One thing that drives me crazy is the current trend of never calling a game "done". It's one thing to ship bug fixes, but I'm talking about a constant stream of updates that add elements to the game, change the rules, change the balance, etc. I blame Minecraft for starting the trend, but Among Us and Polytopia come to mind as additional recent examples. It's weird when I start playing a game at, say, v1.6, really like it, then suddenly it can't be had anywhere because v1.7 is a different game.
I think Minecraft is a poor example to point to for this. Minecraft is a sandbox game, and doesn't have a story. While you can certainly decide your sandbox game is 'done', it doesn't have a endpoint that a story-driven game has.
Minecraft also 'incredibly' has first-party support for downloading and playing any previous version of the game. There's and incredibly vibrant community playing the game on years old versions of the game (mainly for modding).
Minecraft is perhaps the quintessential example of how to do it right - you can play today on the latest, or you can download still-developed 1.7.10 modpacks (and play them on Java 21 if you want muahahah).
Contrast this to World of Warcraft where you cannot play anything but the current latest (except via the now-released Classic, which still isn't the same as "preserve this version forever").
Factorio has also been "never really done" but they work hard to make the modding interface (and especially save games) stable.
Paradox - Stellaris would be a good example of this.
However, this gets into a question of game economics and "how do we keep paying developers?"
The "buy, one and done, no patches ever, bye" model for game development gets "this game is abandoned" and the initial sales splurge doesn't always cover the cost of development. Thus you've got DLC. If there are servers to be hosted for multiplayer lobbies, that expense needs to be paid somewhere.
So a constant trickle of updates / fixes / DLC / changes keeps the player base interested, and can provide the revenue stream to maintain those updates, fixes and servers.
On the other hand, looking at Stellaris DLC (or Crusader Kings) and you go "I'm gonna pay how much for that game?" while players who started from the start see it more as a "pay $20 / year for something new added to the game".
The usual way that is handled is every few years release a "catchup pack" for $x that gets you to a DLC or two behind, which looks like a good deal to new players and old players can ignore because they have most of it already.
Indeed. Most games seem to be targeted at folks who have all the time in the world and play games daily. If I'm very lucky I get a few hours on the weekend and maybe an hour or two during the week. It's frustrating to sit down and think, "OK, time to have some fun" and then be met with "game has 500MB of updates" and so forth.
It has some advantage, The games are growing with the community, improving on what the players are doing with it. And the company is usually making more money long term, as the constant improvement creates more attention and satisfied customers who will spread the message. I think to some degree this is also mirroring what the players often are doing unofficially with mods. Among Us, bus also Minecraft is very guilty of this.
There’s more games that can be called “done” now than ever before. Stop playing live service games and games that aren’t actually finished, and you’re good to go. There’s more finished games on my Steam account that I’ll ever have time to play, and I don’t even have that many games.
If you’re annoyed by games that were better before an update, that’s on you. Before online distribution you’d never even have a chance to experience them before they’re “done”. Now it’s your own choice that you’re complaining about.
Starcraft was doing that in the 90s including the tweaks to balance the different races. IMO it made the game better as clear imbalances got fixed over time.
Interestingly the balance was for multiplayer and they didn't update single player missions to accommodate the changes. I liked to replay the single player campaign periodically, and there was one base infiltration mission that became insanely difficult due to the balance changes. I'm fuzzy on the details but it was related to static defense buffs (protoss cannons if I recall), that meant the limited number of units you were stuck with for the mission couldn't reliably get past what was supposed to be a simple blockade without significantly upping your micro game.
Starcraft is mostly fine since the place where the changes really matter was multiplayer and those games are ephemeral.
Awhile back I was playing through darkest dungeon and they did two rebalances that changed how most characters work. I had spent time leveling up characters and building teams only to have the game change out from under me. It was annoying even if the final rebalance was better since I made decisions that were based on obsolete information.
Software and products changed fundamentally when ubiquitous internet access rolled out. Now every such product comes with a string attached (figuratively but literally), be it a game, a robot vacuum or a car.
This is a trend because it's an incredibly successful business model and most gamers want new content delivered monthly or so. They might not like the company or pricing, but Gaas/live service is popular for a reason.
There's also plenty of new games that are "one and done" outside of patches, probably more than ever.
Totally true-- but that went from a game I could barely stand to one I really love. It is a much deeper game today then the one they first released. I am OK with them updating it for that reason.
