Getting busy

In this era of games as services – we do wish the industry could come up with more elegant ways of phrasing these things, by the way – publishers want us to see their games not as playthings so much as pastimes. They want us to live within these worlds for months, and ideally years. In certain cases, we’re happy to oblige. But this is a two-way street, and our continued engagement, if these games are to have it, must come at a price. As this current trend continues, it is perhaps time to establish some ground rules.

First, if we are to return every day, you must give us something different, and worthwhile, to do. A colossal world is great; a busy one, even better. But if all you intend to fill it with is a seemingly endless series of quick, disposable shopping-list pp g tasks, , you will not hold our intention for long. A typical service game is comprised of m multiple modes and gametypes: give us a reason to play each day, and meaningfully reward us for doing so.

Next, legacy content must not be left behind purely because you have released something new. Awkward though it may be to balance the shiny and new against the old and creaking, we have paid for this stuff and often fallen in love with it. Bring it forward.

Lastly, and most importantly, your world itself must change. We can just about suspend our disbelief when a singleplayer game’s lavish open world is static for the couple of dozen hours we spend with it. But if we’re in it for the long haul, we want our worlds to grow and change around us, just as we do as players within them.

Two games get this stuff right this month, and it’s no coincidence that Destiny 2: Forsaken and Forza Horizon 4 are the highest-scoring games of the issue. If you’re making a game as a service, you have to actually, well, serve us.