Live service will not save you.
During a quarterly financial call last night, Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts, laid some of the blame of a poor quarterly performance at the feet of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. He specifically alluded to its lack of live service features as a key cause of it selling far below target, stating:
"In order to break beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category. Dragon Age had a high quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played; however, it did not resonate with a broad-enough audience in this highly competitive market."
It's hard to know what is going on in the heads of a publicly traded company's CEO, but I can imagine seeing Dragon Age: The Veilguard hitting 1.5 million copies sold stings a bit when Anthem has sold 5 million over its lifetime. When your bread and butter is selling digital trading cards of millionaire athletes in a slot machine masquerading as 2020's FIFA or Madden, live service seems to be the only place in town.
We don't have to look that hard to see the problem though. Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad, arguably two games incredibly well-positioned to make the live service pivot, flopped. Hard. Sony has shuttered studios and projects left and right over the past year, all but abandoning its live service ambitions for their narrative first properties. Even Bungie couldn't land the live service money plane with the riveting conclusion of Destiny 2's story.
Perhaps the best analog to what a story-driven live service experience could be is right on the horizon: Ubisoft's Animus Hub (née Assassin's Creed Infinity). In the Animus Hub, it seems at least, you'll be able to see a timeline of all the Assassin's Creed games you own, visit your daily weapon's shop, and find new purchasable missions. How this is any different than what has already been in the past open world Assassin's Creed games or the uConnect (Ubisoft Play?) store is unclear to me.
The potential for Assassin's Creed Infinity is exciting though! I doubt Ubisoft will capitalize on it, but there is a world where your Assassin's Creed character (or gear or costumes) can persist from game to game. In each game, you play as a modern day character jacking into the Animus; established in the first and second games of the series is the "bleeding effect," the concept that skills you learn in the Animus can manifest in the modern day. It's not a leap (of faith) to think you'd be able to do that game to game, right? There's already a meta-narrative about the modern day, ancient gods, and Pieces of Eden, why shouldn't you be able to unravel that through the Infinity Hub?
The problem, of course, is that you're not going to achieve 10x growth with my dream Animus Hub. Live service will not save your game. It is becoming abundantly clear that it can't even save the games that pioneered the methods. New live service games aren't supplanting old ones, so it's hard not to look at Andrew Wilson's quote about Dragon Age and cynically wonder if he truly believes selling a Post Malone skin for $3.99 was all it needed to succeed.
Could a live service version of Mass Effect do great? Maybe. If you could've smashed Anthem into Mass Effect: Andromeda, maybe Andromeda would've been a better game. But, like Sony is learning now, there are some hard lessons to be learned about the gaming industry at large and what players actually want. Players seeking live service experiences probably already have their one game, so trying to hit the live service lottery is a suckers bet.
It's hard to look at the decade-long development cycle of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and not think this 100+ hour RPG suffered from top-down mismanagement; rumors abound that it had been a live service game at one point. Would 1.5 million copies sold feel a little bit better had the several years of live service exploration been excised? Who knows, but I can tell you one thing: if there's a future Dragon Age game, it doesn't need a holographic Varric to put on my Ultimate Veilguard team.
As an industry (and an enjoyer of video games), I don't know how we can sustain the constant battering of shareholder growth, but I'm confident that live service is not the White Rider we should wait for on the horizon, nor should it be the much heralded Grand Theft Auto 6. I've lost the metaphor a bit here, but more and more it feels like live service is actually the Orc that blows the wall in Helms Deep, instead of the omnipotent savior on the hill.
