How mainstream video games fell victim to the "live-service" plague

Source: Activision

There are plenty of new games that were designed with the live-service philosophy in mind. For that market, it's a decent strategy. Take Fortnite for example. Without the idea of promised content, that game wouldn't last a month after launch. The developers of Fortnite built their game to have a solid foundation. One that can help support them with additional content.

However, when it comes to pre-established franchises such as Halo, Call of Duty, and Mortal Kombat, they took this approach a little too seriously. So much so that, sometimes we're lucky they even sold us a game in the first place.

Call of Duty

Did you know that on launch, in Call of Duty Vanguard, you could not pause the game when playing zombies by yourself? How about Modern Warfare 2, did you know that the game didn't launch with any hardcore playlists?

They are even changing integral elements to both zombies and even multiplayer. With the purpose being, to get you to play their main live-service title, Warzone. Of course on zombies, you no longer have a distinct cast of characters. Instead, you can buy operators and skins from an ONLINE shop that replaces a traditional cast and crew. Instead of a CHARACTER surviving the undead, it's now a random operator that has no impact on the gameplay/story at all. Not to mention, with regards to zombies, core gameplay features have changed to get you to play Warzone. Instead of a limited hud and weapon supply, you have a mini-map, waypoints, loot, custom classes, objectives, health bars, damage numbers, armor plates, and other things. Again, all in the attempt to appeal to their live-service title, Warzone.

When it comes to multiplayer, the same thing can also be said, to a certain extent. Traditionally, your character was just a random soldier from whatever faction you happen to be. Now, like zombies, you can swap out whatever character you want. Want to paly as Snoop Dogg fighting Captain Price? You can. Of course, this doesn't have the same impact as zombies does because of the lack of story on the multiplayer side. However, the point can still stand. Characters are taken out in order to lure you into a shop where you can spend more money on the game with the promise of "customization."

The live-service model can even have an effect on a singleplayer campaign. Black Ops 4 was the first case of this as they ditched their (presumably almost complete) single player mode for a Battle Royal. The campaign was said to be ambitious with a promise of open world exploration and multiple paths to take (similar to Black Ops 2). Thanks to unused, fully animated cutscenes, it took many elements of past Black Ops games including zombies, past characters, places, and even multiplayer characters (yes Black Ops 3 had "characters" in it's multiplayer with personalities and everything). Instead though, they scraped it in the middle of development to work on their Blackout mode(COD's first Battle Royal). The point being, we lost a potentially amazing single player experience in favor of an online mode that didn't even last a year after launch.

Halo

Halo is a pretty hot topic when it comes to actually missing features and modes, literally. Before launch this became a legendary statement within the Halo community, "For any FPS going out forward, we will always have split screen in..." Well guess what? Halo Infinite didn't launch with split screen. This was all in order for them to "divert resources" to other areas of the game. Things like a shop and bundles, things you can pay for.

The game also didn't launch with the basic feature of mode selections. You couldn't select team slayer or griffball, you had one button to select and that was quick play. They tried to chalk this up to "ui limitations," people still don't really know what that means.

Also, the game didn't launch with forge. To put that into perspective, forge is like the zombies mode of Halo. It has it's own niche fanbase that is plenty big if you dive into it. However, it's very clear when you do recognize it. In other words, Forge has become a staple mode in Halo, much like zombies has with COD.

When it comes to Halo Infinite's multiplayer, the same can be said it's treatment of the store. Gone are the days of customizing your Spartans with colors, gear, effects and skins for FREE. On launch, basic colors like red and green were all behind a $8 paywall. This completely destroyed an integral part of Halo's multiplayer scene. The ability to customize your Spartan has been in the game since Halo Combat Evolved (a 22 year old game at the time). Now, when Infinite launched at least, there was no free customization.

Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat 1 was a bold shift in the direction of the MK franchise, although not at all unfamiliar. The game sought to reboot the series, creating a more classic design and aesthetic. When it comes to features however, a pretty coat of paint cannot save this game. However, this may be a byproduct of what kind of game all others in the fighting genre are.

Mortal Kombat 1 released to a pretty well-praised single player campaign. One that captured the interest of the solo player. However, that's really all there is for those players. Looking back at the previous Mortal Kombat game (MK11), the game launched with a grind. That being gear and skins to unlock, %99 of which can be unlocked for free, just by playing the game. The standard game looked like this in MK11, play a couple of towers, unlock rewards, rinse and repeat. This was very sustainable as you can unlock most skins in the game for free. In Mortal Kombat 1 though, like the other games on this list, customization is almost entirely exclusive to an online item shop.

This doesn't help that MK has recently had a bad wrap for overpriced DLC. Some have even argued that those DLC packs are pointless as they rarely feature returning MK characters. For MK1's case, DLC 1 gives you two Superman clones, a random DC character (who doesn't even sport his original character, it's John Cena's adaptation), and two characters who are in the story mode and were cut short to be added into this DLC pack. The point in bringing this DLC problem up at all is the fact that, like the other games on this list, more resources are being poured into a digital shop than the actual game you are paying for. This is all in the attempt to bring players back to the game so they can spend even more money.

Overall

This is all done with a promise of an ever adapting "live-service." One that can and has done well for some franchises. However, as we've seen from initial player reception from these games, it can destroy integral parts of what these games are. The live-service model can do well if implemented and iterated on a finished product. A game that launched with all every feature, mode, and promise. These three games have showed us that, at the end of the day, these are all just companies trying to chase the latest trend. If that means getting rid of what makes their games unique, to them, that's a sacrifice they are willing to take.