Opinion: Live Service Models Drain The Fun From Gaming

The live service model of gaming has been on the rise for years now. What started as a fun and unique approach to gaming has become one of the most predominant forms of the hobby, with developers around the world opting to add at least some live service elements to many of their titles, if not developing them exclusively as such a game. I like live service games, I like having lots to do, but at a certain point it all gets too much. With the massive failure across the industry we’re witnessing as live service games with hundreds of millions of dollars behind them crumble at – or even before – their launch, I think it’s time we face the reality of what the live service model is doing to gaming as a whole.

Before we get any further, let’s establish one thing: I don’t actually want all live service games to disappear. My critiques of the live service model don’t equate to me wanting to be rid of them, but rather to eliminate their key flaw, which is their abundance. There are too many live service games, and their combined, competing live service models has ultimately drained the fun from so many video games I used to enjoy.

Unlimited possibilities, infinite value

The initial boom of live service models was honestly pretty exciting as an avid gamer. I love playing video games, and live service games represent a game that can go on for a really, really long time. I like shooter games, so when Fortnite emerged as a never ending and constantly evolving experience, I was hooked and invested from the first few months it was released. Here I am all those years later, and I still play it! As part of their model, live service games are built on unlimited possibilities. The games can go anywhere, and in some cases that’s exactly what they do.

Fortnite is a living, breathing game, so they can have an entire season dedicated to Star Wars then go back to doing something completely different. It’s not a separate spin-off game or a paid expansion, it just changes itself up, again and again to keep you engaged and excited. Another live service game I enjoyed for a long while was Destiny. It’s incredibly effective to make an in-game universe feel like a real and immersive one when the potential it has is limitless. Live service models having so much to sink into gives them a great sense of value to my simplistic brain, especially when they’re free. It seems many in the industry also noticed the possibility to have an infinite expanding story – but what happens when so many games are built with the idea of constantly expanding in mind?

The inevitable tsunami of content

I managed to stay on top of live services for a while, playing the ones I wanted at the times I wanted and taking part in any of the events that piqued my interest. I feel that we’re starting to reach critical mass though, as the amount of content is exceeding the free time that anyone could possibly have, and as multiple games across genres and across gaming niches start offering time-limited content, exclusive collaborations, one-time seasonal experiences and more. They all want your time, they all want new players to join and old ones to stay, but the pull from every direction can ultimately lead to a player like myself just losing interest.

There are a few games I’ve been enjoying at the moment. I like Fortnite’s latest Star Wars-themed season, and I also have been playing Marvel Rivals since launch. Whenever I play an online game, I also like to have a single player story-focused game to keep some of my focus on too so as to not overwhelm myself with relatively shallow live service experiences. Recently though, the clash of those was feeling pretty extreme. Marvel Rivals has the Hellfire Gala Moments event running, where you must complete a lot of missions on a lot of different days to ultimately unlock the Patch skin for Wolverine. I like Marvel Rivals and I love X-Men so of course I’d like to get it, but the grind was enormous. There are 24 hour cooldowns between mission unlocks, and there are multiple phases of mission unlocks to progress through three different ‘Acts’, and only when you complete them all do you get the skin. It was overwhelming, and so many fans were unhappy that Marvel Rivals actually went ahead and extended the event by another week, but the fatigue from the expectation is already there.

As I mentioned, I’m also playing Fortnite, and the Star Wars-themed season was a perfect fit for me. It reminds me of the Star Wars Battlefront games I used to be in love with when I was younger, so I want to savour every moment of it. The issue is though that I can’t – because the other games want my attention too. I started Dead by Daylight a few years ago and I’ve dropped in and out since, and they’re starting up a new limited time event and have the massive upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s crossover. I like Pokémon, and the Pokémon TCG Pocket game just announced a new expansion full of new cards. I have friends playing Final Fantasy XIV who want me to join it and try out, and as an MMO that’s as live-service as you can possibly get.

Outside of single player experiences, playing any game with even the slightest elements of multiplayer feels like an endless tsunami of content. All these games compete for new players, and once you finally try one out and enjoy it, they’re going to keep pushing out new exciting content. Once you’ve tried and invested time in enough of these games though, the pull from every direction becomes incredibly overwhelming and will ultimately make you feel apathetic towards at least some of them, so as to keep whatever focus you have on the games you can manage. This is a problem, because there are so many successful live service games that continue to expand their reach that people will fall out of others, and become unwilling to try out new ones. We’ve seen this happening in real-time over the last few months, and it’s costing the gaming industry billions of dollars.

Ambition in excess, and opportunities lost

Developers and corporate executives alike can both see the allure of the live service from a mile away. Who wouldn’t want millions of active players every month? Whether your goal is to have an active, thriving multiplayer game for the sake of fun, or you’re looking to squeeze every drop of cash from as many people as you can, the live service model is a good approach to have. However, as this approach has gone on so long, we all already have our live service games of choice that we enjoy, and we don’t have infinite time or infinite money to keep expanding the ones we play. We either have to drop the old ones, or refuse the new ones, and what better example to use here than Sony.

There was a huge push from PlayStation executives to make their studios, either in-house or third-party, pump out live service games. They could smell blood in the water, and it smelt like dollars. As we’ve established though, if practically every game (hyperbole, sorry) is a live service title, then we just don’t have the time or the energy to invest everything in a new one. And that’s what Sony failed to realize. We all remember the disaster that was Concord, as a game with a giant budget and huge marketing push literally disintegrated within two weeks of its launch. Eight years in development, millions of dollars fed into it, all evaporating within two weeks from launch because who had time to invest in Concord – especially when it wasn’t offering anything new?

Sony are potentially seeing the writing on the wall now, as they’ve cancelled seven live service games including The Last of Us Online and a Spider-Man live service spin-off title called Spider-Man: The Great Web. Whilst each of these game cancellations still represents a lot of money being lost, it’s still better they didn’t embarrass themselves again like they did with Concord. There are still others on the move, like the seemingly doomed Marathon and two Horizon-themed live service games, but we’re too far out from their launch to make any judgments yet.

Ultimately though, whilst so many live service games do represent something of an excess of ambition, I also feel they represent lost opportunities. I don’t want games to fail, but if Marathon is going to compete with all the other live-service games we have going on at the moment then it’s just punching way above its weight. The same could’ve been said about Concord. In another universe this could’ve been a fun shooter game with a unique story, or a smaller-scale online game played between friends, that didn’t need guaranteed content drops, millions of dollars of marketing and a dedicated TV episode.

Perhaps worst of all for me is how live service gaming is spreading and affecting some of the games I love most – like Monster Hunter Wilds. I really enjoy the Monster Hunter franchise, and we loved Monster Hunter Wilds in our review. The problem though is that they’re doing seasonal content drops, limited-time content quests and more. They even launched with less monsters than the last main game Monster Hunter World, seemingly counting on adding them later.

I like the paid expansion DLC that Monster Hunter usually offers, and I think free updates with new monsters are great, but Monster Hunter Wilds is slightly leaning in to live service mechanics in a way beyond any past entry in the series. As such, once I completed the main story I’ve not really returned. I can’t fit it in with the others, and once I start I can’t guarantee an end point. It’s going to keep going, keep getting updated and cycling limited-time quests, and if I don’t want to inevitably feel like I’m missing out when I try to play something else then I need to just not engage.

Live service games are a fun and exciting concept, especially for those of us who love to sink hours into the lore, the gameplay and the universe of a game. However, as new live service games emerge, older ones expand, and even non-live service games start integrating some of their elements, I’m struggling to manage what I want to play and which of all the time-limited experiences they offer I’m going to miss. As such, the fun gets drained from them all, and turning to single player, offline experiences seems to be the solution.

Do you agree with my opinion on how the live service model is making some games a bit less fun? Do you find it tiring to keep up with so many of them, and which do you focus on, if any? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more gaming news and opinions like this.