Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
I've seen this term thrown around a bit. A recent announcement from EA said they were going to 'double down' on live services. Of course, being EA, I quickly assumed it had something to do with making their constant revenue stream goals. Apex Legends is the future for them… except it also mentioned Sims 4!? Huh? So maybe it means they are going to follow Paradox and kick out a few years' worth of expansions/DLC for every game?
Well, I found an explanation over in the Sims forums: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/893117/live-service-explained
So before they would isolate their various teams - which I expect was great for accountants that could then easily track how much was spent on each part of ongoing development. But each team would fix their own issues, which meant a fix for an issue from the expansions team that only releases every few months took way too long. Now they are developing, well… normally. Developers have specialties and generally stick to certain areas but they aren't locked in.
So, all in all, it doesn't mean much to us at all. New content probably won't be on as predictable a schedule as before but we're more likely to see the nastier bugs fixed sooner. I expect the term is a heck of a lot more important internally where they need slogans and other political tactics to do some culture changing.
Of course, that doesn't make the constant revenue stream goals go away.
Well, I found an explanation over in the Sims forums: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/893117/live-service-explained
So before they would isolate their various teams - which I expect was great for accountants that could then easily track how much was spent on each part of ongoing development. But each team would fix their own issues, which meant a fix for an issue from the expansions team that only releases every few months took way too long. Now they are developing, well… normally. Developers have specialties and generally stick to certain areas but they aren't locked in.
So, all in all, it doesn't mean much to us at all. New content probably won't be on as predictable a schedule as before but we're more likely to see the nastier bugs fixed sooner. I expect the term is a heck of a lot more important internally where they need slogans and other political tactics to do some culture changing.
Of course, that doesn't make the constant revenue stream goals go away.