Comment remember shareware games, anyone? (Score 1) 330
I think episodic content sounds very interesting. It for sure is not a new idea, but one that deserves more and more attention due to the dawn of the casual gamer masses.
I remember sitting in on a presentation held by Seamus Blackley at the Game Developers Conference 2003 (that is one of the three fathers of the initial xbox project who convinced Bill Gates in getting into the whole console/gaming business and generally a slick dude) where he addressed some of the harder financial issues surrounding game development.
Even though I am absolutely not a proponent of the EA model, where you orient your whole business towards short-lived trends in the casual gamer market and obviously neither succeed in innovating nor in motivating your employees to put any love and spirit in the games (remember the ea_spouse article http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html), I agree with the fact that the current path of games development is not catering to the current incarnation of gamer's needs.
Games taking some 40+ hours to complete were great when I was in high-school and stripped of any responsibilities that come as early as in college life (yeah, who would have thought :)), but once you lack the ability of investing significant time in your games, you miss out on the whole gratification thing that comes with kicking the endgame bosses in the $!@#$! and saving the hottest chick around the kingdom (where have those gone by the way?).
Then again grabbing a game to be completed in a little over 5 hours does not justify some 40 bucks plus spending.
So episodic content feels just right and was actually one of the things not only mentioned by Seamus in his talk. Game studios should cut back on up-front development time for content, instead releasing their games earlier and cheaper. This could also prove to be a great model for studios lacking the experience to produce good games, as they probably won't kill themselves with their first flopping game and get another chance at improving before facing a life of paying back debt ;)
And here comes my actually-not-so-revolutionary proposal: Adopt shareware for games again! If your game's good, people will pay for your content, if they are for the trash bin, you won't have screwed over people! I vividly remember getting my hands on the original first eight levels (was it eight or seven?) of Doom as shareware and then shelling out my allowances for the rest. This concept did work. Why did it disappear? Anyone?
I remember sitting in on a presentation held by Seamus Blackley at the Game Developers Conference 2003 (that is one of the three fathers of the initial xbox project who convinced Bill Gates in getting into the whole console/gaming business and generally a slick dude) where he addressed some of the harder financial issues surrounding game development.
Even though I am absolutely not a proponent of the EA model, where you orient your whole business towards short-lived trends in the casual gamer market and obviously neither succeed in innovating nor in motivating your employees to put any love and spirit in the games (remember the ea_spouse article http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html), I agree with the fact that the current path of games development is not catering to the current incarnation of gamer's needs.
Games taking some 40+ hours to complete were great when I was in high-school and stripped of any responsibilities that come as early as in college life (yeah, who would have thought
Then again grabbing a game to be completed in a little over 5 hours does not justify some 40 bucks plus spending.
So episodic content feels just right and was actually one of the things not only mentioned by Seamus in his talk. Game studios should cut back on up-front development time for content, instead releasing their games earlier and cheaper. This could also prove to be a great model for studios lacking the experience to produce good games, as they probably won't kill themselves with their first flopping game and get another chance at improving before facing a life of paying back debt
And here comes my actually-not-so-revolutionary proposal: Adopt shareware for games again! If your game's good, people will pay for your content, if they are for the trash bin, you won't have screwed over people! I vividly remember getting my hands on the original first eight levels (was it eight or seven?) of Doom as shareware and then shelling out my allowances for the rest. This concept did work. Why did it disappear? Anyone?
