Five Factors That Affect Games Longevity

Regardless of their quality, games usually have a predictable lifecycle. Games release to a wide audience, earn a lot of money from the large player base, lose players quickly as no new content is released and bugs start piling up. Games take an eternity for developers to fix all the bugs and optimize them for different platforms. Developers get bored of working on the game and move onto other projects. 

The game dies out completely and people forget about it completely. This cycle is something that the developers at Meteor Entertainment — makers of Hawken — are now trying to combat with their latest project based on Source 2 engine technology called “Earthrise”. Black belt coin mhw is something that is becoming increasingly more common to game developers and publishers as they look to gain as much profit as possible from their games while they are still hot.

The term “over-saturation” was probably first used by William “Bill” Pugh in the early 1980’s when he started describing how many games were being made that were totally unremarkable in their gameplay, visuals and overall quality. Games couldn’t be too good or too bad because there was so much competition from other mediocre titles. As we are now living in a golden age of gaming thanks to Steam, digital marketplaces and platforms like iOS, Android and the web — companies can make whatever product they want without fear of it failing due to market saturation.

Five Factors That Affect Games Longevity :

1. Gameplay

Developers like to come up with wild and crazy ideas for their games but no matter how good an idea is, the quality of the execution is what matters at the end of the day. A game with a bad premise, terrible controls and broken gameplay will have a short lifespan regardless of how much marketing hype you throw at it. 

Developers need to be smart about what they are going to do for their games because some ideas are just too radical for public consumption which in turn affects the longevity of that game or franchise. Gameplay is what keeps players coming back to a game and if you don’t have a solid core of gameplay that’s entertaining, you might as well call it quits.

2. Multiplayer

At this point in time, multiplayer is an essential part of every single game release because of the increasing popularity of online gaming as well as the fact that most developers are trying to maximize profits out of their game through subscriptions and micro-transactions. 

Multiplayer brings in a lot more revenue for companies than single player titles and that’s partly due to the fact that developers can monetize day one with their multiplayer games rather than having to wait months or even years for DLC packs and micro-transactions to be released. Customers are invested in the game and they are willing to pay more to preserve that investment.

3. Development

The time period between a game’s release and its arrival on the market is called the “overhaul”. Developers like to keep trying to fix bugs, add new content and customize their games to make them appeal to a wider audience as well as making sure that their game is always up-to-date with the latest PC hardware so they can earn revenue from selling extra downloadable content. 

Developers have a very large team working on developing a new game from concept art, writing dialogue scripts and editing audio tracks — all of these need to be completed before the game is released. In order to release a new title they have to be complete otherwise they would then have to start all over again.

4. Marketing/PR

Marketing and PR is a very important part of a game’s lifecycle and it might not be so obvious but the quality of your marketing materials for your game can really affect its popularity. 

If your game has a beautiful trailer which is done by someone who understands composition, color and composition — the player will associate that with your title. If you don’t have the budget to afford high end movie-style trailers then you’ll have to make do with fairly generic one that aren’t too eye-catching.

5. Release Date

Game development is a lot of work and developers can only work so fast to get their titles done before the estimated release date. Developers don’t want to rush their games out on the market but they also can’t afford to hold back the release due to development issues. 

It’s always important for a developer or publisher who is releasing a title for consoles or PC to make sure that their game doesn’t end up competing directly against other major releases in the same genre.