How do you define Live Service/Games as a Service?

Games as a service and live service are actually the same thing. Different terms to mean exactly the same concept. And if you go anywhere at all you'll usually see these terms used interchangably. For example:

I'm a consultant in the free-to-play and live-service games -- games-as-a-service -- business,

www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-02-24-the-six-common-mistakes-when-moving-into-games-as-a-service-and-free-to-play

Strawman. And a rather disengenious one too.

From Casey Hudson (as a note I do not know how to share tweets, esepcially on mobile, and I did not realize these were the same tweets):

"Conversation
Casey Hudson
@caseydhudson
Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you’ll be relieved to see what the team is working on. Story & character focused.

Too early to talk details, but when we talk about “live” it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story."

Now is this a specific definition? No, the idea of air quotes is rather telling in that regard. But it is still a clue into BioWare's mindset and what BioWare means by live games, live service, and how they are treating it. This "definition" (see how easy this is?) alligns with seemingly how 99% of the industry "defines" it as well...or at the very least the trend the industry is going in whether or not they call it live service or not. (Words are fun).

Now as to your metaphor again NO ONE! is suggesting that BioWare has been making live service games for twenty years. That is silly and a silly read given how many times I have to play whack-a-mole correcting that impression. Its either pure misreading of my words or a deliberate troll job at this point.

Its more like comparing Bread with making a cake. Both things can have a lot of the same ingredients in them which lead to a lot of the same outcome, but they are obviously very different types of food, they are similar, they have the same structure, and a cake might even be stretched to be called a type of bread...but they are very different.

Ugh I forget the exact point...my mind is mush!...but I did remember...*checks* Yeah Sire's post up there did bring up something I wanted to address...the whole idea that 'road maps' are a marketing pitch. The entire idea of a live service game is a marketing idea in the first place. Live service is not a genre for gaming, it tells us nothing about how the game plays...its not like saying 'this game is an RPG'...its pure marketing speak pure and simple. Its not about how games play, but how they are released and supported long term.

tomato tomatoe perhaps?

Edit: Or to borrow another one of my favorite apherisms...a distinction without a difference.

Not a very important one. The idea that Bioware is concerned about Post launch support is as interesting as TV producers being concerned about a second season.

Not a very important one. The idea that live service is about in post launch support is about as telling as chocolate bars are for feeding people. Sure they are, but it's beside the point.

Live service, while being about post launch support, is about much more than JUST post launch support. And that's something the entire industry also accepts.

It's neither. It demonstrates how "useful" (notice the quotation marks) your, and Casey Hudson's statement, is in determining what are and aren't live services. It demonstrates the definition is pretty darn useless.

1. I have no idea what you are getting at there.

2. Maybe. However I do not know what everyone expects here either. Its like the fandom is trying to complicate a problem that is actually very straightforward and simple. Or at the very least, as I pointed out to Logicgun on page one...the implentation of live service as a model for video games is only complicated by the fact that almost every company, indeed every franchise, has slight differences on the concept. And back to the cake metaphor, live service ingredients can include DLC but just because a game has DLC does not make it live service. If we cannot except this fairly straightforward definition then the issue would seem to be with us...not with BioWare or the industry.

3. Ah ha! I do wonder if this is a reference to something I made considering one of my big pushes on how useful a definition is when it comes to conversing about it. But, all I can say is that I find the definition personally very useful. I mean at the present time it kind of is the only useful one we got because most of the alternative definitions I have heard...advanced by fans...is quite logically flawed for one reason or another. 'live service games are multi player' yeah what about... 'live service games need to be always connected to the net'... yeah what about. IMO Hudson's definition and the various variations that me and others use who accept it as practical is the only one that is consistent enough to explain all these contradictions.

Edit: Or to add onto the above further 'live service is always predatory and a bad business model'...and while this comes down to pure personal opinion since I do not think most of the things others find predatory actually are...yeah, what about.

I will be the first person to say that I could be remembering those statements wrong for it has been awhile and the few times I have spent a few min trying to find them I haven't found anything.  What I do remember is that the statement about Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 both happened just after it was reported about EA's mandate about having Live Service elements in all their future games.  With the comment about adding more content to the game without a patch was made after Andromeda's release and before Anthem's release for I believe it was a response to people making the claim that all future BioWare games would be exactly like Anthem after it was announced to be a live service looter shooter so they would be pushing the "live service agenda".

The interesting thing is if I am remembering correctly to me that would mean that The Keep and The Archives could easily fall into the live service idea that BioWare has.  For they both allow a person to create or modify a save externally of the game and then save it to EA's servers and access it in the respective games.  

1- Your attempts to blame fans for how they perceive live service games because they've experienced live service extensively before is pathetic. They aren't speaking from a position of ignorance unlike some others.

3- As I said before, that's a you problem.

The frustrating thing is all this handvwringing is probably becoming more and more irrelevant. Since the term is so scccaaarrryyy the game industry is backing away from using it, despite pretty much doing all the things they were doing. We'll see what this means for DA 4.

I prefer to stick to some basic foundational things, like persistent drop-in drop-out co-op, always online requirements for the game to function, etc.. Things like DLC and the sort don’t count, so it’s always kind of weird how that’s always a sticking point. I guess people expect developers to continuously send updates via physical discs in the mail, a la AOL in the late 90’s or some shit? I dunno.

In any case, if Dragon Age or Mass Effect were to ever go “live service”, you can kiss your beloved choice and companion system goodbye, because “real people” become the focus from that point forward.