Can a one-time purchase model really lead to effective growth for “evergreen games” designed for long-term operation?

In today's gaming industry, it's becoming increasingly difficult to achieve overnight success.

Recently, Ma Xiaoyi, Senior Vice President of Tencent, mentioned in an interview that creating a long-lasting GaaS product might require “taking it one chapter at a time”—with long-term operation as the ultimate goal, the team might be able to gradually build and validate its capabilities in gameplay, storytelling, and other areas by developing single-player, one-time-purchase titles.

In terms of business models, service-based games offer far greater revenue sustainability and potential than single-player buy-to-play titles. But just as a carp leaps through the Dragon Gate, behind every successful, long-running game there may be countless competitors that have fallen by the wayside—and no one dares to claim with absolute certainty that they have mastered all the necessary conditions for success.Even Ma Xiaoyi admits that a game may need to meet 10 prerequisites just to qualify for the “lottery,” and even then, the odds of winning may be as low as 30 percent.

Developing evergreen games is challenging. If you have to consider long-term operations while refining gameplay and storytelling, the complexity increases exponentially. That’s why Tencent is open to breaking this process down internally and iterating over several generations, and it also supports teams exploring new approaches through single-player, one-time-purchase games.

This process is undoubtedly challenging: Developing a single-player game is relatively straightforward, but long-term operation, monetization, multiplayer online gameplay, social competition, cross-platform support… every keyword associated with creating a long-lasting game seems like an insurmountable barrier. Can the gap between buy-to-play and subscription-based games truly be bridged through accumulated experience?

In this episode of “Game & Tea Roundtable,” we spoke with industry professionals about whether developing single-player, buy-out games can truly contribute to the long-term growth of “evergreen games” designed for sustained operation.

▍Industry Troll: Xiao Jiu

It can, but it can't.

Objectively speaking, the experience and expertise required for developing buy-to-play games and those for GaaS are based on entirely different skill sets. Not only is it difficult for developers accustomed to buy-to-play games to transition to GaaS, but it’s just as challenging for those accustomed to GaaS to switch back to developing buy-to-play games. There are a lot of “you don’t know what you don’t know” issues involved.

For example, developers working under the traditional buy-to-play model often struggle to understand what players are actually consuming in games designed for long-term operation; they keep repeating that “games are supposed to be fun,” yet treat “fun” as the sole criterion for the success of GaaS.

For example, when GaaS developers switch back to creating one-time-purchase games, they are completely out of touch with the quality and polish required for the core gaming experience, as well as with an understanding of emotion, narrative, and presentation. Mr. Chen Xinghan has given so many talks in China, yet there are likely only a handful of free-to-play GaaS game developers who truly understand what he’s talking about.

These are merely issues at the design and aesthetic levels. How many GaaS developers are aware of the basic fact that “industrial pipelines are actually highly customized based on project type and cannot be reused”? And what about the delusion that a single “AAA superstar producer” can single-handedly carry a project?

These are all real-life challenges, and the gap is actually much wider than most people imagine.

However, even if the gap is huge and the challenges are immense, we still have to do it—especially for the leading tech giants, who simply must. This is because future users—or rather, current users—have already been raised on a variety of products that have set the bar high for content quality, aesthetic appeal, and service standards.

"Black Myth" has sparked a second major surge in the Chinese Steam market (the first being PUBG),As you can see, Chinese players—who are accustomed to GaaS-level services—have been extremely critical of traditional buy-to-play developers since flooding onto Steam: failing to fix optimization issues within six hours of launch is, to GaaS players, equivalent to a six-hour server crash. It’s easy to see why the negative review rate is so high.

Conversely, the same principle applies: 24 years later, players have become increasingly critical of the storytelling and aesthetics in GaaS games. Complaints about static dialogue, plot logic, and character design continue to erupt across various game communities, and this negative sentiment is spreading beyond those communities.There used to be a saying about “staying within the niche to enjoy or poke fun at ourselves,” but now, if a game is truly poorly made, bad news travels even faster. Next year, we’ll soon find out whether “mass-market aesthetics” is already a false premise (which is highly likely).

Today’s players want the quality of AAA buy-to-play content combined with top-tier studio-level GaaS operations; if that’s delivered, they’ll pay—and, as Tencent keeps emphasizing, it’s “long-term, recurring revenue.”Although *Delta* isn’t a traditional AAA buy-to-play title—it’s a PvP game—its quality alone is certainly on par with the top tier of global first-person shooters. Of course, excelling at either aspect would be enough to make it a massive hit.

So, no matter how much industry professionals and developers complain about toxic public opinion or “crazy” players, this is the challenge facing developers worldwide at this stage—it’s not something they want to learn, but something they’re forced to learn.Overseas, the shift toward Game-as-a-Service (GaaS) has entered another slump following the withdrawal of major players like Sony. The future will depend on the domestic market. While the domestic industry appears to have grasped the industrial pipeline for content creation, what it hasn’t grasped is this: both our creative pipeline and talent density fall far short of the quality standards of buy-to-play games.

Here’s a very simple example: ask any game development team in China what the day-to-day work of level designers and narrative writers actually entails.Then take a look at what these roles actually entail in development teams creating true AAA content. You’ll quickly realize just how badly we’re lacking in versatile designers who possess aesthetic sensibility, narrative expertise, and logical thinking. However, in a sense, this reflects the principle that the economic base determines the superstructure—the younger generation of designers has already demonstrated tremendous potential.

From a business perspective, this dilemma hasn’t yet become fully apparent to everyone; it’s just that people currently can’t quite envision what new possibilities exist beyond gacha games when it comes to a “one-time purchase model featuring high-quality content and a long-term gameplay experience.” And those who constantly proclaim that gacha games are dead and that SLG and card-battle games are the future—that’s far too one-sided.

This is a bit all over the place, so let me wrap it up with a conclusion: There’s a huge gap between the current state of GaaS and buy-to-play models, but the opportunities that arise from their convergence will define the next decade—opportunities that all top-tier developers will pursue. Whoever takes the initiative to truly figure out the narrative mechanics of AAA content will gain a significant head start in the next generation of content-driven GaaS products.By 2026, we’ll likely see more signs of this—perhaps.

▍Will Forest, CEO of Breaker Games

I think it’s possible to accumulate it, but it won’t make much of a difference, and you can only accumulate a very small portion of it.

According to Tencent’s definition of a long-lasting game:

Let’s break this statement down a bit—in other words, we need to do the following:

• The theme appeals to a broad audience (it can attract a sufficiently large player base, ideally covering a wide range of users)
• High Retention (Players who join your game and are willing to stay)
• Generate Revenue (For players who stay in the game, you continuously engage them through various operational strategies and events, taking a slow and steady approach until they’re ultimately willing to spend money)

However, none of these three points are central to single-player games; let’s compare them one by one:

Broad Appeal: When it comes to single-player games, the most important thing is for the theme to be unique and explored in sufficient depth—only then can it first attract and satisfy the core player base, and only then can it break into a wider audience.

High Retention: Compared to a game's replayability or playtime, single-player games place greater emphasis on the peak experience—a game with an amazing experience can be a single-player masterpiece even if it's only 10 hours long.

Making money: That goes without saying—compared to mobile game companies, standalone game developers are practically amateurs.

Overall, developing single-player games certainly allows developers to gain experience in “how to create fun, high-quality games,” and this skill can also help with user acquisition, retention, and word-of-mouth. However, for evergreen games, this is merely the starting point of a project—not the end goal.

When a single-player game development team shifts its focus to creating evergreen games, it’s highly likely to run into many pitfalls; they’ll need to fill in the remaining 80% of their capabilities to have a chance at success. To put it more abstractly, one is building the tallest mountain, while the other is building the longest river…

▍“Traveling Thoughts” by Paranoia

Developing standalone, one-time-purchase games can provide effective content accumulation for “evergreen games” designed for long-term operation. However, they cannot provide effective accumulation for the long-term operation—particularly in terms of long-term monetization—of such “evergreen games.”

The analogy of “working through it chapter by chapter” may not be entirely appropriate. In my view, it’s unlikely that a transition from a one-time purchase model to a game-as-a-service (GaaS) model can be achieved through such incremental steps—because there are numerous chasms separating the one-time purchase model from GaaS, and working through them “chapter by chapter” will ultimately lead to a dead end.

Of course, this isn’t to say that CEO Ma is wrong, but rather that his statement is based on a certain premise: within the Tencent ecosystem, developing a long-lasting GaaS product may require “taking it one step at a time”—since Western studios lack experience with GaaS, they should give it a try;Tencent has already become highly proficient in long-term operations—particularly long-term monetization—so it now needs to gain experience in certain skills involved in single-player game development.

A buyout allows you to refine the “core fun” and productivity—such as the core gameplay and world-building: controls, camera work, enemy AI, level design, and narrative themes—which determine “why the game is worth playing long-term”;Production pipeline: resource specifications, automated builds, cross-platform submission workflows, and performance and crash management—these form the foundation for future “weekly/monthly updates”;Toolset: Level editors, numerical tables, story scripts, and batch packaging—tools that allow non-programmers to contribute directly—which directly determine long-term efficiency; Brand and user perception: IP imagery, protagonists, and aesthetics provide a “promising framework” for future seasons and events…

▍Zhihu Answerer: Yishan

Ubisoft has something to say about this. Ubisoft has been making one-time purchase games for years and has always wanted to transition to a GaaS model, but aside from *Rainbow Six: Siege* a decade ago, most of those attempts have flopped.There was a *Overwatch*-like game a while back that seems to have shut down after just a few months; *The Division 2*, a long-term service-based game, ended up with clearly insufficient endgame content in its launch version.

What is the core of GaaS? It’s about developing content once and allowing players to replay it repeatedly to reduce development costs.That’s why we see nearly all GaaS games tirelessly introducing item systems—just grind away; the more you grind, the less you hear from them. So GaaS isn’t content-driven at all, because even with today’s 42-day “sweatshop” model, players will quickly burn through the existing content.The only exception in GaaS or MMOs is the final boss of the “Icecrown Citadel” raid in *Wrath of the Lich King*, where Blizzard’s operations team actually lowered the combat difficulty to encourage players to “consume” the content as quickly as possible.but after all, this is the most iconic and arguably the most successfully developed character in the entire *Warcraft* IP—from *Warcraft* to *World of Warcraft*—bar none.

Therefore, from the planning or architectural level, GaaS requires the design of two overarching approaches—the first is how to encourage players to play repeatedly, through dungeon combinations with stats, daily, weekly, and monthly check-ins, and the design of PvP elements that let players experience the “endless fun of competing against others”;the second is to increase players’ willingness to spend—specifically, the paradigm common in domestic “gacha games,” where “stories are used to shape characters and stimulate players’ desire to pull cards” (the outfits in the *Namu Namu* series are also products of this approach, though *Namu Namu* focuses on materials and design).As for the content churn produced by sweatshop-like development, if it were all dumped on players at once, it would last no more than about 10 hours at best. The rest relies on keeping the two “overarching strategies” mentioned above in motion—the former is called DAU, and the latter is called ARPU; together, they make the whole thing work. The so-called storylines, gameplay, and content are essentially all designed to serve these principles.

But that’s not the case with full-price games. Although we acknowledge that, in the context of “Mix-Media” (media convergence), playing *Atelier* might just lead me to buy those little plastic figurines from Sega—meaning players might engage in some IP-related spending (which Kojima Studio relishes)—but when it comes down to it, the game itself is ultimately about the content.Playing *God of War: Ragnarök* on November 9, 2022, or November 9, 2025, may make no difference whatsoever in terms of the game’s essence. Santa Monica doesn’t care about your DAU—just buy it.whether you play it or not. Completion rates probably aren’t that important to Santa Monica, and even word-of-mouth isn’t that crucial (though it can serve as a basis for adjusting future content).The most important factor is clearly first-week sales—this is practically a matter of life and death for a development team. Although there are indeed titles on the market today that enjoy long-term sales success, first-week sales remain an extremely important consideration for both a studio and a publisher.

In my view, this argument is actually a form of “arrogance.” Where does this arrogance lie? It’s as if the buy-to-play model were merely a service or foundation for GaaS—as if, with development experience in buy-to-play games, studios could more easily make money off players.But unfortunately, if this narrative were truly that wonderful, Ubisoft wouldn’t be in the predicament it’s in now. Major publishers might have gone ahead and re-hired those shut-down studios, using their existing resources to create games like *Prototype Online*, *BioShock 77*, or *Canberra Hunter: Hunt the Universe*.

▍Wulang, former Tencent employee and producer of the single-player game *No One*

If the premise of this question is that “the team has already launched a long-running, evergreen game,” I think it’s feasible. First of all, in this scenario, developing a one-time purchase game likely isn’t about profit—after all, this business model can’t be compared to “in-game purchases.”It’s more likely, then, that the goal is to develop relatively low-cost “small-to-medium-sized buy-to-play games” to explore innovative gameplay or technological advancements: if a new title succeeds, these innovations can be ported to existing games to extend their lifecycles; if it fails, the cost won’t be too high.

From the perspective of player growth, if the goal is to convert players who previously didn’t play “subscription-based” games and only played “buy-to-play” games, that’s virtually impossible. In that case, it would be better to invest in a AAA title like *Black Myth*, but that’s a whole other story.

▍Producer of *Song of the Dragon: Food and Adventure*; founder of Plane Games, a studio specializing in the development of mobile games—Miyako

From mobile games to buy-to-play single-player titles, I’ve actually seen firsthand that long-term growth has real continuity. For example, with our current project, *Song of the Dragon*, we’ve already built a Discord community of over 2,000 people just during the Early Access phase. When we launch our next title, these people will be our core user base that we can reach directly.The situation is similar on Kickstarter: a core group of players who have supported us will naturally carry that support over to our next crowdfunding campaign. A prime example in the industry is the *My Time at Sandrock / My Time at Portia* series, where each installment’s crowdfunding success and community growth have surpassed that of its predecessor.While buy-to-play games don’t have “daily active users” metrics like mobile games do, they can gradually build a “long-lasting legacy” over the years through their community, reviews, and player word-of-mouth—and these accumulated assets represent tangible value for the team.

But if you’re asking whether the experience gained from the one-time purchase model can be applied to creating “evergreen” mobile games, I feel that the barrier to entry for non-one-time-purchase mobile games isn’t there—it lies in capital… Mobile games aren’t just highly competitive in terms of development; marketing and promotion costs are even higher, and it’s an oligopolistic market.

▍Jeff, a former Tencent employee and founder of the independent game studio Soda Game Studio

Speaking primarily from the perspective of small- and medium-sized/independent game studios, I’ll break the issue down into two aspects for now:

Is it feasible for small and medium-sized teams to release games on Steam—whether as one-time purchases or free-to-play titles—that are intended for long-term operation?

Is it reasonable to verify a game on the Steam Marketplace and then release a game with a similar theme and gameplay on a different platform?

I currently focus mainly on Steam games, so my perspective is somewhat limited.I know people who have developed buy-to-play games—or even free-to-play games with long-term operations—on Steam, but due to server costs, their ROI hasn’t met expectations. At least from my perspective, for small and medium-sized game developers right now, it isn’t cost-effective to release buy-to-play games with long-term operations directly on Steam during the early stages of a team’s development.

Why is that? Let’s take an example: To ensure effective operations, long-term games typically require centralized servers to store users’ in-game economic data, transaction data, and more. Steam is a global marketplace, so you need to deploy servers worldwide to guarantee a consistent experience. To save costs and handle potential traffic spikes, you also need to build a scalable server architecture and ensure server security.In addition to servers, you must also address issues such as player cheating, community management, and Steam’s stance on this type of game. These costs are quite prohibitive for most early-stage small and medium-sized teams.

Testing the gameplay through a standalone version—particularly by launching first in lightly regulated overseas markets to gather data on player engagement and other metrics—before moving on to the domestic market and mobile platforms might indeed be a good idea.A prime example is the game *Thronefall*; not only does it have its own mobile version, but other mobile games with similar gameplay are currently very popular.

But here’s a new issue: if we’re going to do it this way, I think, generally speaking, games released later need to offer higher quality, broader platform support, and more content than the games that have already been validated.I think this approach is better suited for large studios to acquire proven Steam games and re-release them across multiple platforms. For small and medium-sized game teams, setting aside whether they have the capacity for long-term operation and the necessary publishing capabilities, if you do the math, it just isn’t cost-effective. There are many ways to test the market—why choose the most expensive one?

▍Zhihu Answerer: Confused About Naming

It is possible—and there are even real-life examples.

South Korea’s “Moon Project” gained a following at Single-Player Brain Lobe, while Single-Player Ruins Library established its world-building and combat mechanics. Finally, the mobile game “Border Prison Bus” was released.

But how can I put this? In reality, doing something like this is a lot of hard work with little to show for it. For *Prison Bus* to succeed, he had to give up a lot.

First, there’s the world-building. The world of *Border Prison Bus* is so rich that you could break it down into several standalone games; without the foundation laid by the two previous installments, it would have been impossible to support such a large player base at launch.

Second, to accommodate the preferences of single-player gamers, "Border Prison" offers exceptionally generous rewards: characters come only in their base form, with no "Life Seats," no fragments, and no skill enhancements. All characters can be obtained by grinding with in-game stamina, provided you purchase the pass.

Take domestic examples of single-player games adapted into mobile games, such as *Gemland*: not only is the game world too small in the original single-player version, but the mobile version also drastically simplifies the gameplay. At the same time, the monetization model—designed to ensure revenue—is something that players of the original game simply cannot get used to.

▍Industry Observer H

A Strategy for a Student with Academic Imbalances to Turn Things Around May Not Work for Everyone

“Use single-player, full-price games to build the capabilities needed for long-term game operations.”

At first glance, this line of thinking seems sound. The Tencent team excels at “science-oriented” areas such as online game operations, monetization, and game balance design, but when it comes to “arts-oriented” areas like art, gameplay, and storytelling, they certainly can’t match the top domestic and international studios (or some of their teams).

So Tencent came up with a solution: to have students who excel in science brush up on their humanities.

This line of thinking is easy to understand. If a top student in the sciences could improve their scores in Chinese and English, wouldn’t their overall score be even higher? Tencent is that science whiz, and testing the waters with single-player, one-time-purchase games is its way of strengthening its humanities skills.By developing single-player titles, the company gains experience in art, gameplay, and storytelling—knowledge that ultimately feeds back into its own long-term, operationally-focused products.

But does this self-help plan for students who struggle in certain subjects apply to the rest of us?

The answer might be a little harsh: not really.

Why not? Take a look at these examples of failure.

The "Big Three" of the console gaming industry—Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo—have all tried their hand at service-based, long-term games. And what were the results? None of them were particularly successful.

Sony has worked the hardest and invested the most, but the results have fallen far short of expectations. As of early this year, the results of Sony’s nearly 20 GaaS projects were as follows:

Published Works:

"Hell's Commando 2," developed by Arrowhead Studios (the only successful title)

"MLB" (developed by San Diego Studio and considered a GaaS game by Sony)

"Gran Turismo 7," developed by Polyphony Digital (which Sony considers a GaaS game)

Service Termination After Launch:

"Concord," developed by Firewalk Studios (which subsequently closed)

Projects in Development:

"Marathon," developed by Bungie (expected release in 2026?)

"Fairgame$," developed by Haven Studios (scheduled for release in 2026?)

"Horizon" MMO developed by Guerrilla (release date unknown)

"Gummy Bears," developed by an unnamed studio (formerly part of Bungie; transferred to a new studio in August 2024)

An as-yet-untitled GaaS game led by Jason Blundell (former head of Deviation Games, who left the company in November 2022 and is rumored to have been recruited by Sony; several former Deviation employees are also involved in the project)

Cancelled items:

The *God of War* GaaS game developed by Bluepoint Games (development began in 2022; canceled in January 2025)

A sci-fi GaaS game developed by Bend Studio (development began around 2020; canceled in January 2025; screenshots were leaked in December 2024)

The "Twisted Metal" GaaS game developed by Firesprite (originally developed by Lucid Games, later transferred to Firesprite, and canceled in February 2024)

The *Last of Us* GaaS game developed by Naughty Dog (development began in 2020; canceled in December 2023)

The "Spider-Man" GaaS game developed by Insomniac (according to leaked information, development began in 2019 and was canceled around 2022)

An untitled GaaS game developed by Deviation Games (development began in 2021, canceled in May 2023; the studio closed in March 2024)

An untitled sci-fi GaaS game developed by First Strike Games (possibly a spin-off of the Deviation project; news of its cancellation surfaced on the same day as reports of an 80% layoff at Deviation in May 2023, though this has not yet been officially confirmed)

"Operation Payback," developed by Bungie (development reportedly began in 2022?, canceled in August 2024; believed to be "Destiny 3")

A fantasy-themed GaaS game developed by a London studio (development began in 2022, canceled in February 2024, followed by the studio's closure)

In the end, the only title Sony has left that’s worth mentioning in terms of long-term operations is *Destiny 2*, developed by the Bungie team it acquired in 2022.Bungie has become something of a “firefighter” within Sony; many of Sony’s GaaS game development teams have Bungie “supervisors” stationed on-site to guide game development, but the results have been, to put it mildly, mixed.

In fact, when judged by Chinese game developers’ standards for “long-term game operations,” *Destiny 2* is undoubtedly a “one-trick pony.”Most of *Destiny 2*’s revenue comes from large-scale DLCs released on a regular basis, which is essentially no different from other single-player, buy-to-play games that love to release DLCs (such as Paradox Interactive titles), not to mention the game’s extremely clunky onboarding and its abysmal community management.There remains a vast chasm between *Destiny 2* and true long-term operation games. And let’s not forget that the project lead for *Starfall*, widely regarded by countless players as the industry’s biggest joke of 2024, is none other than Bungie’s former CEO, Harold Ryan.

Long-running games in Europe and the U.S. simply don't buy into this approach.

In fact, it’s not that European and American developers are incapable of successfully operating long-running games. But when we look back at these successful long-running games, we find that their success often has almost nothing to do with the development teams’ experience with single-player, one-time-purchase games.

For example:

"Warframe," the renowned game from Canadian developer Digital Extremes, has been in operation for over 12 years. As another "grind-based" game, "Warframe"’s business model aligns more closely with the definition of a Game-as-a-Service (GaaS) title than that of its counterpart, "Destiny 2";

"Path of Exile," developed by the New Zealand-based studio Grinding Gear Games, released its second installment last year, and even Musk jumped on board to promote it;

as well as several multiplayer online games from Activision Blizzard, a company most people are familiar with;

And then there's Epic's *Fortnite*

The teams behind these successful long-running games from Europe and the U.S. have, for the most part, not achieved significant success with single-player, buy-to-play titles.

What does this tell us? It tells us that these two types of games are, in essence, two completely different things.

A single-player game is like making a movie, while long-term operation is like producing a TV show.

Why is it so difficult to apply the lessons learned from single-player games to games designed for long-term operation? The root cause is that these are two completely different businesses.

Developing a single-player game is like making a movie: you assemble a team of top-notch talent (a four-digit team during the “Full Production” phase), spend a huge amount of money (before the pandemic, this was roughly 60,000 to 100 million; now it basically starts at 200 million),spend 2–3 years meticulously polishing the game (now typically 3–5 years), and then pin all your hopes on the first-week or first-month box office. You’re only responsible for the 2–3 hours players spend in the theater (which corresponds to the 30–50 hours of main story content typical of single-player games).

Running a game over the long term is like producing a TV show that never goes off the air: You need to continuously produce new content, keep the audience engaged, interact with fans, and design ads and monetization opportunities so that the show can keep airing season after season.

Can a talented film director make good TV shows? Not necessarily. Conversely, can a successful TV producer make good movies? That’s also difficult.

These two types of business require completely different skill sets: single-player games prioritize the ability to create a once-in-a-lifetime experience, while long-term games require the ability to keep players coming back for more; single-player games rely on a one-time sale, whereas long-term games require a steady, sustained flow of engagement;Once a single-player game is released, the team can move on to the next project, whereas the development of a game designed for long-term operation is a never-ending process.

The financial models of the two are also completely different: for the vast majority of single-player, one-time-purchase games, more than 50% of revenue comes from the first month after release, with the remaining revenue coming from small spikes generated by subsequent sales and promotions.In the early stages of long-term game operations, many titles operate at a loss to build a following; they require continuous efforts to maintain engagement and positive word-of-mouth in order to secure a stable, steady stream of revenue over the long term.

So, can single-player games really help build the capabilities needed for long-term game operations?

The answer is: It depends on the person.

For a “tech-focused powerhouse” like Tencent, which has two decades of experience operating online games, developing single-player games could indeed help address its weaknesses in art and storytelling.

But for most teams, blindly jumping on the bandwagon to develop single-player games is likely just a waste of resources, and they’ll end up with a set of skills they can’t put to use.

The biggest pitfall in the gaming industry is treating “quick fixes” as “panaceas.” No matter how well a single-player game is made, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee long-term success. Every game genre has its own rules, and true success comes from respecting and understanding the unique characteristics of each format—not from simply assuming that one set of experiences can be directly replicated in another.