Opinion: Netflix of Video Games and Consumer Trends

Even though I am by all means a ‘budget gamer’ in that I don’t have the kind of money to buy the latest full-retail price releases all year around, my budget restricted to one or two full retail games and Steam sales, I think that the trend towards the idea of gaming as a service, as touted by Phil Spencer of Microsoft, is worrying for the consumer.

I feel that recently, companies have been concentrating too much on minimising risk and on making bigger profit margins, at the expense of creating great games. There have been exceptions to the rule, but many gamers agree that a lot of contemporary monetization trends in gaming have been anti-consumer. We’re talking, of course, of the idea of monetisation, on-disk DLC, day-one patches and microtransactions, even in full-price retail games.

The games industry, as it stands, is not sustainable. Many have said that the current console generation will be the last one, and following trends in gaming has shown a worrying pattern as the industry has been more influenced by mainstream appeal. Now companies are all looking to achieve blockbuster penetration and base their whole model on having that one, big game that they can release year-after-year that will make more than some small countries.

The reason that this is unsustainable is because the games industry has turned its back on its core market. In favour of milking cash out of the millions of mainstream customers, games companies have turned to creating games aimed at what we now call the ‘AAA’ space, focusing on high-tech, state-of-the-art graphics technologies and online multiplayer, the traditional medium of single-player, story-based experiences have gone out of the window. Other companies have gone into the mobile market or introduced microtransactions. So much of gaming in the mainstream space has become squarely anti-consumer.

That’s not to say that DLC is a bad thing; there are many examples of excellent DLC packs that are well worth their price, and in some cases, microtransactions have proven a good way to monetise content in a way that supports developers but also allows gamers to enter games at levels they are comfortable with. But the pattern has been negative, and we cannot ignore this anymore.

Buy a brand-new PS4 game off the shelves, and you will be hit by a day-one patch that will leave your game out of action for hours, if not days, not to mention the act of buying from different companies will land you a different game, thanks to pre-order bonuses or exclusive deals given to certain companies. There is no uniform, enjoyable experience anymore. In addition, DRM is continuing to prove evasive, punishing every day gamers with always-online connections in games that don’t need it, just to catch out a few pirates who will mostly have found an easy way around such measures in a matter of hours after release.

Phil Spencer, worryingly, sees the current state of the industry as the fault of the consumer, this much is clear in his article. He believes that this is because we are looking for a new way to engage with our media, and that the current issue is that we want a better system, and a Netflix-for-games will achieve that.

His premise may be correct, that the state of the industry is changing, and that we are looking for something better, but his conclusion is, in my opinion, flawed.

A Netflix for games may not seem like a bad idea on paper. Indeed, in the TV space the trend for streaming services has been a boon to quality programming. But the issue is, gaming is not TV. Not to mention that history stands against such an idea. So much of what we consider anti-consumer practice in gaming were initially seen as ‘possibly good ideas’, that have been horribly corrupted by poorly-implemented attempts to money-grab at the latest trend without care for the consumer. Just one glance at DLC, or micro-transactions, will be a good example of this. Given that Phil Spencer comes from a company that has become infamous for such corruption, this just seems even more likely to happen with a Netflix.

The issue for me is that Phil Spencer cites the declining market for traditional gaming experiences as a reason, but I think that there is a different explanation for this; games developers simply haven’t been putting the effort into such titles! In the article, Spencer states that “You’ll have things like Zelda or Horizon Zero Dawn that’ll come out, and they’ll do really well, but they don’t have the same impact that they used to have, because the big service-based games are capturing such a large amount of the audience. Sony’s first-party studios do a lot of these games, and they’re good at them, but outside of that, it’s difficult – they’re become more rare; it’s a difficult business decision for those teams, you’re fighting into more headwind.” It is clear here that he is talking from an Xbox-centred perspective, but my argument is, Xbox should then make better games! Look at the past couple years at how many great, story-based Xbox exclusives have come out, and there just aren’t as many as are brought out on other platforms. If you aren’t willing to develop a good product, then it’s of no surprise that people won’t buy the product.

Of course, the idea of a subscription service is good for budget gamers and for those who want access to a full library of different genres, and I may even see myself signing up for such a service, but the industry right now is being so hypocritical in trying to make sub-par games, and then blaming the consumer and industry trends themselves for their games’ inability to sell. Look at Doom, Resident Evil 7, Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, all big titles that are made as complete single player experiences and received with high acclaim. The evidence is there that people want to buy these games, they’re just not getting them!

I believe there is a lot of optimism to be found in the wider games industry if companies are willing to simply develop healthier marketing strategies. They may not make blockbuster amounts as before, but what is wrong with making games that aren’t pushing the state-of-the-art? Gamers love indie titles, and look at Breath of the Wild for evidence that we don’t care much about graphics. If it costs so much to make a full video game that you can’t make a profit, that’s a problem with your development process. People all over are making video games as one-man teams on a shoe-string budget, and they are running rings around big AAA titles in terms of innovation and critical reception. Why is this? The answer is simple; they are using a healthier business model. Exceptions exist, of course, but what I believe that the gaming industry must do is focus on sustainability; the AAA space exists as a totally separate industry from the market at large.

While I am not totally against new trends and new ways of monetising gameplay, I do believe that what developers are interpreting as a call for more anti-consumer methods and different ways to play games, can be much more simply interpreted as, games developers have lost sight of any kind of healthy business model or creativity in chasing the AAA mainstream market, and this ignorance has led to an unsustainable situation. If games companies took a step back from their laser-focus on creating the next CoD, they’d see a much healthier, sustainable business model in creating simply ‘A’ games. Look at how movies function; you have blockbusters and massive superhero hits in the summer, but then there are quieter films that sell a lot less, but aren’t considered failures. We need to focus more on the useful games than the profitable ones if we are to find sustainability.

I wouldn’t disagree, however, with a Netflix for gamers, I would certainly buy into the idea if it was implemented right. But, with the history of the developers who are calling for this trend, history suggests to me that such an idea needs to be taken with the strictest of caution, because industry corruption has infected most, if not all modern monetization trends in gaming largely to the detriment of the consumer. I am not saying that I hope it doesn’t happen, I am saying that the industry needs to be cautious and ensure we’re not ripped off.