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John Linneman - Engagement as a primary metric for success is a direction that concerns me
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
In the very source you posted
It's an example of the devs pushed back and the platform holder changed their models.
I can now see the timeline difference so the question is whether the Paradox games were signed at the beginning but at a low rate or after xbox started experiment with the model.
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It doesn't matter how obvious the future is, people refuse to acknowledge it. The overriding reaction to this will be that stadia is irrelevant so there's nothing to worry about, not that this is the inevitable outcome of any media service. I await the next 5-10 years when people are surprised about mediocrity being rewarded, declining service and game quality, service exclusives, the uptick of GAAS, collapsing retail market, indies having to rely on service providers to survive and inescapable platform mandated censorship.
Snake00
Member
Engagement has been the primary metric for success on tv since forever.
Even though we see a lot of episodic content on tv, there still is a huge audience for short blockbuster movies.
Just like with almost everything this isn't a zero sum game.
Both can exist and be successful at the same time.
Even though we see a lot of episodic content on tv, there still is a huge audience for short blockbuster movies.
Just like with almost everything this isn't a zero sum game.
Both can exist and be successful at the same time.
Ass of Can Whooping
Member
Yeah they changed it but revenue based on engagement is still an option
Salty Popsicle
Banned
The only other subscription service I can think of that pays content creators based on the amount of "engagement" by customers is Spotify. Initially many recording artists and labels were against this type of payment model as they too believed it was not a fair way to compensate them for their work, but for the past 10 years Spotify has dominated the music streaming industry worldwide and makes iTunes look like a side-hustle by comparison. Apart from the few standouts like Taylor Swift who for a time refused to allow her music to stream on any service, the majority of artists now seem to be extremely happy to generate a fair amount of passive income through each song of theirs that gets streamed.
Now I'm not saying music streaming subscription services and services like Xbox Game Pass or Stadia are interchangeable in this respect, but a way to fairly monetize and compensate game studios/developer for their work will come about, evolve, and be refined over time just like it has in every other medium of exchange.
Now I'm not saying music streaming subscription services and services like Xbox Game Pass or Stadia are interchangeable in this respect, but a way to fairly monetize and compensate game studios/developer for their work will come about, evolve, and be refined over time just like it has in every other medium of exchange.
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TrueLegend
Member
Yes always feel for the developer, what about the consumers. Gamepass is the best thing that has happened to indie devs. Playstation just recently got flak last week. They are prepping a game pass competitor we know that from GOW developer. But meanwhile, they need to revamp their digital store with a sensible section for games and prices especially since they now have a dedicated digital-only store. Indie Highlights, Regional pricing, and more engagement in-store. It's good that devs are paid on an engagement basis. Games are not single art pieces where you can fancy art for art's sake. Its a digital product that people are required to pay for. If people are not playing your game it's a flop. No clickbait sales. Its actual democratization of product. Earlier once you duped a player with hype or false advertisement you still got the money for that instance but now you don't. I mean developers are known to say so many useless stuff afterward, you want maps the game is not for you, you want pause button the game is not for you, you want a shorter experience and no level gating that you will need to buy timesaver for, too bad it's not a game for you, oh our game has optimization Issues play on 720p on your 1080ti because our game is demanding. Oh yeah, then how about putting that on the cover of your game jackass. The point is it must hurt the developer's wallet if people are not interested in playing their game. That's real power to the players.
martino
Member
this countering the hype or social proof bought content is a good point..and this is not helping AAA game because a good amount of their sales are that...
like i said earlier people using the service ,thank to the ease and freedom to access more content are sending the right signals:
- 91% of subscribers say they have played a title they would not tried without Xbox Game Pass, while Microsoft has noticed members are playing 30% more genres than they did before joining.
the bold part can only make any person loving this media happy.
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Hugare
Member
Halo, Forza, Fable, and many other big MS first party titles will be focusing on GaaS due to GamePass. The multiplayer focus is real on these kind of services.
"Shit ton of short indie titles" that maybe wouldnt have much revenue otherwise by themselves, yes.
But we are talking about AAA singleplayer titles such as TLOU 2, GOW, GOT and etc. that wouldnt make sense financially.
Why would a company waste so much money with singleplayer games on a live service model such as this?
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FunkMiller
Member
30 hours to finish the Marvel's Avengers campaign.
6 hours to finish Portal.
Length of engagement is no indicator of quality or success.
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Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
"It's the death of creativity".
No one can take this seriously.
It literally represents a faster evolutionary process compared to traditional AAA development.
No one can take this seriously.
It literally represents a faster evolutionary process compared to traditional AAA development.
Hugare
Member
Great post
People missing the forest for the trees here
"GamePass is cheap, it benefits me, so who cares?". Very shortsighted on their part.
All you have to do is see whats happening right now with series/movies streaming services
Kazza
Member
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
That’s the most corporate thing I’ve read today.
Nah, supporting the traditional AAA business model, where the majority of gamers don't finish games, is the most corporate thing you've read all day.
Engagement incentives lead to player first game design that encourages mechanics with real depth.
We're entering an era of gameplay over graphics. Can't wait.
Stadia is irrelevant - the addressable market is what matters.
Even excluding mobile, GaaS revenues greatly outstrip everything else (including dwarfing subscription services at the moment, to be fair) right now. And this is relevant because GaaS literally lives&dies on engagement metrics, and virtually nothing else, so that kind of monetization already dominates the games industry today.
Now - to be fair, GaaS has been more profitable than other models for nearly 2 decades, so the fear mongering of 'engagement KPIs will replace everything' looks overblown given where we are today. The industry is too large and too diverse at this point to ever be that monolithic as a whole - IMO. Though like the "PC is dying" meme, this keeps coming back every few years.
That said, if you're particularly attached to where specific companies/studios spend their $ - you may be impacted by this before long.
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I understand that. I'm not referring to quality, I'm referring to engagement success which is the word that was highlighted in the comment I responded to.
When looking at a subscription service and engagement metrics, they care greatly about how you stick with the content. It doesn't have to be quality content, that's kind of irrelevant. If some raunchy Love Island game show thing on Netflix gets a bunch of engagement that will be seen as successful compared to perhaps some well reviewed show that didn't get a lot of attention or stickiness. More likely than not, the quality stuff will be what drives good engagement. Things like Stranger Things and The Queens Gambit on Netflix for example.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Environment influences content in the long-term.
Been saying this for years; subscription services are disruptive in more dimensions than just as a sales/distribution mechanism. Product that is in a Darwinian sense more "fit" for these ecosystems will thrive and dominate, while others will go extinct. What this successful product looks like, and most certainly what it doesn't look like, is very easy to identify based on what is considered valuable by the operators of such services.
As soon as the KPI moves from sales/revenue to engagement -MS' stated position for a few years now- this process becomes inevitable.
Been saying this for years; subscription services are disruptive in more dimensions than just as a sales/distribution mechanism. Product that is in a Darwinian sense more "fit" for these ecosystems will thrive and dominate, while others will go extinct. What this successful product looks like, and most certainly what it doesn't look like, is very easy to identify based on what is considered valuable by the operators of such services.
As soon as the KPI moves from sales/revenue to engagement -MS' stated position for a few years now- this process becomes inevitable.
Do you think this is a positive trend?
Dlacy13g
Member
To be honest this all started with and is no different than when Netflix really hit its stride. Every cord cutting evangelist was signing its praise to the heavens saying this was the future and we no longer needed to pay high cable company bills. ..... and then the Movie / TV studios woke up and said well then we need our own app / subscription too. Now we have Netflix, Paramount+, Hulu, ESPN+, Discovery+, Disney+, HBO Max and many more who have started to lock their content behind these pay walls. This is the future you all wanted... and gaming is following the path to a degree but frankly, the paywall has always been their with gaming. It was the hardware. You had to pay for the hardware to get to that content. New models like Stadia and Gamepass are not as concerned about the hardware as they give you options but the paywalls all still exist.
TheDreadLord
Member
The way many of you are putting it is like there is someone holding a gun against your head and forcing you to keep playing a game. It isn’t that hard to notice if a game is worth you time… In addition, as long as there are people willing to pay for shorter, single player experiences, there will be someone producing them. If we reach a point where the young are only interested on MP/100000h games then that’s it. Things aren’t static and evolve with time so just deal with it and look for something else.
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M1chl
Currently Gif and Meme Champion
They were focusing on GaaS, even before GamePass was a thing. And as far as I know Halo: infinite goes further, with it's MP component being F2P.
Well yeah I don't really want to get in the arguing that a lot of indie games, simply are not as engaging as they should have been however for example Fall Guys is/was popular mainly due to being on PSN+, another subscription service. But yeah, they probably wouldn't make that much money otherwise.
I think that putting there AAA SP games make sense, since the sales of such games dies down pretty quickly (quickly as in that it does not take years, for sales to drop) and for PS game, you get money once and that's it. And since majority of the people are not buying games at rate, which is common on the Neogaf, I believe that it's better if they get hooked on any subscription service by some AAA SP game and then continue paying (in which 100% goes to MS), rather than buy 1-2 games per year. So even from this standpoint, it make sense. ~10 bucks per month from your audience is nothing to sneeze about.
Conversely I would not say, that it's worth to put there a Gaas game, because the publisher/dev of the game probably expect way more money from MS/Sony to have it there than some SP title.
And I also believe there is another angle to this, people don't really consider subscription as something they are actively paying for, since it sucks money automatically, so there is a situation when your next release gets release on GP, so now you have money for some other game, which actually boost the revenue coming to MS or other publishers, so I believe that it's not so black and white.
But will see, if this perspective of mine is too optimistic, issue is, that publishers/devs actually pushing this shit on us, being it on subscription or not. But I do agree, that at least platform holders should act more virtuous in this.
TheDreadLord
Member
Do you want bigger paywall than 70+USD/game? Gaming is an expensive hobby, much more than movies or TV. Most of the people in the world can’t afford it through normal ways. GP like services allow these people to have access to a much bigger catalog of games without relying to alternative methods.
Dlacy13g
Member
Nope... don't mistake me talking about how this came to be as me saying I want bigger pay walls than what we see now. I personally like the Xbox approach as it gives latitude of where / how you play to a degree (pc, mobile and console) and I like the library w/ the inclusion of day 1 releases. That said, I won't be shocked to see this model expand to other companies like say a Ubisoft or heck maybe a Tencent sub too. Its a potential slippery slope and that is really I suppose the main thing to note.
Hobbygaming
has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
But subscription based services do change spending habits for the worst
People are being conditioned into not buying games at all and that's very bad for the gaming industry
SenjutsuSage
Banned
Another stealth attack game pass thread.
On a serious note, we all know what this thread is REALLY about, and there were just so many ways to approach it. This was the chosen vector.
Microsoft makes different kinds of deals for different kinds of developers based on what works best for them. That has already been documented.
Outside of that, we have evidence of Microsoft's game studios making a range of different kinds of experiences, from smaller and shorter titles, to longer, more complex experiences across a variety of game styles.
I wouldn't look at Microsoft's western RPG onslaught and associate it with a lack of creativity.
Fable
Starfield
Avowed
Elder Scrolls 6
The Outer Worlds 2
just to name a few. Neither would I associate a lack of creativity with the biggest ever change to the foundational design elements of a Halo campaign like is being suggested with Halo Infinite. Microsoft has made clear over and over and over that they are not telling developers to build games that they think would succeed inside Game Pass. They make what they desire to make.
In conclusion: even crying wolf because people fear Xbox Game Pass will change the industry. It will, and for the better.
On a serious note, we all know what this thread is REALLY about, and there were just so many ways to approach it. This was the chosen vector.
Microsoft makes different kinds of deals for different kinds of developers based on what works best for them. That has already been documented.
Outside of that, we have evidence of Microsoft's game studios making a range of different kinds of experiences, from smaller and shorter titles, to longer, more complex experiences across a variety of game styles.
I wouldn't look at Microsoft's western RPG onslaught and associate it with a lack of creativity.
Fable
Starfield
Avowed
Elder Scrolls 6
The Outer Worlds 2
just to name a few. Neither would I associate a lack of creativity with the biggest ever change to the foundational design elements of a Halo campaign like is being suggested with Halo Infinite. Microsoft has made clear over and over and over that they are not telling developers to build games that they think would succeed inside Game Pass. They make what they desire to make.
In conclusion: even crying wolf because people fear Xbox Game Pass will change the industry. It will, and for the better.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
The future of gaming is not GamePass vs traditional $70 games.
The future of gaming is the game that dwarfs 2018 era Fortnite in a few years.
The Windows or Internet Explorer or Google of games is coming.
The future of gaming is the game that dwarfs 2018 era Fortnite in a few years.
The Windows or Internet Explorer or Google of games is coming.
Hugare
Member
Putting AAA games on it makes sense to get new subscribers only. Because they cost a lot, and you can bet that MS is loosing money by putting those AAA games there Day One.
Again, look at Sony where every new IP sells 10M copies. They arent evergreen, sure, but they sell a lot, resulting in great revenue numbers.
Using Netflix again as an example: its like releasing The Godfather Trilogy to get new subscribers, but after getting so many, it makes sense financially to make tons of cheap series or movies like The Kissing Booth to keep the masses engaged.
We will see how it goes, but looking at Netflix and other streaming services, I'm not optimistic.
SenjutsuSage
Banned
According to who? A number of game developers have said that game sales are increasing, not diminishing due to game pass. And for their games to go into game pass in the first damn place, a financial arrangement is made that the developer themselves concur with.
So if the game developers feel they are getting what they need from these subscription based services, who the hell am I, or you, or anyone, to suggest this is bad for the industry if the game developers have a more upfront means of getting back their investment or paying their employees or funding future projects?
SenjutsuSage
Banned
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I've been saying this for YEARS on GAF too. I hate it to death! It's the new "Hardware sales numbers don't matter, Gamepass doesn't care about your hardware" that started it all for me. You could "feel" where we were going. I promise you by the end of this year, there will be a crowd of gamers that will say "Software sales don't matter, it's all about how many hours gamers have streamed game X". It's all stupid to me.
This same issue is happening in the music space for artists where they are getting paid $.0050 per song stream or something wack like that. This WILL change the way some games are created, being that this is a business first and foremost.
Jigsaah
Gold Member
Not every game is included in the subscription service. I use Gamepass, but I bought Guilty Gear Strive just recently. I know it's not on Xbox, but the point is I'm not "trained" to do anything...I'm just looking for the best deal to play the games I want. Most of the games on Gamepass, I already owned by time they were released. I've bought games that I never would have because of Gamepass, not in spite of it.
I will be buying Halo Infinite, because I want to own that game. Add to the fact that most of revenue for games these days come from DLC (ie. Expansions, Microtransactions). What better way to sell more DLC than to get as many people as possible on your subscription service so the masses can play your game for "Free" and then buy your DLC. I bought Stellaris on Steam after initially playing it on Xbox Gamepass. The game and all of it's DLC was on heavy discount. I bought all of it.
There's much more to it then what critics are trying to boil this down to.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Depends on the company and their success.
Adobe doesn't even sell Photoshop anymore. It's all monthly sub plans now. You wont be able to find $800 copies of Photoshop at a store in years.
Sales tracking would lead to 0.
Yet, Adobe's sales and profits are at record highs and climbing.
Adobe doesn't even sell Photoshop anymore. It's all monthly sub plans now. You wont be able to find $800 copies of Photoshop at a store in years.
Sales tracking would lead to 0.
Yet, Adobe's sales and profits are at record highs and climbing.
It’s not bad for the gaming industry at all. It’s bad for consumers.
phil_t98
#SonyToo
here's an alternative point of view, games will have to get better to keep engagement high.at the moment if you buy a game that's a dud you have paid for it, with a subscription service you won't play it any longer. so all in all it will make games companies make more engaging games for us gamers
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Its good for corporate dev, but mostly very bad for indies and pursuers of more arty stuff.
Look at how mobile has gone over the last 15 years to get a sense of what it looks like.
No. You can increase engagement by introducing addictive and superficial gameplay loops and creating easy access skinner boxes. Quality isn’t really an issue, which is why engagement is an attractive metric to these companies.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Your analogy rings true if you view gaming primarily as a single player industry.
It's not.
Multiplayer is where the energy is right now. A 30 hour TLoU II is equivalent to two seasons of Game of Thrones. TV and Movie streaming services have no equivalent to 1,000+ hour epics like League of Legends, WoW, Counter Strike etc...
TV and movie streaming services have a safer future than game streaming because they don't have to deal with future behemoth multiplayer games.
Epic is the 8th most valuable videogame company on the planet right now largely due to Fortnite. A bigger Fortnite is coming that will see its creator become the 4th largest game company on the planet. GamePass, PS Now etc are going to have a hard time competing against that trend.
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phil_t98
#SonyToo
yeah but you can include that but if the game is garbage people will move on
How do define a “garbage” game? Was Flappy Bird a “garbage” game?