Late Game Lessons of Live Service Design
Going the Extra Mile(s) of Game Development
We have a lot of milestone events for live service games this year — Dead by Daylight is hitting six years, Dragon Ball Legends at four, Arknights at three, and longstanding Path of Exile and Warframe at eight among many more. Live service games live or die (pun intended) by their late-game design, and I want to talk about what this means for designing a game around years of content and support.
The Late Game Loop
In a previous post (and my upcoming book on F2P design), I spoke about the three loops of live service games — onboarding, daily, and late game. The late game, not to be confused with the end game as there is no end, is where development must focus on if the game has any hope of surviving and growing.
This is where we get the hardcore players of the game and proof for casual and core players that the game has legs. This part of the play is no longer about learning the game or getting used to it, but about what it is like to play it regularly — either daily or at least several times a week.
The late-game brings with it three distinct questions that the designers need to answer:
- Is this gameplay loop interesting enough to be played daily?
