2y ago

Get ready for shitty games from WB next year that are full of always-on and battlepass

This is from earlier this month. But it didn't really hit until seeing more Suicide Squad details.

"Our focus," he continued, "is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions, with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms."

https://www.eurogamer.net/warner-bros-says-it-plans-to-transform-its-biggest-franchises-into-live-service-games

Gotham Knights is a example. Get ready to see Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Batman, and Mortal Kombat all get that "live services" treatment.

34 comments

There must be more profit than last year.
We're witnessing gaming devour itself from the inside in pursuit of this impossible goal.
Buy indie
- What indie fighters even exist? Party game platform fighters and pony-cruft?

I see.
After ruining their streaming and movies, they are focusing on their gaming division.

Corpos gonna corp. Here's to the death of their kind

Another publisher to mark as ignored on steam
- I didn't know you could do this to entire publishers. TIL.

They'll change their tune when Suicide Squad is a colossal flop. These execs don't understand that it's really hard to do a good live service game.
- Yeah, WB is just late to the party. Sony was going to make a dozen different live service games, but they're reading the room now and cutting that forecast to less than half. With any luck, this is the tail end of the live service era.

They have yet to learn their lesson.

Guess I'll continue not playing any of their games

I could see it working for a fighting game but it feels like they've whiffed them recently. Wasn't Multiversus supposed to be a pretty big game? I remember it lasting a few weeks of hype and then going into hibernation, something about an early access release and then a season 2? I don't remember honestly.
Mortal Kombat easily fits into live service bullshit, sadly, with all the skins and cosmetics that could be applied to battlepasses instead of cosmetic stores.
All the great WB games in the past have never had this kind of monetization. All the Arkham games, Harry Potter; it's kind of sad seeing them take this approach in the future but it's just a cash cow even with a few whales.

Game of Thrones
Wait there are game of thrones games which aren't shitty mobiles or reskins of unrelated games?
- Telltale did a series years ago. Plus there was an RPG on the 360/PS3 gen too.
  
  Yeah, i meant more like the new ones since OP context seems to suggest future ones.
  AGoT have really bad luck for games, that old RPG was decent RPG (but bad as specifically AGoT game) and the best AGoT games are mods for Crusader Kings 2/3.

Harry Potter was great as is... No need to change it.

What is "always on" in a gaming context? I can't imagine wanting a game that you can't close.
- Constant connection to servers required to play, even if the entire game is being run locally.
  
  Oh, that's terrible.
- It means you must always be connected to the internet as a form of DRM.

Ok.
Who cares? This shit was tired decades ago.
Committee design is what it's always known to be. It has a name. Everybody here who has the basics of understanding knows what it is.

Isn't MK already pretty live-servicey?
- At least it can still be played offline, though character unlocks do require an internet connection. They also replaced the krypt mode, which was itself pretty grindy, with a far grindier mode that's far less fun this time around, so a significant chunk of the value is gone.

They're already beating MK with the live-service stick; they really fucking around about to make me a primarily Tekken player for the first time in like 20 years.
- Going to by the things the new Tekken has in common with the new Street Fighter, I don't think you'll escape that stuff in Tekken.
  
  god fucking dammit
  What fighting games even exist anymore that are both satisfying and non-polluted by publisher greed? I don't do shonen that isn't DBZ anymore; so I can't just backpedal to anime fighters for that-- and FighterZ's dead in the water without rollback, so even that's out

34 comments