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In the New Age of Game Development, Gamers Have More Power Than Ever
Velcroman1 writes: "In the olden times before high-speed Internet, the game you purchased on day one was what you were still playing months later. Now we live in an era of day-one patches, hotfixes, balance updates, and more. Diablo III, for example, is unrecognizable today compared to the state it was in when it launched back in 2012. Nowadays, savvy gamers go in expecting their experience to change over time — to improve over time. Today, 'Early Access' is both an acknowledgment of the dangers of early adoption (no one likes to be a guinea pig, after all) and an opportunity for enthusiastic consumers to have a say in how the product they've purchased will take shape. In this article, Adam Rosenberg talks with Michael McMain, CEO and founder of Xaviant, and creative director on the indie studio's first project — Lichdom: Battlemage, which embraces the concept like never before."
We lost the ability to mod a lot of games because of stupid DRM controls and lock-down.
We had power when we could come up with something like Desert Combat mod, or there were tens of thousands of downloadable mods to turn the base game into really incredible things. There are some games like that still, like Minecraft, but for the most part, that is no longer true.
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Ya, and far more of those games that we never patched did not need patches because they got enough QA to produce a stable playable product before launch.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
In the "good" old days, there was mods, maps, map editors.
Now a days good luck being able to do any of that. The big publishers only care about pushing out the "next big" title, year after year.
There is a player created 16 player coop patch for Rainbow Six: Las Vegas 2. Lots of fun.
Ubisoft shits on its PC gamers -- who supported and _allowed_ the company_ to grow before Ubisoft sold out to console gamers because those "PC Gamers" are all "dirty pirates".
How about respecting us gamer and giving us tools so you have free marketing like Valve does with Portal 2 Workshop !?!?
Actually, they did... Maybe not you, but there are plenty of people who clamoured for "easier" titles, and simultaneously for replay-ability. Easier was accomplished through hand holding (ala "Press Y now or you will die", whoops, you died, let's rewind 15 seconds to the cutscene. And news was, the first of those games sold AMAZINGLY well. And when you are stuck with a fully scripted game, the only way to make replay ability without feeling stale is through adding content. And who wants to write that content test it, and distribute it freely?
Thirty four characters live here.
I've yet to see any DRM that prevents content mods. There are some games that aren't very moddable, their files are all binary and they don't release any tools and such, but I've yet to see one with DRM that stopped mods. The ones that are moddable, well they are more so than ever. Have a look at the Skyrim mods sometime. Even the ones that aren't moddable per se can usually be modded. The new Xcom is a good example. It has no mod tools, and wasn't designed with modding in mind, much like the original Xcom. However enterprising modders have figured out how to bust in to various files and mod the game. Not nearly to the extent as a game with tools, but there was nothing stopping them. The game doesn't have some DRM locking them out.
Moddability has been increasing. For one, there's more interest in it, what with the internet to distribute mods. Also there's the fact that increased CPU power allows for more user accessible files. The original Civ was hard to mod, since everything was binary. You needed to do that for efficiency. Civ 4 and 5 use scripting languages, XML, and SQL for most of their stuff, with only the engine and AI core being in C++, since it takes so little time for a modern computer to parse all that. Finally there's channels to integrate modding in to your game like Steam Workshop, that make it much easier for developers to integrate, and easier for modders to distribute.
1. Dumbing things down just breeds better idiots who will then require even more dumbing down. Offering challenge above and beyond the players current ability is what grants the opportunity for improvement. You don't learn how to play by sticking with "I'm too young to die" mode.
2. we won't know who might want to as long as they refuse to release the tools required.
Maybe gaming has become a victim of the race to the bottom. It's too bad, because I remember a vibrant modding community across many titles: mapping competitions, whole communities surrounding specific mods, LAN events and the like. Now it's all feed-it-to-me-through-a-needle.
1. Dumbing things down just breeds better idiots who will then require even more dumbing down. Offering challenge above and beyond the players current ability is what grants the opportunity for improvement. You don't learn how to play by sticking with "I'm too young to die" mode.
How dare those people enjoy different things!?
Did you ever think, maybe some people don't care about honing a useless skill, and are just looking for some light entertainment?
It's not like hard games no longer exist. New ones are being made all the time. The casual market has been booming, so as a percentage, hardcore gaming is down, but why get upset over that?
Hollywood pushes out mindless crap like the Avengers, but that doesn't mean quality films no longer exist. The TV is full of reality shit, but there are still good programs to be found. Trashy romance novels make up a sizeable portion of book sales, but you can still find fantastic literature being written every year.
Stop dwelling on the fact that things you like aren't the most popular things. Unless the thing you like best is being angry, in which case, don't let me stop you.
Early Access is a scam, where they expect "the community" to do free testing for them.
Well, I agree that Early Access is free testing, sometimes it's also "startup money". That's why I set the price very low initially, and grant a free copy and full DLC to those that do the testing work, raise the price and taper off benefits towards completion as it gets closer to being the full game and there's less testing work to be done overall. Some folk don't think it's worth it, other folks do. Some folks just want to see the game development as it progresses and enjoy being early adopters; They like giving feedback and having some influence on the way development progresses. Lots of the latter type of folks learn from the experience and go into gamedev themselves. I do try to provide benefits to compensate for the "free" testing, but some studios really do abuse their fans, fortunately that can have disastrous results.
Day-1 DLC...
I dislike gratuitous Day-1 DLC; Where devs who would have made the original release even better get pulled off head the DLC team, or when stuff is removed from the game expressly to turn it into DLC. However, sometimes it's not all bad. Sometimes that DLC is made by folks who are sitting around twiddling their thumbs after the release goes gold and no more changes can be made, but the release isn't scheduled for weeks or months (and they're not involved in pre-production of the next product -- better to not lay off the folks who just made the game you like, eh?). Lots of games' Day 1 DLC gets made and tested during that "down" time between gold and release. No game is ever "done". There is always something someone wanted to put in, but couldn't. Sometimes things that got cut to make the deadline become the Day-1 DLC. On disk DLC is pretty shitty though. If they had the time to make it, test it, put it on the disk, then it should be part of the game, or just leave it online as Day-1 DLC. The Day-1 DLC also "helps" to kill used game sales (or at least devalue them), which is stupid because most folks trade in used games to buy new releases, and 1st week sales are key. Protip: Rather than boycott a product it's just as effective to wait a few weeks after release before purchasing; Seriously, statistically its indistinguishable from not buying the game at all.
"free" to play, micro transactions, always-online,
"Free to play" (pay to win) is bullshit, but folks rarely will buy a mobile or PC game for a few bucks anymore. I've tried to go with the old school shareware "demo" + full version method, but that's shooting myself in the foot. It's a conflict of interest: I have to show you how cool the game is going to be... but that leaves the player satisfied with just the demo (they go play another demo, and another demo, and forget to ever buy the game... OUYA!) -- Or, I have to make the demo really crappy so you're left "wanting more", so then players have a bad experience and they don't buy the game. What used to work is just videos, screen-shots, maybe an article or two, some word of mouth from closed beta-testers, and a full version of the game to buy with a falling price gradient over time to hit each impulse buying price point. That gets interests piqued and curiosity drives sales. However, since the competition is now $0.99 or "free" to play, no one will just buy a $9.99 game anymore. They'll D/L the "free" game and spend $20 to $100 in "upgrades" and shit though, ugh. Pisses me off, and I don't do that on principal (monetization is not a game mechanic), but I suffer for the stance immensely (probably won't ever be able to quit my day-job), and can fully understand why "Pay To Win" is happening: It works.
Here's the thing: It's stupid to sell copies in the first place! That's artificial scarcity. Copies are in infinite supply and econ101 says they should be $0. What's scarce is the ability to create new works. What I'd love to do is just ge
I've downloaded 33,6GB with extra campaigns and maps for Left 4 Dead 2. It has expanded the replayability of L4D2 tremendously. Fairly recently (considering the game is over 4 years old) it also got Steam workshop support now. So modded weapons, sounds, models, textures etc. is available quick and easy. Now I've reached some 240 hours in it, and still going strong.
It support online play through official servers, best available unofficial, local server and LAN.
Running your own server also means being able to tweak other variables (gravity, firendly fire etc.), and server side mods.
And even in vs. matches, there are seldom cheating. And should you experience it anyway, the voting system makes it easy to get rid of d-bags.
This is the kind of modding support I've come to expect from a good game. Some developers get this.