Live Service Games: The Theme Park Model
One of the more polarizing debates in the gaming world today concerns the increasingly popular business model of Live Service Entertainment: games in which content is released or added periodically, rather than all at once during launch. Critics of this model assert that many game companies use a serialized approach as an excuse to squeeze cash out of consumers, selling a game at full-price which feels unfinished, with the promise of future updates (often with bonus content stashed behind a pay-wall). While there are plenty of examples where the Live Service model is abused, there are also some key benefits to adopting this approach, especially when viewed through the lens of a similar business strategy: The Amusement Park.
Consider the development cycle of a theme park. There’s an idea for an entertainment experience, it gets fleshed out by a team of creative engineers who decide what each ride should encompass. They piece together the different areas or worlds of the park, the entrance, the themes, the waiting areas, the visual styles, all in service to the desired experience for the park-goer. Once the built into a tangible place people can visit and explore, rarely is this seen as the complete package. Rather, a jumping off point, ready to be expanded upon.
Parks like Six Flags, California Adventure and most notably, the iconic Disneyworld, are constantly being expanded and improved upon. As guests tour these parks, the designers can gather feedback on what works and what doesn’t, which rides people visit the most or least, and even what kind of adventures they wish they could take. This can lead to rides being modified or updated for newer audiences (think Pirates of the Caribbean), new sections added for more rides (California Screamin’), or even entirely new parks with themes of their own (Harry Potter Land, Avatar World, or the newest Star Wars themed Galaxy’s Edge).
This type of perpetual iteration is an effective way to keep the amusement park experience fresh and fun. Parks like these are never truly finished, with new and exciting adventures always on the horizon. When we start to look at Live Service games in the same light, we begin to understand the enormous benefit that come with that perpetual iteration, both for the producer and the player.
The first, and perhaps the most overlooked benefit of the Live Service model is developer efficiency. Whether it’s roller coasters or RPG’s, starting from scratch is almost always more time consuming, difficult, and expensive, than building from an established foundation. Adding a ride to a park that already has themes, walkways, enclosures, restrooms, food stands and staff, allows developers to spend more time focusing on creating a new and exciting experience, and less time on the infrastructure needed to get there. What’s more, the marketing challenge becomes less of a hurdle, as there is already an existing brand and fan base to draw from. Live Service games are no different.
Consider Overwatch, arguably one of the most successful games in the FPS genre. Since the game’s original launch, the number of maps has nearly doubled (12 to 21), and the playable character roster jumped from 21 to 32, along with countless balance patches and cosmetics released in droves.
One of the leading contributor’s to Blizzard Entertainment’s ability to crank out so much content, is their flexibility in leveraging the existing mechanics and framework they’ve already built. This means developers can create more content faster, which in turn lets players enjoy new features more often, eliminating the 3–5 year wait time of engineering an entirely new game.
The second benefit to an ever-evolving-entertainment model is extended lifecycle. One of the biggest selling points for major theme parks is the promise of a new adventure with every visit. True, the immersion of Disneyland or the adrenaline of Six Flags is not an every-week experience, but it does leave guests with that “come back soon” mentality. The work and design energy that goes into keeping these mega-parks from getting stale is what gives them the public persona of “timeless magic,” and it’s that magic which translates into a significant volume of returning visitors. The same effect occurs with Live Service games as well, with titles like Fortnite, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, and World of Warcraft providing seemingly endless novelty. By adopting a serialized release schedule, developers can re-energize their player base in ways that more traditional games cannot.
Even the genre-defining storytelling of Last of Us or the engrossing no-cut camera work of God of War don’t offer the player an experience that lasts for months. Titles such as these are Hollywood Blockbusters, filled with beauty and action and heart, but ultimately players still leave the theatre. Games like League of Legends, as another example of iterative content, take on more of a Netflix-style relationship, reconnecting with the player for each new episode or season.
Ultimately, the greatest value of Live Service game development is the capacity to build player-focused games. Theme parks have the flexibility to adapt to the responses from their consumers. If one attraction is wildly more popular, expand it or add more like it. If an area gets low foot traffic, update it or replace it with something new. In the end, the result is an adaptive experience that improves the more people use it. This is exactly the intended strategy of Live Service games. The Mortal Kombat and Injustice Gods Among us fighting series have both created characters based entirely on fan feedback and surveys.
Apex Legends has used limited time events as a way to test out which modes players enjoy, before investing time and resources into adding them to the full-time setlist. Overwatch was even able to adjust the way character selection works to encourage team-focused playstyles. All of these types of features were implemented as a direct response to player behavior, tailoring each iteration to provide gameplay focused on the end-user.
All of this is not to say that Live Service games are without flaws. Indeed, they lend themselves to one of gamers’ most reviled practices: microtransactions. When content can be added post-launch, there is always an opportunity for that content to come with a price tag. Unfortunately, this is a practice that many companies have adopted, both because it is lucrative, and because it is easier to stomach than inflating a game’s “out-of-the-box” cost. True, production companies need to make money (they are a business after all), but there is a fine line between monetization and exploitation. If Six Flags forced guests to pay an entrance fee and a fee for every roller coaster they ride, there would be no Six Flags.
However, charging visitors for food (even when admittedly overpriced) still feels like a fair trade. The same is true of games. Some content is significant enough within the game to warrant an additional cost, and some content is not. This balance is different for every game, and some companies can (and do) abuse it, but this is a fault which stems from the business, not the model itself.
Criticism of the Live Service game model is everywhere, and it is easy to point to a some of the mainstream titles who have shamelessly abused the pay-to-play mentality, but there are also plenty of rewarding characteristics to the theme park approach. The freedom of developers to focus on meatier features, the longer lifecycle of a game, and the potential for player-first content, all contribute to ultimately better games. No game is perfect, and there will constantly be a need for improvement and iteration, but with Live Service games, just like with amusement parks, there will always be room for both.
