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When did we decide to start calling online multiplayer games “Games as a Service”? This feels some weird branding tactic to get investment funds to apply tech i

• 1123581321 3y ago
  They don’t mean the same thing. GaaS is a genre-independent term refers to a revenue-over-time game that requires some ongoing investment, which includes multiplayer but also new maps, season passes, DLC, loot, etc. You could think of GaaS as a non-genre-specific version of MMORPG. Multiplayer games don’t fall under GaaS when the publisher funds matchmaking solely from the one-time purchases of the game and doesn’t invest beyond making sure it runs until sales have dried up. Though, there’s some blurring when expansions become frequent enough that they start to look like recurring revenue. There certainly is that reframing of publishers to attract investors but it’s reflected in business model and design changes in the portfolio of games.