I’m going to start with a bit of a history lesson.

Back when I was a kid, we used to go to the games store and buy a cassette tape. We’d take it home, play it into the machine, and wait half an hour to play the game we just bought. Sometimes it’d work, sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes it would randomly crash, or the last few levels would be impossible. We also had no internet, which meant no patches. We had a tape, to enjoy or not, as we chose.

Today’s gaming industry is radically different. Gamers are spending incredible amounts of time in multi-player games of one form or another. We’re consuming downloadable content to extend the lifespan of games we’ve bought. We’re using networks to interact with each other, from console variants such as Xbox Live, through to publisher or developer related ones such as Steam and Battle.net.

Games are becoming increasingly reliant on this back-end network to deliver significant parts of the experience. While this transition from Gaming as a Product to Gaming as a Service has benefits for both sides, what risks does it pose? How do we critically appraise a game that’s heavily reliant on these service components? What is the importance of reputation? And what happens when this service-based industry reaches saturation point?

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