Re: It turns out Live Service Isn't Guaranteed Money after all

Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

      For a long time, publishers chased after live-service games because
it was seen as a road to instant and constant money. And why not; you
had examples like "Fortnite" or "GTA Online" which were raking in more
cash than Croesus would know what to do with. 'Obviously',
live-service was the magic ingredient that, when added to a game,
would elevate you to instant success and profit beyond imagining. Or
so publishers thought, as they started to stuff live-service mechanics
into every game they could get their hands on.
      But, as it turns out, live service ISN'T magic and a lot of these
games failed. Some of them failed spectacularly; others scraped by. A
lot of the games did okay, but that was often despite their live
service additions. Often --even when they were profitable-- the live
service mechanics were a source of aggravation for the consumer and
may have driven many players away (either from the game itself, or
from any sequels), making the publishers ever more dependent on the
small minority who enjoyed the mechanics. And even when the game was
successful, their very success locked out other games from
succeeding... because the market can only support so many live-service
games.
      There are, after all, only so many gamers and so many hours in the
day in which to play. With an old school game, a customer might
dedicate only 20-80 hours on a game before looking for their next fix;
live service games demands months and months of play before that same
customer even considers moving on to the next game. Publishers who
might once have had four or five hit games -and the profits that came
with each- were now increasingly reliant on single games to keep them
afloat. And if their next game couldn't match the success of the
previous one, things could go sour for the company real quick. There
was no back-up to keep them afloat anymore.
      None of this is news; people have been writing and warning about
this for years. But the reality seems to finally be sinking in for
some publishers, who are scaling back their live-service dreams.
Capcom, for instance, moved back from making their next "Resident
Evil" game an open-world live-service game originally planned and
shifted it back to the single-play mechanics that made the franchise
so popular in the first place. Microsoft recently cut back on a lot of
planned live-service games (most notably canceling an entire MMO that
was already in production at its Zenimax/Bethesda studios). Other
publishers are doing similar.*
        [   There was also a quote from a developer -alas, I can't
       find the reference so forgive me the lack of specifics-
       that basically said that any new live service game is
       essentially competing against the same three or four big-
       name live-service games ("Fortnite" was one, "Roblox" another;
       I forget the other games mentioned)that have dominated the
       market for nearly a decade, and unless you think you can
       beat those your new live service game is probably going to
       end up being a flash-in-the pan, and not reach the levels
       of success necessary that you can base the whole company's
       survival around it.]
      So there is, slowly, some awareness amongst the publishers that
live-service isn't the cure-all to the financial struggles many
companies are facing. Certainly, the success of strong single-player
experiences ("Baldur's Gate 3" being the most prominent) are good
counter-examples too. More important, I think, is just limiting the
scope of many of these games; every release doesn't have to be a
half-billion dollar expenditure. Smaller titles can sell just as well,
and you can crank out more of them to boot. Sure, some will flop...
but as we've seen, there's no promise that your next $400 million
online shooter will succeed either (just ask Sony about "Concord"...
if you dare).

As a part-time game developer myself, I find that the number one route to failure is telling one person or more your idea for the game.  Even developers heading teams must keep the team in the dark as to the big picture they are working on.
--
Hasbro