Rocksteady & Friends Don't LISTEN!

Yesterday, I was on my way back home listening to Falcon’s (@FalcontheHero on X) new video on Gameranx (which, if you haven’t checked out their channel, it’s absolutely incredible, watch here). The title of the video read as follows, “This Video Game Trend is Killing Single Player Games”. What he’s referring to is the trend that some very large video game developers, such as Rocksteady, Ubisoft, and BioWare are currently utilizing in their games, which is creating live-service games.

THIS TREND has got to stop.

I’m not even kidding you. Not only because it is absolutely disgusting having players pay full price for a game AND THEN having them pay even more for a game once they have already bought the game... Honestly, I think that is the worst part of this entire debacle, but the second reason why I think this is bad practice for any game developer is because it is a clear tactic that tells us, the players, that you have stopped listening to us and you have decided to chase the dollar signs instead. Rocksteady & Friends have tuned us out and stopped listening!

Let me explain.

Let’s take a game developer that has created some of the greatest single-player experiences that I’ve ever played: Rocksteady Games. Now, Rocksteady is a huge game developing studio with a huge presence on all their social media channels and in the real world because they’re responsible for creating some of the greatest Batman games ever created. Therefore, they not only affect gamers, but our extra nerdy friends as well: the comic-book nerds. Honestly I just became a comic-book nerd and it’s pretty great, you should read a comic and pick one up for yourself.

All tangents aside, Rocksteady has a huge presence on all of their channels, yet the moment they see dollar signs being waved at Epic Games when they created Fortnite, their first instinct is to disregard everyone’s criticisms of creating live-service games and create one.

But here’s the thing. The live-service industry can be simplified as one big piece of pie. Because the live-service industry, basically, forces you into these games by having you “buy into” these games, there are only so many games that people can play without feeling like they’re wasting their money. In other words, once they’ve committed to one live-service game, they tend to stick with that game for a very long time. Therefore, the biggest players in the live-service industry, namely Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, and Rockstar Games, the creators of Grand Theft Auto Online, have already taken more than 2/3rds of the entire pie. Why? Because they’re good at creating live-service games.

It has taken both of these companies years to develop their live-service games and their dedication, and their willingness to listen to the players, has allowed for them to succeed. Just look at Fortnite:

That is Magneto AND the Brotherhood of Steel in the same picture (I’m not big on Fortnite, but you can check out what they’re doing in Chapter 5 Season 3 here). They have legitimately partnered with Marvel and Bethesda, some of the biggest companies in the world.

I don’t care if you don’t like Fortnite, you can’t deny it. They made it.

Everyone wants a piece of the pie, but there’s only so much of the pie left to go around anymore. Therefore, when I see these great game developers like Rocksteady create a game that has headlines like this:

It’s hard to watch because this should not be rocket science to upper management. I know what the trends and the data says about live-service games and I completely empathize with trying to make your stakeholders happy by going along with this idea, but your specialty is in single-player games.

Just don’t do it.

As simple as that. If they don’t believe you, just look at your audience online and listen to them. Read just a couple of their comments and, I guarantee you, you will understand their sentiments straight away. Sure, is there a lot of garbage that you may have to dig through online in order to get the jest of what we want? Of course, there is always going to be some level of noise when

trying to communicate, especially when you’re trying to communicate through multiple channels all at the same time. But have you ever tried to win a game of Warzone with three other players and no one has a headset?

No? It’s probably because it’s practically impossible unless you’re willing to carry an entire team because communication is the key to success. It’s the same thing with creating a video game. If you want to create a great game, listen to your audience. Check in on them every once in a while and understand that creating content on your social media channels for your audience is not the only reason why you have them. Proper utilization of your channels is being able to use them as a two-way street, not a one-way trip to the worst games imaginable.

So please guys, stop this whole live-service trash, it’s getting old for all of us involved, and start making games that we want to play.

And that’s it from me everyone. Sorry if I went on a little rant there, but honestly this whole live-service situation nuggets me so fired up that I could take my whole monitor and chuck it out the window...but I won’t because my wife would actually end me. But what do y’all think about this whole live-service thing? Are you for it, are you against it, are there certain areas where it’s ok for companies to utilize it? Let me know your thoughts on it! And, as well, if you want to check out more of my articles, check out last week's article here where I talked about a game developer that DIDN’T sell out: AggroCrab Studios. Absolutely legendary game developer and their game, Another Crab’s Treasure, is definitely a must-play game, y’all should check it out!

But enough talking! Have a wonderful rest of your week, play some video games and, as always, don’t be a normie!