Neverwinter Nights Put Out To Pasture

Right on the heels of the announcement of a new infinite dungeons module, via Broken Toys comes word that Atari has completely pulled support from the first Neverwinter Nights game. From the article: "There hasn't been any official word on all this yet but some of the most credible factors, that have been thrown around, include; the financial stability of Atari, and that they didn't want horses for NWN1 to come out officially before NWN2. This also appears to have affected other premium modules that were in production with other teams and there is probably no chance that Witches Wake 2 will ever get produced. It's hard to expect a publisher like Atari to keep on supporting patches forever, and in fact most games are lucky if they can get a few done. The NWN community has been very lucky to have had so many patches with so much free content. We shouldn't lose sight of that. However killing the premium module program makes no sense."

Comments

On the other hand...

[vga_init]

I'm tempted to look at this as a good thing, actually. As the summary mentioned, we've gotten a lot of content for NWN--more than usual for games of its kind. I think the game has had an excellent run, and there is enough of it to keep me satisfied.

Depending on how profitable a game is, companies cannot be expected to keep supporting it for more than a few years without creating a sequal or new engine.

I own NWN, and I absolutely love it. So why am I glad to see support drop? Because deep down inside, there is a hope that Atari will release the source code. It's happened to a lot of classic games in the past, and I hope that this one won't be any different.

They won't do that, however, until the game has long since lost its support and isn't selling much.

Imagine seeing NWN ported to many different platforms; maybe some day in the future it will make a good game for PDA's (the mouse driven interface is just perfect for those types of machines).

Linux distributions might even distribute binary packages of source builds one day along with free, community-made content.

Maybe it's just a pipe dream, but every dark cloud should have a silver lining. :)

Re:So?

[dotoole]

That would be a pretty terrible business decision for them. They want the community making mods for NWN 2 when it comes out, not playing with the source of NWN 1.

Short game vs. long game, profit vs. loyalty

[nick_davison]

It's hard to expect a publisher like Atari to keep on supporting patches forever, and in fact most games are lucky if they can get a few done. The NWN community has been very lucky to have had so many patches with so much free content. We shouldn't lose sight of that.

Once upon a time there was this company called Blizzard. They made three games: a fantasy RTS, a sci-fi RTS and a dungeon romp. They also made a bunch of sequels but those three were pretty much it.

Blizzard supported cool free online match making for their games whilst everyone else was trying to figure out how to charge people a monthly fee for it. They also kept supporting the games with new patches long after every other company in the industry would have given up.

Strangely, people kept buying their new games, which were really just incremental updates of their old games, because they knew that three years down the line they'd still be able to go online, get the latest patch, play multiplayer, etc. Each of those sequels, whilst great games on their own merit, sold incredible numbers due to customer loyalty - far outstripping just about as good games from companies that had previously screwed their customers and couldn't figure out why their cool new game didn't sell as well (clearly it needed more full motion video, duh!)

Then Blizzard decided to make an MMO. Up until that point, no monthly fee MMO had cleared even half a million subscribers. Along comes Blizzard, beloved of all the people they haven't screwed every last penny out of in the past, and they clear the million subscribers almost immediately and five million not long after.

Certainly producing good games has a lot to do with it. But the very best previous MMOs couldn't manage 1/10th the subscriber figures Blizzard got, no matter how good they were. Even if WOW was that much better, the MMO market was relatively tiny at the time. Something changed that meant ten times as many people were willing to give WOW a chance (because, without players giving it a chance, good or not, no game succeeds).

I'd suggest that was the massive loyalty Blizzard has built up amongst fans over the years precisely by not applying the, "Does this make this year's balance sheet look the very best?" school of business.

And, now... Blizzard keep having to buy bigger offices with more rooms to stuff all of their cash in as they rake in ~$90m a month in subscriber fees (so vastly much more than the profit they could ever have made from their prior six or eight titles).

Loyalty, which you get from supporting people even when there's not a quick buck, is worth a fortune in the long run.

At the same time, publishers who're famous for cutting support of a game once the last copy on store shelves is sold can't figure out why they're making great games but just can't seem to turn the crazy profits Blizzard do.

So, no, you can't blame or expect different from Atari. But, perhaps, the reason they've fallen on such hard times is because, like most others, they keep playing the short game.

Re:Short game vs. long game, profit vs. loyalty

[nick_davison]

Note: I'm acknowledging NWN has had great long term support thus far.

I'd just argue the very last message you want to give, right before asking people to pay another round of $50/title for your sequel, is, "We'll only support you so long as there's money in it."

I'd quietly fade out NWN1 support after NWN2 launches in a few months when no one will notice anyway as they're all playing the new title and you've got all of those extra $50s.

Re:It makes perfect sense

[rtrifts]

"Atari wants new content coming out for the sequel game, to increase the odds of people shelling out for it."

I see.

So, following this logic you propose to:

1 - Alienate the team who was at work on reverse engineering Granny3d, key proprietary middleware your developers at Obsidian used which has the effect of preventing the community from creating new animated content for your new game;
2- Infuriate the same guys who were working on NWmax 2 - so that there would actually BE a means for people to create said content for NWN2 and migrate old material over from NWN1;
3- Alienate the largest team of pro level artists in the community, who have, collectively, well in excess of 1 million downloads and several members now employees at EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft and BioWare; and,
4- Alienate Remington Studios (CODI) the second largest mod team of pro level artists on a what-the-hell basis.

as the best way of achieving your goal og getting new content for your new game? o_0

You want new content for NWN2, and your "solution" to this need is to circumvent the contracts of the very people you need to do it - ensuring that the fifty people capable of making those tools and delivering that quality content are so furious that they walk away from the community, vowing never to mod for an Atari game again...

And this makes perfect sense? When the altenrnative was for you to do nothing - have it cost you nothing - and all of the above would have come to pass ...

You wouldn't happen to work for Atari, do you?