Live service games

Live service games are games that keep changing for years after they are launched. The model is also called games as a service. The studio adds new levels, events, characters and items every week or month. It runs the servers that players play on, and it studies how they play to decide what to build next. Most popular phone games in India are run this way, and so are many big console and PC games.

Here is how it works in general. The studio launches the game with enough content for the first few weeks. Players log in, and the game's servers put each player into a match with players of similar skill. This is called matchmaking. The game records what each player does: which level they fail, where they stop playing, and what they buy. This record is called telemetry. The studio's analysts study it, and the studio releases updates: a new map, a festival event, or a fix to a level that is too hard. New content is often grouped into seasons, each a few weeks or months long. A season pass is a paid ticket that unlocks extra rewards during one season. Players come back for the new content, and the cycle repeats.

Why do studios run games this way? A game sold once earns money once. A live game earns every month, mostly from purchases inside the game. Most players in India never pay, so the game must keep large numbers of players coming back until the few who do pay make their purchases. On a user-generated games platform, the players themselves make much of the new content.

The cost is that the game is never finished. It needs a large team for years, servers that never stop, and a constant supply of new content. That need is one reason studios now use AI-generated content for art, text and levels. A game that stops receiving updates loses its players, and in the end its servers are switched off.

Take, for example, a free-to-play mobile game about cricket. For each new tournament, it adds teams, kits and challenges, and sells a season pass.

Consider a word puzzle game with a new puzzle every day. The daily puzzle gives players a reason to open it each morning, and playtesting and game analytics show which puzzles are too hard.

Say a football game for consoles is sold once, at a fixed price. Like many console and PC games, it is still updated with each real season's players, and it sells extra items inside the game.

How is a live service game different from a game that gets updates? Many games receive patches, small updates that fix bugs. A live service game is designed from the start to change, with plans for new content for years, and with income that depends on players returning. It is also different from freemium, although many live service games are free to play. Freemium describes how a product is paid for. Live service describes how it is run.