Industry Trends
"Dishonored 88%, Batman Arkham City 94%, Mass Effect 2 96% - what do these games have in common? It's not just great Metacritic scores; they're all legendary single-player games made by some of the best developers of their generation. Want to know what else they have in common? Redfall 56%, Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League 60%, Anthem 59% - all the most recent games from the respective developers, all critical and commercial flops, and all live-service games. So what happened? How could respected names like Arcane Austin, Rocksteady, and BioWare release games this reviled? Hi folks, it's Zaid Ikram, and in a word, it's live services. Instead of focusing on the single-player games they were so good at, these developers were led astray by the promise of guaranteed profit. But as we've figured out in 2024, there are no guarantees in the games industry."
Reflection on Industry Challenges
"Right now, it seems like all a developer can do is stick to what they're good at and hope for the best. But these guys didn't do that. Instead, they decided to follow a dangerous trend that's killing single-player games, and they're paying for it. And don't get us wrong, at Game Ranks, we're definitely frustrated, pissed off at the current state of the industry. But it's not like we celebrate gleefully once a once-great studio's reputation ends up in the dumps. It sucks. I loved BioWare, and it feels like there has been a pretty fair amount of these types of videos where we're talking about what's wrong with the game, and yeah, it's easy rage-bait. But I don't take joy in tearing stuff down. We don't take joy in wallowing in the filth. Yes, it's sometimes funny to point and laugh, but we are losing great game creators, and I just wish it didn't have to be that way."
Analysis of Live Service Trend
"There's a specter haunting the games industry - a specter called the live service. It's infected the minds of every corporate suit and bean counter. And can you blame them? They've seen runaway success with games like Fortnite, which is still absurdly popular and makes money hand over fist. And the guys at the top of these publishing companies, they all want a slice of that pie. It doesn't matter if it makes sense; they see the other guys' number go up, so they want their number to go up. The problem is all these guys assumed that the pie was infinite, that you'd be able to cut off as many slices as you wanted forever. And it wasn't."
Discussion of Development Challenges
"EA, Warner Brothers, Activision, Bethesda, Square Enix - they might not have mandated it, but they all wanted their game developer studios to build some money-printing presses. Oh, sorry, I mean games with endless multiplayer elements and lots of microtransactions. Which I can't imagine that ever getting old. The important thing to keep in mind is that the games industry wasn't immediately reacting to Fortnite's success. Almost all of these flops were in development well before Fortnite became the biggest thing in town."
Reflection on Studio Impact
"Arcane Austin was closed, BioWare has been mostly silent, other studios have suffered too. Platinum's reputation was damaged after the abysmal Babylon's Fall. I just assume that there's some kind of contractual obligation with that travesty because it just makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah, Kamya stopped working at Platinum, but that doesn't mean every single person with the sensibilities left. In fact, I'd wager there are a lot more people there that understand how to make games. What the hell got them involved in Babylon's Fall? Every time we bring that one up, I'm just beyond frustrated with it."
Critique of Live Service Model
"The reality of life is that adding another live service to your play is a tough sell, especially if that game releases as a mess or doesn't have a good content roadmap or any of the many live service problems we've talked about over the last few years. With these games, you're unique vision was sacrificed to chase a trend. When you try to please everyone, you can end up pleasing no one. In fact, it's much more likely than pleasing everyone."
Reflection on the State of the Industry
"Looking back on this whole thing, these studios would have been better off just going to the casino and putting the budgets of these games on black. They could have turned a profit. A lot of this was just short-term thinking and trend-chasing. I wish I could say the industry is finally starting to learn its lesson after the latest high-profile service game failure, but no. After admitting The Suicide Squad killed the Justice League was an utter failure, what was Warner Brothers Discovery's takeaway from the whole thing? To double down on live service games, of course."
Encouragement for Positive Change
"If there's one thing you could count on in the games industry, it's that these big corporations will make dumb-as-hell decisions. That's the one bet you can count on. You don't need to put it on black. Put all your money on the big corporations making dumb-as-hell decisions. That's not random; it's going to land there. If somebody gives you 30-to-1 odds on that, you take it because you are walking away with 30 times the money that you had prior."
Conclusion
"That's all I got for you today. Leave us a comment; let us know what you think. And as always, thank you very much for watching this video. I'm Zaid Ikram. We'll see you next time right here on Speed Tool."
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