LogFAQs > #979090707

MeatiestMeatus posted...

Palworld has planned endgame support and other post-launch content. That's live-service

That's early access. Certainly, live service games can have early access/beta periods, but to say "we've launched in early access, we're planning to do a bunch more updates before calling the game finished" is not a live service model. That's just early access.

Notably, they explicitly are not planning to make a game that's designed for people to play it forever. Live services are designed with the intent of keeping up a continuous supply of content to keep people playing indefinitely, almost always with some kind of recurrent monetization opportunities (whether a subscription fee, microtransactions, DLC/expansions, or a combination of the above) to capitalize on that engagement. If they're not planning to keep adding stuff to keep people playing forever, it's not a live service.

Heck, if we say that any game that keeps getting content updates after launch is a live service, arguably that means almost every game is a live service these days, and at that point the term just loses all meaning.

SinisterSlay posted...

Yup.
Dumb company: Use AI to reduce costs
Smart company: Use AI to increase production

The problem with increasing production is that there isn't really a shortage of games coming out of any major studio, nor is there a shortage of games coming out in general. Getting more games out can help to capture a greater share of that market, but games already struggle to stand out enough to be successful, and by and large producing more games means compromising on their quality and therefore jeopardizing their chances.

Generally speaking, because the market is finite (people can only buy and play so many games), you're going to see better returns by using new tools to produce the same output at lower cost than to produce more output at the same cost. The exact comparison will of course depend on the magnitude of the savings/production increase (saving 1% is obviously worse than selling 100% more), but I'm not surprised that companies are looking more for opportunities to cut corners than to expand.