Live Services MUST Die!

To sum up Jim's video, AAA publishers are the worst.

But seriously.  There's a term that's going around in the AAA games industry called Live Services.  Basically, it's the video game equivalent of keeping cancer-ridden grandma alive in her deathbed while you keep paying the insurance and medical companies more money.  What Jim's video is highlighting is that companies like Ubisoft are restructuring their business plans to make less games while making more money on fewer games via daily content, DLC and microstransactions.  Live Services makes this happen.

Speaking of Ubisoft, one game of theirs I just so happen to be playing is Assassin's Creed: Origins, and I can see this happening already.  Daily quests and weekly events are introduced to keep players who've already beaten the game coming back for more.  This opens up spending opportunities to buy Helix credits and season passes and whatnot.  Of course, this is nothing new, keeping a game alive by continuing to support it with new content, but does a game like Assassin's Creed: Origins really need to be supported into the next decade?  Assassin's Creed games, with the exception of Origins, are yearly events.  If we're getting an Assassin's Creed game next year, or the year after that, who will still want to play Origins?  Unless... Ubisoft thinks that enough people will.  Therefore, the drive to make the next Assassin's Creed is reduced. 

Now, I dislike the idea of Live Services for a few reasons.  My first and foremost reason is that I feel all games need to end.  I very rarely buy DLC for games because after I beat them, I move on to the next game; I'm always playing something new.  It has to be an exceptional game for me to not only want to return to it, but to also spend money on an expansion pack while I'm at it. 

Another reason is because constant injections of new content while the game is still fresh is distracting from the main game.  To use Assassin's Creed: Origins as an example, I just now started playing the game, but there are quest events that are outside of my level meaning they're going to disappear before I'm strong enough to get to play them.  I really hate seeing them on my screen, and I hate to think of people who've spent money in an attempt to speed up their levels in order to access these daily and weekly quests.

That brings me to my last reason: it's exploitative as fuck.  Now I'm sure most people don't bother dropping money on microtransactions and other nickle and diming forms of DLC, but there are enough people out there that do to keep this business practice going.  There are the whales who have more money than sense, and then there are the addictive gamers who have serious problems and shouldn't be spending that money to begin with.  The fact that you need to keep asking the gamer to pour more money into a game they already played to dripfeed content to them that they should just be earning playing the game is unethical in my opinion.  It's just not defensible.  It's lead up to debacles such as Star Wars: Battlefront II that has put video games back in the sights of lawmakers.  It continues to get worse and worse with companies like Konami charging 10 dollars for extra save slots in Metal Gear Survive, a game which has a single player campaign, but REQUIRES you to always be online.  Now we know why you have to always be online.  Konami needs to know you need a new save slot so they can charge you for it!

This generation of gaming is the most disgusting, most disappointing, most disheartening generation I've had the displeasure of experiencing.  Yet, you get the new gamers who can't seem to wrap their minds around the concept of anti-consumerism and try to defend these companies by saying that video games are so expensive to make.  They need the extra income.  Yes, games are expensive to make, but no, they don't need the extra income.  They WANT the extra income.  They are greedy.  If not greedy, then they are horrible at budgeting.  Why do we as consumers have to be nickle and dimed to help recoup the hundred million dollars that they spent marketing a game of a franchise that everyone knows will release a new installment every year?

Live Services is just a horrible idea to me.  I know this is just my opinion, but gamers don't need to keep playing the same game for years.  There's SO much else out there to play.  Tastes need to be broadened so that we can see a more diverse selection of games.  If every AAA publisher begins to embrace Lives Services, then we're going to see fewer risks being taken.  That means fewer IPs and fewer games.  Do we honestly want to see a community of gamers who play nothing but Overwatch, Destiny 2 and Battlefront 2?  Is that how we want to be seen as? Playing the same thing over and over again?  Let's stop chasing the carrot, shall we?  It's time to kill Live Services!  It's time to just let grandma die!