The next huge computer game you play might never ever end

When Craig Duncan and his group at Microsoft’s Rare computer game studio were thinking up their next huge video game, they envisioned a world where individuals and their good friends produce their own stories as they play.

“It’s your mark on the world,” Duncan stated. “The core vision of it is players going on adventures together.”

That concept changed into Sea of Thieves, a cartoonish, tongue-in-cheek pirate video game, in which gamers take a trip oceans together in boats, checking out undersea ruins and browsing around islands dotted throughout the world. “It can be a genuinely magical experience,” he stated. “It can give you an experience that’s unlike any other.”

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Sea of Thieves belongs to a brand-new category of computer game developed to attract individuals into living worlds suggested to be bet hours on end. Inside the market, they’re called “games as a service” or “live service games.” But to everybody else, they’re an opportunity to play a preferred video game to their heart’s material.

This concept is far from brand-new. Adventure video games like 1999’s EverQuest and 2004’s World of Warcraft ended up being cultural phenomena, bring in countless individuals who not just played the video games however likewise purchased associated books and product for years. Millions even visited a feature film, properly called Warcraft, in 2016.

But in the last couple years, more business have actually produced their own handles the category. Many were on screen at the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo recently. 

Bethesda Softworks has The Elder Scrolls Online dream impressive and Fallout 76 post-apocalyptic survival video game. Electronic Arts introduced its Anthem experience video game previously this year. Bungie, maker of the industry-defining Halo series of video games, now uses an area fight impressive called Destiny. And Epic’s Fortnite fight royale last-man-standing video game has itself turn into one of the most popular in the market.

“There’s clearly a group of people — and I would go so far as to say it is a large group of people — who are very much into investing in something they can invest in and get what they want out of it,” stated Pete Hines, head of marketing at Bethesda. “They get back fun, entertainment, social connections, a feeling of progression and whatever else they’re looking for.”

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It’s not all happiness and roses, though. Companies say that as they’ve entered the genre over the past few years, they’ve learned these games are harder to create and maintain than they’d expected. The pressure to keep fans happy with new stories and experiences, while also finding ways to pay for the teams and technology that powers them, has led to trouble.

Some games, like Anthem and Fallout 76, have drawn criticism for launching with too many bugs and not enough enticing things to do. Gamers aslso criticized Take-Two Interactive Software’s Rockstar Games division over how Red Dead Online initially pushed people to spend real money to more quickly acquire guns and horses needed to play the game. (Rockstar has since changed the way the game works.)

“The industry is getting worse in a lot of ways, they’re getting more predatory and more exploitative,” said Steven Williams, a longtime gaming commentator whose YouTube channel, Boogie2988, has more than 4.5 million subscribers.

He and many other commentators say companies aren’t thinking enough of gamers or employees when creating these titles. They’re asking too much money for extra experiences, storylines and items, while giving back too little, he said. Stories of employees working seemingly nonstop to satisfy gamers’ expectations has also worried him.

And many of these gamers say new business models go over the line. One in particular, known as microtransactions, asks players to pony up real money on top of the original cost of the game to pay for extra designs for characters and weapons.

“We’ve got $60 games with $120 special editions, and microtransactions too,” Williams said. “It’s the nightmare scenario we were all warning about and now we’re there.”

While Williams said some gamers’ criticisms can go over the line, there is some merit to their concerns.

Game makers counter they’re learning as they go and frequently end up apologizing and attempting to make good with their community when they screw up. But they also say they’re answering players’ requests to create game worlds they can explore for longer periods of time with their friends.

“We’re trying to figure out what will engage and captivate,” said Strauss Zelnick, head of Take-Two Interactive Software, which offers online additions to 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V and last year’s Red Dead Redemption 2 cowboy game. (Zelnick is also interim chairman of CBS, which owns CNET.) 

Zelnick said his teams aim to offer “more value than we charge,” he said, even if it doesn’t always come across that way.

“You don’t want players to say, ‘I really, really love the game, but…'” he said. “You want them come back and say, ‘I really, really love the game and sure, I had to pay for it, but it’s appropriate to pay for great experiences.'”

The future

While it may seem to some gamers that these games are taking over the industry, developers are still producing self-contained titles too. Some of the upcoming ones include EA’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Nintendo’s forthcoming sequel for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Sony’s survival thriller The Last of Us Part 2.

Meanwhile, developers are figuring out how best to make this new breed of live-service games too. And as more of them are made, another problem is that there are so many on the market, it’s hard to decide which one to play.

“This space is so new,” said Matt Firor, game director for The Elder Scrolls Online. So his team has designed the game to be more welcoming to people who only play once in a while. For example, people who haven’t advanced far in the story can still play alongside dedicated players who’ve done nearly everything they can.

“Most of my friends have a main game they play,” said Sam Kirkendoll, 29, who works in fundraising for a university in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He’s been playing World of Warcraft since 2007, but he said other friends dabble, leave and then come back.

Firor, of The Elder Scrolls, learned that what brings back those dabblers are big updates with lots of new stuff to do. So his team has started hyping big launches of new stories much the same way TV producers market new seasons for their shows.

“You just need to keep innovating and bring new type of experiences,” said Kati Levoranta, CEO of Rovio, maker of the hit Angry Birds mobile game. The company’s tweaks and new things to do haven’t just enticed existing players back, she said, they’ve brought new ones in too. As a result, the number of people who have played Angry Birds 2 every day has continued to increase, despite it being four years old.

“We know the world where we live today is quite fast-paced, and there are new things coming along all the time,” she said. “So you need to keep yourself fresh and relevant.”

Keeping them happy

Game makers said one key to making it all work is giving players a way to offer feedback and then responding with tweaks as they go.

“You learn over time, because you always have the community giving you feedback,” said Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, which makes The Division 2 post-apocalyptic paramilitary thriller and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege strategy game. “We can learn what they want and adapt content to what they need.”

Rare’s Duncan released the game’s biggest changes in April, a year after its initial launch. The  update included storylines called Tall Tales, which were developed with the help of dedicated players who tested the changes and gave feedback. The company also put out regular videos to the community to keep them apprised of how development was going, up to its launch.

“Sea of Thieves today wouldn’t be the game it is without the journey we’ve been on in the last year,” he said.