Love it when people that know a lot about communicating get tasked with creating a positive perception of something. They know perfectly well that self-deprecating jokes are popular with their target audience and that they even work to endear their shortcomings to the reader. These feelings are probably why this post is being upvoted.
I mean yeah, I agree with separation of concerns and letting the people with the skills do the job… but it almost always feels so manipulative and dishonest.
As a dev myself, I can’t even commit to maybe telling you if and/or when something will be finished. Someone has to set a date and say it’s going to be awesome even though I wouldn’t even say it’s for sure going to be working.
As a dev that’s a skill you can develop. But it doesn’t matter when the marketing department announces a launch date before even asking developers for their estimations.
Enough of that shit and the only date it sets is “the date I leave this fucking company”. I’m so tired of people thinking they can make magic happen by talking down to developers. So tired
It’s literally a company recognizing and correcting mistakes for its customers. I think it’s good to recognize hard work that is beneficial to consumers.
As much as people are maybe more familiar with Cyberpunk being fixed later. No man’s sky is one of the kings of being fixed later. This is not a case of advice being given, but an acknowledgement of the way things have gone.
I guess that depends on what you mean by fixed. Like No Man’s Sky added shit tons of content. Whereas cyberpunk just kind of stabilised the games performance and made minimal changes to the actual gameplay and content.
I played LoL back in the early 2010’s, and I had to smurf to even enjoy the game. Once I got out of the beginning levels the other players’ skill skyrocketed and I just couldn’t keep up. I needed to make a couple new accounts just to be among players of my own skill level.
In LoL, what really separates the “good” players from the “great” players is teamwork. Low ranks are full of individual players, but upper ranks are full of team players. You can be the world’s best individual player. But unless you can 1v5 every encounter, you’ll still end up capped out in Gold rank. Because even as a good individual player, you’ll lose half your matches from the lack of teamwork.
This is ironically why lots of games end up as shit slinging disasters; When you force randoms to cooperate and tie their individual success to the actions of their teammates, shit gets toxic very fast. The slightest mistake or misjudgement is treated as the end of the world, because we judge others by their actions rather than their intentions. Because it’s entirely possible to lose ranks through no fault of your own. Even if you play a perfect match, you can still lose due to your teammates fucking up. So even small mistakes are judged harshly.
It’s also why Korean teams have historically dominated the leaderboards. In Korea, Internet cafes are a large part of the culture. Kids go to play games with their friends after school. So many of the Korean teams are friends who have been playing together since they were in elementary school. Their teamwork is exceptional, because they know what their friends are going to do in any given situation. They can accurately predict their friends’ actions and reactions, and plan accordingly.
Contrast this with the western style of team building. Recruit individual players to a team, then force them to scrimmage for 12 hours a day to learn each others’ play styles. It’s the corporate “recruit a square peg, then hammer them until they fit into the round hole because that’s what the team needs” philosophy. They’re building teams from individuals, instead of finding teams who already excel together.
Source: Dated a girl who floated between Diamond I and Master rank with her friends. I believe she even got lucky and hit Grandmaster once? I had very little interest in playing the game, but got to learn all about it from her.
I know why I quit competitive multiplayer & open pvp games a long time ago. It's just too toxic and people are more into griefing weaker players than actually testing themselves against equal or even stronger foes who also want to fight.
I very much agree with you. I cannot dedicate the time to playing a game that an 18 year old can dedicate. Even if I could, I'm not going to have the same speed. It's back to single player games, Civilization and Cities Skylines for me
The players who lost their accounts aren't hanging around on unranked matches to stomp newbies. They'll want to go into ranked matches to get their level back up. Also, activity on both the new account and the old one would sus out deliberate smurfers
What a lukewarm take. A quick glance to the subscription video-on-demand market should be fairly informative to the future of video game subscription services.
Right now they’re still in the honeymoon phase, that is to say the “offer better value to capture a market” phase, of enshitification.
I mean... yeah. Turns out that having models and looking at the actual data and analyzing the market tends to land on lukewarm takes. The hot takes are for the press and the trolls.
FWIW, I don't have visibility on subscription growth at all, so I'll have to take his word for it, but none of that sounds unreasonable.... except maybe for the fact that the hype may make people make bad moves and double down in ways that are harmful. A degree of fearmongering can be useful, if only as a deterrent.
I think there are plenty of valid criticisms of the subscription model, and the reasons for those criticisms are the same as many of the reasons growth has flat lined. Labeling criticism as fear mongering seems like overly reductive spin, especially when this analyst doesn’t seem to be interested in addressing those criticisms.
It’s like saying “data shows very few people die annually from eating tide pods, therefore maybe we shouldn’t be so scared of eating tide pods.” Like, no, it’s because nearly everyone realises it’s a very bad idea that nobody dies from it.
You’ve crunched the numbers correctly, but have drawn the exact wrong conclusion.
There are valid criticisms, for sure. I was not in the original thread, though, so I don't know how willing to address those he is, but it's a valid point that it's not an all or nothing proposition. You can point out that subs aren't overtaking the market in gaming without implying that they should.
I'd be more interesting in debating whether subs are additive or not. I do know of anecdotal mentions of stunted sales on sub-forward releases, but I'd love to see more data about it (and what that means about revenue eventually, too).
But none of that influences the concerns on preservation one way or the other.
Honestly, I don't think you're right about the reasons growth has flatlined. I think the sub model just doesn't fit gaming best. The content just doesn't work well with the rotating carrousel of new and new-ish games most subscriptions have. I think Nintendo could be onto something, in the way Netflix was early on, in that you may be more willing to pay a fee to just have access to every single game before a certain point and from the beginning of time, but nobody is gonna figure that one out anytime soon.
Any time I see someone use the term “fear mongering” sincerely, I add a general heaping of salt to whatever they are saying. It’s often an attempt to turn the topic to the “evil motives” of the “other side” before the original debate is settled.
If there’s nothing to fear, that can be said without accusing anyone who thinks there is something to fear of trying to generate it for selfish reasons. In fact, I’d think that showing someone is fear mongering will be a greater burden than showing any particular thing they say is untrue, let alone a deliberate lie. But it gets thrown around so much lately as if it’s an argument on its own.
I’m not sure there ever was a honeymoon phase for game subscriptions. They generally still push you to buy dlc/season passes. They still segment stuff into pre-order bonuses that you don’t get in a subscription. You already have titles leaving the service.
I did have a honeymoon phase with gamepass. Now it’s just a thing that keeps charging the monthly fee in the background but also reminds me of the list of games I’d like to try that it has each time I open it up to consider cancelling.
They’ve figured out how to make money from me having a backlog, I just realized. I might have to open it again and compare the amount I’d pay for x months vs the expected sales price to just buy all of those games where x is how many months it’ll take to clear my backlog. I don’t even have to open it to see that I should cancel, because x might be infinite. Hell, I could even just cancel it with the intent of starting back up if I manage to clear my Steam backlog if I want to lie to myself about eventually getting through my backlog.
Video on demand works because the content is short and you need a large variety in a pay period as a consumer.
I don’t just watch one show or movie in a month, it’s several. So bundling makes sense.
It’s also fairly commoditized. I will watch what movies are available on Netflix, not like I’m extremely committed to watch a single given movie as long as the general selection is good. Maybe there’s one or two films a year I care about seeing that specific film before it rotates into a subscription service I subscribe to (and if not, meh).
For video games, it’s maybe one title a month that I really care about playing and then I only have time for that one game. But I only really care about setting aside time for that game and a lot of the other options out there you couldn’t pay me to play.
They are very different markets and a subscription model isn’t necessarily the future or even what’s most profitable for a company to offer (as Sony was recently acknowledging).
a subscription model isn’t necessarily the future or even what’s most profitable for a company to offer (as Sony was recently acknowledging).
It’s worth remembering that the goal of subscription services like gamepass is not to be the most profitable avenue. The goal is marketshare.
Microsoft lost, and Microsoft lost hard. Reportedly, the CEO wanted to exit gaming entirely after the Xbox One. They didn’t based solely on the new business plan, which was to disrupt the market. Kill the existing model by offering super low-cost subscriptions (paid for by Azure and Office 365) and become the new encumbant of a new industry where you can jack up the prices and lower the cos(and quality) over a decade trying to chase profitability.
Subscriptions are not about revenue generation as every subscription model out there lowers revenue massively. It’s about holding a larger share of the market so you can make money in other ways.
I think you’re confusing the advantages and strategies of having a subscription and the advantages and strategies of having a loss leader.
Not all subscriptions are designed to be loss leaders, and most of the benefits you see in GamePass (lower or even negative revenue in exchange for increased market share) is seen over and over with loss leaders that aren’t subscriptions.
Yes, I agree that Microsoft has adjusted strategy from a focus on winning console wars to increasing software gatekeeping across PC and now apparently even competitor consoles. And that GamePass plays a large part in that.
But it would be a mistake to assume that subscriptions in games are all going to have the same goals and focus as Microsoft with GamePass.
I would argue that there are three kinds of game subscriptions right now
gamepass, paid for by azure/office. goal to turn the industry into a subscription service based industry like everything else has been converted into
trying-to-keep-up-with-gamepass: this is ps+ (extra|premium), it exists as a failing effort to keep up with gamepass. it has to make money and thus users don’t see value in it. it either costs too much or doesn’t provide enough for the cost
fifa subscription
the last one has existed for a long time and doesn’t really factor into the discussions people are having today. it’s not really relevant. the other two are both a factor of each other and relevant to what we are talking about.
Great take, I wish more would see the music industry like this as well.
I used to pay for Spotify premium then realized that I hardly added more than a handful of new things to my “library” each month. I switched to budgeting the same monthly funds towards building a local library from direct purchases and bandcamp.
It really depends on your level of consumption of new content whether a subscription service makes sense.
Don’t worry we won’t have have to worry about subs being dominant. Oh wait you meant subscriptions
Ok but jokes aside in some cases a subscription is necessary. Probably a bad example but Netflix needs to operate servers that I can get behind if it’s reasonably priced
However games and services that offer a subscription that don’t need it, unless I REALLY like it, I think it’s plain bad
And frankly I’m kind of a hypocrite here paying for planetsides “premium” service even though they could keep the lights on without it
I kinda went off on a rant but even it only makes 10% (which to me is definitely a big number but seems smaller than it is) of sales it kind of sends a message that this a way to extract more money from people like me that go “hmm well I like the game I guess I’ll pay $120 or more a year for this yes this a sane financial decision”
TLDR: subscription bad but I’m personally using one :(
It’s 2024 and you can’t buy any individual movie or TV show you want, you have to buy access to literal Netflix or others as a subscription. Op is saying games are heading towards that.
You can buy individual films and TV programmes though, it’s just that most people want them now rather than in a day or two when the DVD arrives in the post
I just looked up one of Netflix’s star movies, Nimona, and yes, I can still buy blu-rays of it.
All mediums have had exceptions where the license holder is a fickle, or ineffective, ass at selling; rare books, games with soundtrack licensing complications, unloved movies. They’re generally exceptions by individual work, not from having signed on to the Great Netflix Prison.
Generally, where there’s demand, they still let you become its permanent owner. (In the topic of anime, they even overcharge for it because it’s such an uncommon choice made by super-fans as a prestige item)
where there’s demand, they still let you become its permanent owner. (
this is not true. in-fact it is seen as a marketing tool for the subscription services. market-forces do not naturally lead to the outcome you are describing.
it is also not the “exception” that something isn’t available, it’s an exception when a subscription service does release a purchasable option.
Indeed it’s getting more and more common that not only will shows/movies be unavailable for purchase, but deleted from the subscriptions too.
All I want is a way to rent PC games before I buy them. Gamepass kinda works for that, but I REALLY don’t want yet another subscription service. I suppose I could buy them from Steam and request a refund if I don’t like it, but I hate paying that kind of money up front and downloading a 100 GB game just to turn around and refund it.
I know, right?! I remember downloading a demo (or popping in a demo disc) that let you play like one mission or a set amount of time in a game. In the era of 120 GB downloads why can’t I download like 5 GB of the game and try it first?! The only answer I can come up with is that, much like the charlatans of old, they know a lot of it is shit so they have to grab your money and run.
The games that end up that large are probably all the AAAs with big deadlines that end up released half-finished anyway, I doubt the companies in charge want to justify the extra cost of releasing an optimised demo if they don’t think it’s going to be worth the effort.
A good demo for a good game was minor advertising that was dwarfed by good press. If every player wont shut up about how good the game is, their friends would skip the demo and buy anyway.
A good demo for a bad game was good advertising that bit you later. You got more up front sales, but got harder drop offs once word gets around that the demo was all you had.
A bad demo for a good game stuttered sales. Some people would turn away and maybe never come back, and it took time for word of mouth to tell everyone to skip the demo and just buy the game anyway.
A bad demo for a bad game was shit all around.
In the end, this punnett square made it pretty clear that the best option was to make a really good demo if youre game was shit, or you thought you needed the help finding an audience. but if you knew (or “”“knew”“”) your game was good? The demo was wasted time and effort. Either it was a smaller ad bump you werent upset to cut costs for, or you were slowing sales by accident.
Demos are good for us, but suck for the company making them. So they largely stopped making them.
PS+ set forward a theme of letting people have game trials - you can download and play for a few hours before needing to buy. I think they want that tied to some kind of invested subscription setup just so that people wouldn’t abuse the system.
It’s easier to avoid abuse if every game has demos coded to end after level 1, but as many old analyses have shown, that takes a huge amount of developer resources.
The issue of downloading 100 GB is something that some publishers have tried to solve with cloud gaming. If you’re only mildly interested in a Game Pass game, you can play it on cloud, and then if you enjoyed your first session, download it locally for the next one.
Worth noting that game trials on PS+ are kept behind the highest tier of PS+. Outside of that, there isn’t too much of interest encouraging you to pick up that subscription in my books since the classics Sony’s been putting publishing there aren’t really that good. Streaming PS5 games sounds nice but is highly dependent on your internet connection. Not sure if I’m missing anything.
Yeah that would be great. A single tweet can sound well-informed but I don’t know if this guy is an expert with a pile of data or just a person capable of chatting shit!
Mat Piscatella’s career has spanned the entertainment software industry, including tenure with Warner Bros and Activision. His industry experience ranges from business planning, analysis, and forecasting to operational and strategic planning. A self-proclaimed “game geek,” Piscatella has worked in the industry for close to 15 years.
Video game brands he has worked on include Call of Duty, LEGO, Batman: Arkham, Guitar Hero, DreamWorks, Mortal Kombat, and Marvel. Piscatella regularly works with key industry trade associations and is collaborating with colleagues on new initiatives for NPD. He has extensive experience presenting to and advising senior leadership for the video game industry.
His experience outside of entertainment software include marketing and sales roles for IRI and Banana Boat Suncare. He has an MBA in marketing from San Diego State University, and a BA in political science from California State University, San Bernardino.
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