Beyond Games as a Service with Live Ops
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- In this 2020 GDC Virtual Talk, Microsoft's Crystin Cox explains how LiveOps is shaping the next big step in games and how game teams of all types can use this powerful approach to game development to better engage their communities.
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You can tell how many people DIDN'T watch the video and instead just downvoted, left a comment, and "walked" away. The entire point of the video was to reinforce the idea that game design should NOT be based on the business component (the service). Instead, game design needs to be interesting, engaging, and something people want to do. It should NOT be based on the business need as the driving component. But, don't let that stop you from leaving a terribly uninformed comment and moving on.
You are so full of shit. This video was downvoted because nobody in their right mind wants "games as a service" anymore. And the guy\girl (?) in the video is defending this malevolent idea, which can NOT work right even in theory. It basically says "we are sovvy, we did not meant games as a service to become this ungodly homunculi. They are of course just that from the beginning, but maybe we could have been a little more descreet with sucking your moneys via F2P methods. Let us try again with different mechanics." Also, this whole videos "narrative" is so dilluted, that those who watched it fully probably got a debuff on INT.
Fucking no. Just no.
The medium is the message: a for-profit game studio can't not base their mechanics and aesthetics on Games As A Service if their game is a service.
I think this was a good talk, and as an aspiring game developer, I found it very helpful. To all the people downvoting this because they hear all this business focused talk, there are two things to keep in mind.
First, this is aimed at gamedevs, and veteran ones at that; you don't start by making an MMO, so anybody who is in the target audience of this video should already know how to make a fun game.
Secondly, this is the kind of advice people making MMOs need, all those really cool MMOs that flop in their first year, probably wouldn't have failed so quickly if they had seen this video before they started work on the game.
I think this video is getting hate mostly from people who saw the title and assumed it was about games like the newest Assassin's Creed, where they cram "micro"-transactions into a single player game, which I agree is horrible. If you are actually familiar with the games she lists in her introduction, you'd know that she has only worked on MMOs, so (while she may not explicitly state it) this is about online games with some degree of persistence, not games that EA and Ubisoft spit out that are single player or match based games but have the business models of an MMO.
I know that many gamers' reactions to stuff like this is to say "just make a good game", but that isn't enough for MMOs anymore. This isn't the time of Everquest and Ultima Online, when you could release an MMO and only have a hand full of competitors. Today there are far too many games competing over players and trying to keep a large active player base, if you don't take this stuff into consideration, you will fail. Any company that doesn't talk about this stuff (or outright says they don't do it) either is just hiding it, or they are doomed to fail. Any game that continues to cost a company money after they release it will always be a product first and a game second.
Sorry about the rant, but I think that if you are going to watch a video aimed at game developers, you should at least make more of an effort to understand the reality of the industry today.
*TLDR: Watch the video before you hate on it, and remember that this is aimed at gamedevs, not gamers. Heck, maybe just start at **49:06** and keep that part in mind when you go back and watch the rest.*
It's kinda sad that MMOs have been abandoned by developers and they never tried to get things right to make it interesting social spaces.
Weird downvotes imo. This is a good talk.
Just wanted to go out for a walk and got the notification, that a new gdc talk was released, nice!
Turning players into payers
"Here's a tv that looks like an apple..."
I had to do it.
User Acquisition as KPI is important to new users who sign up for the service. This is a crucial metric for companies who are looking to grow out their user base.
Engagement as a KPI does indeed measure how often users are engaging with the game. This can include metrics such as time spent playing, number of sessions per day/week. Let's not forget about the sociableness of it all. We need to see this in order to swing things in the right direction about the product.
Retention lends itself to the percentage of users who continue to play the game after a certain period of time. Retention is a key indicator of whether the game is meeting the needs and expectations. Retention is a super strong metric and should never be ignored.
Monetization as a KPI as you may know can include revenue from in-game purchases, subscriptions, and advertising. This is studio dependent, and I am not fond of this path personally. I think monetization deserves new innovative methods from the traditional paths while finding ways to mitigate risk.
Customer Sat! This measures how satisfied users are with the game. This can include metrics such as net promoter score (NPS), customer support satisfaction, and user reviews. Let's face it companies that are huge like Apple and other companies use NPS as a practice to measure customer satisfaction can make corporate pivots from month to month. Great video I enjoyed it.
Games as a service make me sick to my stomach. It used to be that game designers made the games and the marketeers tried to sell it, nowadays game designers build a game around selling it. Almost everything discussed in this video I'll take on to not do in my games as I firmly believe that player getting the whole game (like it used to be) are the future due to the fact that all these games as a service are soulless and shallow amusement parks that are wide as the ocean and as deep as a puddle.
You haven't really watched the talk have you?
@@MrPpunk I did and I now have a list of DOs and DO NOTs. I actually appreciate videos on topics I mostly don't agree on and liked the video just because I hope they create more because I learn more about the direction I want to go. Maybe it's a direction that isn't the most optimal or generates the most revenue and is maybe the dumbest way to go; but it will be my way and I'll only get there by listening and taking notes from all people; especially those I don't agree with.
Oh please. Game players are the most entitled consumers in the world. They want 20000+ hours of inter-domain work for free or next to nothing. A game can be fun and designed for profit. If you want to work countless hours on your game and distribute it for free then that’s your decision but don’t come in the comments bashing developers, publishers and artists for wanting to get paid for their work.
This self-righteous mindset is one of the reason why game devs are underpaid and overworked even when our field is one of, if not, the hardest domain in tech.