The producer of Dragon Age has advice for those who want to make a World Of Warcraft: don't do it

When slashers were successful in cinema, all the producers decided to bet on slashers until there was no more audience. When romantic comedies were successful, we all got tired of Meg Ryan and Matthew McConaughey. When it was the turn of superheroes… Well, you get the pattern. There will always be people who jump on the success bandwagon by copying the leader, and it doesn’t always work out for them. And no, it doesn’t just happen with movies: in the world of video games, jumping on the success train is common… even if it means spending incredible amounts of money on almost guaranteed failures.

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This is the case with games-as-a-service, that thing that all studios bet on to ridiculous limits, without realizing that the pie was not endless and sooner or later it was going to fall. After the failure of Concord, everyone has had no choice but to redo their planning for the coming months, and now Mark Darrah, producer of Anthem and Dragon Age, gives them new advice: simply, remove those games from your calendar and stop making a fool of yourselves.

“When I try to get you to choose my eternal game, what I have to think about is that I’m not competing against another eternal game on its launch day. I’m not competing against World of Warcraft the day it came out; I’m competing against WoW in its current state. That game has gotten better after its launch for the player. Even if they’re not playing anymore, that experience improved over the time they did.” And facing a game that has given you everything at launch is definitely not easy.

As Darrah himself says, you compete against a routine, against “the inertia of the fact that this person has integrated the game into their daily life and already has their social circle built in these virtual worlds”. And of course, to play a new game they have to buy it, convince their friends to join, learn to play, level up… Why leave their happy place aside? It doesn’t make sense.

And that’s why games-as-a-service are failing lately: “Companies have forgotten this or didn’t know it in the first place”. There aren’t enough hours in the day, nor enough money in the wallet, to support everyone… And there’s no reason to play a clone of WoW or Fortnite when you have the original. Frankly, it’s about time they get it through their heads, isn’t it?

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