As new live-service games get announced and canceled, we can’t help but think how Nintendo got it right with their Splatoon sequels. While most publishers try to plan these games out for infinite years that never come, these Nintendo shooters have short lifespans that pay in dividends.
Only time will tell if we ever get a huge live-service game like Fortnite again. In the meantime, publishers should take a cue from Nintendo and make their live-service games more like the Splatoon sequels.
Rather than release incomplete games with the hopes of adding more content, Nintendo always made sure its colorful shooters felt complete. Each of these games has a fully-realized single-player campaign and various multiplayer modes that fans will have fun with. Sure, some arenas and weapons were added later on, but these were still complete games when you bought them.
Like we mentioned earlier, another strength the Splatoon games have is their short-term plans. Instead of hoping for a massive fanbase that will spend money on microtransactions, they just make a season pass and wrap it up. On paper, that would be horrible for live-service games, but the series’ gameplay is so good that fans will keep playing it long after they’re done with the DLC.
It also helps that the paid DLC for these games was for fans of the single-player content. This seemed like an odd decision at first, but once players got their hands on these expansion packs, they were incredibly happy. Somehow, these DLC campaigns were able to use the multiplayer mechanics into great bite-sized missions that all feel unique.
Many fans feel this peaked with the Octo Expansion DLC for Splatoon 2. This is where the devs got creative and made some of the best single-player content ever seen for a multiplayer game. It was such a good campaign that Octo Expansion was the clear inspiration for Splatoon 3’s base single-player story mode. Fans still prefer Octo Expansion, but the third game’s offline content was enough to keep everyone engaged.
Compare this to massive failures like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and it’s easy to see why more games need to copy this formula. Releasing complete games with short plans for DLC won’t hurt much in the long run, since the money put into this has already been used. If there is demand for more, they can proceed to make more DLC, but that has to be based on success.
Some fans criticize Splatoon for not fully delving to live-service. Some fans felt that the differences in Splatoon 3 weren’t major enough to be a full game. Opinions changed once they actually got their hands on the multiplayer shooter, but it seems Nintendo was right to just give their multiplayer games light support.
Live-service games don’t need to last forever. The more publishers know that, the better this industry gets.