Should sequels be phased out in favor of continuous updates?

[sXeth]

Isn't this the "Games as a service" model publishers like Ubisoft are pushing for? Anything big publishers are in favour of is probably something we should oppose out of principle.

That said it could work for annual sports titles like FIFA and Madden that are little more than a roster update anyway

Games as Service usually (like many things, there potentially positive ways of doing it as well) involves gating content behind daily/weekly login gates and that sort of thing. Limited time events and daily rewards and all that stuff to keep you coming back in and (in the reviled cases) send you passing by the metaphorical window of the microtransaction store (Whether directly or by showing you all the players decked out in their shiny buyable goods). It starts getting nonsensical in single player games, where there's no reason for that online component at all, or in cases like Destiny, which is a game about grinding that has weekly limits on grinding, because supposedly the world would implode if you reached max level in under a month, even though that barely affects anything.


Its not mutually exclusive of course. You can have GaS and iterative content updates together. But there's cases like Minecraft and No Mans Sky that have been doing the big content expansions without it as well as stuff like Warframe that does both.

That's just how far they've taken it. It started with no longer owning the games you bought.
By either gating it, as you say, through online verifications, then onto online verification platforms like Steam, etc.
They even tried Online Only games, but that is still a step too far. Or it used to be. It could probably be passed off today.
Even renting games through streaming have been on the table.

And that's just the "physical" side of things. Through ToS's and legal pressure they've made sure you no longer own any game you "buy". It's a service they're selling you. They can remove it, or forcibly change it for the worse, anytime they want to.

I was mostly covering as it relates to the content updates and distribution. GaS models have forced gates and so on disguised as "Events" to keep you logging in for whatever purpose. Iterative updates actually expand a game.

As all the licensing shenanigans go, yeah, that's a generally much more disfavorable route. Not limited to games either. Good luck getting a modern car serviced anywhere that hasn't licensed GM or whoevers proprietary diagnostic software. Or having to hack (and violate the EULA voiding your warranty) a damn fridge to let you put it in the filters that cost 80% less.

 

[TimespliTT]

youd think madden/nhl/nba could just add a new mode or remove a mode and update it, and update the roster every year. but nope gotta make a new game every year with feature that otherwise could be patched in.....

call it "MADDEN infinite"

 

[Dalisclock]

youd think madden/nhl/nba could just add a new mode or remove a mode and update it, and update the roster every year. but nope gotta make a new game every year with feature that otherwise could be patched in.....

call it "MADDEN infinite"

How else do you convince people to buy the same game every year?

 

[RJ 17]

Not if you ask the team that develops Destiny.

Hey-oooohhhhhhhhh!

Anyways I'd say no. I'm in agreement with Jim when he points out that the transition to "live service" games (i.e. ones that just continually receive updates and could - in theory - go on forever) is unsustainable as a concept. The idea is to get your hooks into the audience so they keep coming back to play your game. The issue with this is that it - by definition - requires a large time investment from the player. Someone who's really into Warframe, for example, isn't going to have the time to dedicate to World of WoWCraft. Someone playing WoW likely isn't going to also be playing FFXIV. Someone playing FFXIV isn't going to have time to play Destiny. etc. etc. etc.

There simply isn't enough time to play numerous live service games. So if you're going to invest company resources into creating and maintaining one you'd better be god damn sure that it's the best one on the market otherwise it's going to wither and die.

On a slightly unrelated note: any one else nearly piss themselves with laughter when Ubisoft showed off The Division 2 by using that hilarious "No really guys! These are real people talking over mics while playing our game co-op!" method? You'd think they'd have gotten enough crap over this by now to learn.

 

[Mothro]

If Nintendo settled with just permanently updating Skyward Sword its engine and design philosophy would remain in place and as such the radically different Breath of the wild would never be made.

You make it sound like a good thing. LOL

 

[sXeth]

Not if you ask the team that develops Destiny.

Hey-oooohhhhhhhhh!

Anyways I'd say no. I'm in agreement with Jim when he points out that the transition to "live service" games (i.e. ones that just continually receive updates and could - in theory - go on forever) is unsustainable as a concept. The idea is to get your hooks into the audience so they keep coming back to play your game. The issue with this is that it - by definition - requires a large time investment from the player. Someone who's really into Warframe, for example, isn't going to have the time to dedicate to World of WoWCraft. Someone playing WoW likely isn't going to also be playing FFXIV. Someone playing FFXIV isn't going to have time to play Destiny. etc. etc. etc.

There simply isn't enough time to play numerous live service games. So if you're going to invest company resources into creating and maintaining one you'd better be god damn sure that it's the best one on the market otherwise it's going to wither and die.

On a slightly unrelated note: any one else nearly piss themselves with laughter when Ubisoft showed off The Division 2 by using that hilarious "No really guys! These are real people talking over mics while playing our game co-op!" method? You'd think they'd have gotten enough crap over this by now to learn.

MMO's are designed for grinds mechanically though (and in Warframe's case, its the backbone of how they make their money).

If we took GTA 5 and they added two or three new cities (with accompanying campaigns) to the game over a console cycle, that'd be what? 90 hours over 7-8 years. GTA Online is that whole lifestyle choice model (because it is structured as a free to play game like Warframe, despite the full price entry fee) of course.

Same with Zelda, if Link, done with saving Hyrule gets two or three new countries n Breath of the Wild to explore added on over the course of the Switch, that's still not going to be a huge occupation-competing amount of time in the game.

 

[BaronVonVaderHam]

The only games I could really see this working for is sports games. Seeing as how you'd just be updating team rosters and such.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

The games that are just copied and re-stamped on a yearly basis I couldn't give 2 shits if they do it as an update, might save them some trouble and money. Nothing really to write home about anyway, stuff like Assassins Creed, Call of Duty, yearly sports releases.

But if the game is truly different, reinventing itself, or just really polished up, then it warrants a new release altogether, and a different numeral after the title.

 

[Squilookle]

Much like DLC and Communism, this model looks great on paper, but forgets one crucial puzzle piece:

The human element.

Humans are corruptible, and prove it time and time again. We've already seen how much lazier game design in general has become in the wake of the rise of DLC and incremental updates. Hell, Battlefield 1 didn't even approach it's former games' glory until the last two updates, and by then everyone had long lost interest in it. If you made it standard and eliminated sequels altogether, devs would stop 'trying' altogether. Why bother crafting new proper experiences/locations/characters/actual work when you can just bolt a bare-minimum effort addition on instead? GTA Online is the perfect example of this. This series that was once a shining pillar of quality content in large game releases has now completely abandoned the single player additions they were planning in favour of shitty online breadcrumbs like a weapon here or a new car there, all that you have to pay real money for. It's a complete and utter joke.

I can understand incremental updates for a work in progress before reaching version 1.0, but even then, devs should have a clear roadmap. Only that kind of transparency can hold developers and publishers to account and make them actually deliver the workload that sequels used to force them to do anyway.