Super Best Friendcast - The Problem with Games As A Service

[@Hanbei]

"I could hear Liam in my eyes, rolling in our heads" - Woolie "Dimension Eater" Madden, 2017

[@Furymgs3]

"I thought I could hear Liam in my eyes, rolling in our heads, but then I realised it was just chemical reactions."

[@hugehuman1]

The Woolie Hole prolapsed a bit.

[@metalwater81]

Bernard Wiseman I can't believe woolie has the most kawaii eyes on the inside

[@N00BSYBORG]

Problem with games as a service is that a lot of games are now putting their bottom line over the quality of the game. For Honor and Battlefront 2 are good examples of games that could be great but were ruined by their obvious drive to push the microtransaction/lootbox shitassery. People also don't like being manipulated which is how these sort of things tend to go. By the way I really dig that you're uploading podcast segments. The small chunks of content make them easier to view.

[@CaptainSexay]

gotta get those scavenger crates or else you will be destroyed by full dmg peacekeepers. oh wait you changed your class? have fun playing against high level gear opponents without skills. oooooor you buy them and soem gear you little nobushi newbie

[@jordanetherington1922]

They've always put the bottom line over the game quality. Do you really think games were different before?

[@N00BSYBORG]

Jordan Etherington Yes. The cat's out of the bag now that an ex-Bioware dev revealed that EA knowingly made Mass Effect Andromeda worse by forcing a multiplayer component so they could have an excuse to put microtransactions in. Games are intentionally being made worse now to drive microtransaction sales.

[@LuckeeStrikee]

Podcast Segments as a service.

[@CaptainSexay]

didnt activision just patent a system that matches "f2p" players with higher level or "p2p" players to make them buy stuff?

[@thelaughingrouge]

Because games as a service is the real shitstorm.

[@NotAGoodUsername360]

They said mobile games were the future too, and look how well that panned out. Games are just suffering the same problem Hollywood is suffering from: Too many cooks in the kitchen, companies having to spend waaaaay too much money on marketing that never reaches its target demographic because the target demographic isn't anywhere where you can proudly present your sales campaign in a meeting room, big companies don't know how to avoid pissing off consumers so they double down on exploitation while they still have some degree of stability, long-term consequences be damned. It takes a lot of time for markets to crash, but when they do they can level entire bureaucracies, and clearly the big companies don't want to hear any naysaying and are setting themselves up for some major pain.

[@Jaynesslessly]

mobile games are doing god like, clash of clans is literally one of the top grossing games in the entire world next to league and some other asian centric games

[@Copperhell144]

Mobile games in terms of being the future of gaming, not in terms of making money

[@Jaynesslessly]

sozcan "future of gaming" is such a bull shit vague thing to say, theres more people playing phone games than console/pc games and they arguably make more money, what more do you want?

[@Guciom]

And that's basically the ONLY game doing that. The majority of the mobile market are shovel ware clones of popular titles.

[@SteelBallRun1890]

To be fair, I'd play a GTA game where Daniel Day Lewis is both the protagonist AND antagonist.

[@FlameOfUdun96]

Mal Nexus how about those Transformer games by Half Moon Studios?

[@TheChatterbox1991]

Red Dead Redemption 2 appears to b doing that already.

[@DerpyShoes]

Mal, you should check out this game called "Heavy Rain"

[@PredatoryQQmber]

+Mal Nexus Story-wise, Quantum Break tried to do something like that but without actual fighting :( For that to work you have to have strong antagonist and not just cartoony psychopath for a villain. There is also small DLC campaign for "a villain" in Metal Gear Rising. But without fighting the protagonist.

[@jacobp7037]

Zeb Ra i think he ment a version that isn't a steaming hunk of shit

[@J_Themborn]

Whenever you see or hear of AAA publishers being disappointed in sales or talking about how hard it is to make games and just their constant greed growing I can't help but think of Abbadon the devourer in SMTIV or the gluttonous ghost in Luigi's Mansion

[@Fjaloeat1]

We still got RE7, Nier, Persona, Horizon, Zelda, and Mario this year. So single player games aren't completely dead yet. Yet....

[@konkonart7128]

Do we have statistics of loot boxes in Japanese games vs Western games? From that list Nier, Zelda, Mario, and Persona I know are from Japanese studios, adding Gravity Daze 2 to the single player focused games too. Maybe it's just Western corporate culture that encourages games as a service models of games. Granted Asia is notorious for gacha style random gambling in games (mostly MMO and mobile games), but it's not really seen in AAA titles.

[@perplexus3893]

It’s dying though, Which is sad and shouldn’t be a thing. Remember when video games were trying to be legitimized as art? I think they’ve reached the ‘sellout’ part of art now.

[@Dasaltwarrior]

If I'm not wrong, that's because AAA games, and or home console game's in general, are not big BIG business in Japan. It has an audience, just not a large enough one to really attract whale- I MEAN paying customer's. Except for mobile stuff of course as that's popular for the same reasons as it is here. All you need to do to see that it's a western thing is to look at Japaneses companies that actually pay attention to the western market do the same thing, Square Enix is a regular culprit of these practices.

[@miket7869]

i mean, which is the one of the best multiplayer of this year again?

[@Horatio787]

Prey, Yakuza 0, Dishonored 2, Nioh, A Hat In Time and Cuphead. This has been a fucking amazing year so far when you take a step back, plus Wolfenstein 2 is coming

[@perplexus3893]

To be honest, the video game industry never broke my heart so much as it did with Battlefront. Having played both of the original battlefronts, I remember how I sunk hours and hours into it just fighting the AI on different maps because it was fun like that. Then I heard new battlefront was going to be a GAAS game and my inner child died a little.

[@ReachStudioPro]

+Perplexus I feel your pain. I did the exact same thing as you. Bought both the originals, played a shitload of it with my little brother, friends and cousin. Played solo against the A.I for thousands of hours probably and went through the entire cmpaign over and over again. Battlefront EA arrives and wow. I have no words that can correctly describe how much I despise EA. The second Battlefront EA game is a step up but I played it and what the hell! The controls were horrendous, almost unplayable and I simply got a horrible feeling playing the game. I will not buy the second EA game too.

[@codussigma]

Vote for Senator Armstrong! He promises to use games as a service, to END games as a service! How you may ask? Nanomachines son.

[@fernandosau1498]

Not for DLC. Not for season pass! Every man will be free to buy complete games!

[@kojumbobeefman3448]

Brother Coduss I was wrong about you. You're not crazy... YOU'RE BATSHIT INSANE!

[@SnipahBarret50Cal]

I genuinely want to think EA is this, EA becoming the disgusting pos that it is now so that other people don't become like them.

[@Kickback2108]

Okay, is it just me? Or does that banner for Pacific Rim 2 look like a new fuckin' line of Bionicles?

[@Psydekick00]

Kickback No, it’s not just you. I read your comment and looked at it again, and you’re super right

[@k.-flynn]

Kickback where's Makuta

[@Kickback2108]

Right? It's so crazy. Like from from left to right, it looks like Toa for Stone, Water, Air, Fire, Earth then Ice...and Gypsy in the middle is like New Takanuva or whatever

[@holyflutterofgod]

The new layout is a little wonky, but I really appreciate being able to see the screen actually. I'd say it's a keeper, or at least a step in the right direction!

[@kingcoheed1208]

holybutternutsquash I think they need to eliminate the vertical space of the Single cams. Or just have two cams covering the three rather than the individual cams and a group cam

[@Dedlok]

Kid Coheed Group cam is only for when one of them is missing for the week, which coincidentally has happened in every clip they uploaded since they started. When all 3 are there all 3 are individual cams.

[@Dedlok]

+holybutternutsquash the screen on top layout is the layout they use for The News part of the podcast. So not necessarily new but new to people who only have seen the KZbin clips they put up so far.

[@holyflutterofgod]

+Dedlok Ah, good to know! Thanks for the clarification friend.

[@superbro6413]

KZbin recommending this to me after the announcement that Toys for Bob, who made Crash 4, were turned into yet another COD support team, with most of the staff layed off, is a cruel amount of irony

[@IceLizardsUnited]

I miss Games as an Art... Is it to late to return to the 2000s era of games?

[@chiyo-chanholocaust8143]

Questionable? - Yeap.

[@perplexus3893]

Questionable? I frequently feel like the video games industry has reached the point of “the end of ‘Planet of the Apes’” as Charlton Heston (the consumer) looks upon the industry, realizing it has destroyed itself in its own hubris. Short answer: no, it’s pretty fucked.

[@Nico-zt5jl]

2000s era of games is coming to us with games like Mario Odyssey, A Hat in Time, NieR:Automata, Cuphead, Persona, and Breath of the Wild. So there is hope.

[@JosephXFS]

How about games as games?

[@juice6521]

Artists don't make money.

[@finalcrash244]

One day Woolie will become Aqualad.

[@Zurtrinik]

very good point on the wanting that one hit to sustain them for months. Reminds me a lot of that big "WoW-killer" phase a while ago where EVERYBODY had to have an MMO cuz if it works then the subscriptions will fund whatever else you want to do until people stop playing... of course for many of them that was a month after launch, but they still kept coming out just cuz that gleaming prize that was WoW's revenue for Blizzard was so attractive.

[@EmpressTiffanyOfBrittany]

I love these podcast videos. You guys have beautiful baby faces.

[@htimelines1089]

Better quicksave this video.

[@davenathan2002]

Htimelines It only runs in RealPlayer.

[@kakoytazabar]

Only Villains do that.

[@DevonPalmer98]

Thank God, I die a true Canadian- Daniel day Lewis in gangs of Ontario

[@SundaySmiles1]

This is a much better format to advertise the podcasts.

[@adams3627]

Matt's point about GTA V is really ironic now, looking back at almost a full decade of R* realizing that GTA online is a license to print money, and prioritizing accordingly. We had MULTIPLE single-player expansions that never saw the light of day because they weren't going to keep people buying shark cards!

[@BigattckFirecat]

actually cuphead can be called a co-op game too because it offers co-op.

[@glestrade5112]

Everyone: There's no way games can be less of an art form now! The Entire Games Industry: Hold my beer.

[@SiennaBlossom420]

just realized why you're putting these up and. I think i'll at least click on all of em.

[@Sapheiorus]

5:11 I was looking through a bunch of these tonight, on October 2, 2018... and it JUST SO HAPPENED that this name has come up again as the title for Episode 266. Maybe I should look up this "Daniel Day Lewis" dude...

[@toiletsinjapan9933]

Bizarro-dimension castle superbeast?

[@blinkx1070]

GAAS GAAS GAAS, I'M WANNA TAKE ALL YOUR CASH

[@twitchykun]

TONIGHT CASH WILL FLYYYY EA WILL BE A WINNER

[@The_King-Slayer_Leviathan]

the only thing I was thinking of the whole time there where talking was "just till the face cam down just a bit" that or " Woolie just sit up straight."

[@Hecubusx]

PLEASE POST FULL OR SEGMENTED PODCASTS ON YT!!

[@JosephXFS]

They make you subscribe on Twitch to watch the videos so I doubt they'll do that.

[@admcleo]

God bless Woolie trying so hard not to say RitanGall and get in trouble. His love for the game and attempt to push it make so much more sense now. Keep it on the downlow though.

[@GenerationWest]

GTA is the Daniel Day Lewis of videogames.

[@davenathan2002]

GenerationWest Daniel Day Lewis is the Liam Neeson of actors.

[@TheIslesShip]

Games as a service to me feels like an idea that can work given the right circumstances but is being overused to the point of breaking what would be good games. I feel like overwatch has something of what should be the model for lootboxes with one big tweak as they essentially pay for consistent free content should you not really care about cosmetics that much. It's a trade off but in that situation this trade off is more the fair. Shadow of Mordor however is far worse because it legitimately effects content.

[@deviantknight7009]

why is there pacific failure taking up half the screen?

[@ufofighter16]

Can we please get fanart of some Pro Games as a Service dev or publisher cutting Amy Hennig's head off O-Ren style?

[@J_Themborn]

I dread when another GTA is announced, the only way to escape the world talking about it is to denounce technology for months.

[@LuxOverHeaven]

The like to dislike ratio here is ridiculous. You guys have come a long way.

[@ughasdy]

Do they record the entire podcast? I'd definetly watch it if they did...

[@Diinify]

**A BILLION DOLLARS**

[@Firestar4041]

Decapitated head: "Fucking lootboxes man."

[@Babymech]

Super Best Friends: The Service with Games as a Problem.

[@HibHab69]

It's this kind of shit that risks burning consumers out on games.

[@MrThreeTake]

Pacific Rim 2 will be an abortion of a sequel.

[@RobRIPDG]

All that aside it also looks bad.

[@thatspasticgamer]

Anybody know the game Woolie's talking about? The singleplayer one where the singleplayer got scrapped.

[@ExecutionCommentator]

JOINTHEAMUTODAY Nosgoth??

[@kojumbobeefman3448]

Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun turned into Nosgoth, maybe?

[@XainEisenhart]

Definitely Legacy of Kain / Nosgoth. It fits the profile (single player turned multiplayer-only), is an Eidos/SE title (where Woolie worked), and was at a time he was there.

[@RobRIPDG]

Oh you miserable fucks, I never even thought of that. If I eva become rich im gonna make da best legacy of Kain game eva.

[@llRecks]

Did they talk about Activision on the podcast yet? i haven't seen it yet.

[@27TheMunchkin]

Yall gotta be quicker with these uploads guys. By the time these vids go up 2 or 3 other people already put up the same bits.

[@technocrat40]

Who are these other people exactly? ;)

[@27TheMunchkin]

I mean I dont do it anymore, but Fruits Chinpo Samurai, Jeedy Jay, solidus13, Mega Mix Jam & countless others. Literally just search "superbestfriendcast" or "sbfc" into youtube & you'll find them. The results w the most views are from channels like these, not this channel, this is partially because they've become hubs for those uploads (so much so that some people say they don't even watch/DL the podcast because they just want "the good bits" & wait for these channels to upload them) & because those channels reliably upload the best parts of it at such a pace that . . . Well, I used to upload the parts I did because I felt the parts I liked didn't get uploaded. Nowadays I'll look up on KZbin for the exact section that I would've uploaded & within 24 hrs sure enough its there on one of those other channels, thus there's no need for me to. I didn't do it for views, but being first is important if you want said views (which the best friends do since they make a living off it).

[@fruitsJXOsauce]

At this point i only do obscure stuff from older eps. All for fun of course.

[@MakiKuronami]

FruitsChinpoSamurai You should gather up all the old How Hath God Blighted Pat this week and Ubi Pls segments. Those were funny as shit moments.

[@HeirofDacia]

I love Woolie so damn much

[@ShieldedToad]

Anyone know what game Woolie was referring to?

[@WoWNaomiLing]

I only listen to their audio podcast, do they stream their podcast live?

[@JJMomoida]

Naomi Ling Every Monday at 1 pm EST, I believe.

[@darknyx9876]

On twitch

[@Sharky1147]

Our already expensive hobby is getting even more expensive.

[@xAxLxExCx]

A billion dollars? On skins? Gaming is so fucked.

[@darrianweathington1923]

Podcast as a service. Pass

[@jiyangli9779]

personally i don't want to play an assassin's creed game ever again. if they make something that i absolutely have to buy, then that's on me; that's my failure. no amount of time in the oven will make me miss it.

[@perplexus3893]

Kevin Li Frankly I feel a bit bad for Ubisoft regarding AC. I mean after how awesome IV was, where can they really go? Can’t get much better than ‘greatest pirate game’

[@jiyangli9779]

damn it you're right. i forgot about black flag. yes, i will miss black flag. but they'll never do it again.

[@perplexus3893]

Kevin Li you’re right. Even if they were 100% competent and weren’t trying this GAAS shit, I still don’t think they could pull it off again. That was just too good to ever follow up on meaningfully. Made me kinda sad as I realized midway through playing the game that I would never be fully satisfied with another AC game.

[@J_Themborn]

I was thinking of Prince of Persia earlier and saw a video on the history of it and how AC was gonna be about the prince's assassins protecting him from the shadows apparently they were gonna focus on a female assassin which was apparently too hard for AC before Syndicate. Now people are just sick of Assass and I thought up playing as Prince's kid who somehow got the Dahaka's powers and stuff... At least Prince's story got wrapped up, which will never be said for Assin Creed.

[@gqazndood]

It's not longer. Games as an Art. It's Games as a Service.

[@Geneolgia]

This is why i play more Japanese video games nowadays since they seem to be the only ones that care about polished single player experiences, for the most part.

[@motomify]

What gets me are the people who are super defensive towards those who point out the flaws in this business plan, the contrarians who shout "it's MY money!" As they furiously shovel it into their latest Skinner box. People need to figure out how to develop an identity outside of their material possessions, which is what a videogame is. A thing. A consumer product. And such things should all be subject to leery critique in this modern age of profit over product, not rabidly defended as if some holy writ.

[@maxom9816]

The thing is you need to look at games as service as investor as well, yeah you want to encourage devs to be creative give them time and freedom so they can make great game but when its about not just your share but others people who invested into those devs then you have to look at things differently. It does not excuse harsh policies and stupid decisions but can be the reason affect anyway. Look at the whole market as bubbles (segmentation) they are all different by size of people and their taste etc, you investing into single player bubble, you making a single player game which awesome and has a lot of interesting ideas it would take you lets say 3-4 years maybe 5 because you trying to make something really awesome. On 2nd year of development you see that bubble changes other games came out that may have used some of your ideas, later different trends came along and leave, a new president comes in and you change some story because it maybe a bit close etc, then you double down on marketing in order to get at least some people's attention from Zelda, Persona, Doom, Wolfestein etc. Close to finish things do not turn out well dev ask you to delay the project, you let them but you making new ad campaign and new contracts with retailers and finding good date to not compete with big games, which is really hard. Boom game is out and ... reviews are ok to good(even in case of great) you trying to remind people that the game is out go buy it now and convince them to buy it at full price or more for extra editions because you need some now in order to convince investor is all fine and you get only 40% from 60$ because of contracts with retailers and consoles. At the end you look at revenue, you made ok maybe good and investors pleased ... But You and investors see another bubble where not just huge Blizzard making billion but some group of modders making money out of some weird game that has only one map and super unfinished, or others like them (DayZ, Rust etc) they're marketing is streams and just letting people to play under "we will fix things on the go", people happy and tell others to join them. Companies make huge amount of money and get more from sales because people paying them more and less to consoles holders/retailers for benefits like saving more time on progression an lootboxes, and people buying it even for singleplayer. You see that this bubble have much more people in it and way bigger demand to the point where Destiny 2 is the most selling game of 2017 beating Persona 5 and Zelda. There even games (maybe another bubble) that has low reviews and unoriginal but people buying them anyway because they know that they getting 20-30 hours of 60$ and things that they are familiar with (case with Mad Max). So you and investors see that bubble, what is your decision to stay in bubble where demand not that big and in order to make huge money you have to release it fast on time, be on level of Mario, GTA or Witcher and hope that bubble will change for positive side (Like Doom Happened it must be a good sign)? Or move in order get some money to be able to stay on float for sure and have chance to grow and not fire devs? I may have exaggerated, left some important points out or some companies just do it only for money but still if ask "WHY COMPANIES DO THIS S!%$" more imagine yourself as investor.

[@perplexus3893]

Max Om I don’t think anybody here doesn’t understand the huge financial incentives behind GAAS. It’s that (at least for me) it feels like a massive sellout for an industry so recently focused on gaining legitimacy as an art form. Never has there been a more blatant ‘sacrifice art for potential profit’ trend in video games as there is now.

[@maxom9816]

I hope this this trend will go away like others before it but its still on people who buying it not those who selling it.

[@MichaelPace2.0]

You guys are dope, just sayin

[@tefirez3929]

Sleeping Dogs and Fable online husks :,(

[@sku11bropat45]

Does anyone know what "games as a service" means?

[@kaeltxwz]

battlefronts 2 story mode looks cool , but i still refuse to buy that pay-to-win piece of shit.

[@BigattckFirecat]

ps: this is what you are looking for i.imgur.com/k0XE44G.jpg

[@CaptainSexay]

how dare the ranking system put horizon on the same level as wolfensteins terrible 6 hour campaign

[@TK-hl9cc]

That's one of the reasons the praise that overwatch gets annoys me cause it has one of the most scummiest micro transactions I've ever seen in games

[@perplexus3893]

That’s pretty much the only reason I refuse to buy Overwatch. I can’t morally justify buying a game that legitimized the GAAS practice I hate so much.

[@Haweaz]

The game is based around waifus and husbandos. People knew about the Tracer butt debacle before they even heard of Overwatch. Sex sells and overwatch had tons of it. And that led to its sales. Even now its just a cosmetics simulator. I know people who go back to Overwatch just to buy the new skins. Like wtf

[@perplexus3893]

Remery the Helnekromancer that’s just sad. I mean there’s no real function to those items and if there’s one thing I don’t pay attention to in FPS games, it’s the detailing on my enemy’s clothes/guns.

[@CaptainSexay]

this. I got the game when it was on sale for 27€ and was baffled at the amount of content it has. almost none! but every month there is a new batch of skins with like 3 new maps a year.but those wont get them money so we need more tracer skins

[@Adjudicus]

CaptainSexay the game has no content? What are you on about? You're only paying for skins, and even those you can earn without paying. You only consider skins as content?

[@mrakz99]

the real problem is that blizzard know how to treat there fans and others don't and are try this crap.

[@specknacken6507]

"The Problem with NeoGAF As A Gaming Site" Oh wait! That discussion never happened! Sry my fucking bad! (Awful episode. Wish Pat had been there to yell some fucking sense into these chicken cowards.)

[@awsomeDualshock]

To quote The 3rd Runner in another comment chain: -- "I understand that there goes this super useful gaming resource that you guys used, but FOR SOME GOOD REASONS. HOLY FUCK. *OOF*." - Woolie Madden, 2017, SBCC 220 "Five Fish Gods Await for you in Valhalla", minute 55:44 "If only you could apply that strict user registration policy to your pants." - Woolie Madden, 2017, SBCC 220 "Five Fish Gods Await For You In Valhalla", minute 57:20 -- They did talk about it, but not in-depth. This isn't a political podcast, so of course they aren't going to talk about it (especially since everyone else has already talked about it to death). I'm also 100% sure that Pat wouldn't "yell some fucking sense" into them since he knows just as well as them that delving into topics deeper than they can handle will only end poorly. The SBFC has been an entertainment podcast first, news second.

[@Gojiro7]

6:15 we just watched Woolie have an entire podcast inside his own mind XD