| Shadow1980 said: Sure, lots of people may have enjoyed those games, but publishers see the success of those games and they want a slice of the pie. Every time a WoW or Fortnite hits it big, you'll see a bunch of copycats. This is an industry that loves to chase trends, after all. And these "live services," be they MMOs, "quasi-MMOs" (e.g., Destiny), or competitive multiplayer-only games (e.g., battle royales, MOBAs, and more traditional genres & subgenres), are the ideal avenue for big publishers to unleash all the awful bullshit upon gamers that we've seen this generation. These are games ripe for exploitation, of having a bunch of predatory, manipulative, and obtrusive post-launch monetization schemes crammed into them. It's got the likes of EA and Activision seeing massive dollar signs. And it's not good for the industry. There's only so many "live service" titles that the industry can reasonably support, yet too many companies want to shift resources away from traditional single-player titles just to try to cannibalize the market for these online-only social games. Honestly, I'd argue that the only worthwhile things to come out of online are indies and the ability to patch titles after launch, though in regards to the latter most of the notable patches we've seen has dealt with online components of games, so even that one's questionable. I'd maybe also argue that expansions & DLC were a good thing that could breathe new life into older games, and is arguably better than what we had to deal with in the 90s with Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 3 (roster expansions meant buying the whole game all over again), but then again DLC mutated from something benign into the microtransaction/loot box filled miasma that permeates AAA gaming these days, so maybe we'd have been better off if DLC never existed to begin with. |
We as an industry shouldnt be blaming a genre or platform over pubishers and developers trying to exploit it.
If it wasnt for an always online game like WoW i probably wouldn't still be gaming today. The genre has done nothing wrong and i am all for online gaming. I am however placing the blame on the ones that deserve it, for giving always online a bad name.
