In my experience the only games capable of doing this to a reasonable degree are those with subscriptions to play.
Conan Exiles was always going to have content added with duct taped fixes after. The decision to go forward like that was made very very early on, back when they decided (and this may have been months or even a year before Early Access in 2017).
I saw that when they decided to expand the map beyond the first ghostwall fence expansion. But the decision to do that was made long before we saw it. As they decided to expand the map, add more dungeons, add more biomes, they also decided to add more paid content (DLCs) to pay for that development.
They had a choice. We could have seen a completed game, one with out any game breaking bugs and glitches, and one where no major changes would be made (if any). You buy the game and it would have stayed in the state you purchased it. Or they could have continually ‘supported’ the game and added new content to drive hype and sales, as well as paid content to support it.
The problem with the second option is sustainment. An active team needs to be funded. An active team is resources and manpower devoted to sustainment and not making a new game. Thus it needs to bring in revenue and thus more resources to keep things going. But by doing so, they have to balance bug fixes with new content.
Over time the more content and features added or change, the harder it gets to maintain. This is a problem many games run into. Especially if there isn’t a constant revenue stream like you would see from subscriptions. When I look at MMORPGs with subscriptions, they have the ability to sustain themselves while also able to make more sales in bursts with new content (either through expansions, micro transactions, or both). Bug fixes are sustained, as well as the features of new content which sustains itself as well, anything over is just gravy. And its this reason why some of these games go on for decades.
Games as a service however is riskier. They aren’t as risky as a new project though. Which is why they are so popular nowadays with publishers. You can release a game, see if its popular, then do the service thing. Conan Exiles did that. Hell Divers 2 also did that.
This idea of FC maybe ‘doing the right thing’ and just focusing on bugs is a quick way to kill the game. There is no guarantee that we will glady buy things from the bazaar if they spent the next few months sorting things out. Lets say they spend the next quarter. That’s a quarter of not making sales on new content. They have to rely on our good will to see it through.
Business don’t trust customers’ good will. They don’t even trust our word. The only thing they can trust is the transaction. We can say we will buy things from the shop in December and January when they fix everything. We can say that all day. But will we?
Will we stay loyal for that entire quarter and not simply leave the moment a competitor does a Conan-like but better? Imagine if FC spent the next three months making Conan Exiles into what we want. But another publisher puts out the same game we ‘want’ but ‘better’. Obviously we will jump ship and put our money there. We’re not going to go back to the old game out of any sense of loyalty. We don’t have loyalty. We’re customers. We’re fickle, disloyal, and go to whatever serves our self interests.
As we are expected and supposed to do. Its our money.
And that’s assuming everyone here loves Funcom. Which if I put up a poll saying, “What is your opinion of Funcom?” And the Options are, “Love them,” “Like them,” “Indifferent to them,” “Dislike them,” or “Hate them.” What do you all think will be the most likely responses? Let’s not beat around the bush, its going to be primarily the latter two options.
You can make all kinds of arguments why that is deserved. Let’s say its 100% deserved for the sake of this argument. Are we seriously going to expect a business, a non-personal entity incapable of feeling or morality to suddenly ‘take responsibility’ accept the consequences, and just take the hit for an entire quarter potentially to the point of ruin to ‘make things right’? For those in charge to put their career and livelihood on the line to just eat the consequences?
Or will they take actions in the choice of self preservation instead and pick the route that has the least amount of risk, keep their people employed and look out for their interests? Even a business that puts its customers first as a priority isn’t going to trust their customers to stay loyal. Customers are disloyal by definition (as they should be).
So instead they will continue to do what they do. Make enough content to keep the resources from running out. Try to bug fix where they can. But they aren’t going to bug fix so hard that it causes a deficit.
I don’t want to put the blame on us, the players and the customer. But we kind of tolerate this by continuing to purchase and play games that continue with development past their release. Why did we buy Conan Exiles knowing it would continue to grow and be developed past May 2018?
I can tell you right now that I have purchased quite a few games over the last 6 years (and prior to that) that have not seen development past their release date aside from a few hotfixes. And those are feature complete games that have very little if any bugs. The idea of releasing a game in a mostly bug free state is still a thing. But you see no content post release. What you buy is what you get.
And if this is something that sounds great. Its because it is. Its something to consider when making a purchase. When considering buying a game in the future, ask the question of whether or not content will be continued to be developed after release. If so, consider passing on it. Even if it sounds great, even if it seems popular, even if you really really want it.
Because it will do like Conan Exiles has done. It will add new stuff, it might be neat and cool, but it will have bugs. It will have bugs that will linger for years. It will have new bugs as you play. You will not have a 100% satisfaction with the game. More like a 75% that just lingers on for years. That’s what games as a service means. And Conan Exiles was a game as a service from the conception before 2017. You can argue the semantics of that. But the truth is, even back in 2017 when some of us were playing in Early access… the developers had every intention of adding to the game incrementally over time (at least for a 5 year time frame, according to one of the devstreams, I just don’t remember which), and the modern term ‘game as a service’ has simply evolved over time for a practice that goes back a few decades since online updating became a thing. Expansions, DLCs, Liveservice, Game as a Service, all different terms with some slight evolutions over time to describe the same basic principle. Make money off a somewhat complete product over a period of years instead of an initial release.
The tricky part of course is trying to identify if a game will be like this is some degree or not. All I can say is listen to the verbiage used by developers and publishers releasing a game. Maybe even watching for a month after the game’s release to see if there is any major content updates.
I will say this, if you applied that logic to CE, you would have seen the direction it was going in June of 2018 pretty easily. Those of us who bought the game in 2017 in Early Access… not exactly unfortunately, not until the Frozen Update anyway. But its always best to steer clear from Early Access in most cases.
fuuu i have wiatet to test it out im so hyped
By Andy’s beard, I hope you’re right Carol. Wait a minute, who is Carol and what did they do to Mayra?
