Support NeoGAF

[Angry_Megalodon]

They aren't even closely related because of budget and the quality/budget expected from a naughty dog product.

This is the reason why Factions was impossible from its conception. The amount of resources that thing needs would suck ND dry. They wanted a "narrative MP" with its own lore, characters and stuff. They miscalculated badly and only survived because they are Sony's darling studio.

 

[mdkirby]

Very different, arrowhead have always made co-op/multiplayer games. Practically every successful massive GAAS has been made by studios whose pedigree was multiplayer in one way or another, or they were indies, or new studios with surprise first game success with a GAAS. I may be wrong, but I can’t think of any examples where a primarily or exclusively single player studio that has turned their hand at GAAS has seen particular success. There is however a graveyard of significant and expensive failures.

BioWare with anthem
Crystal dynamics with Avengers
Arkane with Redfall
Rocksteady with suicide squad

Imo naughty dog likely just avoided being added to that list. It’s just sad how much time and resources were wasted on it, and all we’ve seen from naughty dog this gen has been remasters

 

[ManaByte]

Practically every successful massive GAAS has been made by studios whose pedigree was multiplayer in one way or another, or they were indies, or new studios with surprise first game success with a GAAS.

One of the most successful GAAS MP games right now was made by a studio who wasn't an indie, wasn't new, and never made a MP game before.

 

[mdkirby]

One of the most successful GAAS MP games right now was made by a studio who wasn't an indie, wasn't new, and never made a MP game before.

Ah, sea of thieves. Like I said, I may be wrong and missing some, doesn’t alter the overall pattern tho. Every so often i contemplate playing that…for a dip in and out game tho it’s not ideal it being on the xbox that I rarely boot up. Maybe I’ll try it once it’s on ps5

 

[Killer8]

Helldivers 2 is undeniably a good game and next to Palworld is the surprise success story of the year. But the keyword here is that it was a 'surprise'. The developers didn't expect this to do anywhere near as well as it has and are currently scrambling to get more servers in place. I wouldn't take it as evidence (yet) that something like Factions would've been successful or that Sony needs to rev up the GaaS engines again.

There are numerous reasons why it might've done better than expected - fresh IP with good marketing, simultaneous PC release, gap in the market (good PvE co-op shooters are few and far between), fuck all to play the last few years. Sony needs to exercise a lot of restraint. You don't go balls deep because of one success story. There needs to be a trend of multiple of these service titles doing well. And then there is the problem of these service games cannibalizing each other's player bases...

 

[TimFL]

Salvaging it into a MP mode DLC for part 2 remastered would be amazing

This. Their no return mode (or whatever it's called) would've been a perfect MP / Co-Op mode to push out as fan service.
The franchise has incredible immersion / gameplay, it sucks that one can only really enjoy that solo. Would've loved to get some extraction style shooter set in that one big Detroit semi-open-world map to drop in occasionally.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

GAAS requires so much development resources. It's one thing to make a multiplayer game, it's a whole different thing to keep supporting with constant updates and the constant balancing required.

It's actually far cheaper to keep a streamlined crew working on a GAAS post launch (while collecting a steady flow of MTX) than it is to jump into another 6+ year development cycle.

Far less risky too.

 

[Raonak]

It's actually far cheaper to keep a streamlined crew working on a GAAS post launch (while collecting a steady flow of MTX) than it is to jump into another 6+ year development cycle.

Far less risky too.

There's no such thing as having a "small streamlined crew" if you're making a AAA GAAS game.
GAAS is profitable is because of microtransactions, which means you have to keep making new content, and that requires a fuckton of work, especially at the AAA scale.

Look at all the most popular GAAS games, their entire studios are dedicated to doing this job.
If your content pipeline is not jam packed, then you're gonna bleed players, and with how competetive the GAAS market is, it's a massive risk that your game just loses popularity.

Most importantly, for a studio like naughty dog, their studio is streamlined to develop cinematic singleplayer games.
It's a complete waste of their talent to pivot to something like this.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

There's no such thing as having a "small streamlined crew" if you're making a AAA GAAS game.
GAAS is profitable is because of microtransactions, which means you have to keep making new content, and that requires a fuckton of work, especially at the AAA scale.

Look at all the most popular GAAS games, their entire studios are dedicated to doing this job.
If your content pipeline is not jam packed, then you're gonna bleed players, and with how competetive the GAAS market is, it's a massive risk that your game just loses popularity.

Most importantly, for a studio like naughty dog, their studio is streamlined to develop cinematic singleplayer games.
It's a complete waste of their talent to pivot to something like this.

This is surface level understanding of Live Service.

If you look at Destiny 2, you'll see a massive difference in the importance of content when you compare it to Fortnite.

Destiny players generally play through a new campaign once or twice, and then go on Twitter and yell at Bungie for being lazy. Fortnite updates require FAR less work and entertain player far longer because the design philosophy is so much better. Epic Games made a fun sandbox that's fun to play in far longer than Destiny 2. All Epic has to do to reinvigorate their players is to change 30 percent of the map every 3 months and give players a few new toys (mechanics, items, weapons) and their player base remains happy.

Naughty Dog was likely making a Destiny 2 type of game. A game where players burn through content quickly and then complain about the next update not releasing soon enough.

Look at games like CSGO, League of Legends, Fortnite, Minecraft etc...and you'll notice how much less work is required to keep those player bases engaged. They have a depth and quality to their design that doesn't get stale after 20 hours.

 

[Unrivaledx88]

We need a remastered Socom 2 Free to play GAAS

 

[Raonak]

This is surface level understanding of Live Service.

If you look at Destiny 2, you'll see a massive difference in the importance of content when you compare it to Fortnite.

Destiny players generally play through a new campaign once or twice, and then go on Twitter and yell at Bungie for being lazy. Fortnite updates require FAR less work and entertain player far longer because the design philosophy is so much better. Epic Games made a fun sandbox that's fun to play in far longer than Destiny 2. All Epic has to do to reinvigorate their players is to change 30 percent of the map every 3 months and give players a few new toys (mechanics, items, weapons) and their player base remains happy.

Naughty Dog was likely making a Destiny 2 type of game. A game where players burn through content quickly and then complain about the next update not releasing soon enough.

Look at games like CSGO, League of Legends, Fortnite, Minecraft etc...and you'll notice how much less work is required to keep those player bases engaged.

This is surface level understanding of the amount of development work required for Live Service.

The games you list still require whole development teams to support. Epic, Riot, Valve, Mojang, these guys have massive development teams constanty updating the game, from constant balancing, to bugfixes, to content drops, to massive community support and things to keep players engaged. Once again, it's not a "small" job, even if it does seem like on the surface they aren't doing much.

And for every fortnite, there are thousands of failed gaas games that died.

They have a depth and quality to their design that doesn't get stale after 20 hours.

But now you're describing a completely different kind of game. You can easily make a non GAAS game engage the player for thousands of hours.
What makes a GAAS game is the constant drip feed of microtransactions that players buy.

Once again, ND excels at what they do, which is why them dedicating half their studio to a GAAS content treadmill is such a waste of resources.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This is surface level understanding of the amount of development work required for Live Service.

The games you list still require whole development teams to support. Epic, Riot, Valve, Mojang, these guys have massive development teams constanty updating the game, from constant balancing, to bugfixes, to content drops, to massive community support and things to keep players engaged. Once again, it's not a "small" job, even if it does seem like on the surface they aren't doing much.

And for every fortnite, there are thousands of failed gaas games that died.



But now you're describing a completely different kind of game.
Once again, ND excels at what they do, which is why them dedicating half their studio to a GAAS content treadmill is such a waste of resources.

If it was "expensive" to support Live Service games, studios wouldn't do it. Studios support Live Service games because it's a hyper efficient use of resources.

 

[AmuroChan]

I rather them not. ND should focus on making single-player games which is what they do best.

 

[proandrad]

No, stop wasting the talent at Naughty Dog on a shitty GAAS.

 

[Oddvintagechap]

It will come out with TLOU3.

 

[SkylineRKR]

They're very different games conceptually, just because both are GAAS/Online doesn't mean both will see the same amount of success.

Helldivers 2 is a coop shooter, and coop has become really popular in recent years. We have many examples of indie coop shooters that outdid expectations or major games with strong coop elements breaking every expectation previously set.

Coop was the shit on 360 due to Gears of War. Then RE followed the trend and was a massive success too. Even Dead Space 3 sort of dabbled with it.

But somewhere further it kind of died down, probably because of very average (Operation Raccoon City, Army of Two) of misunderstood (Lost Planet 2) co-op titles. I think there is a place for it. Co-op can be very fun.

 

[Rac3r]

They should've just released regular factions multiplayer with the left behind DLC. We already saw footage from a leaked build years ago. Just add a cosmetic item store or battle pass and call it a day. Not everything needs to have Destiny-style longevity, and there would've been zero backlash from the community.

 

[Raonak]

If it was "expensive" to support Live Service games, studios wouldn't do it. Studios support Live Service games because it's a hyper efficient use of resources.

You're only looking at the handful of GAAS games that succeeded. The ones that won the lottery.
Like with anything, it's only "cheap" if you succeed.

There are thousands of them that didn't, whether they be AAA studios or smaller ones, they failed because they couldn't pump out endless content fast enough or just got unlucky.
It happens all the time. All that time and money wasted.

If you get a new/small studio or one that is already experienced in the field to focus on GAAS games, sure, that's not risky at all.

But, for a studio like ND - GAAS is far more riskier than making a TLOU3, which will 100% print money and become an instant success, and has very little competetion in their field.

 

[Guilty_AI]

But somewhere further it kind of died down, probably because of very average (Operation Raccoon City, Army of Two) of misunderstood (Lost Planet 2) co-op titles. I think there is a place for it. Co-op can be very fun.

Its very much alive nowadays. Just in the last few years we had Elden Ring, Risk of Rain 2, Deep Rock Galactic, Baldurs Gate 3, Lethal Company, Palworld, Granblue Fantasy Relink, Monster Hunter Rise, Satisfactory, among many others.

Top Online Co-Op Games on Steam

Helping you find good games on Steam: impartial games rankings compiled from Steam gamer reviews.

steam250.com

Most played Online Co-Op Games Steam Charts

High-resolution charts with concurrent player counts for all Steam games, including historic data and stats. View most played games on Steam. View Steam player counts.

steamdb.info

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

You're only looking at the handful of GAAS games that succeeded. The ones that won the lottery.

Horse Farmers thought Henry Ford "won the lottery too". Then they said the same thing about Kiichiro Toyota. Then they said the same thing about Louis Chevrolet. Then they said the same thing about Karl Benz...the list goes on. The haters always had a laundry list of reasons. "It's too expensive", "You have to pay so many employees"...

Now we live in a world with 1.5 billion cars.

The market is shifting for a reason. It doesn't require you to understand it.

Btw, Arrowhead Studios just hit the lottery didn't they?

 

[MagnesD3]

No burn the multiplayer to the ground

 

[Raonak]

Horse Farmers thought Henry Ford "won the lottery too". Then they said the same thing about Kiichiro Toyota. Then they said the same thing about Louis Chevrolet. Then they said the same thing about Karl Benz...the list goes on. The haters always had a laundry list of reasons. "It's too expensive", "You have to pay so many employees"...

Now we live in a world with 1.5 billion cars.

The market is shifting for a reason. It doesn't require you to understand it.

Btw, Arrowhead Studios just hit the lottery didn't they?

Lol, what are you even arguing?

That GAAS games are cheap to make? (they arent)
That being a successful GAAS game is easy? (it's not)
That studios that are experts at single player games should all pivot because "it's the future" rather than just another type of game?
Im not saying GAAS is bad. It's good that sony is investing in GAAS games.

It's just that not every game has to be GAAS.

And no, arrowhead hasn't hit the lottery, they've had a successful launch (server issues aside).
The success of the GAAS game depends on longterm numbers. The true test will be whether they can keep rolling out content or not.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Lol, what are you even arguing?

That keeping GAAS games afloat is a cost effective process.

That GAAS games are cheap to make? (they arent)

Relative to AAA, they are.

That being a successful GAAS game is easy? (it's not)

No game is easy to make.

That studios that are experts at single player games should all pivot because "it's the future" rather than just another type of game?

No one said that.

Im not saying GAAS is bad. It's good that sony is investing in GAAS games.

GAAS is good. GAAS not bad.

It's just that not every game has to be GAAS.

Agreed.

And no, arrowhead hasn't hit the lottery, they've had a successful launch (server issues aside).
The success of the GAAS game depends on longterm numbers. The true test will be whether they can keep rolling out content or not.

False. The ultimate goal of GAAS is money. The long term tale helps, but is not required. Arrowhead Studios will announce their sales figures in a few weeks. It's a huge hit.

 

[Raonak]

False. The ultimate goal of GAAS is money. The long term tale helps, but is not required. Arrowhead Studios will announce their sales figures in a few weeks. It's a huge hit.

You're misunderstanding what it even means to be a successful GAAS game.

The current launch version of helldivers 2 is no different than helldivers 1, which is no different than any other standard full game purchase.
They could release it as it is, and not provide any additional content, and be just as successful as it is now. How's this any different than any other game sony releases? It's just a co-op shooter.

The thing that makes the "Service" part different is the ongoing microtransactions/battle pass/etc. that's where the profits of GAAS games are made, and it's also where the additional development will need to come into play.

Keeping GAAS games afloat is ONLY a cost effective process if you have the popularity and long term engagement to keep players for paying for your development.
For every successful one, there are thousands of dead gaas games which produced absolutely no money.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

You're misunderstanding what it even means to be a successful GAAS game.

The current launch version of helldivers 2 is no different than helldivers 1, which is no different than any other standard full game purchase.
They could release it as it is, and not provide any additional content, and be just as successful as it is now. How's this any different than any other game sony releases? It's just a co-op shooter.

The thing that makes the "Service" part different is the ongoing microtransactions/battle pass/etc. that's where the profits of GAAS games are made, and it's also where the additional development will need to come into play.

Keeping GAAS games afloat is ONLY a cost effective process if you have the popularity and long term engagement to keep players for paying for your development.
For every successful one, there are thousands of dead gaas games which produced absolutely no money.

I hope Arrowhead knows this.

 

[Jesb]

I don’t get why they felt that doing an online costs all these resources. Just do a basic online. Doesn’t need to be a gaas game ffs.

 

[bender]

Horse Farmers thought Henry Ford "won the lottery too". Then they said the same thing about Kiichiro Toyota. Then they said the same thing about Louis Chevrolet. Then they said the same thing about Karl Benz...the list goes on. The haters always had a laundry list of reasons. "It's too expensive", "You have to pay so many employees"...

And then they arrested John Zachery DeLorean on conspiracy to obtain and traffic 55 pounds of cocaine.

 

[Neolombax]

I hope not. I'd rather see something else other than TLOU.

 

[Fafalada]

One of the most successful GAAS MP games right now was made by a studio who wasn't an indie, wasn't new, and never made a MP game before.

And there are hundreds of corpses of exactly the same in its wake.

Practically every successful massive GAAS has been made by studios whose pedigree was multiplayer in one way or another, or they were indies, or new studios with surprise first game success with a GAAS.

I actually think the latter is more often the case than experienced MP studios doing it, though I admit I've never done a full on stat analysis of this.
But then even AAA success stories were more often surprises than not.

If it was "expensive" to support Live Service games, studios wouldn't do it. Studios support Live Service games because it's a hyper efficient use of resources.

Studios do it when/IF the games are operationally profitable. It doesn't matter how expensive it is if revenue exceed the costs by sufficient margin. And the costs of these rise with the scale of the service/games - it's not even really a AAA problem.
But TLDR - live-service games are more expensive to develop than SP on average, and are also not cheap to operate.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Studios do it when/IF the games are operationally profitable. It doesn't matter how expensive it is if revenue exceed the costs by sufficient margin. And the costs of these rise with the scale of the service/games - it's not even really a AAA problem.
But TLDR - live-service games are more expensive to develop than SP on average, and are also not cheap to operate.

I guess Star Citizen might be more expensive than most AAA SP games. I'm not too sure about the other successful Live Service games pre launch though. I tend to think they're cheaper to make on average. If you're talking about post launch support then you have a better case.

 

[Beechos]

At this point in the game sony can release shit on a stick and it will still sell. Their brand is too strong. It will take a bunch of duds and doing something to fuck everyone over to weaken it.

Sure gaas is risky but so is aaa, aa, a.

 

[Fafalada]

I guess Star Citizen might be more expensive than most AAA SP games.

SC is its own breed of a business model - if I had to name it I'd call it DaaS (Development as a service) at this point, so its dev-costs are effectively infinite.
But no - I meant normal GaaS examples - when comparing within the same genre/scope.
Eg. Genshin Impact cost more than BoTW to develop, Palworld was likely substantially more expensive than any modern Pokemon game on Switch.

Or to put it more bluntly - for many of these games the cost of core-development is comparable to a SP game of similar size, but you then add the service & multiplayer component on top of it - eg. had GTA:Online been standalone product, in a world where no GTA5 existed, the cost to build it would likely still exceed that of just the GTA5 SP. (if that sounds hard to swallow - in just the 1 year from GTA5 -> GTAO launch, GTAO added another 100M in development costs).

I tend to think they're cheaper to make on average.

This was common thinking for game-companies between 2008-2014, and it was a costly lesson for many of them. Hell - Amazon was still thinking that all the way up to 2020, and the amount of $ burned in AGS was getting into silly territory given the outputs.