Games as a Service is Dead

In this 2018 GDC talk, Iron Horse Games' Michael Gordon explores the origin of the "games as service" model to help developers understand how to better monetize their mobile games.

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[Rexodiak]

I raised my ear for a second after reading that title "has the time come?" nope, false alarm everybody, back to the cocoon it is.

[austincrist]

Title: Games as a Service is Dead
Video: Games as a Service is Alive, here's how to do it better

[ezariogerion]

It's amazing HOW MANY people you'd think didn't watch the video past the first two minutes. Literally all that he is talking about is how much your first impression matter more than everything past first month.
* Most of installs happen early.
* Conversion later is two times less.
* Best auditory that will persist and pay is early.
* First featuring is five to six times bigger than sum of featurings after.
Everything he talks about is how to make the best first impression, because later everything is gonna matter less. And that what the title means: "Games as a Service is Dead" because it's "Service" is not gonna last past first couple of month. After that it WILL fall into obscurity.

[nbfishie]

I’m trying to be open minded here, but this is not exactly one of the best GDC talks. It was purely about *marketing* mobile games, as opposed to game development, the title was clickbait and misleading, and the entire premise (“Games as a Service is Dead”) is factually false and was contradicted by the actual content of the talk. Not a good start.

In effect, this talk was kind of a microcosm of all the problems of mobile development now — clickbait, reliance on misleading and milking your audience, focus on marketing over development, revenue over quality, etc. It’s solely about engineering a product for maximum exploitation of a dwindling audience in Google’s marketplace, as opposed to making a good product, and maximizing your audience. I don’t think this kind of slash and burn strategy is sustainable, as you can only burn your players so many times before it starts to backfire.

Maybe I’m just not cynical enough yet, but I think games and games as a service can be better than this. And I think the ones that succeed generally are. For a talk that was only focused on maximizing profit, it was oddly ... unambitious. And short sighted I think.

[ChBoler]

These kinds of attitudes are why most people don't take mobile games seriously anymore.

[Alurith]

This video is the opposite of what it's called. I wanted to hear a guy talking about GaaS actually being dead.

[Mysda_]

This is not about making game but making money with as little game as possible. We need game ethics videos, this one is like the worst model for creativity

[IceGoldDev]

My man acts like a retired vet with PTSD talkin' bout war.

[michaellee]

I like how the misleading title of his presentation also stands as a meta-commentary of his ASO strategy.

[brunobely]

Alternative title: “How to milk your player base without the need to create a good game”.

[theodenking]

"Games as a Service" is the worst thing that ever happened to games

[DanylukF]

I always thought mobile games like these were made by satans army, not real people. Seven titles ln the frame of how long?! One actually released. That's quantity over quality folks, and sadly these things make a ton of money from predatory practices. Boo. 31:17 alright now Im starting to think this is a bad joke, E sports are the worst because you have to make a real game with real matchmaking and cant just get people to pay for power in some idle rpg game. Just wow.

[gabriel.knight]

Clickbait title talking about mobile games

[TechnoVikingOz]

Everyones complaining about the guy lying about GaaS being dead like they didnt watch the video. He flat out says that GaaS is a dead model for pretty much everyone, and repeatedly states that you have about 30 days of life to get new players, and that doesnt work with GaaS.

[keelanbowker-obrien]

"eSports are the worst! It's skill based... you can only sell cosmetics!"
And like, 2 months after this talk Fortnite started RAKING in cash.

[jackerty]

Interesting talk about current enemy of gaming. Click-bait title means down vote though.

[carlosbarcena]

After reading all these comments I had to speak up. I don't know if you guys are indie devs or know how they live, but one of their biggest problems is survival. In such overcrowded markets (steam isn't even different from mobile) the games are really difficult to be seen, and they need to get as much people to note them as possible to even make the game profitable and have enough money to make another one. All the tactics in this video are meant to get discovered, after that is up to the game to actually be worthy of being bought or invested on. There are tons of jewel games out there that were a comercial failure because they couldn't sell enough. By the way marketing isn't only to pay to appear in ads, it is algo devlogs, community work, everything we do to show our game to people, so that they play it and we can survive and keep living the dream of making videogames

[voltcorp]

honestly the 50/50 likes/dislikes and the comments bashing the talk really show how much of the GDC channel audience are hobbyists and college devs who don't really see gamedev *business* as a *business* that requires *business* thinking. if you're just doing it for the artistic merit, than obviously this talk isn't for you. but the existence of a games industry isn't this dude's fault, and the cutthroat nature of the mobile market in particular most definitely isn't either.

[KasperMcKay]

What an absolute forfeit of ethics. Boils down to “if you can’t make a good game but wanna milk peoples money anyways here’s how to trick em with marketing!”

[McPhisto]

Made it 8 minutes into the video, then I realized that I don’t care about this guy’s tips for selling virtual crack to people in the most efficient way.