Towards the end of the dominance of service games? 2024 will be a crucial year for the genre

Gaming News Towards the end of the dominance of service games? 2024 will be a crucial year for the genre

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is scheduled for February 2nd and is among the big releases of early 2024. It must be said that the title is the latest from Rocksteady, a British studio that brought gamers back in the 2010s with Batman Arkham enthusiastic trilogy. If these were real references in terms of narrative single-player action games, the developers took a different path with their new project. If they stay in the superhero universe, The teams have been working for seven years on a service game, a long-term experience that regularly welcomes new content to keep players playing and spending money. A first for the studio.

Unfortunately, the project has not generated enthusiasm among players since its announcement, quite the opposite. It must be said that this formula is no longer unanimous these days, after numerous failed attempts such as Anthem, Babylon’s Fall and especially Marvel’s Avengers to remain in the superhero genre. Is the service game format doomed to see its last days in 2024? In fact, the answer is much more complicated if you look at the problem from different angles.

See Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League on Amazon

Serving games, a market with many reputations and a chosen few

In the small world of service games, not all experiences are in the same boat. In reality, a handful of stocks completely dominate the market, leaving the others in the shadows. This is where the numbers come from gaming industry are dedicated to the predictions of their analyzes for 2024. Inside we learn that on PC and consoles, 60% of the game is dedicated to just 19 games, or even 75% of the game time is dedicated to just 33 titles if we expand the spectrum. Suffice it to say that the supply of games is disproportionate to the demand, which is much lower as players prefer to stick with the titles they know rather than invest in a new one.

From this first observation it emerges that All service games that come onto the market face fierce competition to monopolize players’ free time. And beyond other games, they also compete with, for example, social networks and streaming platforms that want to hijack our available brain time. Furthermore, we also have to take this into account The market is no longer subject to spikes in engagement, as was the case in 2020 and 2021 following the coronavirus pandemic which forced people to stay at home. And yet that doesn’t stop many publishers from trying their luck, because if the game is successful, it’s a guaranteed jackpot for them.

How can the already installed service games maintain their hegemony in this extremely competitive environment? In the GamesIndustry forecast paper we previously told you about, we find an interesting answer to this question. If we put ourselves in a current context, We can see that certain popular and already established service games have benefited from nostalgia, leading to great success. We clearly think of World of Warcraft Classic or Fortnite, which have brought back many players who like to rediscover these games when they remember them. By calling on the past, This makes it easy to fulfill the main need of service games, namely the continuous production of content. And the problem is that that’s not always enough to survive, as the recent example of Destiny showed us.

“Even the best gaming service on the market cannot grow indefinitely”

Destiny is the ultimate service game. Bungie’s title has long been a reference for games of this genre and a model to follow since its success is undeniable.. It must be said that the studio was instrumental in shaping the codes of this format as we know it today. After releasing the first part of the game in 2014, Destiny continued its momentum with the release of the second episode in 2017. Over the years, the title is regularly updated with new seasons and expansions, to which new content is constantly added. Although this model has proven successful, there has been a decline in recent years.. After the excellent The Witch Queen, the Eclipse expansion disappointed many players and the game seems to be struggling to recover.

Recently, due to poor results, the studio had to lay off around a hundred employees while also postponing the release of the next expansion, The Final Form. The burden on the shoulders of this new adventure is particularly heavy, because in the event of failure, Bungie could say goodbye to its independence. I explain it to you. In 2022, Sony purchased Bungie due to its expertise in gaming services. While the studio previously enjoyed a certain degree of freedom, well-known members of the Japanese manufacturer now sit on the board. And as summarized in one article IGN what the atmosphere within the company creates: “If Bungie falls too far short of certain financial thresholds, Sony will be allowed to dissolve the existing board and take full control of the company“.

Enough to put insane pressure on the developers, who know that the next expansion will be crucial to the company’s future. So well summarized Jason Schreier in response to this article: “One of the themes underlying this year’s layoffs is that even the most successful live service games cannot continue to grow indefinitely“. Even the perfect student of the serve game finds it difficult to constantly create new content and keep his players happy, which highlights the limitations of this model. However, when Sony initially purchased Bungie, it was because of their expertise in service games, which was intended to help them develop their own experiences. Unfortunately, things are not so simple on this point either.

A model that is unsuitable for studios that are already installed

We will remember this in May 2022 Jim Ryan, then CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, announced with great fanfare that more than ten gaming services were in development on the PlayStation side.. For the manufacturer, the goal is of course to start as many different experiments as possible in the hope that at least one of them will be profitable or even generate profits. Since then, water has flowed under the bridge and the Japanese company appears to have backed down from this statement. Just recently, We remember that Naughty Dog, the creators of Uncharted, announced that their service game The Last of Us has been permanently canceled for many reasons.

First of all, we know from external sources that the project did not meet the quality standards set by Sony. Members of Bungie were surveyed about their expertise regarding game services and concluded that the title did not live up to expectations. Then, for the sake of transparency, Naughty Dog has openly stated that they cannot keep a service game going while continuing to develop the narrative-driven single-player games that made them famous. because it is too time consuming. So a decision had to be made, and it was this multiplayer experience that paid the price.

Of course, if we have had so many service games in recent years, it is because they can make a lot of money if successful and do not incur as much development costs once launched. However, That doesn’t mean everyone is capable of sustaining this type of experience, and Naughty Dog has understood this well given what Crystal Dynamics has experienced with Marvel’s Avengers. While the studio specializes in single-player narrative games, the teams had to manage a constantly updated service game, which was outside their purview. As a result, the game was a dismal failure and has since been discontinued.

Today, Sony seems to be reversing its ambitions when it comes to service games, as evidenced by the example of Naughty Dog. And according to experts at GamesIndustry, they expect the end of market dominance through these long-term experiences in 2024. If the titles already installed are not postponed, fewer and fewer games will appear. Service because publishers no longer want it to focus on the development of premium games. And many players should like that.