A "Forever Game" is a type of game that gets continually updated, adding content to it perpetually until either the company making it stops making money or the developers literally cannot add more.
Your favorite game might be a forever game, from World of Warcraft, Rainbow Six: Siege, Minecraft, to GTA Online, there are a ton of them, and it's clear that the modern Live Service model fits these games wonderfully. But there are other games as well, games like The Sims, Cities Skylines
One thing is clear: developers are making hands over fists of money off of these games, and they revel in the fact.
Though it seems some just can't keep their grubby little hands off the game they are currently supporting. Now and then, a supposed "Forever Game" will receive a sequel literally nobody asked for.
Be it Overwatch 2, Rainbow Six: Siege X, or Cities Skylines 2, Publisher Pressure or a dissatisfaction with their current product will force developers' hand into republishing their current game in a slightly different form a second time. Changing most of the time something in the process, while wiping out important features, most of the community enjoyed.
In the case of OW2 and Siege X not much might change, but a few graphical enhancements, while paving the way in the backend to overhaul the entirety of the game's progression into something far greedier and more wretched than before.
Or like in the case of Cities Skylines 2, you rerelease the same game with graphical enhancements, while it's missing 80% of the content the previous one had in a completely buggy and unfinished state.
The juice just does not seem to be worth the squeeze, if you know what I mean. It might generate a few eyes on an old game, but like in the case of CS2, I think you're simply better off releasing this supposed new game as an update to your existing one, and as nothing more than a simple refresh.
Personally, I never stuck long enough with one of these types of games to see it through a transition. I can personally vouch, though, that when I launched Overwatch 2 for the first time to see a Battle Pass of all things, I physically cringed in my seat, pulling a literal đŹ at the mere idea.
I hadn't played Overwatch in 3 or so years, so to see the game I genuinely enjoyed at a moment in time give in to the Free-to-Play wiles so many other games had, it felt terrible.
To give a german saying to the topic,
"Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurscht hat Zwei."
"Everything has an end, only the sausage (and apparently Rainbow Six: Siege and Overwatch) has two."
Do you people have any forever games which turned out to not go on forever?
What? Plenty of people were asking for Cities Skylines 2. It's not like CS1 didn't have issues, and some of those issues, like the node limit, could be more easily fixed with a new game than an update. CS2's problems are due to Colossal Order just completely collapsing behind the scenes. And while sure it's missing stuff CS1 had, it also implemented a lot of CS1's more popular DLC content into the base game. I definitely wouldn't put it in the same category as Overwatch 2.
I mostly used it as an example due to CS1s status before CS2 Released. Because many people also assumed CS1 to be a forever game, unlike the SimCity series before it. With the amount of DLC and Updates it received it sounded logical for the game to just continually get updated instead of a new game suddenly being released.
You sound knowledgeable about Cities Skylines so I'm not going to say I know more than you, I probably don't, but from an outsiders perspective the two games do look similar, especially since a lot of the changes CS2 introduced were more in-depth.
Between being a Paradox game, competing with an already established franchise title, and technically being the third game in its own franchise, I don't think anyone thought CS1 was going to be a forever game.
And yeah CS1 and CS2 look similar, so did most of the SimCity games. Citybuilders are one of the few genres where you can absolutely get away with just a graphics update, because of the genre's nature as kind of the same type of hobby as owning a fish tank. It's all about making pretty cities, and anything that makes those cities prettier is going to be a welcome upgrade.
Dead by Daylight is completely bloated and ugly at this point. It's a 9 year old game. It will probably see the next console gen.
How do you even do a true sequel when the player base has invested money after money in characters and skins and killers and perks?
And the idea of things 'transferring over' in a hypothetical sequel is kinda impossible considering how they crash the game every update
Sometimes you let the past be the past. This is how the fighting game genre functions.
Games like DBD and R6 really don't look that good anymore, yeah. Even Siege X didn't give the graphics that much of an upgrade.
Eh, if people are still playing World of Warcraft, Everquest and freaking RuneScape, I don't think anyone's eyes are going to bleed when looking at DBD.
I'm sure there could be an interesting study on optics around this subject. You say that they should just launch these games as updates. For Siege X, Overwatch 2 and Counter Strike 2 they literally have, they just happened to tell you they were sequels at the same time. It would be interesting to see the difference in reception based on what is communicated.
Also you say that you launched Overwatch 2, so it's mission accomplished for them.
I wouldn't consider Cities Skyline 2 to just be a graphical overhaul. It felt like a regular (albeit unfinished) sequel.
I did fall prey to OW2, but granted I think I played around 10 Matches before once again dropping it. Hero shooters just bring out the worst in some people, and people in this sentence is me...
i can not believe âeverything has an end except bananas which have twoâ is (basically) an actual thing some people say
I don't think I've heard anyone under 40 ever use the German version of the saying, and that's 40 in my childhood, which means they're probably senile by now.
You forgot Payday 3.Â
I mean... naturally.Â
It's hilarious that they made an announcement that they'll continue to support Payday 2 after 3 flopped. Though I do feel bad for the devs, can't feel great for them...
Total War: Warhammer handled this the right way (even if CA fumbled the third game). All DLC bought for 1 is available to use in 2 and 3, and all DLC bought in 2 is available to use in 3.
EU4 is a game that came out in 2013 and only got a sequel this year. That's years before Overwatch came out and years after Overwatch 2. Yet I don't think anyone was under any delusion that it would never get a sequel or was against the idea.
World of Warcraft's expansions might as well be considered sequels. The content adds to the world which makes sense for an MMO. But can also make drastic changes to what is already there. I don't think it's that drastically different from games that have released their sequels as updates. And again while people complain about the specifics they don't seem against the idea of expansions itself.
I wonder what makes these games different.
The idea of a sequel to these games itself isn't the issue. It's that the sequels have just been disappointing. Overwatch 2 was promised to be a lot more than it ended up being.
I haven't played it but Dragon Ball Z Kakarot has been getting content updates for like 6+ years now. I guess it's easy to make more DLC based off of the shows but I don't think I've ever seen a single-player-focused game like that getting that much of a life.
Check out XenoVerse 2. It's even older and it's still getting updated
You know what I say is worse than making a sequel to a forever game? Calling your game a forever game before it's out, when you haven't asked anyone if they actually want it forever. Because if they don't, you've just multiplied every one of the game's built-in problems to FOREVER.
https://preview.redd.it/k5x4m9xcv12g1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1f9235bf2bcef447df1c05b375ddc0de14dfbd79
Halo is one of those franchises nobody ever needed to be live-service, I think one not as heavily monetized would actually do better. Just as people still seem to come back to Quake and other arena shooters from time to time, people always step back into the old Halos.
I like the way GGG handled their forever game sequel.
Path of Exile 2 is a different game, but also inherits enough of the design of its predecessor that it feels like a sequel. Path of Exile 1 is still up and it is still getting seasons. MTX purchases apply to both as much as possible. This is how you do it.
I believe the reason for them to do this is to re-capture the casual crowd.
Even with "forever games" most people stop after a while and only the more harcore crowd stays (unless it's a super popular game like GTA online or Fortnite)
So the idea is probably getting people back that enjoyed the first game but stopped playing it after a month or so to play other, newer games.
Now wether the more hardcore crowd can be captured with this is another story entirely.
Most modern players have become accustomed to an update cycle, but I think the hardcore crowd is always the one whining the hardest when one of these sequels comes out. And most of the time it is because there is simply too much change.
World of Warcraft ended up doing a kind prequel in wow classic. Even a forever game isn't forever.Â
I'm always curious what WoW is gonna look like 10 years from now. It's funny playing current expansion content then traveling to a vanilla area which hasn't seen a texture update since Cataclysm.
Turtle WoW is working on a UE5 client which I'm very curious to see assuming they survive long enough.
I haven't looked deep into wow, but it's amazing that a game that old is still supported and getting updates. The only other one I know is iRacing, which is far more of an expensive online race simulator than an actual videogame and even then, wow still has around 4 years on it.
Cities Skylines two makes sense in the context of the publisher, Paradox Interactive. Their in-house development is all âForever Gamesâ that theyâre constantly iterating on; usually thatâs through free updates and DLC, but sequels are a part of that too. When Crusader Kings 2 had been iterated to the point that it was focused on the lives of individual characters to an extent the original design could no longer support, we got Crusader Kings 3, built from the ground up to better support that Character focus. Meanwhile Europa Universalis 5 just came out, and mechanically itâs completely different from 4, but it makes sense as the next step in navigating the balance between simulation and playability that the series, and the studio as a whole, has been tiptoeing for decades now.
Iâm not too well-informed about Cities Skylines, played a fair bit of the first one, and it was a lot of fun, but itâs still a game, there were still some things it just fundamentally wasnât made to do. I could see a sequel bringing something new to the table, but from what I hear, it sounds like the developer basically fell apart behind the scenes during production
I think in some cases it is better to keep updating a game than make a sequel. I mean if something isnât broken why replace it?
I do agree that a lot of publishers will keep making and selling updates and content for their games solely to get more money out of their players.
But a âforever gameâ isnât always a bad thing. What would be the point of, for example, a Minecraft 2 or a Stardew Valley 2? And isnât it more consumer and player friendly to keep updating the original game for free instead of making and selling an unnecessary sequel just to try and squeeze some more money out of the game/players? And yes Minecraft does keep releasing new paid content, but there are also lots of free updates with loads of new content.
Sometimes it does make sense to start fresh again and make a sequel instead of forever adding onto a game. Planet Coaster is my prime example of this. PlanCo 1 is notorious for having really bad optimization and core mechanics of the game that you canât really fix without rebuilding the entire system like pathing.
So instead of continuing to hobble stuff onto it, they started fresh and made Planet Coaster 2, which has massively improved on virtually everything from the first game, as well as adding features that wouldnât have really been possible in PlanCo 1 such as their big new waterpark system, every piece of free form scenery being scaleable, and placing scenery items on coaster trains and flat rides.
On the whole I think Frontier actually does a pretty good job of knowing when itâs a good time to make a sequel like this (albeit sometimes they are a bit late with it). I had a massive laundry list of problems with Jurassic World Evolution 2, but JWE3 has fixed almost all of them
The entire Overwatch 2 saga killed ActiBlizz for me forever. Still angry about that. Jeff had a solid idea ready to develop and Bobby "Used Tampon" Kotick had to destroy every single part of it for the cash grab and to try to save the worst esport running when he'd already run every other Blizzard esport into the earth's core. Hope that guy wakes up with lice infested boils where his balls used to be every day until the end.
The fact it went F2P with a skin shop and BattlePass, while logical, was absolutely soul-crushing to me. Add onto that how they announced that the planned PvE content for the game, their entire reason they made a second one, would be cancelled in a little dev livestream it just all felt far too slimy.
Really, one little comment about how it "isn't on the roadmap" anymore in a dev stream is all people get from you guys regarding the PvE Content every single trailer and preview for the game promised? Miss me with that bullshit.
Kaplan has a fair share of the blame for Overwatch 2's trajectory, actually--he specifically refused to hire a separate team to do the PVE for the sequel, which is the main reason that PVP went unsupported for so long. He kinda just stuck to the original vision he had for the game--that being the long-since cancelled project titan--and ignored the success of the game he actually had on his hands.
Thankfully if you don't like Overwatch 2 being F2P along with other hero shooters. Sony decided to release Concord which is a premium hero shooter for $39.99.
Yeah, maybe I'll go play some Lawbreakers. Maybe I'll hit up Battleborn after, or perhaps I'll go play some Hyenas.
The only F2P shooter I still play to a degree is THE FINALS, still great fun and very original. Surprisingly player friendly too, for being F2P at least.
Didn't the Finals shut down? Or am I thinking of xDefiant? All these games blend together for me after a while.
xDefiant is the one that shut down, COD/Hero-Shooter Mix made by Ubisoft. Though THE FINALS got pretty close to shutting down when they messed up their launch and some of their future content drops.
They are good now though. Even if their other recent launch, Arc Raiders, has sucked pretty much everyone but the sweatiest of the sweats out of the game for the time being. Been enjoying it myself too.
The original Cashout Game mode of the game, coupled with the amazing level of destruction of the game map make for a really fun game. Though I wouldn't recommend it to shooter newbies, it can be a pretty hectic and dramatic game if you aren't used to it.
Monetization wise, it's all purely cosmetic and their purchasing system is pretty in-depth. If you just like a specific part of a skin, you can just buy that single piece or the entire skin for a small discount. Makes for some crazy skins and visuals, which are a perfect fit for the VR Gameshow aesthetic the game is going for. The prices are a bit egregious, I could buy indie games for the price of a single skin bundle, but hey, that's more of an industry issue than a game one.
All in all, I'm still pretty smitten by it, 250 hours in. Let's see if it will continue to keep my attention. Embark Games has a pretty good track record with THE FINALS and now following up Arc Raiders.
"Original" but uses a bunch of AI assets
Forever game that ended up not being so: Marvel Heroes (Omega).
Forever game that I hope continues being so: Warframe. Fortunately DE have been wise enough to go with something quite different for their next game rather than trying to make some ill-advised Warframe 2.
I would say tge wprst offender was hun showdown to hunt showdown 1899 (or 1889 i forgot). The gameplay is still the same, i think there was a single new map tho i might be wrong, not many new guns or skills afaik that couldn't just be a normal update, but the republishing update got the minimum specs higher so my pc couldn't run it well anymore, more importantly the menus were fucked beyond use. Before it was very simple, yoh could see and read everything at a glance but when the game first got updated it was a mess, you couldn't find how to enter soul survivor mode without checking the net for a guide it was a genuine mess. Now i just checked it yesterday and it's better but for lije a year i think it was fubar
I miss Global Offensive. Counter Strike 2 killed itself.