the Quarian stuff is not essential to the main plot...

Harry Potter's romances aren't essential to the plot. Dom's wife from Gears of War is a driving force to his character, but not essential to the plot. Any bit of flavor text or NPC is not essential to the plot other than quest and item repositories. Agent 47's background isn't essential to the plot.

But they connect people with the universe. And that's the made thrust of a single player experience. If I just wanted mindless combat, I'd go to CoD or just play a street fighter game. Jin hates his father for taking away his mother in his perception? That's nice. Hey, what are his frames for his d/f 1,2? That's a little more important to me now to win this 99 second battle.

But if I'm supposed to devote more than 30 hours into a universe, I'm going to need my connections where ever I can get them. If you don't care about the Quarians, or not enough that you don't find the now permanent game play exclusion of them to be relevant, I get it. And I understand. But the Excitement was there for others [https://www.google.com/search?q=no+quarian+ark+dlc]. People were wondering if it will tie up loose ends, or if it would branch the story in another way.

To sum up, it was promised, and it was severely desired. It was considered by many to be a needed part of the experience. We all need food and liquids to live as an essential part of our survival. But the reason we like these dishes or that eatery goes by our desires and wants. That's why there isn't a lot of call for Flavorless Paste Dispensers other than Captain Holt.

 

[Kerg3927]

You stop going. And frankly, a lot of other people stop as well. Of course they'll be shuttered down after a month or two of this, not getting the funds they are accustomed to.

But their direct damage to themselves (causing damages to us consumers) were brought on by stupid practices. It's not that we don't want to pay for our meals. We love the food. We love the experience. But it's that when we pay, we just want the entire dish. I don't want to have to come back in two months time for the potatoes, half a salad, and some dressing.

Here's where your analogy breaks down. The scenario you describe is obviously not what is commonly happening in the gaming industry. For the most part, people are still going to the restaurant. Most of these developers are not "damaging themselves." On the contrary, they are likely making more profits than they were before they instituted these new practices. Otherwise, under pressure from stockholders, they would ditch those practices and go back to the old way of doing things or try something different.

Consumers may not like it, but in the business world, it's never a "stupid practice" if it works, i.e. increases profits.

If sales were enough, ME:A would be golden. It's sales helped drive EA. But it's not still a studio. If EA really cared about their ip, you give it to a Rank-A team. Not a support studio. You quality test the hell out of it and pause it if it's not meeting expectations, not ship it out and hope on pre-orders and day one sales to carry you though. Because word of mouth will kill you.

These are all stupid practices. The Studio isn't around because of it. And yes, it made profit. But unrepeatable profit short term from a singular product at a singular time is not worth long term future profit that can be made from the same product handled correctly. The best Business Practice is creditability and A Good Name. They ruined Bioware's name, and the Mass Effect IP for the at least foreseeable future. And if they go back to it, they have to overreach meaning more money and more time than before to get us back in.

That is not smart.

Yes, Bioware does seem to be making actual stupid decisions that are harming the company. They just destroyed one of their most valuable brands. But I was speaking mainly about the DLC business model in the industry as a whole. MEA didn't fail because of its DLC model. It failed because the core game was shitty. And we know the result was not intentional because they closed that B-team studio and fired the company's CEO, replacing him with Casey Hudson. That means the stockholders didn't get the results they wanted.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

this was a mismanaged project given to the B team.

But we have to ask ourselves why did EA decide to give one of their most prized IP's to Bioware's B team?

It's because they thought that it would sell regardless of the quality. EA doesn't give a fuck about the quality of their games. If they think that the game will sell on name alone, they'll do whatever they can to reduce the costs of developing the game. And if it fails, that's fine too. They'll just blame someone else, kill the franchise and move on to milk another IP.

EA is practically known for doing that. And despite all of their promises every time something like this happens, they keep doing it over and over again because they know that most gamers are stupid and they have very short memories. And they will keep doing the same thing until people learn to ignore their games like they don't exist.

They really earned their "most hated company" rating a few years back. Maybe they're worried about losing the title.

 

[Saelune]

Zhukov nailed nihilistic complacency. Just because something is how it is, doesnt mean it is how it should be.

And if you don't want to be "complacent," you have exactly two options...

1) don't buy it
2) convince others not to buy it

Anything else is just shaking your fist at the weather.

I didnt buy it, and stuff like this is trying to convince people not to buy this stuff.

 

[CaitSeith]

Here's the difference. I still get a completed iteration if it was just a canceled sequel. I didn't get parts of chapters taken out of my experience back then.

That's a case by case scenario. It isn't rare that a game is released with less content than the originally planned because of business decisions; and later it's put in the sequel (if they ever do one). They just had to make sure it appeared as full content, and you were none the wiser.

 

[EternallyBored]

I would challenge your assessment of Andromeda being an example of "games as a service".

Again, I'm simply going by what the company said itself. I'm copying and pasting as I mentioned this before.

They branded it a "live service [http://kotaku.com/sources-bioware-montreal-downsized-mass-effect-put-on-1795100285]"

When reached for comment, publisher Electronic Arts sent over the following statement, attributed to BioWare Montreal studio director Yanick Roy:

"Our teams at BioWare and across EA put in tremendous effort bringing Mass Effect Andromeda to players around the world. Even as BioWare continues to focus on the Mass Effect Andromeda community and live service, we are constantly looking at how we?re prepared for the next experiences we will create."

If they didn't want me and others to consider it a Live Service, then they shouldn't have labeled it as one. And to your further point [\quote]

Just using the word service is not what people are talking about when they criticize "games as a service". In the linked statement they are talking about live service in the sense that staff will still be working on servicing the game and trying to deliver promised content. At that time it was their way of promising that people were still working on the game, back in May at least.

When people talk about "games as a service" they are talking about games as acting like a community in that you are getting something constantly built around an online community or a skeletal framework like an MMO where you lose access if you stop paying for the service, or a free to play game where you need to make periodic payments to get access to regular content, keep up with a competitive online community, or eliminate various barriers and annoyances meant to "encourage" free players to spend money.

You can call it that if you want, but andromeda' failures are not failures of games as a service as plenty of old games have suffered similar fates. Andromeda is a complete story, it is not 80% of a story with an ending or some critical piece missing, like old games that had announced sequels get canned what we are missing was not essential to the game we paid $60 for.

As for the rest, I cut it for length, but essentially, look, I get that some people were excited for the Quarian stuff, but that does not mean we only got 80% of chapter 1 or whatever, we got a full game with a full story the core is there, character development is there, even side stories and missions are there, with secondary plot strings and everything. All of the characters had their motivations and arcs in place, the Quarian ship only gets mentioned, effects almost nothing in the plot beyond being setting information and only gets a DLC hook in the barest sense, they could have stated the ship blew up and it would not have effected the plot at all. It is not like removing the romances from Harry Potter because we know the romances had a significant effect on the story, they were already woven into the story with the original books. The Quarian DLC was not, it had no effect on the original story as it was never there in the first place.

It's potential future inclusion could have effected or weaved itself into the story but the story works just fine without it, like HBO promising to do a spin off mini series of one of their shows, maybe it will integrate well and provide context or even expansion to their universe, but it being cancelled does not suddenly make the main show incomplete or that they only delivered a certain percent of the story to us, the Quarian ship's fate is something fans want to know like many unanswered questions in fiction, but That doesn't mean it's exclusion makes the main Andromeda story incomplete or partially delivered.

 

[stroopwafel]

Yeah, I don't really think MEA can be considered 'games as a service' either. You got what you paid for they just don't support the game with any further DLC (or rather EA trying to pretend this embarrasment never happened).

I don't think MEA has many fans but it sucks if a game you enjoyed gets the axe. i enjoyed Deus Ex MD(not as a good as HR but still fun) and just when that game got interesting it ended with a huge to be continued which will now never happen. Espescially since a sequel was planned as Squeenix insisted to cut the story in pieces.

But yeah it's 2017. Only thing that sells are CoD and Fifa for the dudebros, GTA for the 'casuls' and Minecraft for the kids.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Yes, Bioware does seem to be making actual stupid decisions that are harming the company. They just destroyed one of their most valuable brands. But I was speaking mainly about the DLC business model in the industry as a whole. MEA didn't fail because of its DLC model. It failed because the core game was shitty. And we know the result was not intentional because they closed that B-team studio and fired the company's CEO, replacing him with Casey Hudson. That means the stockholders didn't get the results they wanted.

As I said previously, I'm more than fine with DLC as a concept. New modes, extra maps, new characters (as in terms of fighting games). As long as it's good, I'm fine. I do not like DLC as a way to add more to a story that they already have planned, written out, and ready to go just to make sure they can get more revenue.

I agree with you from a business standpoint, it makes all the sense in the world to do it if it yields a profit. But I do also understand when you undercut customers or commit practices that benefits the company more than the customer (always online) to the point where they might feel cheated or turned off.. you are going to lose those customers. And that's bad for overall business.

That's a case by case scenario. It isn't rare that a game is released with less content than the originally planned because of business decisions; and later it's put in the sequel (if they ever do one). They just had to make sure it appeared as full content, and you were none the wiser.

Which even then, it's fine to me. Because it isn't a part of the experience I paid for now. Say if Spider-man Homecoming was going to tease Venom with this film, and that was the buzz with hollywood up until the director came out and said that they were scrapping the Venom parts because it added too much stuff that affected the flow of the movie... I'd understand. They took time to think of the pace of the film, said it was going to harm more than it was going to help, and they moved it to the sequel. Completely understandable. I would not go in to Homecoming salty that I was promised Venom because I know he has no place in this story I'm paying for now.

But likewise, if they said they were selling a companion piece to Homecoming about how Peter was dealing with the events of Civil War and dealing with Events afterwards, how it was shaping the Spiderman we got in the film to the point that we get continual references to those events... but we never were sold the companion piece for whatever reason? It damages the whole.

We were all made the wiser because of how much they talked about how much the Quarian DLC would add to the story and our missions in the Andromeda galaxy. We are so much the wiser for that with no pay off.

Just using the word service is not what people are talking about when they criticize "games as a service". In the linked statement they are talking about live service in the sense that staff will still be working on servicing the game and trying to deliver promised content. At that time it was their way of promising that people were still working on the game, back in May at least.

When people talk about "games as a service" they are talking about games as acting like a community in that you are getting something constantly built around an online community or a skeletal framework like an MMO where you lose access if you stop paying for the service, or a free to play game where you need to make periodic payments to get access to regular content, keep up with a competitive online community, or eliminate various barriers and annoyances meant to "encourage" free players to spend money.

You can call it that if you want, but andromeda' failures are not failures of games as a service as plenty of old games have suffered similar fates. Andromeda is a complete story, it is not 80% of a story with an ending or some critical piece missing, like old games that had announced sequels get canned what we are missing was not essential to the game we paid $60 for.

As for the rest, I cut it for length, but essentially, look, I get that some people were excited for the Quarian stuff, but that does not mean we only got 80% of chapter 1 or whatever, we got a full game with a full story the core is there, character development is there, even side stories and missions are there, with secondary plot strings and everything. All of the characters had their motivations and arcs in place, the Quarian ship only gets mentioned, effects almost nothing in the plot beyond being setting information and only gets a DLC hook in the barest sense, they could have stated the ship blew up and it would not have effected the plot at all. It is not like removing the romances from Harry Potter because we know the romances had a significant effect on the story, they were already woven into the story with the original books. The Quarian DLC was not, it had no effect on the original story as it was never there in the first place.

It's potential future inclusion could have effected or weaved itself into the story but the story works just fine without it, like HBO promising to do a spin off mini series of one of their shows, maybe it will integrate well and provide context or even expansion to their universe, but it being cancelled does not suddenly make the main show incomplete or that they only delivered a certain percent of the story to us, the Quarian ship's fate is something fans want to know like many unanswered questions in fiction, but That doesn't mean it's exclusion makes the main Andromeda story incomplete or partially delivered.

That is your interpretation. And it's a valid one.

However.

What It Means To Treat Games As A Service [http://www.alistdaily.com/strategy/means-games-service/]

A major trend to emerge in video gaming is how more games are being treated as a service. Whether it's through eSports or continually adding content through free updates, premium DLC and season passes, the life of a game can be significantly extended when it is treated as a service.

Peter Warman, CEO at Newzoo, told [a]listdaily that "season passes tie players to the game longer by forcing them to make an initial investment." He then followed-up by saying, "console developers are slowly breaking away from the traditional 'pay once and you're in' model, though it's proving to be slow going. Many console players have reacted negatively to the development of these models, due to their familiarity and satisfaction with the pre-existing model."

Top Video Game Companies Won't Stop Talking About 'Games As A Service' [http://kotaku.com/top-video-game-companies-wont-stop-talking-about-games-1795663927]

There was once a time when video game developers would make a game, release it, and then move onto the next big thing. That time has long since passed. These days, you're more likely to see a new Metroid than you are to buy an AAA game that's never updated, patched, or enhanced in some way. Today's big video games aren't products: they're services.

That's not a new buzzword, 'games as service' has been floating around for many years now, but these days, we're seeing big publishers embrace it in a way they haven?t before. Developers are looking at ways to make money off games for as long as possible, through downloadable content, cosmetic microtransactions, and good-old fashioned loot boxes. For example, here's Square Enix in a financial presentation last week:

"Titles that have become global hits recently have tended to be offered via the 'Games as a Service' model, and we believe this is going to be the mainstream model for gaming in the future. In developing future titles, we will approach game design with a mind to generate recurring revenue streams."

Games as a Service: Unleash the power of the Cloud [https://www.gamesparks.com/blog/games-as-a-service/]

What is Games as a Service?

Games as a Service is a different way of thinking in the games industry and relates more to how games are developed, deployed and operated than it does to how they are played. Game architecture is changing with more and more of the logic moving to the server as this gives developers a new level of agility that is vital for them as they navigate the ever-more complicated world of devices, markets and business models for their games.

The term is mis-understood, much like the related term, Cloud Gaming. It has ended up meaning so many different things to so many people. Outside of games, the 'as a Service' terminology is well understood and rapidly becoming a mature model. At a recent Microsoft Cloud Gaming conference, Rob Fraser, CTO of Microsoft Azure UK shed some light on this. The term encapsulates a server-side deployment model where functionality is centrally hosted and made available to the masses via easy to use interfaces (APIs and SDKs). However, it encapsulates more than software deployment, it also encapsulates the business models that underpin how it is provided. The 'as a Service' term implies a utility model where people pay as they go and pay based on what they use. All of this is extremely relevant to both how consumers play and pay for games today and also how Games as a Service solution providers (like GameSparks) sell to the game development community.

Game as a service model: The new marketing model to develop and sell a video game [http://blog.economie-numerique.net/2017/01/28/game-as-a-service-model-the-new-marketing-model-to-develop-and-sell-a-video-game/]

The Game as a service is a new model to create and develop a video game. Instead of launching a game after a development of two or three years, the game as a service offers a system allowing long-term development. But what does it mean in practice?

This new system is based on the concept of involving players in the game development by acknowledging their suggestions and developing the project while keeping in mind of the initial idea of the creators.
The basic idea is to create a game and deliver future content for the community afterwards.
In this model, the income is essentially generated after the launch of the game.

Why using this model?

Actually, the game as a service is used by the small game studios who do not have the same marketing budget than the big companies such as Ubisoft or Electronics Arts.

The Idea behind this model is to create a genuine interaction between players and developers in order to generate maximum feedback before launching the different patches or downloadable contents (DLC) added in the game.

The video game must be designed as a service and not a product. The Service Marketing is a different way of doing marketing as the game should be considered as a proper service provider rather than a physical product, like in traditional game marketing. Thus, the elements to be considered in marketing service are all those which gravitate around the service itself (human relationship, accessibility) to finally build customer loyalty at the end of the process. The game as a service uses entirely the marketing service concept instead of product marketing and this makes all the differences

Most people in the industry, even higher management types consider any game with a live-patchable framework with any type of Downloadable content to be a part of the Games as a Service model. Not just regulated to MMOs. I'm not going to spend that much time on this, if you disagree with what I just put, I accept that and I'll move on, but this isn't me.

These are game designers, developers, and producers' definitions. The fact that Mass Effect: Andromeda had a patchable system puts it in the GaaS light. The fact that Mass Effect were going to release DLC puts it under the GaaS light. I'm merely pointing out industry wide consensus. If you disagree with it, fair enough. But you'll have to take it up with the industry. I just play games here.

Sidebar, why don't they just say "Games as Services"? It's just easier.

 

[Kerg3927]

EA on MEA and the future of the franchise [https://www.pcgamesn.com/mass-effect-andromeda/mass-effect-andromedas-patrick-soderlund]

Can be interpreted multiple ways. It's either typical make no promises but rule out nothing BS (most likely), or it's EA actually acknowledging that Bioware has veered off course and Casey Hudson was brought back precisely to right the ship.

I have to say that I am intrigued by Casey Hudson coming back. Many people blame him for the ME3 ending, but ME3 overall was a far better game than anything they have put out since. I didn't play it upon release with the original ending, but the Extended Cut revamped ending is not that bad, IMO. And Casey Hudson had his fingerprints all over many of Bioware's best games...

Baldur's Gate II
Neverwinter Nights
KOTOR
Mass Effect 1-3

Of course, I think much of the talent that worked underneath him is gone, and trying to recapture lightning in a bottle rarely works. So I'm not holding my breath. But I will definitely be keeping an eye on how Bioware does in the coming years under Hudson.

 

[jobele]

I can't help but not be surprised by this reaction from both EA and Bio-Ware. I remember Bio-Ware's Ray Muzyka saying some rude things about the people who complained about ME3's ending and again when they caught so much flak about DA2. They seem to have decided to act like a little child who didn't get picked to play and has decided to take their ball and go home which is really sad. They have given out three very lame games lately and their chance at redemption after ME:A was to put out a couple of REALLY GOOD DLCs like they did with ME3. I guess you could say as a we're sorry, but instead they do the same thing and blame everyone else instead of saying we screwed up and are going to make it up to you after you paid a lot of money for the game.

Bad service and bad products is the way most companies have failed in the US just ask FORD about the Edsel or other companies that have gone out of business. As for me I will no longer be buying EA/Bio-Ware games in advance and probably not at all since they only seem interested in catering to the multiplayer group which I have never cared for.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

EA is practically known for doing that. And despite all of their promises every time something like this happens, they keep doing it over and over again because they know that most gamers are stupid and they have very short memories. And they will keep doing the same thing until people learn to ignore their games like they don't exist.

I don't quite agree.

I imagine that they way they see it, they can afford to half-ass most of their games, because they have the license to make FIFA, NBA2K, and Madden; if their other games don't sell, they don't give a shit because they know that their sports games will.

If their other IPs make money? Great! If not, sweep them under the rug and keep churning out sports games every year.