Wednesday, July 27, 2005
How to Design Online Crack
Lost Garden has a fascinating and very enjoyable article on game economics, and how games designed for online distribution will affect it. Danc covers the horrors of the torturous and stifling publisher-retailer-customer model then goes on to describe the new option of online distribution and how episodic design and micropayments could genuinely transform the way we think about games.
How to Design Online Crack
How to Design Online Crack
Friday, July 08, 2005
Gamecloud Interviews
While there's not much of note in these interviews, for archiving purposes it is probably worth giving them a belated link. In order of publication:
And while we're at it:
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: Valve
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: 3D Relams
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: Game xStream
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: Stardock
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: Telltale Games
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: IGN (Direct2Drive)
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: Trymedia
- Distribution Revolution Q&A: GameTap
And while we're at it:
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
SiN 2: The episodic era
For those that don’t yet know, Ritual are developing SiN 2 (or SiN Episodes as some are calling them) in a publisher-less, episodic format, each unit to be distributed over Steam once every three to four months. This is pretty big. Quite aside from breaking one of the conceptions I mentioned in my last post, regardless of how long you think it will last it marks the beginning of the episodic AAA game era.
Why did they go episodic? It certainly wasn’t to make money: episodic development is very hard and pressurising work. Is it to get the game into our hands ASAP, as the Steam slogan goes? Maybe – but the tradeoff is waiting several months between each bout. Perhaps it is because they know that the episodic era is going to need someone to start it off...but surely Valve is doing that with Aftermath? It could also be that they simply didn’t have the funds to sink into a lump development cycle (it’s hard to come up with names for these things in this new context).
Personally I feel it is a mixture of all three, plus Ritual’s existing relationship with Valve from CZ: Deleted Scenes that made it happen so early. This move is still a huge risk though, and I can only assume Ritual want to make the game very badly.
Steam is perfect for this sort of thing so we’ll skip over its capabilities and get right on to the biggest point of friction for the gaming public right now. The price. Each SiN 2 episode will last around 6 hours and cost $20. This at first seems like a lot, but look at this:
That works out at exactly the same, 0.3 hours per dollar, and it sure as hell can’t be a coincidence. Were you a cynic you would point out that Half-Life 2 is not a particularly long title, but bear in mind that a level-grinding or base-building game is a recipe for disaster with singleplayer episodes. It’s got to be as memorable as possible for the player’s interest to keep up between each release and highly-choreographed gameplay is the best way of doing that. Think of an episodic game as a guarantee of constant quality.
Were you a cynic you might also point out that unlike Half-Life 2 SiN 2 is not tied down to publisher deals that take a piece of all the profits (VU still got a cut of Steam sales, albeit reduced). Presumably the lack of decrease is to cushion the risk and stress both of being first and going episodic in the first place, but nobody outside Relic and perhaps Valve knows right now.
One thing I’ve touched on before, and that any staticians will have spotted a few paragraphs ago, is the extreme workload. Ritual are going to have to produce the same amount of quality playtime Valve made in two years in just ten months. They’ve got the advantage of Source being finalised and documented, and probably better organisational skills to boot, but that is still a serious shortage. Some time-consuming processes such as the weapon balancing, voice casting and the design docs must already be finalised and perhaps Ritual have been buffering, so to speak, episodes so they can spend the inter-release period finalising rather than building – again, nobody outside Relic or Valve knows. All I can say is don’t expect a great deal of content variety.
Audience is another issue. How much advertising will we see, now it’s all being funded by developers? There’s the free publicity in magazines, on the net and through Steam’s captive audience which adds up to not a small total, but publicity’s reach (both in terms of numbers and social strata) is nothing compared to paid-for advertising. My guess is a publicity-only approach until all the episodes are out, whereupon they will, assuming they are good of course, be bundled together on a CD at a mid-range price point in a traditional publisher deal with advertising and other such trappings. As ever though, there’s only two groups of people that know.
I’m already waiting with baited breath for the first episode this Winter, and that’s without knowing anything about the game itself!
Why did they go episodic? It certainly wasn’t to make money: episodic development is very hard and pressurising work. Is it to get the game into our hands ASAP, as the Steam slogan goes? Maybe – but the tradeoff is waiting several months between each bout. Perhaps it is because they know that the episodic era is going to need someone to start it off...but surely Valve is doing that with Aftermath? It could also be that they simply didn’t have the funds to sink into a lump development cycle (it’s hard to come up with names for these things in this new context).
Personally I feel it is a mixture of all three, plus Ritual’s existing relationship with Valve from CZ: Deleted Scenes that made it happen so early. This move is still a huge risk though, and I can only assume Ritual want to make the game very badly.
Steam is perfect for this sort of thing so we’ll skip over its capabilities and get right on to the biggest point of friction for the gaming public right now. The price. Each SiN 2 episode will last around 6 hours and cost $20. This at first seems like a lot, but look at this:
| Game | Length | Price |
| Half-Life 2 | 15 hours | $50 |
| Three SiN 2 episodes | 18 hours | $60 |
That works out at exactly the same, 0.3 hours per dollar, and it sure as hell can’t be a coincidence. Were you a cynic you would point out that Half-Life 2 is not a particularly long title, but bear in mind that a level-grinding or base-building game is a recipe for disaster with singleplayer episodes. It’s got to be as memorable as possible for the player’s interest to keep up between each release and highly-choreographed gameplay is the best way of doing that. Think of an episodic game as a guarantee of constant quality.
Were you a cynic you might also point out that unlike Half-Life 2 SiN 2 is not tied down to publisher deals that take a piece of all the profits (VU still got a cut of Steam sales, albeit reduced). Presumably the lack of decrease is to cushion the risk and stress both of being first and going episodic in the first place, but nobody outside Relic and perhaps Valve knows right now.
One thing I’ve touched on before, and that any staticians will have spotted a few paragraphs ago, is the extreme workload. Ritual are going to have to produce the same amount of quality playtime Valve made in two years in just ten months. They’ve got the advantage of Source being finalised and documented, and probably better organisational skills to boot, but that is still a serious shortage. Some time-consuming processes such as the weapon balancing, voice casting and the design docs must already be finalised and perhaps Ritual have been buffering, so to speak, episodes so they can spend the inter-release period finalising rather than building – again, nobody outside Relic or Valve knows. All I can say is don’t expect a great deal of content variety.
Audience is another issue. How much advertising will we see, now it’s all being funded by developers? There’s the free publicity in magazines, on the net and through Steam’s captive audience which adds up to not a small total, but publicity’s reach (both in terms of numbers and social strata) is nothing compared to paid-for advertising. My guess is a publicity-only approach until all the episodes are out, whereupon they will, assuming they are good of course, be bundled together on a CD at a mid-range price point in a traditional publisher deal with advertising and other such trappings. As ever though, there’s only two groups of people that know.
I’m already waiting with baited breath for the first episode this Winter, and that’s without knowing anything about the game itself!
Monday, July 04, 2005
SiN 2 announced
CVG reports:
I'll write up something better once the dust has settled. Initial impression: evens it out with xStream having DNF.
SIN 2 STEAMS IN, POWERED BY SOURCE
Strong ties with Valve revealed as first official word on Ritual's sequel emerges
12:27 Ritual's SiN 2 is official. Not only that, but the sequel is boasting strong links with Valve Software. It's being built on a tweaked version of Valve's Source engine and according to word in PC Gamer magazine will be released in a number of episodes over Steam, each episode said to be six hours in length and being flogged at around $20 a pop.
SiN 2, Episode One, is expected this Winter, with subsequent episodes to be released over Steam every three to four months.
According to Ritual's CEO Steve Nix, the developer has "always wanted to get back to the SiN universe." And Nix told PC Gamer that: "We've been talking to Valve about Steam for about four years now".
Valve's Doug Lombardi recently stated that the Half-Life 2 developer was soon to announce "games created by other developers that will be made available via Steam". Enter SiN 2 as one such title then, and we're expecting news on more Steam involvement in this vein very shortly too.
No doubt one of the reasons behind developers' opting to distribute projects through Steam is the fact that it allows them to bypass constraints that may be placed on them by publishers. Ritual's Steve Nix has implied such is the case with SiN 2. "We talked to publishers about doing it, but we never felt able to make the product we wanted to make with the next SiN," he said of the sequel.
I'll write up something better once the dust has settled. Initial impression: evens it out with xStream having DNF.
