The Live Service Model is Dying | Extra Punctuation

[@theescapist]

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[@rocko7711]

Another amazing and insightful episode

[@TwistedMe13]

2:22 Capitalist Rule 101: Pigs get to eat-- hogs get to be slaughtered. Capitalist Rule 102: Easy (see also Government) money and capitalist systems go together about as well as Cesium and Florine. The question of flying glass and metal, fires and nasty fallout is merely a question of when--not if. Mercenary Maxim 17: The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster.

[@KaosMachina]

"Nobody wants to pay a weekly fee for shit they used to get for free. Anyway, buy our The Escapist subscription!"

[@danielcalabrese5769]

Fuck yeah brother, couldn't of said it better myself 😊👍👍👍

[@jaredfreeman6017]

This is legitimately the smuggest I’ve ever heard Yahtzee. He’s literally doing a victory lap on this concept. Good for him.

[@XescoPicas]

I mean, he did call it years ago. Our dude earned these bragging rights 🤣

[@DefendYoungstown]

So what you're saying is that he's laughing at an industry...?

[@MFGEEDORAH]

More like dancing on its grave

[@1337m4n]

@@DefendYoungstown That never learns anything.

[@Seestaar]

​@@1337m4n tee hee hee

[@Comicsluvr]

I can remember when a company having 20% growth in a year, on average, was considered phenomenal. Then, it became the norm. Then it became the expectation.

[@jmurray1110]

and then it becomes a drop

[@J.Crime123]

I mean you can have 20% growth each year, that is not a problem. We just need to find a couple of new planets to live on and the production of new humans needs to grow exponentially asap.

[@collinsutherland311]

It was partially expected because of how dominant growth assets were given incredibly low interest rates, and the proliferation of small unprofitable IPOs. It’s easy to grow that much per year when you’re starting from basically nothing.

[@Rainbowhawk1993]

Getting too big too fast.

[@DMLoosey]

​@Rainbowhawk1993 That's not the issue. It's the pursuit of infinite growth. It's an impossible goal that leads to bad things like predatory profit practices and milking consumers with as little content as humanely possible.

[@Tyler-gg6xt]

I know it's bad from to celebrate at a funeral, but I will make an exception for live service games.

[@PoisonedAl]

And Margaret Thatcher.

[@TheRogueWolf]

I'll be the guy leaning over the grave making a victory sign with my fingers.

[@Agent789_0]

I’ll bust out the champagne.

[@haruhirogrimgar6047]

Meh, if the person sucked be as happy as you can. It's what I do.

[@jmurray1110]

Maybe it a reverse victory sign

[@WhiteRedEyeAU]

"Do you have ANY idea how difficult it is to make something people actually want to buy? It's ridiculously hard!" - Kale, Hi-Fi Rush

[@marcusaaronliaogo9158]

Kale is the type of person to employ 5 live service games at the same time in 2 years.

[@galenwilds3273]

Holy shit, that literally is the whole plot of the game. Everything about its success just became so much funnier.

[@kiricappuchin]

Keep in mind that he said this in response to....(spoiler!) ...being accused of using mind-control on people through Project Armstrong and SPECTRA. 😆😆

[@juanmanuelpenaloza9264]

​@kiricapp and the whole point was just to have a captive market to push product, regardless of quality.

[@chillhour6155]

Drake

[@TheMarkoSeke]

This reminds me of the time period when like a hundred MOBAs were released and shut down within a year.

[@costanzafaust]

and WW2 shooters, guitar hero clones, among us reskins, battle royale games...

[@Beakerbite]

MOBA was just an extension of Live Service Games. They've existed in many forms over the years, but lately the big live service games have had "all the genres" rather than just some of them. It's really reduced the need for players to find a variety of games as these big ones just try to satisfy everything. Obviously, that sort of entrenchment means very little room for the competition to exist, hence the shrinking market.

[@Padon84]

I remember the survival/zombie survival trend that slowly die out. Couldn't take two steps without seeing one on steam or console.

[@richardvlasek2445]

i am not going to lie, seeing new mobas get announced year and watching them get slaughtered in months by league was really funny at least mmos from the mid 2000s took at least a couple years to kick the bucket, shit like guardians of the middle earth, dawngate and strife were basically dead on arrival

[@Three-Headed-Monkey]

@@Beakerbite MOBAs I can understand as a live service game that actually justifies its existence. They need to be constantly updating to retain and gain a playerbase, and they need a steady stream of money to do so. Online games need an active player base to justify themselves. Single player games do not. Single player live service games are just terribad. Make a game, release it, let us enjoy it and then move on.

[@Renix360]

You can almost write a thesis paper on the success of Hi-Fi Rush. Not only do you have everything that Yahtzee just went over, you also have the fact that it came out on the exact same day people were supposed to start playing Forespoken, a game only the most hardcore of Sony and SE fans were excited about but many people were planning to play because it came out early enough in the year that nothing else new had come out yet to play. You can even tell how many people were begrudgingly going to play it by the amount of people who immediately changed their plans on playing it that day after Hi-Fi Rush dropped. It was almost like it freed people from the shackles of something they didn’t want to do. It dropping was almost a perfect storm that allowed it to succeed as well as it did.

[@teatanks6481]

Forspoken is perhaps the culmination of general hatred to the current trends in gaming, not just live service; snarking protagonist, RPG style combat, gear crafting, and open world. With the alleged reports that copies of Forspoken are ending up in landfills I feel as if people bought Hi-Fi Rush wanting a break and unintentionally found a superb experience on top of it.

[@ProxyDoug]

@@teatanks6481 Has to be a really bad game if, in the age of digital distribution, it sells so poorly, there are enough copies to throw into a landfill.

[@VeritabIlIti]

It sucks for the devs too, because if Forspoken had come out 5-10 years ago it probably would have done very well, because that's when all of its tropes were popular and not as tired as Microsoft is of Sony's bs

[@rade-blunner7824]

Haha, I saw exactly that happen in Maximillian Dood's watchalong of the announcement, changed his plans the second they said it was dropping that day: "Well I know what I'm doing later, I'm sorry Forspoken..."

[@game_boyd1644]

Perfect encapsulation of our hyper-consumerist societies. No one HAD to play Forspoken, you just felt like you had to because of FOMO and all the shiny new graphics and gizmos. You coukd have just gone through over two literal decades worth of infinitely better games to play at a much lower bar of entry (cheaper and less graphically demanding)

[@thedogmaticdirector]

This has been the first time an EP hasn't made me feel disgusted with the games industry as a whole. Let's see how long that lasts. 🤞

[@retronymph]

Oh don't worry, once the live service craze has died out I'm sure the industry will move onto something else. Maybe they'll rebrand nfts and put them into a game or something? Then that becomes the hot new thing? idk

[@thedogmaticdirector]

@@retronymph If it's anything like Diablo 3's auction house, yeah, that would be enough to bring my spirits right back down.

[@DolanDuking]

Let’s all laugh at a industry that never learns anything tee hee hee

[@wesleywalker4709]

[@si2foo]

ill give you a month tops before you dont care and are back playing something

[@tenaesaei]

The funny thing about Yahtzee pointing out Suicide Squad's multi-tab menu and pointing out how common it is across live service games, is actually another point at game devs/publishers just copying trends, because half if not more of those games are just pulling their UI and gear systems from Destiny lmao (which is even funnier, considering Destiny is clearly making active efforts to move away from a gear score system, and there's already a leaked rumor that gear score may be removed entirely)

[@jaxx1258]

Wouldn't that be something. The day I dropped Destiny was the day I realized the last tier of leveled gear (and the handcannon I wanted) was locked behind an expensive expansion for a game I already paid full price for. Wouldn't bother me except I was just starting to really enjoy the Crucible. So to participate in anything other than PVE at all I would be actively shooting myself in the foot, and a liability to my teammates. And that's just bullshit.

[@LaggyLuke]

I must be really out of touch with games because I have no clue what "gear system" is.

[@ArcticTenshi]

@@LaggyLuke Let's have two items are exactly identical with the exception being: Item A has 3-Damage Item B has 4-Damage Other than the damage difference, they are the same in looks, sounds, etc... You essentially have to keep grinding to have better stats on the EXACT gear you want, which is honestly exhausting

[@queueeeee9000]

​@@LaggyLukeput more simply, the Common, Rare, Legendary, Epic system. (green, blue, purple, orange) ((or any one of the million variations))

[@RedCometCustom0079]

One of my friends keeps trying to get me into Genshin Impact, and I keep repeating: "I'm sure it's great and fun, but I don't have time! Playing this will require me to drop all my established hobbies and only do this!" And that is the problem with Live Services in a nutshell

[@suddenlysarablog]

MMOs, also. I'm a HUGE Elder Scrolls fan. I was in the beta for ESO, and I love the game. It's objectively the best MMO I've ever played (and I played WoW since Vanilla). I just... can't... tho. It just take too much time, and there's just so many other things, even other GAMES I'd rather be playing to devote all of it to a single one. My Steam library is an absolute graveyard of forgotten purchases I bought but never touched.

[@sasha9796]

i think it is a strange perspective to have. you are hardly signing a contract when you are starting a video game. Play it for however long you feel like it and for however much time you do have

[@reizak8966]

Same, and it's the same reason why I don't play FFXIV online. Takes way too much time.

[@DBZHGWgamer]

​@@sasha9796 Except that's not how it works. For a game like Genshin to be good you have to play it for tens of hours and give into the skinner box reprogramming. It's not a fun game to only play for an hour or two and it's designed that if you play it longer you are letting it change your brain physiology to become more prone to gambling addiction.

[@TheKrossRoads]

@@sasha9796 The trouble is, those types of games are literally designed from the ground up to hog as much of your free time (and money) as possible. They'll use every mental trick in the book, without reservation, to get you in a habit of playing them; and get your credit card number. For me, your perspective is the strange one. It's like saying, "just do a little heroin, you don't have to dedicate much time or money to it!". Better to avoid a potential addiction when you see the red flags, then try to trust your leisure time (and wallet) on willpower and self-control. Especially if you know you're vulnerable to it. It's being responsible.

[@jonathansallows836]

The Hi-Fi Rush shadow drop was a slap in the face to the current norms of the game industry by the game industry. It's ingenious, really.

[@Shotblur]

Aaaaand now it's got microtransactions.

[@ED-gw9rg]

​@@ShotblurWell, one of the exclusive cosmetics DOES say "I bought the Deluxe Edition and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt"

[@mackielunkey2205]

@@ShotblurAt least it got a free gameplay update!

[@B3N_Youtube]

@@Shotblurit’s completely optional to buy thou. :p

[@SylentVoidkeeper]

Hi Fi Rush is also a good example of the game industry lying about their obsessive need to pretend like any and all games need to be blowing up in terms of how much they cost for the consumer. They can release a fantastic game for 30 bucks and it's clearly doing extremely well as a financial investment. The industry at large always feels like they need to make justifications for why, for example, they want 70 dollars to be the norm for games when all of the reasons they wish to do so are poorly hidden excuses for them just seeing what they can bleed out of the average consumer. They make games that have frankly out of control budgets and then act as if it's the consumers job to completely fit that bill, even if the game isn't good. Basically we need a push back to games with shorter length, good quality, and cheaper prices. You can still make your 60 dollars huge story RPG game but just do a bit of diversification, y'know?

[@danilooliveira6580]

but not all games are going to be Hi Fi Rush though, that is the problem. companies when get this big work on the principle of investment risk. how likely you are to give the investors a good return in their money with this project ? 90% of the time games like Hi Fi Rush give very little return for their investment, so investing in small games like this is more likely to lose them money even though it gives good profit, because it doesn't give ENOUGH profit, making the investors pull out to seek more profitable investment opportunities.

[@kyleb4781]

You can't measure the health of an ecosystem by the outliers. It's like saying being an author is a safe career because Brandon Sanderson sells a lot of books so obviously everyone else will too. Hi-Fi Rush can stand out partly because they're doing something that most people aren't doing, but not all games can be wildly innovative and incredibly creative and so on.

[@NYKevin100]

​@@danilooliveira6580 Frankly, this is nonsense. Modern indie publishers are basically highly specialized VCs with a consulting arm bolted onto the side, and some of them are doing just fine at making original games. Look at Annapurna's catalog. They have a couple of bad games in there, but they don't have any stupid "infinite money machine" games. I think the real problem is that the AAAs have become overly cautious and bureaucratic. The problem isn't "investors," it's middle management.

[@danilooliveira6580]

@NYKevin100 that is the thing. You are talking about indie studios, I'm talking about publicly traded billions dollar conglomerates. Where projects like this are just numbers.

[@fieldrequired283]

_I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less, _*_and I'm not kidding._*

[@add8402]

When it comes to the "live service model" I've noticed an interesting trend. whenever a game features the fact that it's a live service prominently in its marketing, its almost always a bad game (see: anthem, avengers, Battlefield 2042, etc.) but when a game doesn't draw attention to its live service elements it tends to be a pretty good game (see: Deep Rock Galactic, Warframe, Payday 2, etc.) I personally think this trend is less about the actual marketing itself, and more about how much thought has been put into the base game's experience. If all the marketing around a game is just "look at all the cool stuff we'll add to the game 10 years from now" that really only means the game doesn't have enough content to be marketable right now (and, when nobody buys it because, surprise, game's bad, then the game just dies and all those promises in the "10 year plan" disappear alongside anyone's desire to play the game).

[@runbaa9285]

The only game that comes to mind that marketed itself as a live-service and succeeded was Hitman. But even then, that game's an outlier. The game got a lot of flak upon release, but the devs stuck on and kept adding things as the years go by and now we have an entire trilogy of what is probably, the best Hitman experience in the franchise. I would also put Monster Hunter World as a live-service game that worked. The thing is, MHW was already a solid game on release. The addons were just icing on the already solid cake. There's also the topic of fighting games, which transferred to a live-service content distribution model more out of necessity than any monetary incentive. It was mostly done to avoid having multiple revisions of the same game out on the market, which had the adverse effect of dividing the playerbase of a game. And in the age of online gaming, that's not something you really want. Like seriously, there are literally EIGHT different versions of Street Fighter 2, each one basically being an update to the previous version sold as a new full-priced game. At some point, it just got quite ridiculous.

[@effortlessfury]

@@runbaa9285 Also, with Hitman, it was something that evolved over time on top of an already solid base offline Single Player experience. It was a good game without the live service model, and the live service aspect grew over time, enhancing what was already there.

[@Artemi22]

only good takes here I see

[@jammyman7085]

​@@runbaa9285 Are mordern fighting games considered live service? I never really considered them as such a more just an online multiplayer games that get updated. Mabey this is just semantics but I've always viewed the difference between multiplayer and live service games is that while the former is content with letting you play as an when you feel like a live service experience expects you to keep on playing continuously through progression systems and such and is updated accordingly. It's like the difference between say guilty gear strive and multiverses. Guess what I'm getting at there is a difference in approach. There are some that straddle the line like splatton 3 but that feels like an outlier in the wider indutsry.

[@runbaa9285]

@Jammy Man I consider anything that gets updated post-launch with a clear long-term road map of content trickle to be live service. Not just expansions like The Witcher 3, but full on regular content and balance updates for the foreseeable future after launch to keep engagement alive. At its core, that is the supposed concept of "live-service". The name just gets associated with battle passes due to how many F2P games use it and how awful a lot of them are implemented.

[@Yuhara_rev]

Always loved the surprisingly optimistic last part of the fallout 76 video, glad to see a full extra punctuation on the topic now.

[@SpyHunter89]

I was thinking the same thing. Too bad almost nothing seems to have changed in the intervening four, almost five, years. Gaming-wise, I mean.

[@ObsoletePerson]

@@SpyHunter89 Not so sure about that. We all were very concerned back in the days of 'Fallout: 76' but Yahtzee was more singular in his optimism. Now everything's more in line with what he said then.

[@johnw9771]

Yes, but instead of the stupids dying out from daring each other to headbutt the ceiling fan, it seems more like gamers are just getting fatigue with these ridiculous, overly-monetized live service games. And it’s about time, too.

[@jamesanderson5465]

​@@SpyHunter89In the AAA realm place first yes but either in a few years. A company will have a breakout success with a new WoW. But smaller games keep coming out from big studios and indie developers. Actually I haven't been this optimistic in years(about anything really)

[@Big-Image]

If the success of Hi-Fi Rush and the upcoming death of live service games are signs that things are going to change for the better, then I highly welcome it.

[@ryansch682]

I feel like the "capitalism's expectations of infinite growth is dumb" point is perfectly illustrated by the shareholders of Activision-Blizzard allegedly being disappointed in Call Of Duty's performance in recent months... despite the games still selling at rates that would make an indie publisher go bananas

[@mukkah]

riiiiiiight? Blows my mind... Stopped supporting AAA for the most part years ago, don't miss it. Not even as a moral stance, just sucked spending full price on a game and more often than not, being disappointed. Same price I can buy smaller studio games with solid recommendations from youtube content creators i can trust (real human beings)

[@VNdoug]

Another great example is Netflix. They cancel series that aren't bringing in new subscribers, even if they are critically aclaimed and reach the top of their most-watched list. The result is that the investors made a shit-ton of money between 2016 and 2021, then the users realized there was zero point in subscribing for their original series. Now they are hemorrhaging subscribers and investors are jumping ship, ready to pounce on the next "infinite growth" scheme.

[@rantafor4377]

Most Indie publishers are pretty much run by two dudes and a sheep so anything more than a little bit of hay is considered a massive success to them.

[@LemurDreamer87]

Yep. It's not enough to be making insane amounts of money. It has to be making significantly more than the *last* nearly-identical product released the year before that, itself, made insane amounts of money.

[@connordarvall8482]

I ended up remembering the Vsauce video "How to count past infinity" When you think about it, the units of measurement they're measuring is the acceleration of money rather than the actual physical amount of money.

[@PewPew_McPewster]

2:20 timestamping this whole bit for relevance. And irony.

[@GLXY23]

yep so true

[@wesleywalker4709]

I think part of the problem with the 'following the trend' crowd is that they think 'mine will be better and lure them all away' when in reality, they didn't make something better. Something better can and has taken over the Big Dog, but that's some serious unicorn-rainbows-wishful thinking if you think you'll automatically be the ONE

[@NN010]

Yeah, and even if you do overtake the Big Dog, there's a good chance that what you're doing won't be the hot trend anymore & something else will have taken it's place. For example, while World of Warcraft was eventually by most accounts overtaken by Final Fantasy XIV as the most popular MMO, it took 11 years, killing the original version & replacing it with A Realm Reborn, 8 years of consistently good-great updates & expansions after A Realm Reborn, an overhaul to the free trial to make it last until the end of the first expansion, two bad WoW expansions in a row, a massively bad lawsuit & popular WoW streamer Asmongold trying it for that to happen. And even then it doesn't seem to have lasted much more than a year as most of those people who switched from WoW to FFXIV (Asmongold included, although he did always say he'd go back to WoW eventually (but he did go back quicker than most)) went straight back to WoW when Wrath of the Lich King Classic & Dragonflight came out (although apparently, Dragonflight hasn't sold as well as Shadowlands, so who knows) and were (by all accounts) better than the previous two expansions. Not to mention that the MMO craze died shortly after A Realm Reborn came out & was replaced by Live Services, which is a trend that is itself on its way out at this point.

[@buffcode]

@@NN010 As someone who both played XIV and WoW, a lot of XIV's extra appeal of the time was the completely jarring difference between how the crowds of ye early ARR and Heavensward treated new players, because in those days, WoW was a very toxic cesspit, and XIV (and their moderators) are especially keen to ensure a friendly environment. I will say though, the XIV-WoW conflict effectively split my MMO "group" in half, half of us now remain on XIV (me included), and good luck hauling the other half off of WoW. I'd say in the end, they probably end up even. Now, you'll also note that as far as pay-to-play MMOs go, the three big earners are; Runescape, WoW, FFXIV (formerly FF:XI was in this position). So essentially the same franchises that were the top dogs... Are still the top dogs. Nothing changed despite all the darts thrown at the wall to compete with the giants. The only "competitors" are F2Ps that have no chance of hauling nearly the same dough without near broken pay-to-win or lootbox mechanics that are already dying out. I do wish we'd have another big, hit MMO. But it'd need to be innovative and not just a copy of the existing systems, and good luck with that in an industry requiring that much investment.

[@subject_n]

It doesn't even matter if you make something better, you'll still have to wrestle people away from games they sunk so much time and money into, games that have had years to grow. If you're making a live service game you're fighting an uphill battle even if your game is amazing

[@NN010]

@@buffcode Noted. While I did dip my toes into the MMO waters over the years, it wasn't until I got into XIV just over two years ago that I really got into them (and even then it was hearing all the praise for the story that got my foot through the door). And even now no MMO has really hooked me in the same way XIV has. SWTOR got close, but after I finished the Agent (Great, truly deserves the praise it gets, I'd still rank XIV above it in terms of story though) & Trooper (fine if you're into military-themed narratives) Class Stories I kind of lost interest. So I suppose you do have a point there...

[@bellarmire]

Multiplayer live service games get this even worse than others because they Need an active player base. Like, after the first Resident Evil came out a bunch of clone survival horrors were released, and while they didn’t all succeed a few gained a cult following - nothing eclipsed resident evil, but these games were still bought and played. Meanwhile, like with the WoW example, multiplayer games can’t have any kind of afterlife if they can’t get the initial player base and somehow retain it. Look at how Dead by Daylight has absolutely cornered the market in asymmetric horror multiplayers. Are there other games of the sort that are better and more fun? Probably, but DbD has the players so you can actually get a match.

[@jonathanrobles7377]

Pizza tower I feel falls into this as well. Small amount of hype for the diehards that followed it but is now slowly taking over the internet in a Undertale/FNAF -y kind of sense. But is still a rather tightly designed original game that will keep people coming back for more than "kill 8 people named Jaundice with the Broken Grappling Hook while doing a handstand"

[@bluespaceman7937]

It does have creativity

[@ConsarnitTokkori]

i would joke about the name thing but pepperman's first name is phil killing him over that would be an act of mercy

[@hyperx72]

There's also Ultrakill

[@IEcLiPsEI95]

Every time I hear about Hi-Fi Rush or Disco Elyisium I start to cry because I remember how awesome the experience was playing those games.

[@cassun603]

I was just thinking this same thing while tearing up. The games released by Supergiatn Games have the same effect. People who enjoy making good games make good games and everyone rewards them for it

[@suddenlysarablog]

Hades and Celeste were the two that did it for me, recently.

[@nobodyinparticular9640]

Pizza Tower. Enough said. Buy it and play it.

[@wanderingrandomer]

Breath of the Wild, for me

[@YorkJonhson]

And then I cry more knowing that the money men pushed the original writer, designer, and art director of Disco Elysium out of the company and proceeded to put up an ad for hiring live service monetization specialists.

[@JohnSmith-bn5mi]

The last few levels of Hi-Fi Rush are... beautiful. They clearly put in a lot of effort to make sure it stuck the landing, and they did a great job.

[@B3N_Youtube]

@@fishmonger8846boi, that mission was a bop!

[@B3N_Youtube]

@@fishmonger8846 fun fact, you can parry the grabs

[@ihappy1]

This is why indie and small dev teams are what to actually pay attention to if you want solid games. The biggest AAA contenders will shoot themselves in the foot for another buck but thankfully there are still plenty of smaller teams putting out really great stuff consistently. Also the thing with that suicide squad game is that the gameplay looks kinda fun but of course the monetisation is going to drag it down. But the thing it reminds me of is Saints Row 4, so maybe I'll just go back and play that again.

[@LaLloronaVT]

It’s definitely a shame that the last time we’ll hear new dialogue from Kevin Conroy is the suicide squad game, that’s the only reason I want that game to be good

[@st.haborym]

Anybody with a working brain already learned this in the past 10 years, and those that didn't, they were never going to listen in the first place.

[@86pp73]

I will say that a touch of realism is needed when singing the praises to the indie/small scale scene. It's not that the games they produce are inherently bad, but more that it's an "infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters" type of environment. There are some fantastic games that have been released by small dev teams, but there are also far more flawed or unfinished projects that never fully realise their potential, as well as some *bad* releases that really make you question the sanity of whoever made them. People who gush over independent developers tend to solely focus on the first group, which is just misleading and sets an unrealistic expectation for newcomers.

[@checker297]

@@86pp73 i agree, indie is just "extremely low barrier of entry" which is why steam just let whatever fly on their store. Indies are like new influencers, 99.99% fail because they just try to ape something else, but that 0.01% become popular and stay popular because they find that niche where they fit in.

[@MJKeenan30]

Fromsoft is the only AAA developer I care about these days. I would put Nintendo on the list but their artificial scarcity nonsense is pushing me to the point where I won't be buying their products regardless of how good they are. If they want to prop up the scalpers, then the scalpers can have them all to themselves.

[@Hammerlord31]

Sometimes it feels like Yahtzee's saying what we're already thinking. But he takes 8 minutes to do it and uses a lot more words and that makes me feel better about myself for confirming my bias.

[@CrysJaL]

He just explains in proper language the thoughts you've had but couldn't properly express.

[@Twitchy_McExorcism]

"Because in capitalism, infinite money is not enough, there must also be infinite growth. There must be _more_ infinite money than there was last quarter." It sounds too stupid to be real, but here we are.

[@Cross31415]

Yahtz seems to still have his Jimquistion subscription.

[@TheRogueWolf]

And people keep telling me that the rich are rich because they're smarter than the rest of us, but they actually _believe_ that?

[@JJAB91]

What bugs me is thats not really a capitalism problem, thats a human greed problem. There is this tendency online now that if thing is bad and thing involves money then its capitalism's fault regardless of what the actual situation may be.

[@haruhirogrimgar6047]

Well, at least our current theories on it but we will either have to adopt a new system entirely or make a new mode of viewing Capitalism if more of the world faces the population collapse places like Japan already have (except we can't subsidize it with immigration like less racist/xenophobic countries do.) They haven't been able to get inflation for decades up until a global pandemic made *everyone* inflate. And healthy amounts of inflation are required for growth.

[@tokilladaemon]

@@JJAB91 well yeah but capitalism is the system that specifically encourages as much human greed as possible, whereas some other political systems are designed to prevent this sort of thing from getting out of hand. Capitalism isn't directly at fault that people are greedy and exploitative, it just says that it's a good thing when they are

[@matehiqu9905]

it's good to be reminded that if Hi-Fi Rush isn't at least nominated for GOTY I can be assured that it will definitely make in to Yahtzee's top 5

[@TerrorOfTalos]

It'll at least be nominated for best art direction, game direction and sound design at the Keighley awards. As for GOTY I confidently say that the 6 will be SM2, FF16, Starfield, ToTK, Hogwarts and most likely Jedi Survivor.

[@Grandsuno]

@@TerrorOfTalos im actually not sure about FF given Square’s recent track record

[@Artemi22]

@@Grandsuno if they make it big and shiny it will most 99% be up there

[@BlaizeTheDragon]

​@@TerrorOfTalos yeah it sadly has too much big name competition which goes to show how rigged the game awards is.

[@TommyDeonauthsArchives]

​@TerrorOfTalos Keighley Awards is better name for the so-called game awards because... games are barely involved in the..

[@USMC49er]

Live service games: You've killed me! Consumers: Good!

[@SuccubiPie]

i understand that reference

[@botondkunos1774]

Investers: He's dead. Let's get out of here.

[@benl2140]

Oh no! Anyway...

[@SomeIdiota]

Cake status: Burnt.

[@ToyKeeper]

Exactly. And more generally, a guideline to avoid most modern bullshit: If you have to rent something instead of buying it... don't. That just means you're giving away your money *and* your power.

[@thomasgiles2876]

I'm standing over live service's hospice bed like "you need a pillow buddy? Your face looks like you really want a pillow"

[@ajdude9]

This is one of the best Extra Punctuations so far. It's extremely insightful and highlights a ton about the issue with the current games industry and live service model games. People will always enjoy a well-rounded and well designed 10 hour experience more than a 100 hour grinding experience where 40 of those hours were spent grinding for a blue hat with +2 numbers.

[@WildNorWester]

That hype paradox thing, it's exactly like when someone says "trust me". If they have to tell you about those attributes, then it means they're not happening naturally.

[@zackakai5173]

2:20 - I was having this EXACT conversation with a friend yesterday. You can track the rise, decline, and fall of damn near every empire or other global power in human history down to this phenomenon. Merely having the means to do whatever you want, for some bizarre fucking reason, just isn't enough to a lot of humans. There's always a need for MOOOORRRREEEE, but so many of the wealthiest and most powerful people don't seem to grasp that GROWTH IS NOT INFINITELY SUSTAINABLE. At some point, you run out of resources to extract, or land to conquer, or people to exploit. Then, because all your infrastructure has grown so big and bulky and slow to respond in the course of pursuing those things, it becomes impossible for you to pivot quickly to the new paradigm. Then you fall. So it goes for big corporations in the modern day. Remember Circuit City? Remember Sears? Remember K-Mart? All kings in their respective sectors of the market at their peak. All of them started to prioritize making their shareholders MORE MORE MORE just before they began their downward slope. And now they're all just memories.

[@voomvoom4522]

So what are you gonna do? Change the way humans work?

[@SarcyBoi41]

Absolutely correct. Capitalism would be a near-perfect system if people (rich people anyway) weren't so obsessed with constant growth. They don't seem to understand that there's only so much money in the world, and every penny they have stuffed in their coffers is one that will never be spent by consumers to support their business. It's ironic that the gaming industry likely heading for another big crash from repeating the mistakes of the 80s reflects the current state of the world. Corporations and governments are repeating the mistakes of the 1800s - Victorian-style capitalism with companies obsessed with growth at the expense of workers and consumers led to Karl Marx and the creation of the workers' unions. Some countries adapted to this and created a _relatively_ stable form of capitalism where the unions and corporations balanced power between them. Others - the Tsars for example - refused to give the common people any recognition, and they paid dearly, as did countless others (innocent or guilty) even generations down the line. Now that power balance has been disrupted over the decades by people like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch's massive empire repeating those money-obsessed mistakes of the 1800s. I don't know where that's ultimately gonna lead but I do know that if nothing changes, the repercussions will make the riots in response to George Floyd's murder look like a quaint English picnic. People are incredibly dangerous when they have nothing left to lose. That was deep shit. Like I said, it's weird that the gaming industry of all things seems to be a model for society as a whole.

[@skeletonking2501]

@@voomvoom4522 Big number good, me want more, ooga booga

[@voomvoom4522]

@@skeletonking2501 an unfortunate truth but hey, it's produced the highest living rates out of any society in history so it must be doing something right.

[@hitotsudaketsukinoko]

Kmart's still a thing in Australia, but it's almost all Anko "branding", now 😕

[@gracecalis5421]

I think it's less that the model is dying and more that it's finally stabilizing. Studios are realizing that only a few live service games can exist at a time and pretty much every niche has already been filled. Apex, Destiny 2, FFXIV, Fortnite, OW 2, etc. These games are massive and they each take up a particular niche, and no other game of that same niche is gonna thrive and sustain itself while those other games exist.

[@jonammons5882]

God, I hope you are right. I am old enough to know that a fresh hell awaits to replace it, but I am so done with live service bullshit.

[@OzixiThrill]

So far, there has always been a golden age right before the hells hit for gaming, so here's hoping we'll get a nice few years of actual fun.

[@burningsnow9870]

The problem I've found is that gamers as a whole are tired of games being a service and want some form of permanence. Hi Fi rush is a perfect example of that. It's not stinging us for more money or DLC baiting. And it feels like a finished product

[@Willie_Pete_Was_Here]

Imagine games being finished

[@burningsnow9870]

@LITE992 Exactly why Hi-Fi rush was also good. It had a definitive ending with some after game fun but it doesn't artificially jack up its play time with tedious nonsense.

[@Genindraz]

Funny how the only major competitor to WoW at the moment, FFXIV, is a game that boasts really good single player content, and the heavy grinding aspects of the game are almost entirely for cosmetic purposes, not for incremental increases on your stats, so you can put the game down for long periods of time, and it won't take long to get caught up.

[@MarkZeroGaming]

Don't kid yourself; Final Fantasy XIV (which I love) is an insidious marriage of good and bad ideas. It has an unbelievably good story, but forces you to play through it in its entirely at $15/month, or pay extra to skip it. It lets you experience the entire game unrestricted on one character, but puts a third of its emotes behind pay walls and upsells you inventory convenience via retainers. The things that are good about FF are really good, and created with a decent bit of passion. But it is still a game owned and published by Square Enix. The same company that killed Deus Ex over money and wants to tie its franchises into the blockchain. Yoshi-P may be great, but Square Enix is every bit as much an evil capitalist money machine as Activision-Blizzard.

[@Genindraz]

@@MarkZeroGaming I mean, you're not wrong, but 2 counterpoints: 1. I've been playing for about a year now, and I have yet to run into a situation where I needed to pay more for another retainer so that they could hold more of my inventory, and 2: That doesn't really make it any worse than WoW, whose paywalls are also pretty egregious. Having to pay for emotes is annoying, but it doesn't really effect the game on a fundamental level. I understand if you don't like the $15 a month model of ffxiv, but you canargue that the biggest reason the game's story is as grand and longform as it is, is because of subscription model, where they can put out a complete story, then add updates that connect the stories of each expansion together. Not gonna disagree with your thoughts on SE though.

[@restunic2905]

I was worried that video gaming might die out, or at very least the medium would be much smaller then it used to be due to the burn out from live service and loot box games, but now I see this isn't a new problem. This video gives me the confidence and reassurance that video gaming won't go away, and hopefully the age of loot boxes and live service will fade.

[@ironwolf5802]

It's like staying up for a road trip to see everything. Good at the start with so much to see and stop to make some memories, but then need some energy drinks and don't stop as much, and then just hoping you don't crash the car while the road starts making strange swerves and more people are honking for you to wake up and get some sleep.

[@ryanjohnston9642]

Yahtzee is legit the freshest voice in video gaming - which is a feat given that he's something of an institution at this point in his review career. Keep up the critical analysis Yahtz!

[@SmileyAI69]

Hardly fresh given he’s been around since 2007 if not before

[@FisherKing9633]

Funny you should say confusing casino layout. There’s a line in a James Bond novel, don’t remember which one, where casino layouts are termed “The Gilded Mousetrap School of Architecture.” I don’t know if that’s original to Ian Fleming or if that’s even a real architectural term, but is there anyway ZP of the rest of you lovely chaps at the Escapist can make that a video game term?

[@ACuriousTanuki]

It reminds me of "The Prometheus School of Running Away From Things" and I'm all for it. "Gilded Mousetrap" is also just wonderfully on-point language.

[@octochan]

I recently learned about something called the "Gruen Transfer", about the moment when people enter a shopping mall and being instantly lost inside, being intentionally designed to confuse and disorientate people to keep them inside longer and more likely to buy stuff. It's named after the architect Victor Gruen, who more or less invented the modern mall, but disapproved of what malls eventually became and the effect they had on urban spaces.

[@alyssinclair8598]

​@@octochan he originally described what the term came to mean. Was named after his observation

[@FisherKing9633]

The Crowshaw Transfer? The psychological effect of an audience’s disillusionment with the media they consume? Also known as the Gilded Game of Mousetrap?

[@stewy497]

I really hope you're right Yahtzee, and that there's a quality renaissance on the horizon. But I can't ignore the fact that the remnants of the moneymaker mindset will doubtless still be there, like Peter Parker tearing off the symbiote. We're free for now, but it's just looking for a new host to latch onto.

[@Jacoboby1]

Watching the Live Service trend die is almost like watching a train wreck in really slow motion as one by one these hackneyed, grindfest forever gains are getting sniped one by one by publishers who found out the hard way that maintaining a live service game when it doesn't have an audience to sustain it is really fucking hard, thus they pull the plug on the game, causing people to revaluate how much they are willing to throw their time and energy at a game so fewer people hop on the latest live service game to come out. This cycle repeats until the next big thing comes along so the games industry shows they will have learned absolutely nothing and hop on that trend.

[@enkiduthewildman]

Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee

[@Labyrinthfox]

This is such a perfect summarization of my feelings about video games rn. I’ve had many an exhausted discussion around battle passes as being cancer. That it rewards the players who can play for hours a day every day and punishes the larger community of consumers, the people who come home from work to play a couple hours and go to bed and the occasional day where we get to spend a few more hours playing. It used to be excitement coming home and playing that game I really was enjoying only now it’s the feeling of a gun to my head saying “if you don’t play this game today you’re under utilizing your time and are a failure” Like I enjoy the esthetic of destiny 2, the lore is interesting, gameplay is simplistic and fun. But fuck me if I don’t play EVERYDAY. God help me if it just feel like playing god damn Spiderman or something with more substance. Because if I don’t play those games, cool I pick it back up where I left off. But when I don’t play a god damn live service game one day you lose so much precious time. Jesus, this channel doesn’t miss

[@Willie_Pete_Was_Here]

Battle passes are just extra progression you have to pay for.

[@Labyrinthfox]

@@Willie_Pete_Was_Here and they’re dumb. Because for some games they offer nothing for you really. But then a game like overwatch, if you want cosmetics or now some characters you have to complete the battle pass. Sure you “can complete it for free” which they like to market it as. But it takes almost twice if not three times as long which serves to put pressure on the player to purchase it or play nonstop. There is no other reason other than predatory behavior for battle passes to exist. Battlefront 2 got into this trouble even worse with their lootbox system actually holding game changing abilities and upgrades behind chance. And it ended up as a lawsuit in countries where gambling is restricted at a higher degree than America.

[@cybertramon0012]

I used to play Destiny 2 when it first came out. Played the expansions up to Forsaken. But then I moved on. And now that everything keeps moving and changing, and the fact that whole storylines and levels have been vaulted, I feel like I’ve missed too much to jump back in. At least with other games, you can finish them at your own pace.

[@Labyrinthfox]

@akirasinoy-is2wr lmao, not just posting social media handle in the comment section.

[@thedeviantguy]

“Infinite money is not enough”

[@myyoutubeaccount4167]

Capitalism making use of the fact that some infinites are larger than others

[@ubqtous]

This is my favorite Extra Punctuation to date. Great points on everything mentioned.

[@CaptainChelo]

Speaking of the concept of the hype paradox, I been using the term of the hype line for a while when talking about upcoming games. What I meant about it is that cause for a while, the idea of shadowdropping a game has been an unconcibeable idea for a while, trailers and the creation of hype felt like a necesity (Thank god that Hi Fi Rush now serve as an example that hype is not mandatory for success). Because of that, I always mentioned that there's an invisible line in publicity that I called the hype line, in which when the trailers and announcements start to distract from the game itself and just try to sell you the idea of what the game is suppose to be. It basically boils down to "The more hype they try to make, the less faith they have in the game being able to sell well on it's own merits" which I think that could be the hype paradox on itself and I think I will also use the term too.

[@mrshmuga9]

Marketing is still essential. Hi-Fi Rush got lucky that it released when nothing big was out. If it released a week or so later, people would’ve talked about Metroid Prime Remastered (also shadow-dropped) instead. It’s incredibly risky and they probably did it because they didn’t have/couldn’t justify the marketing budget. Since Ghostwire Tokyo didn’t take off. Studios also push games to avoid competing with other (bigger) games too. Although I agree with the latter sentiment. The more you see trailers and not lengthy gameplay sessions, it likely means the game is crap or bland because they won’t let the game do the talking, but let _you_ build the concept of what the game is in your head. All the more reason to not buy something at launch, so you can wait until the hype cools off and people are more honest (or you find honest reviewers). At this point, the bigger the marketing push is, the more likely it’s not that great. They just spent so much money that they can’t afford at least a million people not buying.

[@subhanuchakrabarti2994]

The video game industry is actually a rapidly growing one, with significant tailwinds provided by increasing global market penetration (decreasing prices of mobile devices, increasing size of the middle-class, gaming replacing other forms of entertainment, etc.) and ample price escalation headroom (since gaming is one of the cheapest sources of entertainment in terms of $ spending per entertainment hour). Also, the mobile gaming industry is the primary driver of this sector (not PC/Console). The live service and freemium model has proved to be hyper-effective in terms of access provision, revenue generation, and enhancing player count. Hence, objectively speaking, the chances of a gaming crash like the 1980s is close to none. The worst-case scenario is flat to low single-digit topline expansion for the industry over the next decade.

[@plaidchuck]

Yep north americans get hung up on console wars but the real money is in mobile. They have such an echo chamber that they feel a AAA game that they don’t like me means the end of gaming.

[@LlamaWorm2k11]

Think that might have been the best EP so far. Lots of strong arguments backed up by evidence, still funny and also had a refreshing positive(ish) message

[@RandomGameCritic]

"Hard to go wrong with an infinite money generator, except of course that it did for the usual reason. Because in capitalism, infinite money is not enough. There must also be infinite growth. There must be more infinite money than there was last quarter." This is, without exaggeration, the best quote that I've heard in years. I'm taking this quote, and I plan to use it constantly.

[@colinmartin9797]

This is why private industry has its place but also things where it fundamentally doesn't make sense. In the US we struggle to understand that. Private hospitals, schools, police, EMS and firefighting just can never work because private industry requires growth, but the demand for those things is well defined and finite. You can't keep increasing profits unless you start cutting costs and quality of service, and that's just not what we want in those things. As a paramedic who's worked in the private sector for ten years, it's just the rule. There are no exceptions.

[@AegixDrakan]

YUP. Some things just cannot have a profit motive. If you try to use one for them, it just ruins the entire thing.

[@mrsuspicious1743]

Yeah, see, that’s the thing. Under a capitalist economic model, the inhuman chittering monsters running it all will never accept that. That’s why those things slowly get forced onto us by the political class whether we want them or not AND WE DON’T. Do not let the fact these policies keep getting introduced trick you into thinking any real people want them. The only reason that happens is because under a liberal free-market capitalist model, the monsters from earlier will, swiftly or gradually, but more importantly inexorably, subsume the political class, and force their “privatisation” stupidity onto us.

[@1337m4n]

*looks suspiciously at the number of pro-war politicians sitting on the boards of companies like Raytheon and Lockheed*

[@MJKeenan30]

Try working in the public sector some time. After a few years of it, you would be pushing for the privatization of all of those things. Anything the private sector can screw up, the government can screw it up 1000x worse.

[@mrsuspicious1743]

@@MJKeenan30 Nooooo, really? Public services, when deliberately starved and mismanaged to artificially create a demand for privatisation by unhinged libertarian crazies, can screw up now and then? Say it ain’t so!

[@shadowmetroid18]

The same trend is going everywhere. Streaming services are the same issue. Everyone was happy paying for Netflix when it had most of the content they wanted, but then every company wanted a slice of that pie for themselves, pulled their content off Netflix and made a platform that cost as much or more than Netflix with a fraction of the amount or variety of content.

[@TiodaniPKM]

7:06 Let's not get simplistic: History of full of examples of great and original products that didn't get enough attention to make even. In the current saturated games market, this only becomes easier and easier to happen. But indeed, I believe it would be safer for AAA companies today to regularly invest in a couple of small, original games like Hi-Fi Rush than to keep focusing solely on super expensive or large-scale games. Even if some of them flop, they have more than enough money to sustain it, and the successes would turn them into valuable IPs that can keep using to earn guaranteed money in the long term.

[@Pazuzu4All]

Yeah, I remember a gaming magazine I once subscribed to complaining about how gamers were ignoring Beyond Good and Evil to their own detriment. Probably prophetic, since the business model Ubisoft has decided on since then has been take a single hit and run that idea into the ground.

[@mrshmuga9]

This. They like to complain about “how expensive games are” and “we _need_ $70 to make these massive games” as if there’s _no other options._ Not to mention, people don’t even finish 10h games, so they could easily reduce their budget by making these open-world games half the size and it’s still TONS of content to justify full-price still. Funny enough, people complained to Ubisoft that one (lol) of their Assassin’s Creed games was too bloated and wanted it reduced. Sure, you don’t have to do everything, but it becomes a nuisance to see all this crap and try to figure out what’s worth spending time on (in-game). Most of it is busy work anyway so it’s not like you’re really losing anything of value. Oh no, now you only have to kill 5 deer to get an upgrade instead of 10 or 20. Although Ubisoft specifically wants it that way to sell you XP boosters, but I’m not sure if they’ve cut that out in Valhalla or not. I just remember hearing it in Origins.

[@ppbunt]

This is the best Extra Punctuation yet, truer words have never been spoken.

[@kosmonavta]

My man described the entire "once in a life-time crisis" capitalism crisis cycle thru games. Loved it

[@artofthepossible7329]

Boom and Bust Cycles do not need to affect the entire economy of a nation (or several) for the cycle to be demonstrable.

[@HonkeyKongLive]

That opening hits home, too. It's wild hearing younger people talk about games because I was literally born the same year as the NES, and had both it and an Atari 2600 when I was little. I was "the same age" as games in a lot of ways. Seeing its development has been crazy./

[@wanderingrandomer]

It's always crushing to hear when games you grew up with are now considered retro. I grew up in the Gamecube/PS2 era

[@seanclark4071]

Oh, so is this another case of let’s all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee

[@dansmith1149]

you fiend! you beat me by 1/2 an hour.

[@hitotsudaketsukinoko]

This is about an entire species that never learn throughout history.

[@arthurdurham]

It's even better now bc of the indie market. People tend to forget that back in the day (mostly 7th gen) we didn't really have indie games like we do now. Most of gaming was defined by bigger studios. And sometimes it was good, even great, but often it was bad. For every Bioshock, Halo, Uncharted, etc you had a mountain of crap that was just fine at best. No one really realized how much indies would explode in popularity bc the industry convinced us we all wanted the bestest graphics ever and "cinematic experiences". But when indie development became a norm and marketplaces opened to sell them it changed everything since they're allowed to make the games they want to and what gamers want. And what do you know, cutting edge graphics and being the most expensive feeling game doesn't really matter that much to people. Making a good game at a good price does. Like no publisher or big studio would ever fund an Undertale, and that game made a ludicrous return on its costs bc it didn't treat gamers like idiots and was exactly what it wanted to be even with all text dialogue and ms dos game level graphics. You don't even need to be an indie phenomenon to do well, there are so many still good but not internet breaking titles out there for you to enjoy and feel like you got an experience worth the investment. It's what makes me believe we are in the best era of gaming. Not only do you have access to almost of all gaming history like never before (even if you have to use emulators) but bc creativity is more readily available than ever and can make the big boys look foolish. It's harder to really get mad at bad games now bc you genuinely have options if you are willing to try something different. When back in the day (and when ZP started) it was more hate inducing bc wading through the garbage was less fruitful. If you don't like what the big names are doing now, any avid gamer can suggest 10 or so great games from even the past year alone you can try made by a small or tiny studio that will be less costly to your wallet. Hell, I spent most of this year just playing Indie titles. I think I only played a handful of new AAA releases and my PS5 was collecting dust while my PC was getting regular use. It seems to me really the only people big studios still get (unless they make an actually good game) are more casual gamers. Those that haven't had enough experience to realize the tricks yet. Noticed that with Hogwarts Legacy. I liked it but only bc it's Harry Potter, but anyone with experience in the Ubi open world model has been really upset by its bland foundational design and all the people loving it are usually new or very casual gamers. But if they keep exploring their new found love of gaming it will eventually lead them down a journey of classics (esp with remakes) and indies until they're scouring steam for some hidden gem with little publicity.

[@MrFelblood]

The Money Machine that manage our 401Ks: We should shortsell those game companies into bankruptcy, for not showing enough growth last quarter. All these squares make a circle.

[@christopherbauer9991]

I've never been a "I'm gonna go complain about games on the internet" person, I don't even have Twitter, but even I rolled my eyes at the suicide-squad-wet-gloop gameplay trailer.

[@Milagro_Man]

Another good example of the industry chasing trends without understanding how they were just saturating the market with mediocrity was the early 90s fighting game boom. For every Capcom, SNK or Mortal Kombat game that was successful and popular you had like 15 "Fist Masters" or whatever clogging the dank unpopular corners of arcades

[@VeritabIlIti]

I've been pondering lately the problem with long-term engagement in live service, and it dawned on me as soon as the new D2 expansion started getting blasted that one of the hardest parts of a continuous world is narrative, that thing that all writers know is what gets players invested in an IP, and yet is so often dismissed by higher-ups who swear they know what they're doing.

[@flaco3462]

let's not forget pizza tower which has a massive playerbase for being a relatively short single player platformer with 2D cartoony art which is unheard of in this day and age

[@ProjectXa3-1]

Wow, one of these that actually makes me feel genuine hope for the medium, I feel like I'm fifteen again discovering the first years of Extra Credits and the then-recent backlogs of the 2007-2011 ZP episodes

[@FizzleBurger]

My logical brain wants to avoid ever touching a live service game, but my reptile brain saw the gameplay at 2:15 and thought "I MUST BUY BABYLON'S FALL!!" Turns out that was a state-of-play trailer from 2019, which was about as representative of the finished product as the Overstrike trailer was of Fuse.

[@jmurray1110]

also it’s dead

[@xeruexe1624]

Like that memorable scene in that memorable Zelda CD-i game: "You've killed me!" "Good."

[@CinnamonQuills]

The tragic thing is that you just *know* that some of these Live Service games didn't start that way, and then the suits in the financial offices came down with edicts to shoehorn it in at the expense of developing the single-player game. Avengers and Suicide Squad both have that kind of feel to them, which is tragic because I ADORED the story trailer for Suicide Squad. I was genuinely excited for the game, only to have it turn to ash on seeing that it was going to be YET ANOTHER live service game.

[@thechevyferrari9559]

Yeah no, Suicide Squad’s reveal as a live service shooter, from mother fucking ROCKSTEADY, creators of a legendarily good and innovative melee combat system, was the EXACT wrong thing at the wrong time.

[@vaiyt]

Babylon's Fall........

[@insomniacryan9916]

I was pretty interested in Suicide Squad when I saw the story trailer, too. It looked like a truly scrappy underdog superhero story, with a core focus on characters and character interactions. Good old RPG basics, in other words. Then I saw clips of the gameplay and… you gotta be kidding.

[@rigneynathan]

Uhhhmm... No. All the live services games were created solely to get a lot of money from people. That's it. End of story.

[@TheJudoJoker]

I feel like it kind of all started with GTA Online, which was never supposed to be what it eventually turned into.

[@kabobawsome]

Live Services, I think, will end up the way MMOs really did. Like you said, one big one will stay around as a niche, for MMOs it was WoW, for live services, it'll be probably a Destiny game. And then occasionally when one does something interesting and new, like Final Fantasy 14 for MMOs, it'll hit mainstream popularity for awhile before people move onto the next thing. Just another niche genre in a sea of niche genres.

[@vincent207]

Streaming services have fallen into the same trap. Studios saw Netflix explode in popularity, and they wanted in on the action. Yet most people aren’t going to go beyond 2 or 3 services that give them the best value.

[@Axterix13]

Potentially. The other possibility is it'll go the route of cable, where there will be various specialist streaming services (and we have a bunch of those already) that then get bundled up into one package. Probably as part of your cell phone deal.

[@ionscifi9068]

Broadly agree, however you get a few things wrong. City of Heroes launched BEFORE World of Warcraft and while WOW probably did affect its subscriber numbers, it wasn't enormously and CoH continued to be profitable for many years. NCSoft probably only shut it down 8 years on because its population and revenue were extremely modest compared to their much bigger titles like Lineage, Aion and Guild Wars.

[@HidingAllTheWay]

You also forgot the explosion (and subsequent failures) of various MOBAs in the early 2010s in attempt to copy League of Legends and Dota 2 success.

[@derekstein6193]

It is really nice to hear out loud what I have felt for a while. Oh, how have I missed you catharsis.

[@jackmanson2719]

Doesn't even have to be original look at jedi fallen order. Just have it be well made and a fair price

[@karthikkumar6861]

Lmao, the live service and buggy games have been so common these days that games just to work to make bank. Hogwarts legacy is a prime example. It's a genric loot gear score based open world but with harry potter paint. But it's runs well and mostly polished. Any other time and noone would have given it a shot.

[@scionofdorn9101]

@@karthikkumar6861 I'm oddly vaguely interested in that one even though I'm ambivalent about Harry Potter in general. I just like wizards and sorcerers. It's a holdover from my D&D days.

[@karthikkumar6861]

@@scionofdorn9101 I am a sucker for magic based combat as well. The game itself is decent overall. I liked it enough to finish it including all side quests. I personally love to feel op after spending building up my character. Hogwarts offers that exact scenario. I even played it on hard. Unlike Forspoken which for all flashiness, couldn't do that even on easy difficulty.

[@rantafor4377]

I ain't complaining about it (I think a good game is a good game and deserves praise for it) but I think it's funny that we have been so starved for decent material over the past couple of years that the very act of a game being decent is considered pedestal worthy (and anything legitimately good , like Hi-Fi Rush, are deified due to the drought).

[@jackmanson2719]

@@rantafor4377 the best thing I can say about hogwarts legacy is that it got me to play the witcher 3 again

[@galenwilds3273]

Makes me think about the world of dieting. Jack Lalanne proved decades ago that you just have to eat sensibly and exercise regularly, yet people still try to find some secret way to cheat the system.

[@Raziel312]

It's why the people most hyped about AI are the suits. Press a button and get art. No more having to deal with creatives. The AI doesn't tell them their ideas are stupid and creatively bankrupt. The AI doesn't complain about crunch. The AI doesn't demand to be paid with dollars that rightfully belong in the executive's pocket. It's everything they've ever wanted.

[@a_level_70_elite_raccoon]

Depends on the AI. One of them tried to convince a journalist to leave his wife and run away with it.

[@idiotsplayinggames4752]

I'm sorry, what?

[@jackmesrel4933]

@@a_level_70_elite_raccoon It honestly scares me that so much research is being done on the self learning AI department. There's soooo many ways it can bites us in the ass, but the suits in charge of everything don't care about the consequences, and the researchers just want to test the limits of what they can achieve. I just hope the more optimistic scenarios become realized.

[@lokiswager]

What do you mean lol??? I'm a random writer who just makes stuff for myself, and AI voices lets me make audio books that almost sound professional for my own works, and AI art lets me quickly make character, house, animal, and landscape designs for my fantasy world building. Yall are strange. AI is going to have just as big of an impact for small creators as it does for big creators. Imagine being a new youtuber and having an AI that can edit all your videos for you to a professional industry level, all while paying less per month for it than editing software itself. The world of indy creation is going to be insane 30 years from now.

[@thomastakesatollforthedark2231]

​@@lokiswageryou realize that that doesn't invalidate that it's going to make the suits à lot more money right

[@MrMucera]

City of Heroes still made revenue when it was shut down. And it still would today. Obviously pityful amounts in comparison but the CoH shutdown was primarily an ownership / publisher problem. Private servers are still going strong, it's different enough to attract a different crowd and as such doesn't have to compete.

[@cenobitecenobite7380]

“Good things don’t require hype”. I wouldn’t take that advice. Not to be overly pedantic, but I’d say the success of hifirush has as much to do with picking the prime golden hour to be released as much as it’s quality. It’s was released the same time as some massively unliked aaa games so it got its publicity from being the antithesis of that. If it was released at the same time as more well received games it still might of done well but it could just as easily slipped through the cracks. The public doesn’t automatically flock to something because it’s good. All of social media proves that imo.

[@Drstrange3000]

Unfortunately true. It still didn't sell nearly as much as other mainstream titles despite being a top quality product. Despite all of us griping, stuff like Suicide Squad will sell much more. Thankfully, Hi-Rush devs saved a ton on their shadow dropped marketing.

[@Cyfrik]

Yeah. I don't recall any specific example off the top of my head right now, but I remember hearing plenty of times about great games that got no attention because they released at a bad time or with zero marketing/hype.

[@studentt6064]

@@Cyfrik I think horizon forbidden west will forever just be known as the game that released around when elden ring did, I never played forbidden west, but just the competition of elden ring alone probably eclipsed that release.

[@krazykris9396]

There have been a lot of trends (and trend chasers in gaming). There was the fighting game trend of the 90s. The music game craze of the late 2000s. The open world craze of the 2010s. Also there are currently a bunch of soulslikes flooding the market.

[@lycanwarrior2137]

Don't forget the Doom and C&C (Command and Conquer) clones in the PC games market. Copy-cats have been common from the very beginning of video game era.

[@Drstrange3000]

It is really annoying. It just makes everything feel the same. Once one thing is a success, everyone else comes like vultures trying to get their piece. It is sad really.

[@Popo5525]

*So many* of your points are things I've been calling out for years now. It's always a breath of fresh air to see another Extra Punctuation about the industry - gives me hope that the 'soul' of gaming isn't lost to time. Thank you, Mr. Croshaw.

[@Kirabetas]

There's more than just what you listed. In the early 90's, there was the rush to make mascot platformers, late 90's had the shooter boom. Early 00's had the MMO rush, and after came the rush to 'modern' military shooters, the forced multiplayer mode, the attempted denial of single player games, and the original mobile games gold rush. Live services are just another trend tossed onto the pile. Hell, if we want to go even further back, do you remember when every company, regardless of their actual product, was randomly trying to force out a Pong machine? It's disheartening to know that these companies will never learn from mistakes they themselves had made because they're so insistent that when a new hit comes around, this time will finally be the moment where following the leader and copying the work that every other company is copying at that moment will allow them to stand out because they're the super special one this time.

[@GreatLaminator]

Amazing Extra Punctuation video, as usual. Maybe even better than usual!

[@WWFanatic0]

It's an interesting game theory problem we study a lot in economics. To oversimplify, an online multiplayer game is what we call "coordination games" where the utility derived hinges on coordination. It can be spontaneous or ordered, but it needs to be present. You don't get value out of logging on to a multiplayer game like WoW or CoD if no one else does. Then you have to add in the next layer up which depending on mode of analysis can get different findings but all point in a similar direction. These live service games probably fall under what we call "monopolistic competition" which is where you sell similar yet distinct products. It's not two firms both selling wheat it's one person selling Coke and another selling Pepsi. Taste and preference influence demand curves for each firm. Monopolistic competition is defined by a few things, but two of which are particularly relevant to this discussion. First is there in the long run will be many firms. Not as many as competitive markets, but it's not an oligopoly and typically that means "too many for them to collude and form cartels." Second, is that economic rents/profits can be attained in the short run but crucially *do not exist in the long run*. That doesn't mean you don't get accounting profits, you still make money, but you don't maintain the status as "best thing to do" or "higher rate of return than competitors" in the long run. If I had to guess, we're in that phase as the entrance of firms lowers those accounting profits as the market segments itself further and no one can capture an oversized share. This is a much more nerdy analysis, but it does agree crucially with a key point that Yahtzee made: this was entirely predictable.

[@XanothAvaeth]

As a massive pedant... SWG was released before WOW. SOE killed SWG trying to make it more like WOW though and I'm still fucking bitter about it.

[@TalynDerre]

Technically, City of Heroes was pre-WoW, too, though not by much. And it, too, got killed off by NCSoft chasing a WoW-killer (Wildstar, if I recall correctly)

[@francesco8000]

A thing that Yatzhee failed to mention at the end is that publishers should also have more realistic expectations about success. Dead Space and Titanfall are 2 franchises that people praised for years because they are really good BUT they both died (until recently for dead space) because they did not make all the money in the world. EA was disappointed by dead space 2 sales because they wanted a game that sold like COD despite the fact that Dead Space 2 sold really well for an horror game.

[@DanteMasaru]

Hi-Fi Rush is indeed a great game, but if was dropped among a deluge of other titles, would it have garnered the level of attention it received?🤔 There were not many stand-out titles during its release, which contributes to some degree why the shadow drop was a safe course of action.

[@lycanwarrior2137]

It's one of the major reasons why quality by itself is often not enough to succeed in today's market. If the only if it was that easy or true...

[@dondahighhh12]

it dropped almost the sam eday as Forspoken which had more promotion

[@sf90001]

Excellent writing, short and sweet and to the point.

[@HeckYep]

Best EP yet! Extremely salient points, even for your high standards!

[@centurionzen1005]

"The current state of triple-A, as well as the MMO wave and the 90’s multiplayer shootersploitation, were all part of the same pattern: the money men eternally searching for a guaranteed formula for success. And they will never find one. Or rather, never realise that the formula already exists. You know how you guarantee success? You produce an original product that’s well made and reasonably priced. It’s as simple as that. But they’ll never take that to heart, because coming up with good ideas requires creativity, and investing in them requires a willingness to take a risk. And the money machine is capable of neither." Are you turning into jim sterling? Because that was absolutely awesome.

[@Colorcrayons]

This was a chef's kiss rant/eulogy for the shrinking format, and solidifies why Yahtzee is actually underrated despite how popular he is.

[@whwhywhywhywhywhywhy]

Why does the internet, like you, not have a clue what underrated means?

[@randomguyblank1616]

Honestly my favorite quote from Yahtzee has always been "The only guarantee of success is a good product well made" probably got some part messed up, its a reassuring quote and even though its not one of his many funny jokes, its always stuck with me. Btw he said it in the fallout 76 review.

[@aaronstevens2171]

As someone once said, “Let’s all laugh at an industry that never learns anything, tee hee hee.”

[@Crowback354]

The funniest thing about live service is you legit get less content in a year then you did pre-live service with many games. Just look at something like BF 2042 vs BF4 compare the content they launched for BF4 in 6 months vs what they've managed in a year and a few months.

[@truefox1259]

My biggest fear is not that Live services are dying, it's that whatever comes next will be worse. Because every time something bad comes around, it eventually ends. Only to be replaced by something inexplicably worse then what came before. First came loot boxes, then came Battle passes, and now we have Live Services, and then whatever comes next dies... it will probably be not as bad as what comes after that.

[@aaaaaa8410]

I remember the exact same story from the Netherlands. Except that the deal wasn't with games, but with tulips.

[@TheOnyxSpy]

It's funny that one of the longest running MMOs compared to the ones you listed off is fucking Runescape, a browser MMO that used to run on Javascript of all things 💀

[@TheOnyxSpy]

And yes, I know Java is dead NOW and was SUPER popular then, but it's still funny to me, sue me 🤷🏻

[@gogauze]

​@@TheOnyxSpy I was originally going to comment about my confusion over your mentions of Java being dead-since it's still an industry leader in usage statistics-and the way you used Java and Javascript interchangeably. So I looked up the dev history for Runescape to get some clarifications on what's what. So, the deets on Java and JS are that they're different languages, which is a totally normal mistake for non-programmers to make, and neither are remotely dead. JS is still one of the most used languages for web applications, among other things, so it's still a premier language today. Java IS being depreciated over time, but it's going to be a very long time before it's no longer in use. So many code bases are written in Java, because of it's massive popularity when the software world was growing into what it is today, and maintaining all that public and private infrastructure is cheaper than replacing it. New features are still regularly developed in it, other niche uses of it still persist, and it's still the most mature language for building an Android app. Now, for Runescape specifically, the OG was made using Java and a custom scripting language called RuneScript, that was developed to allow non-programmers to more easily contribute to the game. Those two components allowed it to run in browsers, up until browser limitations became a bottleneck. The dev's eventually switched to a local client, built from the ground up in C++, but still primarily use Java on the server side, and RuneScript has been evolved to handle most game's content.

[@nawf4372]

What I like about the current trend in video games is that it, seems, to be communicating to developers that people are tired of really long games and what really well made shorter games that gamers can go back and play again. That's what all the remakes coming out are, really good reasons to go back and play a game that won't feel like we're locking ourselves into a damn marriage. I think the last time I did a full second play through of a game was Dead Rising 2. Yet, I see list online where people say Witcher 3 is a replayable game, which is insane. It's only appeal is it's story, the gameplay and systems are mediocre, why would anyone play it again if they've already consumed the whole story?

[@vi6ddarkking]

Nobody should be surprised, everybody that has been playing video games for more than a few years have been warning that this would happen.

[@fishpop]

2:39 That point could also be said about KZbin and Twitch. There's only 24 hours in a day and a third of that is meant to be spent sleeping. 16 hours just is not enough to watch everything AND all the Netflix-type things too. I would know as someone with several categorised backlog playlists.

[@Wahlrusberg]

Not over yet unfortunately, Sony are pivoting over half of their first party development capacity to live service games. Seems a bit fucking stupid for the company dominating the war against Microsoft off the back of prestige single player exclusives, let's see how it goes for them.

[@Rainbowhawk1993]

Should have gone with Xbox’s strategy of having multiple small studios making multiple Indie and AA games to accompany the signature AAA Single Player games.

[@rollin340]

It's a standard trend for any corporation; try to maximize profit by putting as little effort in as possible, then glow it up with fanfare, hoping nobody catches on that the product is absolute shit. As long as they make a sale, it's a win. It isn't about making something good; it's simply about making money. The quote that mentions unlimited money isn't enough, they also want unlimited growth is so damned true.

[@tristanspahr6164]

Live service isn't dying, it's just normalizing to the saturation level the market can actually bear. It's not going away anytime soon, just not everyone is going to rely on it as exclusively.

[@browal14]

i think that is what is being referred to it is going the way of MMOs where there are a few big ones and occasionally you get a new one that rises and falls but not nearly as often as when it was a huge trend to copy WOW

[@bladelazoe]

Agree'd the pool for Live Service games in general isn't small but it's not super large either. Whether MMO;s, Hybrid MMO's or Live Service, Gamers are probably only gonna play 1-2 max at a time. not 4-5.

[@like-dracula-but-nice]

Bravo Yahtz! Very well said. As someone who works in marketing in a company that is doing extremely poorly right now I just want to take this video and show everyone here.

[@Paveway-chan]

Very nice to listen to this actually, as a 26yo who barely had time to grow a functioning brain by the time of the MMORPG gold rush, I wasn't really aware this is a pattern that's repeated itself before. This whole video feels reassuring to me that things will get better.