I agree with geewhiz…embrace the ability to expand a game…having said that, the paradox model has gotten so out of hand, it borders on greed…for god’s sake, they can’t even make a new 64 bit engine for their new upcoming rome game !!
Brad and his team took the time and resources to make a new 64 bit engine…bravo !!
Technology changes alot of things…you guys want to give up your cell phones? remember phone booths?
Its simply a matter of well done expansions and appropriately priced DLC…paradox sucks in their business model and everyone knows it…don’t become paradox
The internet also changed it in a way where publishers started to release games that are broken or incomplete with a “we’ll fix it later” mentality. (See recently, for example, Stellaris and Surviving Mars – those games are very different now from what they were at release.)
Furthermore, some developers are also eager to change games to suit the vocal folks on forums and in Steam reviews who complain about stuff: case in point, the changes wrought in Skyshine’s Bedlam and Chaos Reborn after release, done deliberately in an attempt to get more positive reviews. In Chaos’s case, the new rules are optional; in Bedlam’s case, the changes were more extensive, and simply going back to an “older” version of the game is not an option unless you happen to have downloaded the version of the game you liked via GOG or something before the changes.
And thus…
Yes, old school, but it requires games to be feature complete and mostly bug free. You either liked a game when it was released or you didn’t. If you didn’t, your complaining wouldn’t result in the developer revamping the entire game, but instead incorporating your ideas into a sequel, or perhaps an expansion pack.
It’s kind of like the Star Wars situation, when George Lucas tried to “fix” what he saw as a flawed series of films by releasing the Special Editions. Most of us liked those original movies, and the changes he made were not seen as improvements, and are nowadays divisive. Other examples include music albums that are “remastered” and never sound as good as the perhaps flawed records that you’ve played over and over again.
Sometimes, you just have to accept your work is imperfect and leave it at that. At least until you release the sequel or a second edition of your board game/book/whatever (which doesn’t actually replace the original).
Board games often have revisions and change on future printings. So if a game stinks just leave it at that and move on or try to do something about it. I rather vote for the ability to do something positive. Concentrating on the negative eventually can lead to making a person negative all over. IMHO
There’s obviously good and bad implementations of both philosophies so it’s hard for me to have an overall preference.
I will say that the overall industry trend of having a significant v1.1 out a couple months after release and the fact that there’s going to be a sale in 3-6 months makes me less likely to pickup games at release. I like it as a consumer but I doubt it helps game companies.
The games I buy at launch are the ones where reviews make me want to play right away because it doesn’t need the v1.1 patch even if it is coming.
Don’t become modern Paradox is good advice. They’ve managed to not only make me no longer care about their games, but actively avoid Triumph’s next game due to a lack of trust in them, and I loved Triumph.
The big issue with Paradox is that they constantly change the game radically, those changes tend to be expensive for what is offered, and you never have an idea that the game is complete.
I’ve never had that feeling from Stardock that I was being nickel and dimed constantly- but I might if I didn’t buy Founder’s editions or get the Elemental apology freebies.
With GalCiv III, Crusade made the game feel complete, at least to me. Intrigue felt like some good ideas, but not as needed as what Crusade gave. I’m not saying Intrigue was a bad thing- it made the game slightly better- but at this point I’d argue GalCIv 3 doesn’t need more gameplay mechanics.
Overall, I think despite Stardock’s lack of success in doing so,that its business model is more suited to competitive games than non-competitive. How Stardock does things with founder’s editions and the update model- that’s what competitive gamers want.
This is how I feel about games and their continuing development.
I really do not like DLC. Basically, a game comes out, I buy it and play it until I am bored of it. If its a good game, this can take several weeks. After that, I am done with it.
Then DLC comes out, they are usually minor things. I am already bored of the game, so why would I play through the original game again, of which I am bored already, to see a small bit of new content?
Sometimes, years later, if I had fond memory of a game, and all the DLC is on super-sale and is also highly recommended, then I may buy it, only because the original experience has faded from memory.
What I prefer and what I miss from old-school games, are expansion packs. These added a huge amount of content to the game, and in some cases, almost as much as the original game had. This makes it so much more worth it to me. I suppose it is also the distance between the time I played the game and the time the expansion pack came out (usually a year or more after the original).
Let me give you a theoretical difference in scale between an expansion pack vs DLC. There is an RTS I have fond memories of. C&C Generals. If this game had DLC, then the DLC might have included 4 to 6 maps OR maybe 3 new general types (one per faction). As an expansion pack, it had 16 new maps, 9 new general types ( 3 per faction), and 15 new missions. That is something to get excited about. The DLC? No so much.
I really wish expansion packs would make a comeback.
I echo the statements made here and introduced by JoshoB. I am totally turned off by DLC, especially content packs containing portraits, a new race, a single new add-on piece of busy work, etc. (cough Paradox…)
For Gal Civ III, Crusade was the only DLC I was truly interested in at release as it fundamentally changed the gameplay, effectively being an old traditional expansion pack, which revitalized my interest in the game.
However, with the modern mechanism of games being discounted very soon after release, I can see why there is a approach to DLC to maximize profits and to keep an active consumer base. Saying that, if your game is good and repayable, you don’t need to keep spoon feeding DLC as the game will keep an active consumer base regardless.
I think the paradox model for dlc is excessive (although I’ve bought many of them anyway) but I think what Brad does is actually ok. Small optional dlc and occasional more significant meaty stuff that improves gameplay. I loved galciv 2 and pre ordered 3, but I was not especially impressed by 3 at release. It’s a much much better game now, and if all we had was the release version, I’d have regretted my pre purchase.
Please don’t change your business model because of a single post on the internet, Brad.
I really don’t see the advantages of the old retail model where you got a shot at maybe one expansion, then you lay off most of your devs so you could race to work on something else you could get on the shelves.
If it’s a game I’m enjoying, I love the DLC model of ongoing support and development across genres. Path of Exile, Warframe, and yes Paradox games. Keep plugging away at GalCiv 3 until you’re ready to take the series in a different direction, then work on the sequel.
I feel like the difference between what Paradox does in their grand strategy games and what Stardock does in GalCiv 3 is huge. I can fire up GalCiv 3 without any DLC and play it just fine. Firing up a Paradox game without the DLC just makes me feel like I’m crippled against an AI that gets to play with more toys than me.
Is that true of say, province development in EU4? I think the AI can’t use expansion stuff in general, but I think there are some exceptions.
Anyway, put me in the group that loves expansions and fixes. Usually changes to the base game improve things, and I don’t believe for a second that the improvements down the line could as easily fit into the base game.
Another thing that Brad mentioned that I want to reiterate: inflation is a thing. The $50 per game in the 90’s is worth a heck of a lot more than $50 for a game today. It would be interesting to compare the cost of games versus the trends for programmer and artist compensation.
The AI cannot, nope. There might be exceptions but they’re not common and I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I know of one instance where the AI used an expansion feature but it was corrected in a hotfix. So @Telefrog doesn’t have to worry about the AI getting to play with toys that he can’t. :)
Any exceptions are a bug, and AFAIK, development was never one.
Put me in the group that’s somewhere in the middle, but doesn’t want to go through the discussion yet again. PDS stuff is expensive, but it’s not their fault if Sweden’s economy does well by not following common nonsense.
I’m definitely on the “Release it, patch it to function, and then save ideas up for a larger, more fleshed-out expansion or sequel down the line” camp, @Brad_Wardell. Piecemeal DLC arriving every couple of months in a never-ending drib-drab of nickel-and-diming; massive game restructuring patches effectively designed-by-committee by the most passionate and vocal minority on the official forums; games left half-finished because of the industry-equivalent of “we’ll fix it in post,” etc. are all among the legion of things that have made me more or less walk away from digital gaming.
I just wanna buy a game that was finished to the best of a team’s ability, implementing the fullness of their vision, play it, and then know I got the full experience and be able to move on, rather than checking back every two weeks to see if the latest rebalance or “story DLC” added just enough novelty to justify digging back in and discovering whether or not the game is “done enough” yet.
I understand that version of things is noticeably harder on a company from a financial standpoint, and sets them up for failure if the one big product flops, so I’m not saying risk the whole company to appease my particular hangups, but I did want to add a voice to the chorus.
Stardock’s current approach doesn’t deeply offend me, but it’s still about 25% more than I’d personally care for, for what it’s worth.
It sounds good, but I think that in practice, the limiting factor for the initial release is always going to be the “financial standpoint” you mention later, rather than the fullness of the team’s vision. The vision is always going to be bigger than the available time and budget.
That’s what expansion packs are for. Initial game should be feature complete within the limits of the project plan of available time and budget. Expansion packs should add desired features that didn’t fit into that plan or come up after the release date. Bug fixes withstanding, that would be my ideal. ArmandoPenblade stated things so much better than I can.
On the flipside, “gigantic, DLC-sized holes in the game design” grate my nerves horribly, so I wind up doing what a lot of users here have mentioned, and just wait months or years down the line for development to actually finish, and then just buy the whole shebang for pennies on the dollar.
So how do distinguish between “we couldn’t get that feature in and make our release date, but got it in the expansion” and “we intentionally left a DLC-sized hole in the initial release”? I mean, I think if you asked a Paradox dev, they would be pretty vehement that they fit everything they could into the initial release.
