Shortly after Rage 2 was revealed last year, id Software studio director Tim Willits made some waves when he seemed to confirm the game would take a modern “games as a service” approach. Well, in a new interview with GameSpot, Willits seems to walk those comments back a bit – Rage 2 will have events and other post-launch content, but Willits no longer seems willing to fully embrace the GaaS/live service label.
Here’s how Willits describes the post-launch plans for Rage 2…
“We’ll have events and we can churn in activities on the occasion. But you do not need to always be online for this game. So was a little bit of confusion recently, but if you are connected to the internet, you can participate in these live events. If you’re not, then just play the base game and have fun. We can make these cool events happen that will kinda keep people engaged as we can deliver them more content in the future. […] We have some cool beats that we’ll talk about after the game launches, and what the framework looks like moving forward. When you play the full game, you can see that there’s room for things to expand, and we will continually layer things in to keep people engaged.”
And here’s his thoughts on the whole games as a service thing.
“No [Rage 2 isn’t games as a service], it will just be a supported game. I don’t know, it’s so hard to…like someone needs to come up with a perfect definition of what a ‘games-as-a-service’ game actually is. Many people have different ideas of that, and I may have confused people originally when I started talking about this. What we’re planning on doing is creating some updates and content for this game after we launch. So, we monitor the game, we monitor the players, we act in the community, we’re gonna support it, we’re gonna update it. It’s not like a subscription or a free-to-play game. But it will be supported.”
Willits is right, of course – the “games as a service” label is pretty vague, and could, technically, apply to any game with any sort of post-launch support. That said, most people tend to attach the label to games like Destiny 2 or the Battlefield titles, where there’s a very steady drumbeat of updates and a focus on microtransactions and other monetization schemes. Seems like Willits is rejecting that specific definition of the term.
Rage 2 unleashes its fury on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on May 14.
