For almost a decade, live-service features have been de rigeur for most games – but with live-service projects being cancelled or pivoted to single player, it a
I don’t think you’re going to find many sharing your definitions. GaaS has just been simply replaced by the term live service in how people talk about this stuff. Perhaps Valve showed their hand early with this interview, but the expectation we had as customers with early TF2 was very different back then. I definitely wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky to be any form of service; it might be the industry’s best example of being a form of penance for what they promised their customers at the start.
I agree that up to a point their approach was to fix things, but at a certain point they reached the point of achieving most everything they promised. Then kept going and adding more.
However, my point of bringing it up is that even in the past few years, the game has continued to be updated and each update brings with it new players/sales, as well as further marketing thanks to the attention those updates get.
This was one of the significant reasons stated for the approach to GaaS by companies like Valve back in the day, and No Mans Sky is an example that this is something that can be done in the modern era.
I also agree that the concept has been bastardized in recent years. As I see it and as was defined at the time, games like Left 4 Dead 2 are/were delivered as “Games as a Service”. Yet despite that fact, Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t include the trappings that are attached to “Live Services” of the modern era.
Like many things, big publishers have corrupted what started off as a pure win for consumers…but that is why I make the distinction of “Live Services” as a fork from the concept.
I don’t think you’re going to find many sharing your definitions. GaaS has just been simply replaced by the term live service in how people talk about this stuff. Perhaps Valve showed their hand early with this interview, but the expectation we had as customers with early TF2 was very different back then. I definitely wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky to be any form of service; it might be the industry’s best example of being a form of penance for what they promised their customers at the start.
I agree that up to a point their approach was to fix things, but at a certain point they reached the point of achieving most everything they promised. Then kept going and adding more.
However, my point of bringing it up is that even in the past few years, the game has continued to be updated and each update brings with it new players/sales, as well as further marketing thanks to the attention those updates get. This was one of the significant reasons stated for the approach to GaaS by companies like Valve back in the day, and No Mans Sky is an example that this is something that can be done in the modern era.
I also agree that the concept has been bastardized in recent years. As I see it and as was defined at the time, games like Left 4 Dead 2 are/were delivered as “Games as a Service”. Yet despite that fact, Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t include the trappings that are attached to “Live Services” of the modern era. Like many things, big publishers have corrupted what started off as a pure win for consumers…but that is why I make the distinction of “Live Services” as a fork from the concept.