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Comment on Has the live-service dream crashed back down to earth? | Opinion

I don’t think Unreal Tournament 2004 would have been considered live service just because they occasionally gave out a free new map. It was a form of marketing for the thing they already made. TF2 at least was a product when they sold it up front before it was free to play, when it had no microtransactions and they weren’t the goal for getting paid for having made TF2.

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MoreZombies@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
It was always the goal, just a different approach. I posted this quote in another reply but:

"The crux of the Newell’s address focused on the concept that direct communications with customers, transparency, and constant updates are the best ways to maximize profits from a product. In this way, Valve views its products as a service rather than a finished project. When the company shipped Team Fortress 2, work wasn’t done. Rather, the team said, “Now we can start.” The team has then gone on to ship 63 updates – which include anything from bug fixes to new game modes – to the game in just over 14 months. This can directly result in increased sales that would normally taper off over time. As Newell put it, “When you want to promote your product, you’re going to use your customers to reach new customers.” " www.ign.com/…/dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell

The thought pattern still has roots in sales/marketing - by releasing more content for the game, you attract new players. I would say No Mans Sky is a good example of this in recent years - its free content updates leading to constant attention and sales. No other forms of monetization are included.

I played UT2004 but was too young to recall things, but if the game did this through game updates I’d consider it an early form of Games as a Service. However, I consider Live Services to be a sub-classification under the banner, which by my definition UT2004 would not be:

I think of games that provide ongoing content, and maintains the game servers in exchange for varying streams of income. These are games that will typically “stop working” when the official servers go down (stop being “live”?). I consider games like Anthem and Loadout to be examples of Live Services in this respect.

So while L4D2 was by definition an example of a Game as a Service, it has a different approach to the concept compared to a game like Destiny 2. From how the game is played (offline/online, hosting servers), to how it is monetized and the updates are delivered can vary significantly.

I believe that all Live Services fall under the GaaS label, but not all games that fall under the GaaS label are Live Services. The lines have just become so blurred that it is hard to consider that games that can be so different fall under that label. We are in the pot, and the temperature is getting higher.

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- ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I don’t think you’re going to going many sharing your definitions. GaaS has just been simply replaced by the term live service in how people talk about this stuff. Perhaps Valve showed their hand early with this interview, but the expectation we had as customers with early TF2 was very different back then. I definitely wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky to be any form of service; it might be the industry’s best example of being a form of penance for what they promised their customers at the start.
  
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  - MoreZombies@aussie.zone ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I agree that up to a point their approach was to fix things, but at a certain point they reached the point of achieving most everything they promised. Then kept going and adding more.
    
    However, my point of bringing it up is that even in the past few years, the game has continued to be updated and each update brings with it new players/sales, as well as further marketing thanks to the attention those updates get. This was one of the significant reasons stated for the approach to GaaS by companies like Valve back in the day, and No Mans Sky is an example that this is something that can be done in the modern era.
    
    I also agree that the concept has been bastardized in recent years. As I see it and as was defined at the time, games like Left 4 Dead 2 are/were delivered as “Games as a Service”. Yet despite that fact, Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t include the trappings that are attached to “Live Services” of the modern era. Like many things, big publishers have corrupted what started off as a pure win for consumers…but that is why I make the distinction of “Live Services” as a fork from the concept.
    
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