Thoughts on Free-To-Play, AAA Titles and Vacation

Hey all, I was on vacation for most of August. Spent some time with family in Moscow and New York. I apologize for not getting on but I just needed to take a break. I'm back now, though, so let's get started.

The news has been buzzing with talk about EA's future goals (of which I've detailed on my blog months ago) finally being made public and the Assassin's Creed 3 director saying he thinks AAA games are dying out. Let's start with EA.

Electronic Arts

I've outlined in many previous posts about EA and what their future goals for gaming were long before the public was aware, and I'm hoping now that the news is out that people will start listening and realize the truth.

EA is banking on 100% Digital, that we all know already, as well as the Micro-transactions, aka Free-To-Play. Sadly, I think the Micro-Transaction/F2P model IS going to take off, mainly for Two (2) reasons:

1) While a lot of Hardcore Gamers won't buy into this, the vast majority are likely to give in if the base price is cheap and it becomes streamlined to purchase the extras on top.

2) Casual Gamers, or more specifically people who play games to kill some time, are definitely going to embrace this idea because they already have on the mobile devices.

I honestly don't think there is much that can be done to curtail this trend. The one and only thing that will completely fuck over Publishers like EA and Activision is if something happens that screws up the game or if the games they release are drastically stripped down to the point where the game becomes simply boring and, to be frank, sucks.

If EA/Activision don't shoot themselves in the foot over some mess up, I think people will embrace this idea, and that is extremely grim for the future of gaming.

So the moral of the story is DO NOT SUPPORT EA/ACTIVISION or any other Publisher that wants to infringe on the rights of Gamers.

AAA Titles

You've probably also read about the AC3 Director speaking about the future of AAA titles and how he thinks they're a dying breed. I couldn't possibly agree any more with him, he is completely right. There are Two (2) reasons that will help propel the industry into decline in the coming years.

1) The big publishers are pushing for F2P, as talked about above, so they can release content on Day 1 and over time to capitalize on increased profits.

2) The cost of Current-Gen and Next-Gen games is skyrocketing.

With respect to the cost of game projects, the Next-Gen systems are not going to help in reducing the overhead costs of producing games for said systems. Even if there are already set engines in place and certain criteria met beforehand, it's going to cost much much more to develop because people are going to be expecting outlandish visuals and High-Definition content.

When I say "High Definition" I don't just mean graphically, I mean HD in the sense of immersive sound, increased feature-sets, gameplay, content and more all wrapped in a big package with a pretty bow on top. As the levels of expectations increase, the price will follow suit. As stated above, I can see Publishers pushing Devs to be more adaptable (read: forced) to their thoughts and expectations of Next-Gen content, i.e. F2P.

This all spells the demise of AAA games as the mainstream. To be honest, though, I don't see this happening in the near future. AAA games will continue to be made for at least the next few years, if not 4-5 years, because they know there is money to be made in doing them. But, what I am trying to say is that as time goes on and budgets shrink and costs go up, games will start to lack even more content than they do now as Publishers try and push towards F2P to maximize profits.