>>6098042>age of AAA videogames, games-as-a-serviceI always recoiled at this appellation, I guess instead of Unreal Engine 5 Nanite ALL THE SPARKS AND LIGHTS LOOK AT MY FACE IT IS SO REAL I associate it with S&P credit ratings for LEH lol I don't know who was the first to apply that triple A rating terminology to games hmmm. I remember when I met gaming companies particularly the GaaS / games-as-a-service models they had all these metrics around user acquisition cost and monitored or engineered metrics like friend signups within 14days etc (on the thesis that if you signed up your friends to play the live service game model there would be improved retention peer pressure etc, all these dark design patterns to lure you in and captivate / cage your attention) On this basis even if Deadlock is a fairly generic game, Valve clearly can afford to cross-promote or hype it easily as they obviously enjoy far lower user acquisition costs with their huge advantage of a captive audience on Steam, perhaps that is why the game is entitled Deadlock to represent the stagnant inevitable culmination of what videogames have become
I think a lot of the GaaS game model optimisation derives from the AARRR type funnels from early digital companies (Acquire Activate Retain Refer Revenue) there are variants of the acronym but the funnel was essentially the formula to ramp user growth etc with very little attention devoted to considerations of product quality or feedback (note how the all-pervasive digital funnel growth hack models are sort of agnostic towards design features of the product/service lol, you could use them to hype anything, regardless of any quality considerations or benefit/value-added to the user/society, WeWork, Theranos, crypto, metaverse, chatgpt LLMs etc) I wonder if nowadays there are any companies that achieve success profitability and scale revenues (not just trapped in a niche) whilst purposefully rejecting these formulas hmmm, if that is even possible anymore (as if you don't adopt these distasteful marketing practices, VC hype funded competitors or others will etc)
Anyway here is NVDA Jensen signing a boob. I never asked for this
