You’re right. It is a matter of perspective though. For the actual players, absolutely. It’s always better to have self hosted matches and control the content yourself. But even in my example above, Overwatch could not sustain itself as a studio on the buy-once model, even with loot boxes. I still think they’re doing it wrong and it fucking sucks, but the buy-once model lead to a developmentally dead game for a few years.
From game dev perspective, having a model that makes money over time allows the game to continue being updated without investment from outside sources.
You can get money over time with the traditional model, just release content DLCs. I’ve spent hundreds on EU4 over the years, and I just treat their DLCs as buying a new game since it freshens up the experience for me. For MP, players get access to whatever DLC the host has, which works really well.
Overwatch could totally do that as well. DLCs could have:
playable characters/classes
game modes
maps/settings
SP campaigns
Nothing about the game requires an evergreen format. Some games do, such as CCGs like Hearthstone and Magic: Arena since they have frequent card releases and the games are designed around scarcity, but most of these don’t.
Pretty much any GAAS MP game would be better as a self-hostable game. Even ranked matchups can work well that way.
Games are designed around GAAS not because of the design of the same, but the profit model. GAAS is there to sell cosmetics and whatnot.
You’re right. It is a matter of perspective though. For the actual players, absolutely. It’s always better to have self hosted matches and control the content yourself. But even in my example above, Overwatch could not sustain itself as a studio on the buy-once model, even with loot boxes. I still think they’re doing it wrong and it fucking sucks, but the buy-once model lead to a developmentally dead game for a few years.
From game dev perspective, having a model that makes money over time allows the game to continue being updated without investment from outside sources.
You can get money over time with the traditional model, just release content DLCs. I’ve spent hundreds on EU4 over the years, and I just treat their DLCs as buying a new game since it freshens up the experience for me. For MP, players get access to whatever DLC the host has, which works really well.
Overwatch could totally do that as well. DLCs could have:
Nothing about the game requires an evergreen format. Some games do, such as CCGs like Hearthstone and Magic: Arena since they have frequent card releases and the games are designed around scarcity, but most of these don’t.
I don’t disagree with you. All I was really saying was that Overwatch specifically wasn’t making money with its model