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

So?

[GigsVT]

Did anyone really expect them to continue supporting a game from 1991??

This is the silliest story I've ever read.

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

[Psychochild]

There are a few misconceptions in your post. Unfortunately, lots of people make them.

First, WoW does not make $90 million per month. A large portion of those 6 million subscriptions Blizzard claims are in China, and Chinese players pay US$0.06/hour. They would have to play more than 8 hours per day to reach $15/month, and China has restrictions on how long minors can play these types of games. (I made a post on my professional blog with more details and links to references.)

Second, the 6 million subscription figure is worldwide. As I said above, most of those players are in China, a market that was not available to most of the previous games one might consider. The half-million figure you state is for North American subscriptions for previous games. Comparing this to Blizzard's last press release claiming 1 million North American subscriptions, we get a figure of 2x rather than 10x as you state.

Don't get me wrong, Blizzard certainly has done very well and surpassed the "old guard" quite handily. They also proved all the naysayers wrong that said the fantasy online game market was oversaturated and no new game could possibly do as well. But, it is best to keep the figures in proper perspective when discussing this topic.

All that said, I do agree with your central point: the Blizzard and Warcraft brands were well-loved for being great games from a pretty honest company. This definitely helped them make an online RPG that surpassed all previous records.

On the other hand, the Atari situation is different. I suspect most of the income goes to Bioware, so Atari doesn't make much off the premium modules; they likely expect to make more from sales of NWN2 and want as little competition as possible. Some people that won't get getting the newest patches and content might look to the sequel for an upgrade. Is it the smartest move? Not sure. But, the decision did not totally come out of left field.

Some thoughts from a game developer,

Support..

[Anonymous Coward]

Atari's involvement with ongoing support for NWN was minimal, basically all the patch support for NWN for the last year was BioWare driven and funded and had little Atari involvement. The premium modules program was used to fund continued support for NWN, including the recent 1.67 patch which added a large amount of new functionality and content to the game.

However, the focus of this discussion should not be on the patch support (which we planned to stop sometime this year anyway), but on the fact that several premium modules developed by very hard working groups of the community were cancelled litterally weeks before the finish line, robbing these people of their chance to get professional credit and reward for projects they had worked on for years in some cases.

Some more info:
http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic =482695&forum=42

Georg,
BioWare