188A. Forever Games (Part 1): Returning to Finite Games

The Holy Grail for both developers and consumers, why can't either find it? Is it mythological? Both veteran developers and consumers are rewinding to 2000 in frustration.

In this series I seek to explain what a Forever Game is, and what the value proposition is for developers and gamers. Those two things are not the same and that disconnect is what took us down a bad path. Many consumers are abandoning GaaS, as are some veteran developers. Both want to rewind back to the last “known good save”, which means starting over and losing a shocking 25 years of gameplay! That’s at least as outrageous as it sounds. Meanwhile AAA just merrily prances along towards a cliff.

[The Fool is the first card of the Major Arcana, numbered 0 , and represents new beginnings, innocence, and potential. It symbolizes a leap of faith into the unknown, urging you to be spontaneous, open to new experiences, and trusting in your intuition. When reversed, it can suggest recklessness, stagnation, naivety, or fear of the unknown. Source: AI]

In 1999 I got hooked on an online game called Everquest. The same characteristics that made me so valuable to the Olympic community ended up being just as valuable in this new community. Pretty soon other players were asking to buy my accounts and then even the items I was collecting. I did no marketing, people were desperate to buy what I had. This became so lucrative that I went full time and stopped teaching.

In both the Olympic track communities and in game development the prevailing wisdom was that to win you just had to “do more”. My brain worked differently. In the Olympics, instead of thinking more was better, I was thinking “how can I make 1 hour of training translate as much into speed as possible, without an injury?” Just running more can make you slower. My nuanced approach was the product of many years of science education and asking “Why?” my whole life. The result was World Records for Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Florence Griffith-Joyner (my athletes) that many consider unbeatable even almost 40 years later. Maybe they are… if you don’t have access to that unpublished science, the understanding of what training actually does for you.

In EQ I started to ask “why are people giving me so much money for something that doesn’t exist?” This is the question that officially pulled me into game development, just like with the Olympics. I approached the Los Angeles Times because I thought the emergence of virtual goods sales was a newsworthy moment in history. I was paired with Ashley Dunn, the tech editor, and he invited me to his house while we co-wrote the first major paper in the world on the topic. I used my middle name “Lee” for security reasons (SOE would have annihilated me legally, but they didn’t know I had a Western name) and I even got to meet Ashley’s two sons while we wrote.

The article was published front page, column A1. Millions read it and I consider this a watershed moment for Games as a Service as investor money started to flood into the space. I had such a good experience working with Ashley that I decided to become a game journalist, which I was from 2001 to 2005 writing for UnknownPlayer. We would get shut down in 2005 after I exposed Ubisoft’s misbehavior on the Shadowbane project and they retaliated full force. That was the kick in the ass that I needed to dedicate myself to answering all the big questions that AAA would need to advance in Games as a Service. Questions that, even today, it seems they haven’t stopped to ponder.

In short, I was the biggest Fool in the gaming industry. When the industry started branding me a “Guru” they didn’t quite have it right. But I didn’t just trust intuition. I went back to school at age 41 to study conventional economics to layer that onto my robust science background. All science starts with “Why?”. Data people like to tell me that with enough data, you don’t need to know why. That’s when the Tarot Card gets flipped, the moment you lose that wonder that drives the Fool.

The Bad Path

As the adults in the room increasingly sucked all wonder and life out of games, our industry turned into something cruel, manipulative, and mathematical. I wept as Master Children and fellow Fools like Chris Taylor got thrown into dumpsters. Mark Jacobs managed to throw himself into a dumpster after coming into close contact with EA leadership. I think Richard Garriott locked himself in his own dungeon after being exposed to EA. Now with EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Amazon, and even XBOX running to find whatever dumpsters are left, we find ourselves with a dumpster shortage.

Just as I can predict and treat injuries before they happen (because I know the physiology of all related systems, and was a competitive runner myself), I was able to predict the current scenario back in 2017. I even explained how and why it was going to happen (not the same thing). Note that the answer to “why?” preceded the answer to “how” because it all starts with why.

When Microsoft spent some ungodly amount of money to vet me over 6 months in 2012, and ultimately hired me as their first game economist, it was because they acknowledged that they didn’t understand GaaS physiology. None of their 99,000 employees had that skill set. That’s normal, that’s why you vet and recruit external experts. But I would argue that none of the aforementioned companies have anyone that understands GaaS physiology in 2025, based on results.

Back in 2005 right before I committed to pioneering the field of game economics after the Ubisoft attack, I was coaching track at Palm Springs High School and teaching sports medicine occupations. I worked on our athletes using the same techniques I taught in my class. A super creepy math teacher who was also coaching with me took this as an excuse to start putting his hands on all our athletes, especially the girls. Without consent. Parents complained. I complained. This is what I imagined happened at Microsoft, Activision, Amazon, Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft, etc.

In the process they made gamers very uncomfortable, never got consent, and gamers never got help from authorities (just as the principle at PSHS looked the other way).

Now you have influencers like Ethan Einhorn, bless his soul, calling for a complete industry rewind. He wants us to start making complete games that you buy once and won’t have them get turned off without your consent. Like, it was back in 2000. He calls these “Finite Games” that you spend once on or at least a set number of times then don’t keep getting hit up for cash.

Somehow I get the impression this is really important to him. I’ve never met him, but if I did, I would give him a big hug (after asking for consent). If you read my last article on the original Grinding Gear Games founders, you know that three of them are doing the exact same thing as good Ethan here!

A long time ago when I got my first motorcycle I celebrated by driving a long way to see my sister. She celebrated by buying some sea bass (this was before I was vegan) and cooking for me. Soon enough I saw half a worm in it and didn’t need to think long about where the other half went. But you can’t blame the fish for a few worms. While I celebrate these four men, and back their efforts 100%, I am not going to throw GaaS out because of a few worms. Worms happen, it’s all part of the circle of life. And failure. For the Fool, this is a learning process. If you flip that Tarot card over, then you don’t learn and just keep repeating the error.

So while AAA seems like it’s become the Cult of the Inverted Fool, I’m still full of wonder and hope. I don’t worry over all the layoffs because in my world that happened 8 years ago when I predicted it. This is a necessary step in order for us to discard those Inverted Fools and get back to making what gamers want.

Next Up

Now that I’m learning what the LinkedIn Algorithm is looking for, I’m going to make my articles shorter and put more effort into getting them under the nose of game developers who need what I’m writing for them. So in Part 2 I will explain what a Forever Game is, why consumers have been demanding them since 2000, and why they are different from both Finite Games and what AAA has delivered.