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A few days ago, I released my Sea of Thieves review, which is a game I had a lot of fun
with and enjoyed quite a lot.
However, what I noticed from everyone's feedback is how polarizing the game is.
Some love it, and some hate it.
Whether it is a lack of content, repetition, lack of endgame, no character progression,
or even that is just no fun—people have a lot of issues with this game.
The problem is, Sea of Thieves is not the first, and certainly won't be the last,
game that suffers from these issues, which leaves a bad taste in many gamers' mouths.
Games like Destiny, The Division, GTA 5 with GTA Online, and Battlefront 2 have paved the
way for Sea of Thieves.
Each of these games focuses on the "games as a service" model, and through doing so,
may have already dug their own graves.
Is Sea of Thieves truly dead on arrival, and why did Star Wars: Battlefront 2 make gamers
so angry in 2017?
Today, we're going to talk about it.
To understand why Sea of Thieves was made the way it is, we must go back and examine
the release and life of Destiny.
While we could go back further, Destiny set the stage for online games as they are today.
When Bungie, the creators and developers of the acclaimed Halo series paired up with Activision
to do something new, gamers knew something big was going on.
The announcement and subsequent alpha and beta test for what we now know as Destiny
only served to ignite the flames of hype surrounding the game.
The shooting and traversal mechanics were nearly perfect, the world was beautiful and
seemed full of character and things to do, and the story and plot were intriguing.
Destiny may have been one of the most hyped up games in the last decade on similar levels
with No Man's Sky, but when the game released to lukewarm reviews, long-time Bungie fans
and people who played the beta were shocked.
Destiny was praised for its incredible combat, beautiful graphics and world design, and having
an addictive gear grind aimed to keep you getting better equipment and eventually the
best gear possible.
However, what it lacked was something that would damage the game long-term and would
require Bungie to release multiple expansions to finally fix.
The game's story was bland and uninspired; after completing the main storyline and grinding
for most of the gear, Destiny became a repetitive routine of completing one or two weekly events,
grinding the same few strikes and waiting 15+ minutes for an event to spawn in the world
which only has a small percentage of dropping the items you need.
So how did Destiny maintain a large player count even when most people had completed
nearly all there was to do?
That is where the promise of future content comes in.
Before Destiny even launched, you could buy the expansion pass, which would give you access
to the first two expansions the game would offer.
Knowing that there is more content coming, even if it is not currently accessible, is
something that motivates players to continue playing so that they can be as ready for that
new content as possible.
It took Destiny three expansions to be able to fix most of the game's issues, and by that
time they had lost a lot of their players.
The game lived on because of the promise of more content to come, and that content did
eventually fix the game.
However, is that something we, as gamers, want to allow developers to do?
Is it acceptable if developers release games with a lackluster amount of content, just
enough to get us by until they release their next update?
If you bought everything upon release, Destiny would have cost you nearly $100 by the time
the Taken King expansion came out and solved a lot of the game's issues.
Or, you could wait a year or more and get the self-branded "Complete Edition," which
implies the game's original release was not complete.
This is the kind of business model publishers and developers are aiming to go with when
they talk about "games as a service" and why online and social-focused games like Sea
of Thieves may be in serious danger.
Destiny was not the only game to release with similar structure and thus similar issues.
The Division was released with a very similar "online shared world" experience, a loot
grind, and a lack of end game.
While you could go to the Dark Zone, a place where PvP is allowed, and try to grind for
better gear, it was full of hackers and high-level players who just wanted to ruin your day.
Again, this game lost many of its players.
Nearly two years later, the game has finally been fixed tremendously and is seeing an influx
of players once more.
But the game wasn't in its proper state for TWO YEARS.
Destiny 2 released last year with a lot of improvements upon the first iteration, but
still having a season pass before the games release and offering much more egregious micro-transactions.
The shaders in Destiny 2, which allow you to color your gear, were made to be a one-time
use consumable.
Unlike the first game where you could change them out infinitely, once you use a shader,
it is gone.
The only way to get the shaders you want is to grind for them again or purchase them with
real money and get a randomized engram that may not even have the specific shader you
want.
Then, of course, you have the Battlefront 2 fiasco, where it was much easier to buy
items and characters in the game than it was to actually play to earn them.
There was a point where Dice had the micro-transactions set up to where it would take 4,528 hours
or $2100 to unlock all the base content.
Everything was loot box based; thus, everything you bought would be randomized.
All of these games that we have talked about cost $60 for the initial purchase, $10-20
per expansion, plus the cost of optional micro-transactions.
All of this is to say that these developers and publishers are designing games in such
a way that allows them to make as much money as possible.
Again, is this something we should accept?
Do we want to send the message to developers who are milking us for all we have that we
are okay with spending more money to complete the game that we already bought?
Take Two said that they want all of their future games to feature "recurrent consumer
spending opportunities."
And EA has said, even after they lost out on sales and goodwill for Battlefront 2's
problems, that, "live services that include optional digital monetization, when done right,
provide a very important element of choice that can extend and enhance the experience
in our games."
So even though most gamers speak out against them and feel they are causing developers
to provide less content for the buy-in price in leu of making money from recurrent spending,
publishers are still adamant about their place in games.
Why?
Because they make an insane amount of money.
Out of EA's 1.23 billion dollar revenue in their last quarter, 787 million of it was
from live services with only 260 million being from game sales—Over triple the profit on
things bought after the original purchase of a game.
This is why it seems so many games are going down this route—it may make many gamers
less happy, but it makes companies significantly more money in the long run.
And for businesses, money talks.
Enter Sea of Thieves.
Microsoft and Rare (the developers of Sea of Thieves) obviously saw the massive monetary
success of the previous titles mentioned, as well as what was seemingly lacking or could
be changed for the better; thus, Sea of Thieves was born.
And let's be honest, the premise of Sea of Thieves is unique.
Go alone or gather your friends up to explore an open world as a pirate, find buried treasure,
take over islands haunted by the dead, and team up with other players in the same world
that can do the same things that you can: fight, loot, and cause mayhem.
In theory, Sea of Thieves should be a game that everyone who has ever had even a remote
interest in the pirate life should want to play for hours on end.
So why has it been so polarizing, with many people playing for hours with their friends
and others bashing the game with only a few hours clocked in?
Where did Rare potentially go wrong, and what did they do right that most people aren't
getting to see?
There are quite a few complaints about the game that are well-founded.
People have said that there are not enough enemy variation (of which there are under
ten in any form), the quests are repetitive, the game gets boring after a few hours, it
is not fun in single-player, there is no real progression, you can only buy cosmetic items
and no upgrades or variations on already owned items, the world feels empty and meaningless,
and the game isn't worth it's $60 price tag, to name a few.
Do some of these issues sound familiar?
Many of them are the same things that plagued the likes of Destiny and the Division upon
release.
What is more intriguing about Sea of Thieves though is that the game is centered on being
more like an MMO than those other titles and does not offer the purchase of a season pass.
So what is the hook (pun intended) that will keep people playing, and what do people who
purchase this game have to look forward to?
Are all these complaints reasonable, or are they founded because of over-hype and expectations
that were beyond what the game planned to offer in the first place?
Rare has seemingly done all they can to set expectations as to what Sea of Thieves is
about and will contain.
There were multiple betas which everyone could play in, tons of trailers and videos from
the developers about the game, and as many people writing reviews and previews of the
betas and builds they saw as was possible.
Rare made it clear that what was in the final beta was basically how the game was, but that
full release would have more content.
Everything about this was true.
There were more trading companies, more quest types, more things to buy, and more places
to go.
However, the motivation and purpose for playing this game has never been too clear.
This is the biggest flaw in the marketing of Sea of Thieves and why so many people feel
disappointed.
Rather than a deep and complex dive into the world of pirates, with character progression,
tons of weapon types and enemies to fight, a compelling story full of pirate lore, and
a huge variety of land masses, shipwrecks, and dungeons, players of Sea of Thieves were
greeted with zany cartoon graphics, simplistic combat, mainly cosmetic upgrades, and relatively
similar islands and other areas.
As I noted earlier, there is also no season pass or slated expansions in the works, and
while we have heard from the developers about some additional content coming to the game,
Sea of Thieves' future is uncertain.
So what was Rare thinking, or are we just missing something critical about the game's
design?
As I mentioned in my review, playing Sea of Thieves alone is something entirely plausible,
but is not nearly as enjoyable as playing with a crew.
It is also true that I have had a ton of fun playing with others and being obnoxious and
silly.
I have made some memories that I will remember for years to come I couldn't have made anywhere
else.
The reason for this is that Sea of Thieves is a game focused more on being a social hub
to have fun, hanging out with your friends as pirates, messing around with other people,
and having some laughs while sailing the open seas and collecting that coveted pirate booty.
It's the reason each character has an instrument to play, the actual character models look
so silly, and why the graphics and art style were designed the way they were.
The game is about having fun, interacting with other people, and doing some light pirate
role-playing while you're at it.
In earnest, it's an experiment that is one of the first of its kind from a first-party
publisher, and also a game that entirely fails to market itself as such.
Gamers are conditioned to look at the content of a game, search out the story, progression,
depth and complexity, and what the game tells you to do to determine its value and if it
is worth it.
Sea of Thieves's value is not so tangible, and thus is entirely skipped over in search
of where the traditional content is.
Sea of Thieves was never meant to have RPG mechanics like character leveling, upgradeable
weapons, huge diversity in quest types, or a compelling story.
The content in the game is simply there to compel you and your crew to create your own
story and serve as a catalyst to get you exploring and encountering other players.
The appeal of the game comes in seeing your friends fire themselves out of canons, falling
off of the ship into the water while you are sailing at full speed screaming as they plummet
into the depths, desperately trying to empty the water out of your ship as it begins to
capsize, and the amazing feeling of fending off multiple ships and killing their inhabitants,
leaving all their loot for you.
While these are all just moments, each of these and the hundreds more like them are
all centered around the fun and silly social interactions this game is focused on.
Drink too much and you can fill a bucket with your vomit and throw it on your crew.
Someone making you angry on your crew?
Lock them in the brig.
Sea of Thieves is a game made with social encounters, humorous moments, and making memories
with friends and strangers in mind.
With all that said, we come back to the reason that the game so polarizing.
Sea of Thieves has brought to light something we, as gamers, as well as game publishers
and developers, need to work together to address.
For decades, games have been able to be placed in certain genres, and within those genres,
we all allowed a certain amount of leeway with the amount of deviation from what defines
games in that genre.
In the last couple of years, games have begun to take aspects of multiple different genres
and mash them all together, leaving them in a weird gray area between genres.
When someone asks you what type of game Destiny is, and you say a first-person shooter RPG-lite
shared world game, no one knows what that means or looks like.
To quote part of IGN's review of Destiny, "The endgame might hook you for the long
haul once you fully understand it, but Destiny is ultimately unable to be all the different
games it's trying so hard to be."
You shouldn't have to learn to understand what a game wants from you to play it.
This is Sea of Thieves biggest fault, and it is one we have never truly seen before.
Sea of Thieves doesn't know what it really is, and because it is a new type of game with
a relatively novel motivation for playing, it doesn't know how to market itself and
how to describe itself to potential players.
Sea of Thieves wants you to play it continuously and wants to be an online "games as a service"
for years to come, but its value proposition and reasoning for spending more money and
time with the game is not clear to most consumers.
Online games as a service are the future of gaming.
Whether we like it or not, when this much money is made and revenue from game sales
is tripled by purchases in live services, companies would be stupid not to chase the
dollar signs.
However, the problem that the gaming industry is facing right now is how to balance how
much content needs to be in the game at launch, how much content to trickle out, how long
to wait between drops, and how to explain to potential buyers what online and live services
mean for their game.
For years, we've paid $60 to have all the content on the disc and maybe paid for an
expansion or DLC that was substantial at some point after launch.
Now, games like Destiny, The Division, Sea of Thieves, and Battlefront 2 are launched
with a "base" version of the game, with a content plan set up for the next couple
years.
This means rather than getting everything into the game for launch, companies are picking
and choosing what to leave out and add later post-launch.
Most of the time, the audience is left in the dark until these pieces of content are
close to launching and don't know what is coming or how much more there will be.
While they wait, they play a game that offers them much less than another, more fully-fleshed
out title would, or they get sucked into an addictive loot grind specifically made to
keep you playing and buying.
While, in theory, there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach if it is done right,
it seems many mainstream games that are adopted to the games as a service model are treated
just like regular buy-and-get-a-complete-package games.
You simply cannot market Sea of Thieves in the same way you can market God of War or
Horizon: Zero Dawn.
If you are going to make a game that is focused on social encounters instead of more complex
and diverse content, that is something that needs to be made known to players.
If we have the expectation that we are just getting a "starter edition" with many
free and paid updates coming in the future, then backlash like Sea of Thieves has experienced
won't be seen as frequently.
Many gamers, through no real fault of their own, expected Sea of Thieves to have tons
of different content and quests to do, locales of all shapes, designs, and sizes, and multitudes
of ships, weapons, and equipment.
How were they to know this wouldn't be the case if no one ever explained the real point
of the game?
If the future of games is one where single-player, mostly complete packages are sold along games
that have continuous updates, live services, and micro-transactions built into the core
foundation, we need to develop a better way of informing buyers of what kind of game they
are purchasing.
We also need to develop a more transparent pricing model, where people can know that
for $60, they are buying a game that will force them to pay additional money down the
road to experience all of the planned content.
Many people had no idea that Sea of Thieves was built with a games as a service model,
and for $60 they want to be able to jump in and have tons of content.
When you can spend $60 on a game that you can play for 250 hours and still have things
to do, why would consumers buy a game that seems like it has no real variety and is very
bare boned instead? Online games are having an identity crisis, and games like Sea of
Thieves, Destiny, The Division, and Battlefront 2 are all suffering from it.
Sea of Thieves has some great things going for it, but its lack of proper identity and
messaging, seemingly barebones traditional content, no real accommodation for single-player
gameplay, and the motivation and purpose for playing going unarticulated, have caused the
game to lose its legs before it had the chance to properly earn them.
Unfortunately, Sea of Thieves also won't be the last game to shoot itself in the foot,
and with games like Anthem coming, which is claimed to be a live service model while also
being claimed to be Bioware's last shot, the future of online games and their developers
may be in serious trouble.
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