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GDC's annual State of the Game Industry survey reveals 1/3 of 'triple-A developers' are working on live service games

Imtjnotu

Member
Snl This Is Not Good GIF by Saturday Night Live
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
The undeniable fact is that PS Studios is in a terrible position when it comes to leadership and organization. They are as bad as Microsoft have been for the past few years.

Not anywhere in the same galaxy, the just released a GOTY and MP GOTY last year

It’s delusional to think some GaaS games from their c tier studios is somehow indicative of poor output overall
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
out of 1/3, how many will be shutting down
It's funny how people keep saying this but has anyone actually dug into the numbers?

There were roughly 8 - 10 successful GAAS releases in 2024. How many GAAS flops did we have last year?

People keep saying it's "lightning in a bottle" but I get the feeling the numbers say otherwise.
 
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Wulfer

Member
Sure it is, they’ll come out with Helldivers 3 for ps6 or whatever and it’ll be another massive hit. These GaaS titles, once they hit, don’t easily go away
or they won't come out with Helldivers 3 and they'll be thankful Helldivers 2 is a success! Microsoft's in the same boat with Minecraft! Scared to do anything because it might damage the brand!

Also, huh i didn't know Naughtily Dog was considered C Tier? You learn something new every day I guess.
 
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hemo memo

You can't die before your death
I predict that 1/3 of triple-A developers will shut down or undergo major restructuring under their parent publishers by 2030.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
They'll need to learn this lesson a few more times before they either 1) figure it the fuck out or 2) go bankrupt. I suspect that for quite a few, it'll end up being the latter. Shifting your development to prioritize live service games can't be easily undone, and the timeline needed to correct course will be too much for several studios.

I'm just glad that none of my GDC meetings are going to be with those sorts of teams.
 

EDMIX

Writes a lot, says very little
I can only guess that devs prefer it because a successful live service means job stability?
Most definitely, There's always this constant stream of things being developed but I never really care for the term "live service" because in my opinion they're just describing what we understand with online games anyway and what we're talking about with some team making content Post launch for a long duration of time is something that has occurred before that term even was used to talk about any of this lol but I digress

I hate it.....A massive chunk of the industry is gambling with terrible fucking odds.
Gambling I don't know about any of that there's a lot of data literally showing you how much people are gaming online and it is the overwhelmingly vast majority, I don't see any gamble here. At least not any more than any other type of game being created it's not like there's a fucking guarantee making a single player game it's going to be any more of a slam dunk.

Here's the real problem the gaming industry is becoming creatively bankrupt and it's a safer bet to create a Live Service game!!!
I greatly disagree, There's absolutely nothing safe about creating a live service game you're talking about amongst one of the most difficult types of games to create in the industry , With having to release Post launch content or having to balance out specific aspects of the game on top of providing numerous updates to correct networking issues on top of having to provide a fresh new experience not just for whatever the base game is but continuously altering and changing that aspect to keep people playing


Nothing regarding that sounds safe even remotely , I would even fucking argue a single player game sounds more safe because it's a static thing

As in you have a beginning middle and end you don't even need to fucking make any type of Post launch content and you don't need to drastically update some massive core design concept on the yearly basis

So I would relax on this idea of safe because I don't know if that describes these live service games lol

I would argue online games require even more creativity to get people to not just go into the game but to continuously play it afterwards on top of trying to set themselves apart from an extremely competitive market
I gather you’re counting yearly sports games as GaaS which are popular because they are sports games.

New GaaS isn’t competing in the sports market.
? What does any of that matter though? They are popular because people wish to play with each in those games, to pretend they are moving those units SOLELY based on being "sports games" is a bit naïve

Of all the gamers, why the fuck would sports fans magically not wish to play against other people in a idea literally about competition? So those new games games not all being sports doesn't really change much of any of this considering the licensees needed in a lot of those markets in the first place

semi-moot lol

When I said "It's the future of the medium" I meant "It's the future of the medium."

birdman-respeck.gif
I mean people could say what they want, But I think a lot of people on here are scared to see the reality regarding a lot of this I can't even say this is the future of the medium, it literally is the current as of right now the vast majority of gaming by in ridiculous degree is online we literally have Call of Duty online mobile with over 600 plus million people...

We could only get to GTAV getting 200 million and clearly this was because it's online portion....

https://sensortower.com/blog/mario-kart-tour-200-million-downloads
https://venturebeat.com/games/among-us-surpasses-500m-mobile-downloads-since-launch/

People playing together is not a future idea, that is happening right now as the majority and i think hardcore gamers are either clueless about this or having a hard fucking time with reality and please note, I don't play any of those games, I think the only online IP I even play is Battlefield series.

When something like a online game, live service, GAAS or what ever someone wants to fucking call it like Fortnite has over 650 million users and monthly 100 plus million visits, I think its time to put that horseshit idea to bed about this just being some one off, random thing or something.

That is that majority. I don't know how many times someone needs to hear some fucking game doing 300 million downloads to realize single player games are not the majority.
 
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bitbydeath

Gold Member
? What does any of that matter though? They are popular because people wish to play with each in those games, to pretend they are moving those units SOLELY based on being "sports games" is a bit naïve

Of all the gamers, why the fuck would sports fans magically not wish to play against other people in a idea literally about competition? So those new games games not all being sports doesn't really change much of any of this considering the licensees needed in a lot of those markets in the first place

semi-moot lol
Sports is an already catered market.
It is not wise to take your chances on GaaS as the majority (outside of sports) fail hard.
 

Killjoy-NL

Member
Makes sense. A successful live-service game is lucrative business.

As much as some old school fans might hate it, it's here to stay.

Traditional singleplayer and live-service games can coexist, you know?
 
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Three

Member
tfw GIF


Videogame industry reset coming. Starting with Sony.


lord of the rings GIF


Hold the line don't buy!
you mean the publisher that's been doing more singleplayer releases than most publishers?
You guys should start looking inwards, you know, what Rare has been regulated to, what ABK puts its studios on, what Bethesda Game Studios mostly is now, where Square makes most its money while people gloat about its single player failures, what Konami makes its most profits on, that sort of thing.
 

Three

Member
Japan will fill the void when all these shitty western publishers have collapsed.
GDC isn't just western devs. It's a global conference. Asia has gone just as hard into GaaS, Monster hunter, SF6 and every fighting game, efootball, Genshin Impact, FF14, Marvel Rivals, PubG etc. These are what's making money hand over fist for these publishers as unfortunate as that may be.
 
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