^Stay tuned to The Thursday Nite Rant, which week we ask: Why are all the games dead?
The online services bubble appears to have burst, with a slew of online games including shooters, fighting games and role-playing games announcing cancellations in recent weeks. Some of these also represent huge franchises in the field: Battlefield is setting sun, together with Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier.
Why do live service games have a hard time finding an audience, even when they’re already attached to a big, beloved property? Well, part of it must just be viewers’ limited time. Most people don’t have enough free time in the day to maintain more than one hobby, so often live service games live or die by how much they monopolize your life. For many people, fortnite
But there are other factors: Sometimes a game builds enough of a community to keep going, but shareholders’ need for continued growth doesn’t keep the idea of the project getting big enough to not be bigger. In short, the problem is capitalism (laughs).
At the time of recording we know the following games were shut down (or in the case of Deathverse, temporarily interrupted):
- Apex Legends mobile game
- The Fall of Babylon
- Battlefield
- Bravely Default: Brilliant Lights
- criminal horizon
- Crossfire X
- Death Poetry: Let It Die
- Bonds of Adventure Heroes worn by Dragon Quest
- echo virtual reality
- Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier
- Hellfire Tactics
- knockout city
- Rumble
- break the curse
- Love life!School Idol Festival
Do you know how many of them there are? How much time do you even have to make meaningful progress in it? A question many publishers need to ask themselves is whether the pursuit of unending growth is sustainable, because the answer is clearly no, and until the answer is accepted, their expectations will never be realistic.
Not everything can be Fortnite, and that’s not a bad thing!
