Live Service has reshaped how gamers view time spent online: A look at the past and psychology of the present.

Call of Duty: Warzone has taken the franchise in a completely different direction. And not for the better.

Live service. The phrase alone can send a shiver down your spine. As a gamer of a certain age (33 to be exact), I let out an audible sigh every time a new trailer is released for a game that looks right up my alley, only for it to immediately be announced as a free to play, live service title. Now F2P is not an inherently bad thing at all. It gives the game a great chance to gather an audience (especially if it is for a new IP), and on the consumer side, it gives us a chance to try it out without spending a dime. The problem is, we are spending far more than a dime, and I'm not just talking about money. I'd like to approach this ongoing battle against live service from a different perspective. There are thousands of articles out there written by journalists with much talent than myself that have already talked in great lengths about the predatory practices of live service. Instead dear reader, let's take a look inwards. A quick retrospective and perhaps even a look at our own psychological make up.

Battlefield 1 provided top class multiplayer chaos without an ongoing battlepass or seasonal content.

Looking at the past

I realized after writing the title to this section, that some of our younger gamers have actually never experienced an online multiplayer experience that wasn't a live service. I hope by bringing up some great examples, I can demonstrate that online gaming was in a great place long before battlepasses came along.

Let's go back to the 360/PS3 era (which I personally believe is the golden age, but that is an article for another time). Many of us got our start with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and similar to kids with Fortnight today, we rushed home after school to get online and play with our buddies all night. I think with our rose tinted glasses we often build that game up to be something that it wasn't, but I believe it's simplicity is what gave it the strength to become a staple of modern gaming. While revolutionary in some aspects like the perk system, the multiplayer suite was actually pretty straight forward: there were roughly 4-6 weapons of each type, 16 great maps at launch that focused on proper positioning and flow as opposed to the now industry standard 3 lanes, unlocks that progressed by leveling up (solely by playing, not but dishing out money), camo challenges that prioritized skillful headshots, and most importantly, a map pack DLC that gave us 4 new maps at once, not the drip feed of seasonal content you see today.

What about a series I'm more fond of: Battlefield. In a similar fashion to CoD 4, Battlefield 4 launched with 64 primary weapons (86 in total) and 10 large scale maps. Over the course of the next 1.5 years they would release 5 total map packs that also added a variety of new weapons to the game. And guess what? We played it and played it and played it. Never once complaining that there was a lack of content or without any worry of AI slop.

The king of games from this era, at least from a longevity stand point, is Left 4 Dead 2. With over 32,000 concurrent players on Steam at time of writing, it proves that if you make a game that is not only a blast to play with friends, but also respects the players time and wallet, it can stand the test of time. It had 3 paid DLC's, and one free community update. It didn't drip feed you one map at a time. It didn't gouge you for cosmetics. L4D2 knew what it was and did the co-op shooter better than anyone else (arguably still has to be topped in my opinion).

Now, you are thinking to yourself "well that sounds reallll swell boomer, thanks for the trip down memory lane, but that sounds BORING". I can see how a younger generation would feel this way. There's no ranked modes. There's no cosmetic shop to flex on your friends that you have the latest cross-over event skin. There's limited challenges; once you have unlocked all weapons and finished all the camo grinds, all that was left to do was just play the game purely for enjoyment/competitive challenge. Re-read that last sentence. Now re-read it again. My dear reader we are getting into the meat of it now, stick with me, it's all coming together.

Battlefield 6 was a return to form in many ways, but is it enough?

Has Modern Gaming Reshaped our brains?

What inspired me to write this article was actually a phrase that a good friend of mine constantly utters while gaming online: "I don't know what to do now". Most recently he stated it while playing Battlefield 6 after completing the battlepass as well as the class challenges. With nothing to grind for, he felt kind of directionless, unsure of how he should approach the maps or perhaps if he should even continue playing at all. What's been so comical to me is that every time he mentions it, I always respond "just play the game", which to me, seems so common sense, but I have a feeling he is not the only one in that boat. In fact I know he is not.

If you recall the viral video from renowned streamer xQc who after the BF6 beta, famously said that Battlefield needed a ranked mode and battlepasses to grind. Now if someone genuinely enjoys those things, there is nothing wrong with that. I myself, am a big fan of Marvel Rivals and love to grind ranked mode (shoutout fellow support players, we are the unsung heroes). However, I believe his sentiment to be a greater symptom of what modern gaming has conditioned us to enjoy: the constant dopamine hit, that constant feeling of doing SOMETHING. It has affected us down to our very core, even if you aren't someone who is compelled by FOMO or needing that constant dopamine, it still shows up. It shows up in game development, not just in the monetization aspects, but in the actual gameplay. CoD is NOTHING like it used to be. It is just now made for streamer's to move at break neck speeds and try to collect cool highlight clips. No tactics, no thinking about your next move, just constant GO GO GO and hopefully out maneuvering the opponent. Again, there's nothing wrong with enjoying this type of game. I am simply trying to point out that we didn't used to be like this. We could spend an entire weekend playing the same L4D maps over and over and over and we never tired of it or complained. Perhaps it was the friendships that made it so enjoyable. Perhaps we as a society just had more of a tolerance for the status quo and didn't need constant instant gratification. Perhaps it can be traced back to the rise of the smart phone which truly put the world at your fingertips. Perhaps it's a combination of all the above. But what I think we need to be cognizant of is that it didn't used to be like this.

I just launched a gaming TikTok page to show off some highlights. I KNOW that I have to speed up the video because no one these days will make it through a 30 second video, I had to find ways to condense it to 10 seconds. That is just one example, I had a friend during the Modern Warfare 2019 run that would finish the battlepass within a couple of weeks and complain he had nothing to play for now. I would tell him the same thing I told my current friend; just play the game, focus on helping your team win, try out weapons or classes you may not use as often, etc. Now, personally I have always been someone who enjoys a sense of not having anything hanging over my shoulders. I LOVE being done with a battlepass and challenges, because then I feel truly free to play the game the way I want to play it, so it never really occurred to me that some people may need more motivation or direction. What happened to just playing a video game because, I don't know, it's FUN?

If I were to leave you on one thought from this article, it would be this. Live service is here to stay, there's no point screaming into the void. Publishers are making far too much money to ever go back to a map pack/DLC model, so the monetization side is completely out of our control. What we can control is how we approach the way we game, and I would encourage everyone to think about the multiplayer games they play. Do you actually enjoy them? Would you still play if you had no way of progressing further? Or do you just play because you NEED that sense of accomplishment and grind. Take a look inward and also maybe take a look at your backlog, I'm sure there's a few games there that would love some attention.