Subscriptions aren't the way to go for non-MMO games, IMO. Like I said previosly, for games like this, if you are actually adding enough 'content' to justify subscription, then you are just beating the game to death (making it worse after a certain point in time... eg you wouldn't really implement subscriptions for a six month period would you? ). And if its not content, then you have to offer things like persistent universe--- well for that you might as well turn it into a MMO which is not what people want for games like this . I would support expansions, but that too to limited extent with quality always in mind. E.g. you don't want to create a Sims, lol. In other words, like others have said here, I think the standard expansion model is better than micro expansions or subscriptions. That's not to say its the best possible... you could come up with some innovative new idea none of us can think up.

(1) Scary .

(2) Game-balance is only a two-way street if your game is badly designed. Having formerly worked on game design in the past (and still doing it occasionally as a hobby), improving any aspect of the game should improve every aspect of the game. If this statement isn't true at ANY point, something is broken on a more fundamental level than game balance. If balancing a multiplayer game ruins or badly hurts the single player game, your game is broken somewhere. In most cases the problem is that single player games often have different goals from multiplayer games but share the same ruleset. So one can be improved, but the other will always suffer as a result. See Guild Wars as a good example. They implemented a lot of PvE-only skills so that PvE players could cope with the balancing of PvP. They ought to be on different rulesets entirely, but they at least mitigated the 'damage'. In a game like Sins, the single player and multiplayer goals are essentially the same. The rulesets are the same. So there is really no argument against balancing the game.

(3) First off, let me say this. When balancing a game, one should never ever listen to what players say. Always look and see what they DO. Apart from outright lying, players at the highest level of the game often don't have much muscle in the part of their brain that explains how they win. All the muscle is concentrated in winning. So while they might THINK something is X, it might be Y instead. You have to WATCH what they do, not listen to what they say. This is the number one fundamental flaw that 90% of game designers make when balancing their games (I'm looking at you, Relic).

It's not impossible to say whether competitive gaming drove the balance. As a witness to the whole spiel, I'll enumerate what happened. The thing about game balance is that there's a feedback loop between the designer and the players. In other words, the more balanced and interesting your game is, the more likely it is that (good) competitive players will latch onto it, the more likely that they will show you how to improve your game balance.

Starcraft never became the phenomenon it was without the intervention of the Koreans. At the early stages of the game, most players (including me) had it in their minds that your player skill was determined by your micro ability. Silly stuff like that carried on through a number of patches. We still drove balance (oh did we drive it...) by exploiting things like 4-pool etc. But when Boxer hit the scene, things started really going. The feedback loop had finally ramped up to the point where it just grew and grew exponentially. This guy was considered inhuman back in the day, and he single-handedly mastered the game (at least the Terran game).

No one could sit around in a 'clan' anymore and bullshit about how good they were. This is a problem with a lot of multiplayer games - the competitive play isn't high-level enough. No, if you were gonna talk shit, you better beat some of those Korean guys or at least not get your face run over. The Koreans understand how to play competitively. They don't form these groups of yes-men around them like Westerners tend to do. They don't bullshit around. They play the game until they kick ass. I saw the same thing in Guild Wars. The top two guilds were almost always Korean, the same two, and they won every tournament I can remember. You don't do that by bullshitting around. These are the guys that drive game balance. The players that can SHOW you their mastery of the game.

(4) I should have stated this more completely. What I mean is that if there is a widespread competitive community and people start paying attention, they will become better at the game. They will realize that 'pieces' of the game exist that they had never considered before. The easiest example is when newer players 'discover' micro. That opens up the game for them. Other examples are specific strategies - in Starcraft, a lot of people have a sort of epiphany when they see that you can block a ramp into your base by building structures there. Things like that is what I was referring to.

(5) Unfortunately, this is almost always true. However, the community has only become 'fractured' into two stronger 'halves' when something like this happens. What if there was no strategy section on the forums, and no one played multiplayer? A lot less people would be excited about this game for sure. The tragedy of it is that competitive and 'casual' players want the same thing, a good fun game with diverse strategies. Multiplayer-oriented balance is what is needed here. If the game is balanced for multiplayer, it's balanced for single-player - period. There are no fine lines in this game to cross (no dancing units, no micro-oriented imbalances, all numerical fixes).

The 'casual' players shouldn't complain about ships being nerfed/buffed/whatever, they should complain that the AI doesn't use the best strategies against them. After a while, it's like the AI just lies down to die for you, waiting for the dagger at your liesure.

(6) It's not the competitive player base. It's a subset of them that form groups of yes-men around themselves and think of themselves as better than everyone in every way just because they might be better at playing a game. I've never been able to tolerate the bullshit these people tell themselves, so I've never been in a clan like this.

The good competitive gaming 'clans' are people that are really the competitive backbone of the game. These guys don't want to win just to gloat, they want to win by improving themselves in the game - 90% of the satisfaction of winning a game is in knowing that you did it because of how you played. I alluded to this slightly in the Stellar Frontier post - the competitive players that were given an unfair advantage could never feel the satisfaction of winning. Real competitive play isn't about being better than someone else, it's about testing your skills against the best. Losing to Boxer in Starcraft is a badge of honor if you played your best. If you're just some pathological asshole, you're not gonna get any satisfaction from playing your best, only from gloating after you win.

The best friends I've ever made in competitive games are those who were excellent opponents - we enjoy learning about each other and playing against each other. This is the spirit of multiplayer gaming.

(7) And I suppose all the people that play single player and all those that casually play multiplayer are perfect angels? You can't pick out a subset of a group and judge the whole group by them. People are even complete assholes in real life when you're right in front of their face. Any community anywhere in the world will have people like this.

There are also some subtleties when speaking about this issue. There are often different opposing philosophies (though they have the same goal) that meet and cause sparks. The philosophy of a lot of competitive gamers is that of Sirlin - play to win. This is a well-defined 'field' full of terminology such as 'scrubs' and whatnot that you've probably heard.

There is nothing wrong with this philosophy, only the way in which people weild it. When someone says something is 'cheap' or 'lame' in a game, they are usually attacking the validity of a tactic in a game. The problem with this, however, is enforcement. The game doesn't know the difference between a 'cheap' and 'lame' strategy and an 'accepted' strategy, all it knows is who won the game. Furthermore, it's difficult to define what is 'cheap' - the definition might differ between people. So the play-to-win gamer decides that any tactic that can be done in the game (apart from using third-party programs/hacks/etc.) is completely valid. Those who decry the use of 'cheap' tactics are, in effect, not playing the real game. This is where the term 'scrub' comes in. It is simply someone with any view of the ruleset of a game other than the real ruleset. In other words, anyone who plays by their 'own' rules instead of the real game rules.

The other philosophy(ies really) is not quite so well-defined but generally comes down to 'play to have fun.' The eternal problem with this is that no one can agree on what fun means. That doesn't make it an invalid philosophy, it just makes it less easy to communicate. Both philosophies' goal is the enjoyment of the game, the first is simply more specific and more well-defined.

The trap people fall into is not agreeing to disagree. Instead they view themselves as completely correct in every way and turn to attacking the other side. This happens in just about every aspect in life that involves groups of people.

(8) I played this game as well. The #1 killer problem with the developer was they listened to what people said instead of watching what they did. Classic fatal mistake.

(9) This is a design mistake. Halo 2 (I think) had the same problem - no standard gametype. The developer dropped the ball here in not providing a standard game type that people wanted to play. So the community was less likely to meet critical mass because they were, in a very real sense, fractured (unlike the use of fractured addressed earlier).

(10) A lot of the conflict just proves that people care about the game. There's a lot of noise for sure, but that happens anywhere. A game staying alive longer is pure proof that the community is invigorated. There is a certainly a lot of crap and noise going on, but the game is better for surviving it.

Never is a long time, by the way .

.. I was trying to make a point that having tournaments for EVERYONE.

Hense tournaments to win where you'd get something small like a free mini-expansion worth $10, or maybe win a full game.

You could have 5000 people win a free mini-expansion and that hardly cost anything. While you may sell them for $10 or $15, they don't actually cost Stardock that much to give away. But perceptually, that's $50,000

I don't think so. Let's take two old games off the top of my head - Allegiance and Natural Selection. Both of them still have players, but 'died' long ago.

How many people are still interested in playing these games? A game that is alive has a somewhat steady flow of new players still coming in. That, more than anything, more than any number of ridiculous ladders or whatnot, is the biggest indicator of a game's health - new players join, and want to stay.

Both these games are still maintained by a hardcore competitive playerbase. They got good at the game long ago, they all know each other, and have been playing since the Dark Ages. Occasionally a new person will join the game, but are immediately chased out by both groups. Be it the skill level, the learning curve, the attitudes present. While one could say that the competitive scene is driving these games and keeping them alive, would you call that alive?

I wouldn't, they're both in a state of zombified undeath. There's no POINT to them being alive any more. One could even say Starcraft is in this state. How many new people are joining Starcraft? Despite how huge it is, I think anyone who gave a damn about that game was playing five years ago.

While sure, a dedicated community (frankly, the competitive scene has nothing to do with this) will keep a game 'alive' longer than normal, it's not alive in the sense that the game's existence serves any purpose any more.



This actually wasn't supposed to be in my post - a leftover from an older chunk of writing. But anyway, I feel it brings up a valid point since you mentioned the "play to win", in which case, balance *IS* a two-way street.

One thing I find is that competitive gamers will cry about 'skill' everywhere they can. In FPS games, if the game doesn't have bunnyhopping it doesn't have enough "skill". If it doesn't have hitscan weapons, it's not enough "skill". If it doesn't have headshots or instagibs, it's not enough "skill". What competitive gamers seem to want is every game to be exactly like the last one they were good at.

This *IS* a pivotal point of game balance. I can bunnyhop. I'm not the best, but I can do it. I have better than average aim, I'm pretty decent at FPS games. However, I will not play games with such "SKILLZ"-driven features in it, because they make the game suck. This ultimately degrades to a great game debate about which playerbase to market the game towards. The casual scene wants a game that is fun, unique. See Tribes 2 - slower paced, heavy focus on teamwork, more focus on your tools and less on the player - The competitive scene seems to always want a game that is extremely fast-paced, adreneline-driven, and 'twitchy'. See UT. Frankly, the kinds of games competitive gamers want bore me to tears, and you can easily say that both games require just as much 'skill', but the competitive scene simply wants games that are designed around what THEY do, rather than vice versa.

One could even make a point that the competitive drive is what is contributing to the death of creativity in games. IF you followed what the competitive scene seems to want, you'd be playing the samey games over and over. Hell, the T1 competitive players wanted T2 to be the exact same game, and were furious that it deviated from what they were used to. The TFC competitive players wanted TF2 to be the exact same game, and were livid that they removed grenades.

So it comes down to balance. Do we leave bunnyhopping in, a competitive 'staple'? Or do we take it out to even the playing field for the 'casuals'? Me? As I said, I'm no FPS nub, and bunnyhopping should NEVER be in ANY game.

Another example is micro - how do you balance that? There used to be an 'exploit' in Starcraft that was based around micro - it involved a transport and putting units in and out to avoid damage. As far as the micro players were concerned, this was legit - so why did Blizzard remove it? Technically, it wasn't imbalanced, but it did need to be fixed, so who is right? There's other things as well. Sure a Marine vs. a Zergling is a basic number crunch, but if there's things you can do to dance your units around and increase survivability, when does it become a balance issue? It's like bunnyhopping. It might be 'TEH SKILLZ', but that doesn't mean it's not a broken mechanic.

What about build orders? I think they're a broken mechanic in strategy games as well, as they break what should be player-driven strategy apart into number-driven formulas.

If developers simply watched what people do, it really doesn't matter if you're 'casual' or 'hardcore'. Any experienced player at any game, tag-wearing retard or not, is going to be good at it. Just because I've never been in a clan doesn't mean I'm not better than most of the morons who are. In fact, most of the justification for competitive-based balancing *IS* from developers who listen to them (and then the game invariably falls to shit). Decent stat-collection systems that echo back to the main server alone will serve as a great guide to balance.

As I can't agree that competitive gaming is vital to balance, and competitive gaming keeping a game alive longer is something of a fallacy, what exactly does competitive gaming do, then? Especially, as you pointed out, the difference between Eastern and Western competition. All I can think is that professional competition makes more money for whoever is sponsoring the tournament - the developer of the game actually gets a pretty raw deal there.

To this end, I still see no point in 'catering' to competitive players. They're an extremely small portion of the community, far smaller than they themselves like to think, and their impact on the game is negligible. Games that aren't friendly to a competitive environment (Tribes 2) weren't hurt by that fact, and in fact even 'big name' games that are designed to appeal to competition, like Quake Wars, actually flop pretty badly. Natural Selection's popularity was higher when it had less focus on personal skill and other competitive-driven 'changes'. The difference between 2.0 and 3.0 was night and day, and the game's popularity plummeted once 'competition' took the spotlight. Now nobody gives a fuck about Natural Selection, except the aforementioned die-hards who fought to make the game that way.

As I said, Starcraft's popularity was driven by a lot of factors, far more than because it was 'competitive based' or something. Even two things like Battle.Net and the Custom Rules Maps. Prior to Starcraft, matchmaking had to be done via clunky IP-based lobby systems, like Westwood Online. Custom Maps really drove multiplayer's success as well - back in the day, over half the games were custom rule sets (90% of them being *********DRAGONBALLZZZZZ ROELPLAING BGH BGH BGHXXXXXXXXXXXXX((((((((((((*)

Even the market penetration was simply a substantial contributor - prior to 1998, how many PC games were marketed in Korea?

Agreed 100% BG2 Redux or something would make a bloody fortune. The closest thing available right now is the NWN series and thats so dulled down from BG2 quality its barely even worth mentioning. Bioware is losing too much of its creativity to corporate commands to keep the game rating low :/ BG2 would've gotten a Mature rating now, and for good reason, but its still awesome, and getting a mature rating doesn't really reduce your target market by much. All you've done is get rid of the kids with overbearing parents who apparently want to shelter them from anything and everything. While there are quite a few of those, a teen rating usually has almost the same affect on those people that a mature rating does.


Back to the fees/xpacs thing...

Since I forgot to mention it in my last post. I think the persistant multiplayer world would get some subscribers, I can't say how many for certain, but I'd definitely give it a go.

The toruneys/events for everyone thing might be a good idea. You'd have to work it well so that its somewhat fair, and you don't just have the korean situation where a guy was making $120k a year playing in starcraft tournaments. Something like how an MMO would do it. Like do a christmas event, everyone gets a free copy of

(1) You said it yourself, these games died. So they're a bad example. It's not like I was saying, for example, that any game with any competitive element in it would survive for 10 years. There are lots of factors like advertising, quality, and so on.

(2) The same thing happens in Starcraft just about every day. But there are places where people can learn to play the game if they would like. ICCUP is a pretty good example of this. They have lettered leagues and a lot of average players play against a lot of other average players and enjoy the hell out of it.

(3) See (1).

(4) I think you'd be shocked. Starcraft is sitting on the PC game rack at Wal-Mart in a little town of 5000 people. It's always been like this, but especially so since the announcement of SC2.

(5) Here we started getting into the nebulous area of defining what we mean when we say community and alive and so forth. To keep a game 'alive', you need a certain critical mass of people to keep the game in the public eye. Take chess, for instance. No matter how good a game might be, unless a whole lot of people play it/know about it, it won't really go anywhere in the long run - in other words, it won't be remembered as a great game by a large number of people. You certainly don't NEED a competitive community for this to happen (GalCiv II), but including them can only make your numbers grow - that is, unless you fuck it up - which unfortunately developers tend to do on occasion.

You can see this with Starcraft. The game wasn't an enormous hit in 1998 (compared to a couple of years later[it's not in 3D *cry* <-- practically every review for it]). It was 99 or 2000 (can't really remember, getting old ;)) when we started getting a huge influx of people - this is around the time when the Koreans entered the scene. Before that there was a rather mild competitive scene + a lot of modders/mapmakers. Blizzard played their hand correctly and supported the map editor, brought in replays, balanced the game with fervor, and (most importantly) didn't fuck it up. Their success in all of this is what brought them that feedback loop I referred to earlier.

(6) There's an important distinction between these. Balancing the game is not a two-way street unless your game is broken. If your game is unbalanced, it's unbalanced. Whether you're approaching the game from a play-to-win perspective or play-to-have-fun perspective has no effect on whether or not the game is balanced.

(7) There are only three ways to determine the outcome of a game (if the possibility of a draw is 0). You can determine it randomly or you can make a deterministic ruleset and a goal or you can combine these two elements. If the game is determined randomly - well that's boring as hell. There isn't any kind of 'luck' factor in this game that comes to mind (if you play non-random maps) so it's determined strictly by its ruleset.

Those who find the best pathways to navigate the ruleset to victory are said to be more 'skilled' at the game. You can't really have any meaningful competition without 'skill' being a factor. The examples you pointed out were very specific and were mostly whining. If the game needs those things to be successful, the developer will put them in. If they are detrimental, the developer will take them out. Otherwise the game will take a hit.

Some games have more skill differentiators than others. Whatever provides buoyancy for your flotation device is my motto. Some like more skilldiff, some like less. It's up to the developers to decide what they want to do with the game.

(8) Maybe some people want that, but I wouldn't paint all those people with the 'competitive gamer' brush. Most of the progamers in Starcraft are looking forward to the changes in SC2, though there are some debates on specific points. It keeps things fresh. I could simply counter-argue by saying that all the 'casual' gamers wanted this game to be MoO in 3D. It wouldn't be any more or less true.

(9) This sounds like you're talking about skilldiff. Some people like less, some people like more.

(10) I'm gonna have to mark you -1 for this example. Any team-oriented game is gonna be exponentially more competitive than a one-man oriented game. From this, it follows loosely that a game that's more team-oriented than player-oriented is gonna require more skilldiff. This is only in general, obviously. You can add in factors to make one-man games require way more skilldiff and so on.

If you have a team of 8 on one side and a team of 8 on another side: if one team spends 10 hours a day playing together, and the other is just an occasional squad from a clan, the first team is going to walk all over the second team. This might not happen in 1v1, for example. The 10-hour-a-day guy is more likely to win, but not exponentially more likely. This was a big problem for Guild Wars in general. The barrier for entry to have a top 50 guild was at least 4 extremely skilled players and 4 very good players.

(11) Sorry, but I have to say the same thing for the casual players. They want the game to revolve around them too. It's a human thing. The only difference here is that competitive players will contribute more to the game balance through their high-level matches by exploiting overpowered things/bugs/etc. It's not as if they write a check-list and send it in to the developer. The developer is the one that balances the game.

(12) False dichotomy. Taking out bunny-hopping from Quake III, for example, would not even the playing field for casual players. It's just -1 skilldiff. It's up to a developer to make the game and make these decisions, not the competitive or casual players.

(13) If it's in the game, it's a valid tactic for sure. Blizzard took it out because it was overpowered, not because it was micro. For an example of a bug they didn't fix (intentionally), look at muta stack. These things are skilldiffs, and it's up to Blizzard to decide how many they want and which ones are balanced.

(14) It was imbalanced because it was too strong a tactic to defend against.

(15) These are more skilldiffs. Dancing units around and exploiting an encyclopedia of engine bugs etc. is what competitive gamers do. If Blizzard sees someone winning a huge amount of matches by exploiting one of these bugs, they'll make a determination on whether it's overpowered or not and act accordingly. All the competitive players do here is find and exploit the bug.

(16) There are build orders in every game I can think, including Go and Chess. These are just optimal starting moves. Something like this exists in any semi-deterministic game.

(17) But some will be significantly better than others and will understand a great deal more about the game than others. Certainly you're not suggesting that we tell Blizzard that they should balance the gameplay based on some people playing the single player game. Developers do often take aggregate statistics, but these statistics are usually top-down in that strategies and tactics leak from the better players downward.

(18) It's important to remember that your association or lack thereof with other people has nothing directly to do with your skill at anything. In fact, by the law of averages, most people in a clan are not even moderately skilled compared to the highest-level players.

(19) Watch what they do instead of listen to what they say etc.

(20) You're right as I just referred to a bit earlier. But there's no reason not to get the information from the primary source.

(21) So people that play in the Superbowl have no effect on the popularity of football?

(22) I'm gonna go with the Superbowl analogy again. Sponsors give money to the people who host the event who pay a licensing fee or come to some other agreement with the game publisher (the publisher may even host the event itself [e.g. Guild Wars tournaments]).

(23) This might be true for some games, but just about any statement might be true for some games. A lot of games are made specifically with competitive play in mind (e.g. Quake III Arena/Counterstrike/Quake Wars).

(24) Quake Wars has a pretty large community actually with a lot of topics going back and forth at all levels of skill. id certainly scored points with a lot of people, that's for sure. That isn't worth nothing. They didn't become the next Starcraft, but they will live on for a while longer. I'd say they did pretty well compared with 'successes' like Crysis (;)).

Just thought I'd interject with a short post.

There, done.

-- Retro

I havent read the entire discussion just commenting on OP. Personally, I dont like subscription models. I would rather pay for an expansion pack every few months than actually load up new content like that. I have a few reasons for this.

First: Maps, with galaxy forge and the other utilities I really dont think that adding maps is that big of a deal.

Second: Lack of a credit card, I do not own a credit card, I have a DEBIT card though. Although I did purchase sins online(mothers credit card) I still like that walk into a game store and pick it up feel.

Third and Last: I really dont notice the difference when small packs are added constantly. Hey look new ship....ok? Ooh another layer of tech...no biggie. Combine those together and I just get a whoah feeling. Thats just me though .

Maybe you could charge for Clans members to have certain features.

You can log on to a normal server for free

To log on and play for your clan, you would need to pay a small premium membership fee. This would get you things like private lobby where only other subscribed clans can meet, clan ladders etc... People can also advertise matches/events etc... to the other clans.
And of course, if their are tournaments/prizes etc..., people are more likely to pay some money towards subscribing.

Another option could be to come to some arrangement with some of the modders - e.g. the mods everyone wants (Star Wars, Star Trek, B5, Stargate, Battlestar etc...) could either have a small fee to download OR could have a small fee to play on a server dedicated to that mod - you could have the following lobby arrangement maybe


General Server - normal games (free)
Clan Server (subscribe)
XXX Server where XXX is a populate mod
General Mod server - take your luck finding someone to play the mod you want on this free server

Maybe this won't work - I haven't played Multi yet as I am still waiting for the game to go on sale in Australia...

No one is going to pay a subscription for a game that
A) Has a small multiplayer community
Has no guaranteed content

Look at your playerbase now, Frogboy, maybe 200 players online on a good day. That isn't going to go -up- when you make them pay even more to stay online, or divide them is it?

People spit and spittle all about tournaments and what not citing the success of starcraft- and quite frankly that's a good example. The main issue of competition is that it builds brand and increases your portion of the market share. If the game is played at top level, but doesn't attract a crowd of watchers, it's not going to get anywhere.

Consider these many factors of Starcraft
-Huge casual Community
-Mod friendly (RPGs, Scripting, User Campaigns)
-Compelling story and single player mode.

All these contributed to the longevity of sales and what not. The thing is that Blizzard creates and -incredibly- user friendly casual game, and leaves the experts to exploit the holes, keeping things that stay behind. They don't do anything as incredibly stupid as making the game purposely -less- accessible to casual players.

It's the casual player that brings you money- they buy the boxed game, your only source of income. The hardcore community is laughably small; I would be hardpressed to say Starcraft has 10,000 players that you can claim that of. That's 10,000*50$=500,000$. I would say your operating costs for a year are far more than that. You could pay maybe 10 junior developers, or 5 senior developers for one year for that kind of money. It's small change.

However, what competition does do is give you 'free' advertising (Of course even that comes at a cost, travel, PR, support) that contributes to your company name and encourages people to buy the game.

Take a look at the XBOX 360 and the Wii business models; Wiis are selling out like hotcakes, and developers, gamers and everyone alike are all excited about it still- DESPITE the fact it hasn't -really- proven itself as a hardcore gaming console yet. XBOX 360 has penetrated the hardcore market deeply, but it still needs to consider it's future carefully.

If you want to 'milk' Sins or Gal Civ II for money, do it with content expansions. That's a way you can't fail, as long as you deliver good content in the form of units, story, and gameplay mechanics and that sort of thing.

The way balance should work is to help -expand- the possibilities and content of the game. A game is enriched when it removes 'bad options' and makes everything a 'good option'. It means skill matters even more because there are multiple ways to victory- this encourages competetion, and stimulates casual play at the same time because games -don't- become repetitive; they become more open ended and less predictable.

And that's what you want. The subscription model is eminantly predictable and prone to bad feelings and suspicion. You might gain a small influx of cash, but will the subscriptions -really- make up for the illwill generated and the splitting of the player base? It will only serve to cut off the option of competetion, as it will create a -clear- line between who is elite and who is not, and good lord, everyone hates that. (We learned that from sociology, didn't we?)

KEEP IN MIND:
Video games are a *cheap* enterprise. Part of the reason for WOW's success are the many alternative payment models available to countries where credit cards aren't popular, or (relatively) large subscription fees are not popular. I don't want to assume anything, but since Stardock is relying on a highly unconventional method of distribution, I doubt it has the manpower to manage multiple forms of subscription, or that it truly has a large audience in East Asia. I could be wrong, of course.

So, while I would encourage you to invest money in marketing in terms of tournaments, ladders, and ranking systems, you definitely -don't- want to alter gameplay mechanics so they are less casual friendly. The logic of competetion and drawing in more paying customers is that they find the game fun- they'll get sucked in if they can see the leaderboards and what not and see, "Gee, I'm already playing: Maybe I can be one of the greats!"

But that isn't going to happen if the first day they log in they get smashed by a bunch of trolling clanners, or there's some kind of clear barrier to entry into the competitive arena. People are willing to accept seperation based on time and skill spent in a game; that's how the competetive process works after all- they're much less willing to accept an outright bias.

And please- everyone. It doesn't help your arguments if you use Starcraft and World of Warcraft as negative examples, or any other extraordinarily successful game you happen not to like (COH). Those games are serious moneymakers, and anyone interested in the money is going to laugh at you if you take any of those games defining traits, and try to twist it into some kind of negative manner.

What you may want to experiment with are micropayments for SINGLEPLAYER CONTENT! Multiplayer content is notoriously difficult to balance and support, and like I said, I doubt you'll accrue the money neccessary to repay developer time spent on making it.

However, Singleplayer content is easy to manage, and quality Single Player content(Particularly in the area of voice effects, graphics, story and cinematics) is difficult to come by, and beyond the interest of most modders. Extra story 'episodic campaigns' and access into your sourcecode (For the modder) for small fees would be a much better way to 'expand' your game. The number of people who are getting SC2 just to get a jump on the competition are small- the number of people who just want to see WTF happens to Kerrigan and Jim Raynor is absolutely huge.

The thing about SP content is that you can drop it in, and as long as there's no major bugs, no one really cares. However, even the TINIEST misstep can just go wrong in an MP game. I bet no one would have even noticed the major 1.03 imbalances if Sins was a purely SP game.

Also-
What you may want to try is to 'reward' players who spend time playing the game and getting stupid acheivements (Like Space Ponies, Woo!) with 'tokens' that allow them to access the games on your Totally Games Network, much like how Wii Points work.

Frankly, I'm not sure how many of your older games sell. Most people have probably pirated the heck out of them now. But if you reintroduce them through the point systems, people will start downloading and playing them again.

Now this introduces people to the possibility of playing those old games again. And when they finally get tired or frustrated with that oh so hard to get acheivement, they'll just shell out 5$ for that Gal Civ I game since it's a really good game anyway and they've wanted to play it for a while.

This is a great model that takes advantage of your library of old games and requires minimal support. There will be some issues though, like ensuring legacy games work, and refunding points spent on non-working games, etc. Or you could just make it so you have a policy of not supporting legacy games won through points.

It's free money, and a great tool to boost consumer confidence and your company name. Afterall, how much do your older games contribute to your budget? $500,000? $100,000?
I think the sporadic sales you receive would be better aided through the PR shot you'd gain for this move. Just think how many people would buy your new game (Sins, or whatever) just for a shot to download all the games in your library for free.

And how many of them will just give up after discovering they don't have the time and break down and pony up the $10-$20 to cherry pick the best titles in your legacy library?

They are?

Looking at Starcraft 2, I've yet to see anything original in there.

In fact, look at the 'supply depot walls'. That alone should pretty much prove my point.

You'd have a point, but from what I've seen, 1v1 Starcraft games, Quake 3 deathmatches, are all 'crowning points' of competition. The most money is made and the most hype is made on these tournaments. I can only recall one time I've seen / heard of a team 'victory' in some major event.

(can't edit my post for some stupid reason)

I didn't say original. Blizzard doesn't do original. Warcraft is heavily based on Warhammer Fantasy; Starcraft on Warhammer 40k (HEAVILY). Diablo... you get my point. From a mechanics point of view - Dune, Lineage/Everquest.

The appeal that Blizzard has is that they can take stuff that already exists out there and turn it into an interesting and polished experience. It's the combination of stuff that they work with. No one else seems to be able to do this with such success. They let other people innovate and take risks, they just go for stuff they know they can do right.

By the way, the new supply depot raising/lowering mechanic is a huge gameplay and balance factor change compared to SC1. The artwork may share some similarities but the game is almost completely changed apart from resource gathering (which has minor changes itself). Hydralisks aren't hydralisks anymore etc. Everything is different. Not that originality scores you any points.



Actually, it seems to me that the big draw in Quake III tourneys are team deathmatches.

On the Starcraft front, it's hard to have a team of Starcraft players play with the perfection and fluidity of one Boxer.

Anyway, the point I was making wasn't 'team-based is the most popular', I was saying that a really good team will stomp an average team really badly as compared to really good player vs. average player.

ts;dr

People really need to stop claiming that there's only 200 people playing Sins of a Solar Empire online at once.

The number of people online represents the number of people in the chat forum (or were recently in the chat forum). It does not represent the # of people currently playing games online by a long shot.

Now, having looked through this discussion a bit, there are definitely a lot of misconceptions about game development.

Let's bottom line this:

Commercial PC games cost money both to create and to purchase. If gamers want long-term support for games they like, then they will have to find a way to pay for that continued support and development. Otherwise, developers will just move to another game.

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor is the final expansion pack planned. After that, there will be a few months of additional updates as is our policy (including a Galactic Civilizations II 2.0) but then that's pretty much it.  If players want new features (such as more diplomacy features, a better United Planets, more ship components) there will have to be a way to pay for those things.

Sins of a Solar Empire is at the start of its life. It still has a long period of free updates and expansions ahead of it.  But like Galactic Civilizations, eventually it will make mroe sense to work on new projects.

 

Can I ask what's the biggest difference between say, a full-sized TOTA expansion, vs. a handful of your 'mini' expansions rolled into one? Especially since TOTA isn't going to be on store shelves, the difference becomes a little less distinct.

Or rather, what is the driving decision behind TOTA being the 'last' expansion pack? Were sales numbers for DA not promising, and therefore TOTA isn't expected to sell that well? Or is it simply requiring manning on other, bigger, newer projects?

If people are willing to pay for these little expansions, why wouldn't they want to pay for larger ones?

Just my two cents

I would not do subscriptions for games period. I prefer the old way of buy a game for a one of price and buy the expansion packs. Usually when the time comes I do move off a game when I had enough.

Saying that I would buy a content patch for a one of fee for each content pacth if it has enough to justify it. I would prefer to have extras included if it will enhance the game play greatly..

On that note I would expect patches that fix bugs or balance the game out to remain free and would not consider paying for them.

I do have to admit why stardock has done a great job with galciv2 and expansion packs it is getting to be an old product in comparision to alot of other games from different developers and there is only so far you can keep a game going before people move on (even with lots of extra new content).

This new expansion pack for galciv2 has added plenty of content to play with as well as improved the graphics but I can't see everyone playing this game for to many years now. I think it is just better to patch it up and retire and only do content patches every so often if there is demand for it up untill the release of galciv3 (or sins for that matter). Thats is my opinion alone.

I have to admit now I would like to see a new galciv 3 built from scratch with a whole new AI and 3D engine which takes into account high end hardware for those who have high hardware as well as low end hardware.

I kind of agree with this statement because of the way the vast majority of companies are. However if you folks for instance stuck with the current game, released many updates and got to a point where peoples concerns with the current product were addressed then maybe in future a system like that could work. The problem is many companies get carried away , chopping a game in tiny parts and calling them expansions. If you spent 8months to 1 year on sins adding content to get it exceptional then I would know this company is in it for the gamers and aiming to make each installment great as opposed to just churning one out with issues and then moving to the next before the first has even met its potential. (I would like to see MP ranking and true all round research done into whats the best MP balance for all, not just veterans, obviously they are a big big factor though+catering to veterans is in some small way catering to replay value because most veterans become so by proving themselves in MP)

To speak about the oblivion packs , some of those were a joke, for example the horse saddle one. Also if your talking about a persistant world , well the problem is I have played many MMOS and I feel when a company is getting monthly fees they just get lazy, why add much more content? money is comming in anyway. (I have played every major MMO on the market and they all lack diversity Im afraid to say, if you are going to go that model I would say make it like eve online where you can pay monthly but when a full expansion comes out you get it free or better yet, go like guild wars business model wise where you have a persistant world which is completely free and people buy expansions if they get good reviews. Even the eve online example isnt too great because from a gamer perspective its very seldom and expansion comes out and by the time content does come out youve paid way way more than the price of a game/expansion.

I believe a company if they have a good enough base product it will get sales for years and they can make money on advertising. At the time when everyone used to lambast me for saying persistant worlds can do it without monthly fees well then guild wars came out. I guess Im saying whatever you come up with it needs to be done in a way to look after gamers since gaming is costing a fortune and at least a portion of us are gradually getting more and more cynical as we get taken for gimick after gimick.

I actually think a persitant world would be great but having seen so many schemes Im sorry if I sound downhearted its just I see games not meet their potential many times over and out of all game genres persistant worlds I have found to have the most lax standards. If you do go this route you need to take your time, concentrate on getting diversity as opposed to monotony to get the project finished on a basis 100% regarding profit and 0% regarding gamer enjoyment. (So many persistant worlds go wrong hence my caution, let me say though if it were done correctly it would be epic)

Just to finish well I must say I am loving sins , I would like to see devs making pledges to make sure MP in this game stays right and perhaps to add small things to give ultimate replay value when time permits but aside from that it is one good game. You folks really need to keep this open mentality going, its a good thing and trying to find something that makes your company money while giving gamers true value for money is key.(Im sorry to say the majority of newer games fall short massivly in this - Myself and a friend played a premium priced fps and finished it in under 4 hours, sorry but this kind of adopted philosophy to make games like this is not good at all, yet the mainstream reviewers like gamespot gave it a good review, it just leads me to believe its one big "racket" sometimes. )

For example say you go a way similiar to guild wars and make a good lot of money, well actually go above and beyond and now and again provide something GOOD to your gamers for free, just occasionally. True give and take between business and consumer , it just doesnt happen and if you did go down this route of after X amount of cash back giving say the odd expansion out free after many months perhaps even a year then the kind of exposure your company would get would be astronomical.

I wish you folks luck , I hope you dont mind me be honest and if I hadnt noticed previous forum posts of how you folks are nice with your community then I wouldnt have bothered writing this. Just to finally say going by past experiances I agree with the below quotes , quoted from the above post.



I also agree with much of what TarlSS say and some of what he states is looking at things in a pragmactic way and is all the more reason to invest more time in the current game to get a superior base product that boasts a massive playerbase. So if your going the MP route well if the base product doesnt have everything the best strats have how will people know that subsequant products will not just be a pre finished pre-cursor to another product and in the end you have something like the sims, all expansions, 0 substance. (Waits for someone to quote the sims sales figures )