What To Know About Games As A Service

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Since its inception in the 1970s, the video games industry has undergone several major overhauls before it became the billion-dollar enterprise that it is today. In almost 50 years, the burgeoning and niche market has reinvented itself from the pastime of choice for nerds and geeks to an essential part of any modern-day home and entertainment life.

The early years of home video gaming nearly imploded in on itself as unregulated and oversaturated games flooded and eventually diluted the market until Nintendo stepped in and actively chose what was acceptable for their machine, essentially creating the modern video game market that we have today.

But over the past few years, a new model has emerged that provides video games as a service rather than a one-shot playthrough with no additional value.

Here we will outline the following:

  • How the Model Works
  • Games that Use it Well
  • Where it Goes from Here

The model is simple and provides value for money when done right and some of the most impressive games have managed to use it successfully for years while the future for games as a service has never looked so bright.

Photo by Fábio Silva on Unsplash

How the Model Works

Not to be confused with video game subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass, PS Now, and PlayPhone Games, GaaS is a very simple model in theory, yet hard to deliver in practice. The games as a service business model essentially aims to provide continuous gaming for extended periods following the ending of a particular game, known as the “end game” period. What developers do is basically extend the life of a video game by releasing expansions and updates to the game so that more content is available following the end game.

While this is a basic concept, it needs to be implemented well in order to succeed as it costs a lot of time, manpower, and money to maintain and sustain since it requires ongoing production like working on a game that never ends. However, video game developers are extremely passionate about what they do and some of the best developers that create GaaS titles have been working on them for near or in some cases over 10 years.

Games that Use it Well

GaaS used to be the sole domain of PC online games because of the combination of upgrade capability to machines, hard drive space, and being able to connect to online game servers. However, this all changed with generation 3 of video game consoles the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, both of which were designed with HDDs and online capability. This new design meant that all gamers could benefit from GaaS and a new era was born.

While there have been notable flops with very recent GaaS titles, EA and BioWare’s Anthem being one of the worst offenders, most GaaS games are excellently made and have been around for quite some time. Online RPG games such as Elder Scrolls Online aside, some notable GaaS games include the extremely popular Grand Theft Auto Online, the intriguing Destiny, and the most recent successor to one of the original GaaS games The Sims 4. The reason why these games are so popular is that their creators regularly update them with fresh and exciting content that they know fans want so it isn’t uncommon to find a regular player of one of these games to be fiercely loyal.

Where it Goes from Here

As it stands, GTA V has sold a staggering 140 million copies with GTA Online consistently achieving well over 100,000 players per day across multiple platforms. The Sims 4 was recently reported to have sold 20 million copies making it one of the best-selling GaaS games ever. While Rockstar Games is always tight-lipped about any project, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that with the massive leap in technological power of the new generation of consoles and a wider PC market that GTA 6 will come with an updated online or GaaS component.

Because of the success of games like these, many developers are now actively involved in multiple GaaS projects for all machines including PS5, Xbox Series X, PC, and even Nintendo Switch. Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers and their recently released Outriders are both GaaS titles with Square already having outlined huge long-term plans for both. Even the failed Cyberpunk 2077 launch hasn’t prevented CD Projekt Red from hinting at their extended ambitions for the game. Because of this and many upcoming GaaS games, it stands to reason that the industry itself is putting a lot of faith in the model as a possible replacement for traditional gaming. As for consumers, they are the deciding factor, and should they decide that a game isn’t worthy of their time and money, then Anthem won’t be the last to be figuratively buried with all of those copies of E.T the Video Game.

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