It's no secret that a notable portion of PlayStation's first-party catalogue going forward will dip into the world of live service and multiplayer. One of these titles will almost certainly be Naughty Dog's upcoming multiplayer shooter, thought to be called The Last of Us Factions. We've heard next to nothing about the project, but it's been in the works for years, and you can bet it'll be full of all the usual Game as a Service bells and whistles.
Speaking of which, an interesting new hire means Naughty Dog now has a principal monetisation designer in its ranks. Anders Howard has been in the games industry a long time, serving more than seven years at Epic Games. While he was there, he "helped form the core of Battle Pass progression strategy" for Fortnite, according to his LinkedIn. He also consulted on the Battle Pass integration for Rocket League and Fall Guys.
He'll bring that experience on live service titles to the Last of Us multiplayer title. It was always a safe assumption the game would be structured in this way, but this more or less confirms a Battle Pass-style progression for Factions.
Hopefully we learn more about the game soon — it's been too long since we've had any official details. Are you excited for Factions?
[source linkedin.com, via gamesradar.com]
Comments 34
Not a bad idea. Make as much money as possible because people will complain no matter what.
IT'S ALL STARTING TO COME TOGETHER
Fortnite is well designed so that's good I guess.
Not good news for everyone that hates MTX's and that's only checks notes oh every single person
Last of us factions is going to be monetised af lol
I hate this so much. Long live single player games.
Good luck with this.
Nothing will ever come close to creating as much revenue as Warzone and Fortnite do.
Not sure whether this will be a "Free to play" model like the aforementioned, but if it isn't, then I fear it may fall by the wayside.
I say invest in a new IP and leave the live service stuff to Epic and Activision as others have tried and failed miserably.
as long as you can play it without spending money then thats fine
original last of us factions had quite alot of microtransactions
Can't really launch live service games without something comparable these days. I'm not really a huge fan. I don't like mechanics that you give you timed FOMO. My life is stressful enough as is.
I mean on the plus side, my backlog is absolutely huge, so if games companies are going to double down on this BS then maybe I can finally play some of it
Bring on the service games!
Wonder if this is the next chapter of Naughty Dog, no more story games, fully focused on multiplayer games…
I'm looking forward to seeing it and playing it but can't see myself sticking with it long. Would rather see Killzone or Reistance
Going to be really interesting seeing how Naughty Dog presents story in Factions when the main character is wearing a purple hat, lime green jackets, and blue pants with giraffes all over the place.
Don't get me wrong I'm excited to see Factions but this is going to get really goofy.😂
@Wiggo thing is though, Fortnite is "the dream" as far as game publishers are concerned. Obviously there are costs involved in running such a popular multiplayer game, but for the most part they manage to make money from getting people to buy cosmetic tat. And the beauty of getting people to buy cosmetic tat, is that it doesn't cost any more for you to sell it to more people. If you put a game on a disc and sell it for £70, there are costs involved - cost of producing the game in the first place, cost of making all the discs, and then at the very end of the chain your retailers will be expecting to make a profit margin, so you're not even making £70 off each game anyway.
Sell a digital game and you're paying less in costs, but there's still the cost of making the game in the first place.
Sell digital tat, and there's a minimal cost involved in designing said tat but you're about as close to "pure profit" as you're ever going to get. Sell enough of it and you can even fund game development/maintenance and other things just from tat sales alone (I assume that Fornite's sales of tat is 100% what funds Epic Games' weekly free games, but I could be wrong). Sell truck loads of it, and you can make a very healthy profit on top of that.
This is why there's going to be no end to the wannabe Fortnites, at least not until someone comes up with a different business model with even better potential for sky high profits foir minimal cost of sales comes along.
Wow, live service games and battle passes are all of a sudden bad when sony are involved.
ND is going to tank their rep all to chase the live service unicorn at the behest of Sony.
The sad aspect of this for PlayStation fans is that we have to wade through and wait through Sony trying to join in on the live service scam bandwagon years too late. In so doing we will get less meaningful new Ips and projects and instead just garbage, until they realize they have long missed that boat and the general perception of these models has largely tanked and will continue to do so aside from those that primarily play only these types of games or monetize their hobby through twitch garbage.
For those that genuinely love finely crafted games, I suspect we will have to wait several years for all of the live service projects in Sony's and their Studios pipelines to release and ultimately fail with the majority of them. This drought will only exacerbate an already fairly nonexistent transition to the PS5 generation.
Sony is going to lose millions and millions of dollars on most of these projects. We are going to lose loyalty and time, and ultimately likely shift to cross platform options to play the actual games on the horizon from the likes of Bethesda studios and others. Not necessarily because we want that route, but because Sony chose to put most of their eggs in a basket already oversaturated and molding.
This is no bad thing, Fortnite has one of the most rewarding battle passes out there when you compare it games like CoD and Overwatch
@UltimateOtaku91 Well the market is currently beyond oversaturated with all that junk so Sony is like someone featured in My 600-Lb Life trying to jump into a small pool with 1,000 people already inside.
Fortnites battle passes are alot better than all others I've experienced, apex for instance I've just got back into and there version battle pass pretty terrible imo.
Like for multiplayer games I never really get the hate for stuff like battle passes you don't have to get it, it's mostly always just cosmetics offers no advantage and you still get the game for free with all new updates maps ect, I'd actually sooner it be that way than having seperate DLC maps when player base gets split.
I bought one Fortnite sub and then collected the tokens as I leveled up paid for every subsequent season so it’s been very good.
@UltimateOtaku91 think what you mean is "all of a sudden PushSquare has multiple writers who don't agree on everything". IIRC, Sammy is the most outspoken live service games advocate - and he happens to not be the article's writer in this case
@Ssimsim the thing I don't really like about Battle Passes is that once you've bought in, you really have to sink a fair amount of time into the game to get your money's worth. If I'm going to pay for cosmetic content, I'd much rather it be transactional - "pay money, receive content" rather than have it all behind unlockable tiers that are only even unlockable for a limited amount of time. I've never once stuck with a live service game for long enough to actually get to the end of a battle pass (I mean I've never actually bought one, but you know just as well as I do that the free users tend to be enrolled in the battle pass as well, they just have to pay to get all of their unlocked content that isn't free)
For all this complaining though, the solution for me is really simple - I just don't buy battle passes. I'll give a live service game a go, earn a bit of the free currency, unlock a few free items, and when I inevitably get bored and want to play something else, it's no big deal because I've not bought a battle pass that I should feel a need to complete.
It makes sense for the direction they're going but also sadly it seems we won't be seeing any single player stuff from them for some time
I’ve played two live service games recently — GT7 and Avengers. GT7 is really a fantastic game and as long as Sony approaches their GaaS like that, then I’ll be okay. It functions fully as a $70 game, tons of content, buying credits is really unnecessary, and the online features are completely enjoyable without any extra investment. Avengers on the other hand is a mess. There’s a decent game in there that is unfortunately swallowed up in a quagmire of MTX and unnecessary supplemental content. It completely ruins the experience. You can’t even navigate the single player features without bombardment of marketplace reminders and oodles of add-on trash that almost makes the game unplayable. Being prompted all the time to buy gestures, outfits, powers, equipment, and missions. Just let us unlock those things through gameplay or at least get them out of the way so I can see the menu for the actual game.
A “monetization designer” is absolutely the last person I want involved in my AAA game.
Can't really blame them when people reward their SP talent with a few million copies sold and "TLOU cash grab-we hate Abby and Druckmann-PT2 story is awful" silly rhetoric. Whilst yearly recycled nonsenses are making $1B a week.
Mmm, i’m not sure if that is good news…The whole concept of ‘battle-pass’ is personally not making any game more enjoyable.
Ultimately, isn't this just a customer manipulation specialist?
@trev666 - Besides the billion mtx hats and flags, OG Factions was heavily p2w. They straight up sold OP guns that out performed every base gun in the game. Buy or die!
Under the leadership of Jim Ryan, Sony is about to become the another EA/Ubisoft.
ripping off in store for this silly live last of us wanna be.
"Monetization" and "Naughty Dog" should not be placed together in the same phrase. I don't like this, not one bit. Well, if you think I will buy The Last Of Us 3 no matter what, then you are absolutely right!
@avatarian well then you've never played their multiplayer modes in their games 😂
@theMEGAniggle You are absolutely right!
My low self-esteem doesn't allow me to play any game against any opponent that can post comments or has a sense of self.
@avatarian damn, I shed a tear for you
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