Electronic Arts says the old way of releasing games doesn't work anymore

[Syt]

https://www.pcgamer.com/electronic-arts-says-the-old-way-of-releasing-games-doesnt-work-anymore/

Electronic Arts says the old way of releasing games doesn't work anymore

The Anthem experience has apparently led EA to reconsider how it launches large-scale online games.

Electronic Arts acknowledged during its Q4 2019 financial results conference call that Anthem, which it expected to be one of its biggest releases of the year, did not live up to expectations. Despite all its problems, EA reaffirmed support for both the game and developer BioWare, but it also said that the experience has led it to realize that it needs to start handling large, live-service game releases differently than it has in the past.

"The reality is, it's not just an EA challenge, it's an industry-wide challenge," CEO Andrew Wilson said during the call, referencing the difficulties of creating and operating large-scale open-world games like Anthem. "You're moving from what was initially a BioWare game which would be somewhere between 40 and 80 hours of offline play to 40 to 80 hours of offline play plus 100 or 200, 300 hours of elder game that happens with millions of other players at scale, online."

That obviously has an impact on development and QA processes, but EA is also examining how it presents new games to potential audiences, with an eye toward managing expectations. Wilson said that in Asia, major online games generally go through a soft launch and multiple community tests before everything goes live, which enables EA to get a better idea of how they'll behave at scale. In the West, however, major publishers have stuck with older conventions: A "drip-feed approach" to marketing to "build up the appetite and excitement for the game," that leads straight into release.

"As games have gotten bigger that system isn't working as as well as it has done in years gone by. So what you should expect from us is that it's not just about changing the development processes in the game, it's not just about changing the QA process in the game—although both of those things are being changed dramatically inside our organization right now—but it also comes down to changing how we launch games," Wilson said.

"You should expect that we'll start to test things like soft launches—the same things that you see in the mobile space right now. And it also comes down to changing how we communicate with players. Our entire marketing organization now is moving out of presentation mode and into conversation mode, and changing how we interact with players over time."

Wilson believes that change in approach should help ensure that games run better and more reliably when they go fully live, and will also help players "understand exactly what it is that they're going to be playing, and how they're going to be playing both on the day of launch and over time."

"We think that we're in a really good position for this—I think this gets really hard if you don't have scale to do this, and so we feel very good about it ," Wilson said. "And over time we hope that we can lead from the front and help other developers and publishers change the way they do things as well."

[Tamas]

So Apex managed to hit the motherload with the surprise launch and now they want to ape it, but put an idelogy around it?

[Syt]

So Apex managed to hit the motherload with the surprise launch and now they want to ape it, but put an idelogy around it?

... but:

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-pressure-to-constantly-update-games-is-pushing-the-industry-to-a-breaking-point/

[...]

For a counter-example, there's Apex Legends. A game in the same genre as Fortnite, one that couldn't be any more "game as a service" unless it had a Marvel movie tie-in event. And yet, creators Respawn responded to a remarkably successful launch by saying they weren't going to change their plans and were in fact happy to update it slowly.

[...]

And what's been the reaction to this sensible approach? Analyzing the reduction in its Twitch viewership and dozens of YouTube videos declaring that four-months-old Apex Legends is dying.

It's true that Apex Legends had an average of 200,000 concurrent viewers for its first couple of weeks versus about 30,000 now. But when it launched some of the biggest and most influential streamers in the world were being paid to play it. Once those streamers went back to Fortnite (and its $100M World Cup) or onto another craze, which for many has been GTA Online roleplay, of course the viewer count went down. But when a game doesn't do its damnedest to maintain momentum by any means possible, it's punished.

[...]

It's changed how we talk about games because conversations around new games are crowded by what's being renewed, and there's only so much attention to go around. If a game like Apex Legends isn't immediately the biggest thing in its genre, naturally shrinking player counts are heralded as a sign of doom.

On the design side the effect on multiplayer games is obvious—everything about games as a service and how manipulative they can seem comes down to their need to maintain momentum. Singleplayer games aren't immune. Some of the biggest, like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, have a calculated drip-feed of progression to keep players coming back and talking about the game for months instead of weeks, only speeding up if you drop money on an XP booster.

[...]

None of this is new, but it is escalating. In 2013, EA released 13 big-budget games, not counting the likes of FIFA Manager 14 or Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. Just including the tentpole releases there were six sports games in their respective annual series, a new Battlefield, Crysis, Dead Space, Army of Two, and Need for Speed, as well as a SimCity reboot and Fuse. In 2018, EA would only release seven games of comparable budgets—six annualized sports games and another new Battlefield. And yet its annual revenue has grown from $3.797 billion in 2013 to $5.15 billion in 2018.

[...]

[Tamas]

Interesting, thanks Syt.

Without reading the entire article yet, the opening premise "Live service games have trained players to expect a constant stream of new content, and only constant work can deliver it" doesn't seem that dramatic for me. Sure, if a company's structure isn't built do deal with a constant stream of content that's an issue, but otherwise mixing that with a SaaS approach surely would be a good way to make money? I mean, that's how MMOs used to operate

[Iormlund]

Without reading the entire article yet, the opening premise "Live service games have trained players to expect a constant stream of new content, and only constant work can deliver it" doesn't seem that dramatic for me.

The premise itself is bullshit.

Live service games have trained players to expect lackluster content on launch, replaced by unbearable grind.

[Valmy]

Here is what you do EA: Make cool games. Finish them. Then release them. Then move on to the next one.

The very model they said was dead several years ago. That one.

[celedhring]

Here is what you do EA: Make cool games. Finish them. Then release them. Then move on to the next one.

The very model they said was dead several years ago. That one.

Yeah, the whole article reads as "these things that we have been doing for a while and players hate, are actually what players love".

[viper37]

Here is what you do EA: Make cool games. Finish them. Then release them.
Then move on to the next one.

The very model they said was dead several years ago. That one.

Well, I'd say, add further content in between moving to another project

I like Galactic Civilizations III.  99$US was the price of the game for the Founders Edition, and that included access to the alpha&beta + all future expansions&dlc of the game.  Regular game was 49,95$ at release.

The game was crappy at first.  Heck, it is still bug ridden after 3 years (or is it 4?), but damn, I got my money worth out of it, even if I had to pay for each extensions.  Lots of content was added through DLC& yearly expansions.  The founders have had their money's worth out of it after the 2nd DLC, I think.  But there's always something new introduced in montly patches, dlcs, expansions, etc.
I like this model.

[Grinning_Colossus]

I want to buy my games as CD-ROMs in unnecessarily large boxes that I have to buy at a store. When an expansion comes out, I would like to drive to the store and buy that as a separate CD-ROM in an equally large box. Honestly, this way of releasing games started failing when they made the boxes smaller.

[Josquius]

I hate that increasingly companies aren't even releasing physical versions.
I want to own the  actual game damnit.

[Valmy]

I want my games on hundreds of 3.5 inch disks.

[mongers]

I hate that increasingly companies aren't even releasing physical versions.
I want to own the  actual game damnit.

What's especially annoying is buying the physical boxed version and finding a steam code inside that you have to use in order to authorizes the game. 

[Tamas]

I hate that increasingly companies aren't even releasing physical versions.
I want to own the  actual game damnit.

You never own the actual software, physical copy or not. You buy a license to use it.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I hate that increasingly companies aren't even releasing physical versions.
I want to own the  actual game damnit.

Not me; in the battle against clutter it is really handy that my gaming doesn't involve physical copies.

[Tamas]

I hate that increasingly companies aren't even releasing physical versions.
I want to own the  actual game damnit.

Not me; in the battle against clutter it is really handy that my gaming doesn't involve physical copies.

Hell yes. I have over 200 games on Steam. It would NOT be easy to store two hundred DVD cases, let alone big boxes.

The age where each game release was a celebrated rarity is long gone. Now it is the age of foraging out the good value ones from the endless stream of new games.