Comments on: Three Moves Ahead Episode 38 – Expansions and DLC

By: Guest Blog: Message and Meaning in Strategy Games

Guest Blog: Message and Meaning in Strategy Games — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:51:55 +0000

[...] in episode 38 of Three Moves Ahead, Bruce talked about how modding and downloadable content has made games an entirely different [...]

By: Erez

Erez — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:34:25 +0000

Regarding Odium, here’s an old (Bruce) Geryk analysis that expands a bit about what’s good in the game (and what’s bad about Shadow Watch): http://www.quartertothree.com/features/odium_sw/odium_sw_1.shtml

And from mobygames.com, http://www.mobygames.com/game/dium and the “Gorky series” http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/gorky-series

By: mutait

mutait — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:31:32 +0000

Good panel, guys. The thing that scares me most about that Dragon Age camp shill business that it reminded me how vulnerable I am to such sleazy tactics. (I grumbled a lot but bought the extra content soon after he made his pitch). But I think that EA is only beginning to realize the potential of such revenue boosters. Here’s a little idea for them for Dragon Age 2 — in game extortion. Here’s how it works. Some time around the 3/4 point in the campaign a guy in sunglasses and a tight suit appears and compliments the player on his PC, his party, and all his pretty little saved games, then adds that it would be a awful awful shame if something were to happen to all of them.

By: Gormongous

Gormongous — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:06:55 +0000

Punning Pundit: There already are, and once again a supposed anti-piracy measure seems to have alienated more customers than it was meant to engender.

It really was a breath of fresh air to hear Feargus Urquhart in an interview say that attempting to prevent piracy ensures nothing but hard feelings among the people who are supposed to be your fans. Not that the Stardock model has proved wildly successful, after the Demigod fiasco, but these days it seems like the industry is having to choose between bad and worse.

By: Punning Pundit

Punning Pundit — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:02:08 +0000

What’s hurting EA in this, I think, is the suspicion that they ripped part of the code out of the game in order to sell it back to us.

Missing from this discussion is how much this seems to be an anti-piracy measure. A pirate who wants to get the full game experience has to hook their game up to EA’s servers and ask for the bonus content– and could possibly send EA money for the DLC.

Granted, there will probably be pirate DLC servers out there at some point :(

By: Michael A.

Michael A. — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:43:20 +0000

+1 to pretty much everything spelk says.

With regards to Dragon Age (and the same goes for Mass Effect, incidentally), I think the DLC concept holds up better for open-ended game worlds, though (e.g., Bethesda’s style of games). The idea of going back to a savegame when I’ve already completed the main story with that character or starting up a new character just to experience 2 hours extra of gameplay (and 50 hrs I’ve already experienced) holds little attraction.

As for the Dragon Age backlash, I suspect part of the problem is that the whole inventory management thing was a stupid decision (there is really no good reason why it couldn’t have been in your camp), and the extra content added by the DLC seems thin. For a $50 game with 50 hours of gameplay, a $7 DLC that adds 1 hour of gameplay (and whose storyline is … to put it mildly… poor) doesn’t seem like very good value for money.

I think DLC in general is an excellent thing; but as with games we’re obviously going to see as many misses as there are hits.