Joe Tung, a video game industry veteran who formerly worked on the Halo and Destiny franchises, has commented on the state of video games and specifically the live-service approach. Speaking to PC Gamer, Tung said he believes live-service is “so much better” for both players and developers than the more-traditional-boxed product model.
Tung, who also worked at Riot Games on League of Legends and is now CEO of Supervive studio Theorycraft Games, said, “I always felt like in the $60 boxed product model that I was having to make decisions that were not in the best interest of players.”
Instead, he said he felt that model was meant primarily to help sell as many copies as possible in the first two days. For live-service games, Tung said a strength of this model is that developers that think long-term. “You can think long-term in terms of what is best for the player, and how does that overlap with what is best for the company? I think it allows you to make much, much, much better decisions overall.”
Asked about decisions made that are not necessarily in the best interests of players, Tung said back in the E3 days, some of the demos shown during press conferences may not have been representative of a final product. “It’s like, let’s jam as much bullshit vaporware into the build as we can in the next three months because we have to have a huge showing at E3 because it’s our one opportunity to talk to our audience before we launch the game,” he said.
Supervive aims to be a title that players can enjoy for 10,000 hours over the course of multiple years, Tung said. The game, which was formerly known as Project Loki, blends elements of the hero shooter, action game, and battle royale genres. Alpha testing on PC is happening now, with an open beta to follow this fall.
