Recently, former Dragon Age franchise game producer and BioWare veteran Mark Darrah released a new video and expressed the idea: "Games are not movies, but perhaps they should borrow their business models."
Darrah compared how the revenue structure of cinema and video games is organized. Films generate profit not only through cinemas, when people buy tickets, but also through additional monetization channels, including digital sales, film releases on streaming services, physical media releases, and advertising integrations (product placement).
The situation is different with games. After purchase, publishers try to maintain their revenue by selling additional content (DLC/Expansion), in-game purchases / microtransactions.
According to Mark Darrah, such reliance on the service model is a problem — it negatively affects the diversity of video game genres. Betting on microtransactions pushes publishers to invest in more game-services, while other genres receive less attention, as not everything can be turned into a "service."
Mark Darrah expressed the opinion that product placement in video games currently accounts for a small share of revenue compared to film and television. And he believes that the share of revenue from this type of monetization could be increased:
Perhaps certain partnerships could be built [...] It seems to me that the excessive reliance [of video games] on microtransactions shifts the focus too much towards certain genres and hinders the development of others. Is it worth thinking about? I think so. Do I have a ready-made ideal model? No, not yet. But the industry should think about it, because not everything can be a "game-service" — as, hopefully, we have seen quite clearly over the past year and a half.
Darrah believes that if the main monetization comes from game-services, then gamers risk ending up in a world where "there will be no AAA games that are not services."
The video is available at the following link.