Ex Destiny and Halo Producer Says Live Service Is 'Better for Developers and Players'

ign.com:

A former Halo and Destiny executive producer at Bungie has said the live service model is "so much better for developers and players" than the one-off $60 or $70 purchase model.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Theorycraft Games CEO and former Halo: Reach and Destiny executive producer Joe Tung said the traditional method of buying video games, meaning to make a single payment of around $60 or $70, causes developers to make decisions which were not "in the best interest" of players.

"I always felt like, in the $60 boxed product model, I was having to make decisions that were not in the best interest of players," Tung said.

"It was in the best interest of: 'How do we sell as many copies in the first 48 hours as we can?' One of the huge strengths of the games as a service model is you can be long term, you can think long term in terms of what is best for the player, and how does that overlap with what is best for the company. I think it allows you to make much, much, much better decisions overall."

Tung referenced the now defunct E3 and the trailers and gameplay clips which premiered there, promising what he called "bulls**t vaporware" that players would never actually get to experience, because all developers had to do was convince them to spend $60.

"I would wager that any developer who has ever worked in the $60 box product model, up until the point where E3 was cancelled, has a story about the E3 build," he said. "It's like, let's jam as much bulls**t vaporware into the build as we can in the next three months because we have to have a huge showing at E3, because it's our one opportunity to talk to our audience before we launch the game."

"I would have to wager that some hugely significant percentage of those E3 efforts ended up on the cutting room floor because they were half-baked and caused people to crunch and really make huge sacrifices to get it in," Tung added. "That's my favorite example of hugely impactful decisions that were not about what is best for the player."

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