Operation Health

On June 7th, 2017, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege released one of its most… uh, everything Update's in the game's history.

Important, infamous, amazing, terrible, dumb, necessary; there's dozens of words in the dictionary that could be argued to perfectly describe this update, which is why I think you can find people both groups mocking it, and ones begging for a sequel. Whatever one's thoughts may be, there is often a conflict in games of all-types between content (the things we play through in a game) vs core (the things we play with in a game.)

What happens you make things for people to play through for a game people don't want to play with?

For those unaware, Test Drive Unlimited 2 was the 2011 sequel to 2006's Test Drive Unlimited.

I know, my analysis is terrifyingly insightful.

It featured the Hawaiian Island of Oahu from the original game, but it's primary draw was its new location of Ibiza out in the Mediterranean Sea next to Spain. Being one of the earliest examples of a Primarily Multiplayer Service Racing game, the people who spent the hours required to earn the game's best houses and cars will hold many, many fond memories of Ibiza, unable to help build a sense of nostalgia.

Now, Solar Crown's developer KT Racing couldn't make all of TDU2's Ibiza two months after launch, but they released its Capital Region, the part that even someone who only played the 2011 game even for just fifteen minutes would be able to recognize. It was obviously a deliberate, not because of how Live Service games need to plan all of their post-launch content well in-advance, but because it was marketed to people before the game even released.

Perhaps that's why then it didn't bring people in…

Y'all know I don't like to use Player Numbers for arguments of a game's quality, however, there's a pretty obvious case to be made here that releasing content did almost nothing to help Test Drive Solar Crown's current-state, and the reason why is simple, it does almost nothing to improve the core of Test Drive Solar Crown. You've built a new environment for people to drive, in a game where the driving isn't fun. You've devoted a team of artists towards recreating an environment most users are seeing through a 720p DLSS Letterbox to barely hold a stable framerate. You've added Proximity Chat for an always online game that has no one to chat with.

The term Live-Service often really emphasizes the SERVICE, meanwhile Live is more often than not just referred to server-connection being a requirement to play, but Live Services are a living thing. They are not static. There comes a point where no matter how perfected a game is, the absolute last thing a player wants to see is the Developers releasing another Patch Note listing Improved Rock Texture Quality.

They want to see a new map, character, skin, firearm, just anything to mix up a formula that you can get bored of even when the formula is perfect… and the opposite is just as much a reality, although, there's an extra element to it.

The numbers your seeing for Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown, are the people who love it regardless, or are at the very least, capable of loving it, and the thing about those people, is that they're not prioritizing new-content, for if they were, they would not be here. The hardcore are the people who are going to play the game when during its lowest points, and when it's far surpassed its height of relevance.

The hardcore don't need Content, they need a Core.