With no mention of MMOs! This model is over two decades old! This article is also all gloss and choosing to make a game that you’ll operate as a live service c

With no mention of MMOs! This model is over two decades old! This article is also all gloss and choosing to make a game that you’ll operate as a live service comes with a lot of risks particularly with a fickle and seasonal gaming audience. You either get big enough to retain a sizeable population or fizzle out. In particular we’re about to see a bunch of extraction shooters from new studios get released and it’s going to be a bloodbath. “Designing experiences has become a crucial aspect around game development.” Uh huh, that’s what designing a videogame has always been. Has this author actually designed any games or even talked to some game designers? “Today's service-based models align developer and customer motivations. Whereas in the past, they worked with addictive mechanics or a marketing ploy with a high price tag to entice the user to purchase, but without maintaining the user's interest. Subscription games, in order to make money, require the user to keep wanting to pay monthly to keep playing. A developer who wants to keep my interest high is one I would like to invest my time in.” The juxtaposition of these two paragraphs gave me whiplash when it’s by far F2P games that exploit addictiveness and dark patterns to keep people engaged. Even relatively safe games like Fortnite still exploit FOMO hard. Even a cursory study of models like Season Passes should be seen within the context of trying to shore up retention by locking players into the game by tying them into a grind which has a very real upfront cost.