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KManX89 on 12 March 2024
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Kyuu said:
JRPGfan said:

I'd argue there is limited space for hyper successfull GaaS type games.
There is only so much time in the day, and if a title is something you play for years and years, online.... you typically dont play others.
So a player that plays helldivers 2, probably doesn't play fortnite and vice versa.
That drastically limits how many players such monster success titles can draw in.

While single player games arn't like that.
They can be played even by those people heavily into these GaaS type games (everyone needs a break from doing the same thing over and over).

So yes there is a place for both.
However the competition is brutal on the GaaS type games, if you want a huge hit (not just, a barely break even type of deal).
Alot of them just end up failing, and dieing early deaths, and end up loseing money for the people that made them.
Its def. alot more risky investment to make a game like that.


"And most games from either model also require quite a bit of luck to be mega popular."

The differnce is that the one and done, even if not a mega hit/popular, is much more likely to earn back, the cost it took to make the game.
Alot of these GaaS type games, cost just as much to make, and usually have a free to play model, to build user base.
That means from the get go, your down 100's of millions of dollars, and your fighting server/maintaince/on-going dev costs, to turn a profit, and claw back at the investment costs to make the game in the first place.

That ontop of the risk of failour being much higher...... its just a gamble.
Sometimes it pays off HUGE. Most of the time, it just ends up costing millions in losses.

The more studios that case that fortnite money.... the tougher the competition, the more that risk grows.
There is def. not the same amount of "room", for both types in the gameing space.

There is a limit to how many studios can do this. Eventually studios will realise that the venture/gamble is not worth it, anymore and stop.
So the great equaliser, is many studios will bet their bottom dollar on this, and the market will kill them.
Those studios shut down, and the devs. go elsewhere to do something else, or try their luck again.

I don't know how much it costs to maintain servers and keep them running, but the initial costs for live service games are often relatively low. Helldivers 2 for example cost 50 million vs Spider-Man 2 costing over 300 million iirc. Helldivers is probably going to outsell Spider-Man at some point this year. You gotta remember that Sony's live service path was met with many doubts and criticisms, with a lot of people pointing at Sony's past failures at producing a single massively popular MP game.

I agree that GaaS has less room for growth, but both models have their cons and pros. And there are many genres that don't yet have a standout GaaS. As long as your game is good, well-marketed, and unique among other GaaS... chances are decent that it's going to do well. Suicide Squad bombed mainly because it sucked.

The story being underdeveloped and, well, shit was attributable to the live-service shenanigans, though. What little story it has is just there to drip-feed you objectives and GaaS gotchas, which is the whole catch 22 with making single-player games live-services and why they never work as live-service games (Platinum couldn’t even crack the code with Babylon’s Fall). That and the always-online stuff.

The fact that it shits all over the established lore irrespective of the GaaS model is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae really. It also probably didn’t help that Sweet Baby Inc. were actively involved.