The Case for Evergeen Model and The Effects of Destructive Versus Constructive Design

The Case for Evergeen Model and The Effects of Destructive Versus Constructive Design.

The Evergreen Model, also known as the 4+2 method, is a set of business basics that the Harvard Business School call their “Four Primary Management Practices”. They consist of: strategy, execution, culture and structure. The Harvard folk go on to claim that with just the mastery of two the secondary management practices, you too can have a successful business. These secondary practices are: talent, innovation, leadership and mergers. The idea here is that if you don’t have mastery of any of these areas, you hire people who do which will bring us nicely to the video games industry.

The triple a video games industry, as it has been taken to being called, is a strange place as far as technology sectors. It would make sense that someone who has a history of great ideas is put in charge of leading a company, but the video game industry sees ideas as expendable. It is a place so full of talent, yet simultaneously fearful of creativity. It is a place that doesn’t need to bargain for wages because the passion keeps employees there, until it doesn’t anymore. The video game industry sees talent as replaceable because there is such a high demand for their jobs that there is no scarcity while other industries wither and die for lack of talent and innovation, the gaming industry is rigid and unchanging and has only gotten larger and more profitable every year.

                In general, a place that doesn’t appear to appreciate its own talent yet benefits greatly for the efforts of its talent.

What, if anything, does the triple a industry excel at in the secondary management practices list?

Leadership and Mergers.

                It is hard nowadays not to hear evergreen model being bandied around and most of the time, used outside of its true meaning. So, what is the evergreen model?

                It is a research project, essentially, that turned into a business model.

                There were 160 companies in The Harvard Business School’s studied 160 companies for the Evergreen Project with the goal of gathering data on variables that contributed to the growth or decline of these companies over the span of 10 years. A specific set of variables emerged from this test which is the basis of the 4 + 2 method.

                I often hear this term applied to game design in the context that the Evergreen model is a way to constantly generate revenue from a single game title by constantly upgrading the game from version to version and charging for this additional content. Even this context is wrong in a way because, aside from companies like Blizzard, these companies are not making a constant stream of revenue from a single game, but sequels of a game in a cycle of destructive obsolesce.

                My case in this essay is not for the Evergreen model, nor is it an endorsement of a subscription model. What I want to talk about is the two schools of thought in the Evergreen model of constructive design, versus destructive design. Or in video game speak, expansion versus sequel.

                So let’s dig in, shall we?

Constructive versus Destructive Design

For this essay I will be comparing two companies, side by side to see what their strengths and weaknesses are and to see if I find any commonalities between them and from there, construct a framework for which the Evergreen Model can become a sustainable model for a company that doesn’t wish to reinvent the wheel over and over again.

The two companies I will be comparing have a lot in common and yet, not a whole lot in common at all. A paradox of parent and child ownership: Blizzard and Activision or Activision Blizzard if you’re nasty. A merger of two names so large that they kept both.

We will be looking at three titles: Blizzard’s largest title: World of Warcraft, Activision’s Call of Duty series and Bungies Destiny series.

Okay, so on the constructive side of this argument is World of Warcraft.

As for the destructive side of the argument we have Call of Duty, and Destiny.

WHAT IS CONSTRUCTIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE DESIGN

First let us talk about constructive design. Constructive design is best exemplified by MMORPGS who, instead of making older content obsolete either from neglect or through sequelization, add onto the content already there and at times, make it better by improving it.

In constructive design, we do not delete content. Just like the law of thermos-dynamics, our content never disappears, it just changes.

Destructive design is the yang to the yin. Planned obsolescence in the face of an incoming sequel. The way it works is this. You make a game, like Inifinite Warfare. You add DLC and a season pass that has a bunch of new multiplayer maps, maybe some single player if you like that kind of thing, and then… Bam! A brand new sequel comes out even further splitting the playerbase. All that hard work and effort is all for nothing now because you have effectively killed it as a publisher. The title may still have a playerbase that has yet to upgrade to the newest platform, but with consecutive title releases, that playerbase shrinks more and more until it is abandoned completely. Destructive design favors short term profit over bucket loads of profit in the long term.

Let’s look at how World of Warcraft does constructive design.

WORLD OF WARCRAFT

            To say that World of Warcraft was a highly anticipated game is underselling its impact. When Blizzard teased its newest title they had a reputation for quality that is the envy of most studios. They were renowned for their quality titles and their ability to make games that were both fun to play, and highly addictive. Starcraft was an e-sport before we really had a name for it and Diablo 2 is still played to this day even though Battlenet no longer supports it.

            When a company is this well known for quality and they jump onto a relatively new gaming genre, good things are bound to happen. At this point, their major competition was Dark Ages of Camelot, Ultima Online, and Everquest which was a personal favorite of mine. Their direct competition, however, was from Everquest 2 which was releasing a mere 15 days before the highly anticipated MMO, no doubt in an attempt to undercut WoW’s sales.

            Everquest 2 did not live up to expectations and in a lot of ways, seemed a step back from the original as it was rushed out before all functionality was complete, while World of Warcraft sailed out of the gate with a whopping two-hundred and fifty thousands sales in 24 hours with one-hundred thousand concurrent users.

Vanilla World of Warcraft came out in 2004 and remained untouched for a while until complaints about the end game started trickling in. Within the few months after the initial release, Blizzard released several patches one of which added a PvP arena for a type of combat with capture points, a quest system and so on. Patch 1.2 was released in December and included, among other balance changes, a new dungeon called Maraudon which was a 40 – 49 level dungeon. They also fixed the awful torrent patching system they used.

            They added many high level dungeons and raid bosses in 1.3 as well as meeting stones which were the first iteration of their dungeon finder system making it easier to find groups.

            Most of the changes were quality of life and content editions to keep the player base happy. They were able to do this because of subscription fees that allowed the development team and QA more breathing room to make bug fixes, balance changes, and so on because this was a game as a service. You can face the fact or don’t, but the reason why most stand alone titles get terrible patch support lies squarely on the fact that there is no budget laid out for things like minor bug fixes. I’m not saying the money isn’t there, but a corporation that reports to a board and has to maximize profits are not terribly concerned about the title they released months ago. They are already moving on to the next release.

World of Warcraft was going strong at this point and while all these patches were going live, Blizzard was creating their first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

EXPANSIONS

            First, let’s talk about what an expansion is and how it differs from DLC. DLC is a bit nebulous. It can mean anything from a hat for your horse to an entire 30-hour campaign if you are CD Projekt Red. For the most part, DLC is a small add-on that adds a bit of content to get those concurrent player numbers up.

            An expansion is like an entire new game that tacks onto the end of the game you already bought and keeps you playing for as long, if not longer than the base campaign. It is the very definition of constructive design.

            When Blizzard released their first DLC, The Burning Crusade, they were already crushing the competition and every MMO announced or being released was starting to look eerily similar to WoW. When the expansion released, WoW was boasting a subscriber count of 7 million and every expansion since that point increased their numbers. Wrath of the Lich King brought them up to 11.5 million subs and Cataclysm brought them to 12 million but this was the start of the decline and ever since, their numbers fell back to pre-Burning Crusade levels.

            The reason, as far as my research shows, is that Blizzard started on a path to destructive design. They re-designed old areas and replaced starting zones for old races with new starting zones. Some zones switched factions. This change was much too much for players and it wasn’t uncommon to hear complaints from players stating that they wished there was a way to go back to the old design with updated direct x 11 capabilities. The reason for this backlash, I believe is from the fact that old content, which players enjoyed, was no longer available or changed beyond recognition. It’s like what happens when a sequel comes out and you find yourself wishing you could play the old maps with updated graphics.

            Cataclysm lost Blizzard nearly 3 million subscribers, a million of which they got back with the Mists of Panderia expansion which quickly lost them even more subscribers. Since then, the trend line is pretty steady, they haven’t added significant amounts of subs, but they haven’t lost them either.

            And the expansions keep coming because the game is still very much profitable.

            This is an example of the destructive power of the destructive model and the power of a constructive model of design. You start with a solid base game, and you just keep adding to it being careful not to kill the things players like and fix the things they hate. At this point, World of Warcraft has become absolutely bloated with features which can be daunting for new players, but the benefit is, there is nearly something for everyone.

            Then in 2018, Blizzard did something that the playerbase has been asking for. A thing that Blizzard had shut down private servers to prevent. A thing that seems a no-brainer. They announced World of Warcraft Classic. A return to Vanilla content. A return to the design that brought the original hordes of players in. It was met with applause from the community:

            Players in fact, contrary to popular opinion, knew what they wanted. What they wanted was to play the game they had bought originally. At this point, there doesn’t seem to be a plan to add the expansions, and honestly, maybe they shouldn’t. As one player put it:

The Constructive Design Model and Agile Development

            I was told recently by a colleague of mine from China that the Asian market is much different than the American market because the Asian market values collectability. Pokemon, antiques, card games, if the game has some sort of collectible component to it, the Asian market will eat it up. At least that is how he put it.

            The benefit of a constructive model is that you are not constantly reinventing the game from the ground up. You have the ability to act quickly to customer demands because there is no three year development cycle to implement a pokemon like catch it all minigame in WoW. The resources and time dedicated to a project like this is minimal in the scale of a triple a title and if you were, let’s say, to want to break into the Asian market, it would behoove you to appeal to them specifically even if the rest of your market isn’t interested. Those who don’t want it in their game can ignore it, for the most part.

            The other benefit is that when a competitor comes into the market, they have a long road to travel to compete with you. Imagine the absolutely monolithic heights a game like Elder Scrolls Online must climb in order to compete with the sheer scale and amount of content that WoW has on offer even with a rabid fanbase such as Bethesda’s. An MMO, to compete in this arena must do things either significantly different, or similar in methodology with a glut of content out the gate and a plan to release more in order to have a chance at competing. In order to compete now, ESO will need to release content almost as quickly as WoW is, and to be frank, they don’t seem up to the task. When they do release content, it is nowhere near as expansive. They have, however, been picking up in popularity since launch with huge patches delivered that included a thieving mechanic, Morrowind expansion (thanks Bethesda), and their latest expansion Summerset Isle which proves that the more content you release, the more players you bring to your platform.

            By some very unscientific calculations and from looking at players who have completed every achievement in the game, it would take the average player over 600 days to complete all of the content on offer in a game as expansive as WoW and for a game with a subscription model, this is exactly what you want. You want your fan base to keep playing because there is no possible way they could experience all the content on offer in just a month or so, where other MMO’s tend to lose subscribers over the span of a few months due to a lack of content.

            Often you see players leave WoW to try another MMO they are excited about, just to end up resubbing to WoW once the other game runs out of content.

            This is the power of the constructive model of design. You do not take away from the player, or make content obsolete. You add to it while keeping the integrity of the other half of your game intact.

GIVING AWAY EXPANSIONS ONCE A NEW ONE COMES OUT

            Our antithesis argument, Call of Duty and Destiny have a problem with doing expansions right. See, in these games, the model is quite a bit different and causes problems with splitting up the community, which can be a problem because what content these games provide is small enough to become boring before the next expansion even releases, which can explain their dropping player numbers, but World of Warcraft doesn’t have this problem because even thought there is some splitting of the community, not only is there a glut of content to experience otherwise, but the expansions get rolled up into the free to play model once a new expansion comes out.

            This is a very player facing model because, if you think about it, the more expansions you release that the player base doesn’t have access to, the more you split the audience. So, think about it this way.

            World of Warcraft has 6 expansions, currently. Imagine you just bought WoW because it isn’t free in this example. You play through the content and now you want to play with your gamerboy and gamergirl friends in some dungeons and raids, but they’ve already done the vanilla content ten times or more over and they are bored by it. You decide to get up to date on the expansions by buying one of them, but then your friends want to play a dungeon or a raid in another expansion that you don’t have, or they want to grind high level gear.

            In order to catch up to them, you would need to spend 360 dollars plus the subscription fee just to play with your friends. I believe this is the reason WoW picked up the free to play model and went with an early access form of expansion releases. Basically, when you buy the expansion, you are paying Blizzard to play that content early before it is rolled up into the base game for free. It is brilliant from a business perspective as not many people are willing to wait for that part of the game to become free but for those that are, their patience is rewarded.

            It also cuts down on the amount of player base splitting for the reasons stated above. When the player base is split, the player base who goes without the expansions normally quit, hence player rate drops.

CALL OF DUTY AND DESTINY

            Let’s start with what could possibly be the best example of destructive design, Destiny, which has a problem that could have been easily addressed if greed had not blinded both Activision and Bungie to the potential profit that could be had from continuing development of their base games.

            When Destiny was being teased at the various expos, it was so unbelievably hyped by fans of Halo that it seemed like the second coming of Christ were about to emerge from his tomb and proclaim from the mountaintop that he with a capital H has risen. With hype this large, the only logical thing that Destiny could have done was release with a ton of content that would live up to the expectations of players. Expansive open world maps, tense encounters, a great story, incredible loot, all that would have been amazing.

            What we got instead was… Well you all know how this went. We didn’t get what was promised and many in the playerbase felt cheated even if they were pumping an obscene amount of hours into the game.

            Bungie began releasing content to enrage the playerbase further with lackluster expansions and DLC. When the Taken King was released, we finally got a glimpse at what could have been with Destiny. The problem is, what was sold to us and promised to us was a game that will be expanded on over the span of ten years. Thie quickly turned out to be, not only a lie, but the first in what will likely become several sequels.

            Bungie made their destructive design decision here when they decided that Destiny 2 would not be an expansion, but instead, would be a sequel.

            This would have been fine if what Destiny 2 released with was even better and more expansive than what OG Destiny had on offer, but it was clearly smaller in scale, and far less ambitious and even did away with features gamers had grown to love in the base game.

            This was a destructive design decision because your choice to play one or the other decides what content you get to experience instead of having all of that content rolled into one game. The strength of World of Warcraft is that the game is always expanding and giving the players something new to come back to when they leave.

            For Destiny, there is no such incentive because not only has Bungie followed a destructive model of design, but they have also proven that when they do release DLC and expansions, it is usually rather lack luster, not to mention short, recycles old content and so on.

            And we have seen what happened to World of Warcraft’s numbers when they started changing and deleting old content. The player base revolted.

            Now before you type into the comments, you just said you want them to recycle old content and now you are saying that is a bad thing.

            Listen, there’s a difference between expanding a game with brand new content and saying you are adding new content when what you are really doing is using old content and calling it new. If you can’t tell the difference, then I don’t know what to say to you.

            Imagine if Destiny 2 was just an expansion to the base game. Imagine having all the old multiplayer PVE and PVP content alongside the new content. Maps you know, and maps you don’t know, all in the same playlist, and every two years you get even more content. More things to keep you playing.

            In ten year’s time, the game would be approaching what WoW achieved but in the multiplayer FPS genre.

            Now let’s talk about Call of Duty. Of all the games that I have talked about here, Call of Duty is the franchise most poised to do a constructive design. Call of Duty has a whopping 15 main titles in the series. That means 14 single player campaigns (sorry black ops 4), 15 sets of multiplayer maps and several maps and entries into the zombies series.

            What I propose for this is a constructive model of design that rolls all of those games into four different game modes. Past, Modern, Future and zombies modes.

            The past mode would roll all of the world war two era games into one playlist.

            The modern mode would likely be the largest playlist with some of Black Ops entries being rolled into it. We’re talking modern warfare, ghosts, etc.

            The future mode would have the movement and weapons of the future games and would have those playlists to pull from.

            The way this would work is that even though some of these games might have outdated graphics, the gameplay would be roughly the same throughout as the game play could be dictated on what the current version of the engine is and since artists usually have downtime between titles, they can work on updating the graphics for older maps as free DLC (but knowing Activision that will likely be called cosmetic DLC and sold as such). You keep the gameplay the same for each mode to ensure that the player does not become disoriented when the gameplay changes from the latest iteration of World War 2 gameplay to Call of Duty 2 era gameplay and movement and violently switches to wall running and slide dashing. Each mode has it’s own specific gameplay model that way map designs don’t need to change.

Essentially, all you are doing is importing maps and assets like weapons into the newest version of the engine. Player models would all be updated versions meaning you wouldn’t need to worry about the animation engine and needing to change skeletons and bone weights or tweaking old player models.

            Imagine queuing up for World War 2 games and having over 80 maps to choose from on rotation. Imagine how easy it would be to expand this game. You would still charge for future expansions, but all past titles are rolled up for free as a part of your subscription fee.

            The downside to this is that the sheer size of each modes install would be prohibitive, but with this model, you have the budget and leeway to change maps, texture sizes, and since textures, models, and light maps are the majority of a games size, if you redesign texture placement, have a base player model set across modes, you can reuse a lot of textures strategically to ensure a smaller install size.

THE EFFECTS OF DESTRUCTIVE DESIGN

            The effect of destructive design is much like the effect of DLC splitting a player base but multitudes worse in that the only people who are likely still playing your older titles are those who hated the new entry, have no interest in the new title, or those who cannot yet afford to purchase it. A subscription fee can be seen as pernicious by some and a sustainable development environment for others.

It can be seen as pernicious because I would think that most people do not even acknowledge a fee in their bank statements unless they look at them often. A subscription fee sits in the background, consuming your money while the content you pay for is sitting there untouched.

            But it also provides you with the resources to provide a real service to the consumer with constant patches, support and content. It is a constant sort of revenue that you can predict for a period of time.

            Each title released is a sort of calculated risk. When a studio releases a stand-alone title, much research is done to determine how the product will be received, what it’s likely meta-score will be, and if all shows the title will do good, the project continues, as is, to a release state. If the score is bad, then that title might be pushed back in order to provide more time to polish the product. This is the critical phase of a project. Every month delay is making the risk and exposure of your product much more visible to the executives.

            It is critical at this stage to get gameplay and presentation right so there are no more delays and hits to your stock price.

            With each title being riskier and riskier financially as project bloat inflates the budget for your sequel, you would think a model like this would be useful. When your expansion flops and no one wants to play it, there’s still incentive to pay and play the content they previously enjoyed before the expansion came out with possibly better graphics and updated game play.

            The other problem with destructive design is that it encourages developers to drastically change the things that players liked and be stuck with that decision for the development cycle of an entire new game. This tendency comes from player expectation with sequels. Bigger, better and more. Developers, to justify their sequel, seem bent on fixing things that didn’t need fixing which is a problem that the constructive model doesn’t have because it doesn’t need to justify its asking price. You are buying an expansion to get more content, not to have a different experience.

With constructive design, you have the ability to patch often and improve the experience. The budget for a non-subscription based, destructive model game title is much lower for patches and as a result those games do not receive the support they sometimes deserve. When the company lacks a good response to issues that plague the game, in the community’s eyes, their faith is shook. They start to grow suspicious of that companies next title, and most of the time they move on to something else. This is why having a support budget, in the form of a subscription fee, is good for the customer. It’s just not that great for their wallets.

So if you’ve ever wondered why games don’t do this, there’s fear, mostly, that a subscription model would not be well received. I personally don’t mind paying for service games, but my main fear in this design is that eventually, games die, and triple a studios are known for killing games. In many cases, the community surrounding a game have managed to keep titles they like alive through private servers, but these cases are few and far between.

            But there are two schools of thought on this. Those who will never pay a subscription fee to a game, and those that would rather pay a fee than to pay for the whole game.

            What side of this argument do you fall into, and why? Let’s discuss in the comments below and on Discord which you will find a link to in the description below. If you like this channel and haven’t rage quit yet, subscribe.

            This has been a rant from strat-edgy, and now that you’ve heard it, go play some games.