The "live service" model is all played out | Opinion
We all have a pretty intuitive understanding of the anatomy of a trend in game design. A very successful title is followed by a wave of games which copy key aspects of its design – some taking inspiration while innovating successfully on the formula, others rather more shamelessly seeking to cash in by copying anything that's not nailed down (or protected by intellectual copyright law).Within a few years of the launch of the initial defining game – be it Doom, or Command & Conquer, Grand Theft Auto 3, Dark Souls, or any of a host of other widely-imitated titles over the decades – the market is awash with games replicating its ideas.Diminishing returns kicks in hard, though, as consumers begin to tire of ideas that no longer seem fresh. Some games' ecosystem of "clones" can escape this trap by diversifying enough to become a genre of their own ("Doom-clones" essentially becoming FPS games, "GTA-clones" more or less evolving into the open world genre), while others will spiral away through growing player apathy as attention moves on to the next trend or fad. Read more
We all have a pretty intuitive understanding of the anatomy of a trend in game design. A very successful title is followed by a wave of games which copy key aspects of its design – some taking inspiration while innovating successfully on the formula, others rather more shamelessly seeking to cash in by copying anything that's not nailed down (or protected by intellectual copyright law).
Within a few years of the launch of the initial defining game – be it Doom, or Command & Conquer, Grand Theft Auto 3, Dark Souls, or any of a host of other widely-imitated titles over the decades – the market is awash with games replicating its ideas.
Diminishing returns kicks in hard, though, as consumers begin to tire of ideas that no longer seem fresh. Some games' ecosystem of "clones" can escape this trap by diversifying enough to become a genre of their own ("Doom-clones" essentially becoming FPS games, "GTA-clones" more or less evolving into the open world genre), while others will spiral away through growing player apathy as attention moves on to the next trend or fad.
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