Hacker News Reader

Comment by gigaflop | Hacker News Reader

People can only spend so much time on a Live Service style game. They aim to be "The game you log into daily", but usually only kids have the kind of free time to grind these out week after week, let alone keep up with multiple.

Then, each have their own $10ish Battlepass, and you need to grind to get to the end of it. Aside from a new map or character, these are the bulk of 'new stuff' that gets added.

Gaming as a Service doesn't scale well on most people who can afford to whale out, once they've already found their slot machine.

View on HN

> only kids have the kind of free time to grind these out week after week

Adult will still have time to watch netflix, youtube or tiktok, read books, engagement bait on twitter etc.

What these games are competing against is not "free time" but any block of 15min that would go to another activity.

Given the number of people binge watching Netflix, it's a decent marketing segment.

Most games require a dedicated hardware device or beefier PC hardware. It is also easier to veg out on the alternatives than games which require more active engagement on the part of the player.

All can greatly filter your audience vs doom scrolling.

In the article's case, requiring a PS5 or a gaming PC is sure a deterrent.

That's where other live services will try hard enough to be at least on the Switch, or even better, work on mobile.

Sure but the comparable idea with Netflix is like one show. You watch that show and then it's done. It took you maybe 8 hours. This kind of game expects a player to log in week after week, dedicating hundreds and hundreds of hours over the course of years.

But players who want to do that are already invested in other games. They're not going to split out time to play this new one unless it's amazing. This thing was $40 and not well regarded. No one is really surprised at this result.

Yes, it really comes down to motivating users to play your game, either through network effect or by just being that good.

I was just pointing that the amount of time isn't the real issue, it's the competition for that time. Of course, the tighter that time is the tougher the competition will be, and the better a singular live service game needs to be.

Yep. I love gaming, and game nights with a squad, but I can't ass myself to follow every single option.

Also, back when I played Valorant, a regular match could be anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes long. Add up queue times, waiting for people to group up (because there's usually one more person who's almost online, etc), and waiting for the potato-pc users to load in, it could easily turn into 3 hours for 2 to 3 matches.

These days, I'd rather watch a movie, and be in a different chair than the one I'd spent my working day in.

You can't play competetive matchmaking with small kids around though. I had to drop Dota since too many games got ruined by the kids needing care and I was about to get dropped into the punnishment games bracket.

Singleplayer games or Netflix you can just pause.

Yup, I pretty much stopped online gaming altogether once my son was born for this exact reason. And there's plenty of high-quality offline games out there if you're inclined to spend time playing and trying games. Game companies are in for a rough decade if they continue this $100million+ dollar outlay before game launch. MVP is a sound model.

To expand on that: there's also the issue that these games have to be (somewhat) competitive multiplayer games: multiplayer because otherwise there's no way to create enough content, and competitive since otherwise there's less of a reason to play the game for long periods of time.

If you've ever played a dead/dying competitive game as a newcomer you will know the problem this creates: since the people that stay around are either new or very dedicated players, the skill gap becomes gigantic, which turns of most new players.

if your game wins the Life-Service race, you draw other players in. If your game dies the very same structure that keep players around will prevent new players from joining.

And here I am, a 45 year old husband, developer and everything and have over 3k hors in Destiny ;)

If I tally up my total hours across games, it's just a difference of taste :)

I stick to things that I can easily pick up or put down.

Yeah but is that the only game you play? If so this is a typical amount of time to dedicate to a hobby or whatever, but an atypical time use pattern for gaming.

If it's only one of many games you play idk. Depends on how your wife and kids feel about it I guess, none of my business.

Man I play so much Destiny. But it really is a "Dad game" according to my kids. I'm older than you, BTW :-)

Destiny was great, until they decided BattleEye was a requirement. Spyware? No thanks.

ah yeah, since I play on playstation I dont have anything to do with that.

> And here I am, a 45 year old husband, developer and everything and have over 3k hors in Destiny ;)

LOL... I am pretty much the same as you. Except I try, at a minimum, to get a few games per day in Rocket League. :-D

Yeah I remember doing nothing but playing video games, especially these shooter games, as a kid, but now I only play games rarely and they tend to be of the “avant garde” variety—meaning, they’re often free or very low priced indie games from small developers (think of LISA, Undertale, Nikke Yumi, that sort of thing).

I have a little nerve damage, so it's hard for me to even play these kinds of games anymore. Combined with the fact that I like these kinds of games as it's usually been reasonable to drop in, play for a while, have fun and not dedicate a portion of my life to leveling up or mastery.

For me, the peak in terms of time investment are around Q3A and Unreal Tournament. So it's been a long while since I played regularly. What's funny is I want to play, it just gets frustrating when your hands/fingers just don't respond right.

Q3 and UT are probably two of the best games ever made. They came at a really special time in games. Goldeneye goes in that list too.

Absolutely... I also played the original Team Fortress mod for Quake as well. Just a fun time to play in general. I think it was around Doom 3 that it was less fun to me. I mean, the more realistic looking environments (for the time) were really nice. And not to call out D3 in particular, just seemed that by then a lot of the fun in FPS games had waned a lot imo.

It will be cool if GPUs can maybe double/triple current performance on the high end and that reaches mid-tier. The opportunity for really immersive environments. That said, we need more compelling gameplay and too many studios seem trapped in the exercise of trying to extract maximum value over a compelling story. I think some of the politics in games holds them back as well. Of course, I'm no longer the audience for reasons in my prior post.

God if they made shooters as good as Q3 and Doom then I would definitely play more of them.

This whole discussion, btw [0]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN-ekLaHyuI

I bought a steam deck, I play old sega racers (Daytona, sega rally, outrun 2, scud race) mostly due to only having a few mins of free time a day. Also dedicating large amounts time to games feels really wasteful given how little time I have. (I'm in my forties with two kids)

If you like survival horror, give Signalis a try.

That's another example, but its too spooky for me.

I'm waiting for content in like 3 live service games at a time. I rotate between them when they get new stuff.

I find some time nights and weekends.

If I'm gonna grind some multiplayer thing, I just prefer for it to be MtG these days. I can spend my week casually thinking of a decklist, and see how it performs with live players on the weekend. Still leaves decent time for Elden Ring or something.

I've dropped maybe $500 on Valorant, but it takes too much mental energy for me to enjoy casually playing it anymore. I also don't want to rely on getting a full squad in order to have a good time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com