5 ms·

I do wonder whether the future of gaming will eventually move towards a model like DF, ADOM, WoW, DOTA 2, EVE etc, whereby instead of completely new games every

by xaa 10y ago

I do wonder whether the future of gaming will eventually move towards a model like DF, ADOM, WoW, DOTA 2, EVE etc, whereby instead of completely new games every year that generally just feature updated graphics, we will instead see a few games in each genre becoming more and more fleshed out over the course of years or even decades. Really, there are not a whole lot of different game genres when you get down to it. If one had a good RTS engine, for example, you could build a WWII simulator or a sci-fi setting on top of it with only a few mods plus new unit models. And from a player's standpoint, there is something amazing about playing a game that has been developed for decades like DF or ADOM, because it is so much deeper, more detailed, and well-balanced than the average new game. And has less bugs. I think this thinking is behind what must be a massive effort to reskin Morrowwind. The increase in modding's popularity is another indicator of this trend. Of course I doubt new games will entirely cease to be made. There are certainly genres that haven't been discovered yet. But it seems that the bulk of player-time is moving gradually towards games like this IMO.

hesdeadjim 10y ago
I have to disagree pretty heartily. Looking at Steam numbers and information from Valve directly, there is no indication that people are suddenly or even slowly abandoning new game sales in preference to games with extended content lifecycles. Perhaps what you are seeing is that with an increased number of gamers (this is supported by data), these types of games have an even bigger audience than before. There has always been classes of gamers who prefer mastery of a small number of games versus preferring new experiences. Some people have played Counter Strike for fifteen years and WoW for almost as long. On the other hand there are gamers like me who prefer a constant stream of new experiences.
- xaa 10y ago
  There are two possible ways to measure trends in gaming. One is to look at sales, the other is to look at where the hours are being spent. So, I agree that sales of new games are extremely robust now, likely because Steam has made it easier than ever for indie devs to sell, gamers to buy, and studios to push patches. And all this has driven down cost. $50 for a new game used to be par for the course. Now I wouldn't even consider paying that unless I was certain the game would be good. So all this has driven up demand and sales. And yet if you look at where the hours are going on Steam, it supports my thesis at least to some extent. There is a scale-free distribution of player-hours, and it appears to me that the high player-hour games appear to be extended-lifecycle games. A commenter pointed out in another HN thread earlier this week that 1B player-hours per week for DOTA 2 alone.
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    The thing is, money is what drives what content will be produced. So I think what you really want to look at is not the number of sales, or the number of hours, but the amount of money spent.
    - xaa 10y ago
      To some extent, yes. But DF and ADOM are direct counterexamples to this. They have been developed for decades certainly far beyond the point where the marginal value of a dev-hour has ceased to be worthwhile. Yet development continues. On top of that, there are quite a lot of very detailed community mods for games that are developed for free. The thing about games that causes them to diverge from regular economics is that it only costs time and expertise to enhance them. And obviously there are lots of people quite willing to donate that.
      - wtetzner 10y ago
        Yes, but that's because the author's are interested in it directly. I don't think measuring how many hours people play these games necessarily directly affects the developers' motivation to keep making them.
  - hesdeadjim 10y ago
    Are you looking at total hours or per-player hours? Competitive games like DOTA, LoL, et-al tend to attract players who sink a lot of time into mastery. Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. I spend thousands of dollars a year for both AAA and indie games, and at most I game ~10 hours a week. The most time I've sunk into any single game this year is 80 hours and the average is closer to 10.
    - xaa 10y ago
      Mostly total hours, but both. Per-player hours also follow a scale-free distribution within any given game. You are right that some games encourage more time spent than others (I don't know about whether they "attract" a certain type of player). I mean, to even do half the quests in Skyrim would take many hundreds of hours. Another example of a noncompetitive game with high per-player and high total hours is KSP. Also RimWorld and Factorio to a lesser extent. I still think it is a meaningful observation if we see an increasing "centralization" in total hours in a few games. I'm not commenting on whether that's a good or bad thing. If we wanted to measure whether certain games attracted "obsessive" gamers, I guess we would want to look at hours/player/week or something, which I know nothing about. > Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. That is quite true insofar as a player who spends an extra hour without paying extra is not contributing to the economics of the industry. If the gaming industry had their way, I'm sure they would prefer very low per-player-per-game hours, which would encourage more sales. You seem like an ideal customer from their perspective :) But my primary focus is the trends in gamer behavior, not the industry per se, although they drive each other.
Qwertious 10y ago
"I do wonder whether the future of gaming will eventually move towards a model like DF, ADOM, WoW, DOTA 2, EVE etc, whereby instead of completely new games every year that generally just feature updated graphics, we will instead see a few games in each genre becoming more and more fleshed out over the course of years or even decades." You're assuming people want more complex games, but (note my complete lack of sources) history has shown that people move towards less complex games over time. Dwarf Fortress will never go mainstream, because not everyone wants a complex game. A lot of people like games that they can wind down with, that don't need thinking for.
- wtetzner 10y ago
  Just because the implementation of a game is complex, doesn't mean the gameplay has to be. Having a richer world to interact with means there's more stuff you can do, but not necessarily more stuff you have to do. In fact, it could be quite relaxing to just explore the world, and have conversations with interesting NPCs.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    That takes time, effort, skill, and dedication to craft. You do get games like that... Witcher 3 springs to mind in fact. It's not something EA or Ubisoft can crank out twice a year and monetize to the tune of $120-$200 per unit.
    - wtetzner 10y ago
      No, but they might be able to crank out expansion packs twice a year, to add some more depth. Anyway, I'm not suggesting that everything will move to that type of game. Just that "complex simulation" doesn't have to map to "complicated to play".
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        I agree, but I think "complex simulation" is the opposite kind of product most AAA houses are designed to produce. Most games are far far from complex, to the point of adding on arbitrary mechanics to add a feel of complexity. After all, complexity requires thought, balance, testing... and again it's just easier to crank out a turd that people will thank you for offering them.
Retric 10y ago
We already have this. Madden stile games continue using the same engine for a decade while putting out 'new' games. Just look at everything using the Unreal Engine etc.
- freeone3000 10y ago
  Unreal Engine doesn't support your point. Street Fighter V and Kingdom Hearts III and Gears of War IV don't really have any similarities beyond their sequelriffic naming and that they all use Unreal Engine 4.
  - Retric 10y ago
    I mean look at the actual titles released under each version of unreal engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games Unreal Engine 2 - Warfare Build 927 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 (2004) ... (14 titles across pc and consoles) Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013) Now, going from unreal engine 2 to 4 is the kind of jump that suggests your dumping most of the old code. However by sticking with version 2 that long they where clearly reusing their code between games.
smogcutter 10y ago
Seems like there's two angles to that - games being treated more like sports, and that (I assume) continuing development on a profitable game carries less expense and risk than launching a new title.
imh 10y ago
It would only work for a certain type of game. Something story heavy couldn't work for example.
- wtetzner 10y ago
  I'm not sure that's true. In a big open world, each "expansion pack" that comes out could be a new storyline that lives in the same world.
abakker 10y ago
I would be very happy with this model, but, I would like to have more community authorship/control. Kind of like how forums are moderated. I always felt that monsters and dungeons were WoW's weak point. There just want enough new/complex after a certain point. I'd have loved to hit the kind of world where community contribution kept more of it fresh.
vkreso 10y ago
Paradox games. They do exactly that with the Europa Universalis game series and many others as well.

by xaa 10y ago

hesdeadjim 10y ago

I have to disagree pretty heartily. Looking at Steam numbers and information from Valve directly, there is no indication that people are suddenly or even slowly abandoning new game sales in preference to games with extended content lifecycles. Perhaps what you are seeing is that with an increased number of gamers (this is supported by data), these types of games have an even bigger audience than before. There has always been classes of gamers who prefer mastery of a small number of games versus preferring new experiences. Some people have played Counter Strike for fifteen years and WoW for almost as long. On the other hand there are gamers like me who prefer a constant stream of new experiences.

xaa 10y ago
There are two possible ways to measure trends in gaming. One is to look at sales, the other is to look at where the hours are being spent. So, I agree that sales of new games are extremely robust now, likely because Steam has made it easier than ever for indie devs to sell, gamers to buy, and studios to push patches. And all this has driven down cost. $50 for a new game used to be par for the course. Now I wouldn't even consider paying that unless I was certain the game would be good. So all this has driven up demand and sales. And yet if you look at where the hours are going on Steam, it supports my thesis at least to some extent. There is a scale-free distribution of player-hours, and it appears to me that the high player-hour games appear to be extended-lifecycle games. A commenter pointed out in another HN thread earlier this week that 1B player-hours per week for DOTA 2 alone.
- wtetzner 10y ago
  The thing is, money is what drives what content will be produced. So I think what you really want to look at is not the number of sales, or the number of hours, but the amount of money spent.
  - xaa 10y ago
    To some extent, yes. But DF and ADOM are direct counterexamples to this. They have been developed for decades certainly far beyond the point where the marginal value of a dev-hour has ceased to be worthwhile. Yet development continues. On top of that, there are quite a lot of very detailed community mods for games that are developed for free. The thing about games that causes them to diverge from regular economics is that it only costs time and expertise to enhance them. And obviously there are lots of people quite willing to donate that.
    - wtetzner 10y ago
      Yes, but that's because the author's are interested in it directly. I don't think measuring how many hours people play these games necessarily directly affects the developers' motivation to keep making them.
- hesdeadjim 10y ago
  Are you looking at total hours or per-player hours? Competitive games like DOTA, LoL, et-al tend to attract players who sink a lot of time into mastery. Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. I spend thousands of dollars a year for both AAA and indie games, and at most I game ~10 hours a week. The most time I've sunk into any single game this year is 80 hours and the average is closer to 10.
  - xaa 10y ago
    Mostly total hours, but both. Per-player hours also follow a scale-free distribution within any given game. You are right that some games encourage more time spent than others (I don't know about whether they "attract" a certain type of player). I mean, to even do half the quests in Skyrim would take many hundreds of hours. Another example of a noncompetitive game with high per-player and high total hours is KSP. Also RimWorld and Factorio to a lesser extent. I still think it is a meaningful observation if we see an increasing "centralization" in total hours in a few games. I'm not commenting on whether that's a good or bad thing. If we wanted to measure whether certain games attracted "obsessive" gamers, I guess we would want to look at hours/player/week or something, which I know nothing about. > Hours are also not a good metric for estimating the health and trends of the industry. That is quite true insofar as a player who spends an extra hour without paying extra is not contributing to the economics of the industry. If the gaming industry had their way, I'm sure they would prefer very low per-player-per-game hours, which would encourage more sales. You seem like an ideal customer from their perspective :) But my primary focus is the trends in gamer behavior, not the industry per se, although they drive each other.

Qwertious 10y ago

"I do wonder whether the future of gaming will eventually move towards a model like DF, ADOM, WoW, DOTA 2, EVE etc, whereby instead of completely new games every year that generally just feature updated graphics, we will instead see a few games in each genre becoming more and more fleshed out over the course of years or even decades." You're assuming people want more complex games, but (note my complete lack of sources) history has shown that people move towards less complex games over time. Dwarf Fortress will never go mainstream, because not everyone wants a complex game. A lot of people like games that they can wind down with, that don't need thinking for.

wtetzner 10y ago
Just because the implementation of a game is complex, doesn't mean the gameplay has to be. Having a richer world to interact with means there's more stuff you can do, but not necessarily more stuff you have to do. In fact, it could be quite relaxing to just explore the world, and have conversations with interesting NPCs.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  That takes time, effort, skill, and dedication to craft. You do get games like that... Witcher 3 springs to mind in fact. It's not something EA or Ubisoft can crank out twice a year and monetize to the tune of $120-$200 per unit.
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    No, but they might be able to crank out expansion packs twice a year, to add some more depth. Anyway, I'm not suggesting that everything will move to that type of game. Just that "complex simulation" doesn't have to map to "complicated to play".
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      I agree, but I think "complex simulation" is the opposite kind of product most AAA houses are designed to produce. Most games are far far from complex, to the point of adding on arbitrary mechanics to add a feel of complexity. After all, complexity requires thought, balance, testing... and again it's just easier to crank out a turd that people will thank you for offering them.

Retric 10y ago

We already have this. Madden stile games continue using the same engine for a decade while putting out 'new' games. Just look at everything using the Unreal Engine etc.

freeone3000 10y ago
Unreal Engine doesn't support your point. Street Fighter V and Kingdom Hearts III and Gears of War IV don't really have any similarities beyond their sequelriffic naming and that they all use Unreal Engine 4.
- Retric 10y ago
  I mean look at the actual titles released under each version of unreal engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games Unreal Engine 2 - Warfare Build 927 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 (2004) ... (14 titles across pc and consoles) Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013) Now, going from unreal engine 2 to 4 is the kind of jump that suggests your dumping most of the old code. However by sticking with version 2 that long they where clearly reusing their code between games.

smogcutter 10y ago

Seems like there's two angles to that - games being treated more like sports, and that (I assume) continuing development on a profitable game carries less expense and risk than launching a new title.

imh 10y ago

It would only work for a certain type of game. Something story heavy couldn't work for example.

wtetzner 10y ago
I'm not sure that's true. In a big open world, each "expansion pack" that comes out could be a new storyline that lives in the same world.

abakker 10y ago

I would be very happy with this model, but, I would like to have more community authorship/control. Kind of like how forums are moderated. I always felt that monsters and dungeons were WoW's weak point. There just want enough new/complex after a certain point. I'd have loved to hit the kind of world where community contribution kept more of it fresh.

vkreso 10y ago

Paradox games. They do exactly that with the Europa Universalis game series and many others as well.