When a Live Service Game Dies: Players' perspective on WildStar shutting down
Kajala, Niilo (2025)
2025
Master's Programme in Game Studies
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2025-03-06
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202503052586
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202503052586
Tiivistelmä
Live service games, meaning games that receive regular updates from developers in exchange for subscriptions or other types of in-game transactions, have become the dominant form of monetisation in the market where most games are given to players for free to stay competitive. Almost all the top-grossing mobile games are using live service as their business model with many of the PC titles also adjusting to this model. This all started with massively multiplayer online games that required a constant internet connection to function and used to charge players a monthly fee in exchange for constant updates. WildStar is one of those games and is the focus of this thesis. During its four- and half-year lifespan between June 2014 and November 2018, the game cultivated a small but active playerbase that remains alive today on various social media platforms despite the game servers having been shut down for over five years.
To better understand what the players enjoyed about WildStar, how they reacted to the closure, and what happened after the game had closed, I published a survey collecting almost two hundred responses around the world. As I was one of the players of this game, I chose reflexive thematic analysis as my analysis method as this allowed me to analyse the responses by enriching my analysis of the data through my own experiences and knowledge of the game.
In the data analysis process, I developed five themes based on Yee’s and Ducheneaut’s (2019) gamer motivation model that described different aspects player enjoyed about WildStar. These enjoyments played a crucial role in identifying why different players feel vastly different ways about the game closure. The large dataset in this research allowed me to connect player enjoyments, different emotions, and their intensities, that I then used to develop five new themes encompassing different ways people felt about the game shutting down.
Previous academic discourse on game closures primarily focused on ethnographic studies where the researchers happened to be researching a game that closed during the research period. My research adds a different perspective from players who lost their game five years ago. This allows for identifying different ways players behaved and reacted to the closure through feelings that have been processed over the years. Additionally, it gives a glimpse of the long-term collective trauma experienced by the leftover community and brings awareness to the importance of community management during these closure processes.
To better understand what the players enjoyed about WildStar, how they reacted to the closure, and what happened after the game had closed, I published a survey collecting almost two hundred responses around the world. As I was one of the players of this game, I chose reflexive thematic analysis as my analysis method as this allowed me to analyse the responses by enriching my analysis of the data through my own experiences and knowledge of the game.
In the data analysis process, I developed five themes based on Yee’s and Ducheneaut’s (2019) gamer motivation model that described different aspects player enjoyed about WildStar. These enjoyments played a crucial role in identifying why different players feel vastly different ways about the game closure. The large dataset in this research allowed me to connect player enjoyments, different emotions, and their intensities, that I then used to develop five new themes encompassing different ways people felt about the game shutting down.
Previous academic discourse on game closures primarily focused on ethnographic studies where the researchers happened to be researching a game that closed during the research period. My research adds a different perspective from players who lost their game five years ago. This allows for identifying different ways players behaved and reacted to the closure through feelings that have been processed over the years. Additionally, it gives a glimpse of the long-term collective trauma experienced by the leftover community and brings awareness to the importance of community management during these closure processes.