Left 4 Dead sequel announcement invokes . . .boycott?

[CaptHawkeye]

No reason to be so hostile,

Hey asshole, it turns out people around here won't like you when you say stupid shit and back it up with "because I think so".

DLC's a fairly new concept, as far as releasing content beyond bug fixes over the Internet is concerned. Some Devs don't think it's worth the effort, others want to move onto other projects and not look back. But so far, the climate has been fairly DLC friendly. Fable 2, Halo 3, Killzone 2, the aforementioned Fallout 3 all have DLC of some kind. Big release games tend to have it, and it's making cash on very little development costs.

So that's cool, despite all of those titles being multi-million sellers, the developers eventually got around to making...some extra maps. Truly, consumers must be blown away by the sheer quantity of DLC on the market these days.

[Nephtys]

I don't get that at all. The 'real' Dev Team doesn't even have to have anything to do with the DLC, as they move on to their other projects/sequels. A small gang of nobodies, unrelated to the main dev work or resource creation can then basically just play with modkits, and sell little 5/10 dollar packs with fancy crap.

Look at the billions of new levels/NPCs/pants that people modded for Oblivion. Now, let's say you sell a FRACTION of that in a DLC.

Like say, if L4D sold two new guns, one new infected and one new campaign in a 5/10 dollar pack. Possibly even a new mode where the Survivors start each level split up, instead of in one saferoom. That took minimal effort, could be churned out literally in three weeks, and then could rake in cash.

[Stark]

That's exactly it. It doesn't make sense given the information we're working with. That's why I figure there has to be something else going on. Perhaps corps/marketing/financial reporting is structured such that boxes moved = better (which makes no sense for Valve)? There has to be some boardroom somewhere where someone says 'this isbetter than releasing tiny DLC for $5 a pop'. Perhaps adopt rates are far lower than expected? On console, perhaps it's related to the whole 'barely 20% of consoles ever go online' statistic?

[Richard Sharpe]

No reason to be so hostile,

Hey asshole, it turns out people around here won't like you when you say stupid shit and back it up with "because I think so".

DLC's a fairly new concept, as far as releasing content beyond bug fixes over the Internet is concerned. Some Devs don't think it's worth the effort, others want to move onto other projects and not look back. But so far, the climate has been fairly DLC friendly. Fable 2, Halo 3, Killzone 2, the aforementioned Fallout 3 all have DLC of some kind. Big release games tend to have it, and it's making cash on very little development costs.

So that's cool, despite all of those titles being multi-million sellers, the developers eventually got around to making...some extra maps. Truly, consumers must be blown away by the sheer quantity of DLC on the market these days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion

But hey, what do I know about healthy discussion and debate. It's not like I had my reasons for believing what I do.

With DLC, companies can release a surprisingly little amount of content (Like, say, Broken Steel for Fallout 3) without having to find a publisher beyond online distribution AND they can markup the crap out of it. And horse armour not being profitable? Dude, the minimal cost it took to code and skin horse armour is severely offset by the people who bought it for $3 or however much it was. DLC is essentially all profit

Oh wait.

[Stark]

Are you going to actually provide evidence for anything or just wikilink nonsense? There is CLEARLY some other mechanism in play, since it doesn't happen more. What's your response?

ROFFLE OPINION

[Losonti Tokash]

Just like how people were surprised Harmonix did a Guitar Hero Metallica.

They...didn't? Unless you're making a comment on the Beatles game. Harmonix hasn't done a guitar hero game since that Rocks the 80s thing.

[CaptHawkeye]

You know, one of these days, a noob will come to this board who will not be infatuated with his own ego and sense of self-worth. One day, a noob will come to this board who will not be the sole authority on nothing, but will have genuinly usefull information to bring upon this community from Post: 1. And lo, on this day, Duke Nukem Forever will be released, the planets will aline, Nostradamus will rise from the dead, and perform an awesome guitar solo to the theme of "Doctor Feelgood".

That day, is not this day. And so the sun will set, the moon will rise, and the Hall of Shame will have another Hallmark Moment lovingly smothered upon its bosom.

[Stark]

They...didn't? Unless you're making a comment on the Beatles game. Harmonix hasn't done a guitar hero game since that Rocks the 80s thing.

Of course I am. Remember, Activision is an evil money-grubbing corporation releasing stand-alone incompatible games with only one artist! Harmonix is a grass-roots touchy-feeling group who are about the ART man and they'd never do that!

Oh wait. Turns out corporations exist to make money?

[CaptHawkeye]

Just where did the first promises of "DLC" start for consoles? PC's have more or less always had "DLC" in the form of patches which even frequently came with things like free extra maps, and other added content.

Somewhere down the line, the whole DLC tirade thing on consoles started. I wonder where it did to be honest. Where was the line between "free patch" and "$2 horse armour" drawn?

[Losonti Tokash]

They...didn't? Unless you're making a comment on the Beatles game. Harmonix hasn't done a guitar hero game since that Rocks the 80s thing.

Of course I am. Remember, Activision is an evil money-grubbing corporation releasing stand-alone incompatible games with only one artist! Harmonix is a grass-roots touchy-feeling group who are about the ART man and they'd never do that!

Oh wait. Turns out corporations exist to make money?

Look man Activision is on a whole different level with their whole "Band Hero" and "Guitar Hero: Motley Crue" shit. D:

[Stark]

Just where did the first promises of "DLC" start for consoles? PC's have more or less always had "DLC" in the form of patches which even frequently came with things like free extra maps, and other added content.

Somewhere down the line, the whole DLC tirade thing on consoles started. I wonder where it did to be honest. Where was the line between "free patch" and "$2 horse armour" drawn?

It's been around this entire generation, so several years, and I believe XBOX had DLC too (even if it was more haphazard). It's old enough in concept for games to be built from the ground up to deal with it.

[Ford Prefect]

So that's cool, despite all of those titles being multi-million sellers, the developers eventually got around to making...some extra maps. Truly, consumers must be blown away by the sheer quantity of DLC on the market these days.

To be fair, the Fable II and Fallout 3 is somewhat more involved than a extra maps in multiplayer or some new skins in Ninja Gaiden II or Dead Spess. That said, I think Fallout 3 is the only game really into DLC; that they have two quest packs coming up for release and have laready put out three (I think) is pretty out of the ordinary.

[Covenant]

That's exactly it. It doesn't make sense given the information we're working with. That's why I figure there has to be something else going on. Perhaps corps/marketing/financial reporting is structured such that boxes moved = better (which makes no sense for Valve)? There has to be some boardroom somewhere where someone says 'this isbetter than releasing tiny DLC for $5 a pop'. Perhaps adopt rates are far lower than expected? On console, perhaps it's related to the whole 'barely 20% of consoles ever go online' statistic?

It has to do with the amount of income you make all at once, and the esoteric way they calculate quarterly earnings and such. Developers are often tied to release schedules that are insane and entirely arbitrary so that they can get things out at certain times in order to continue making enough money to keep their publishers happy and keep all their people employed.

As a long-term strategy, DLC makes a lot of sense. However, a lot of these places over-estimate the amount of time they'll have between finishing one game and needing to start on the next. And DLC games often get scrapped faster than non-DLC games because, by their nature, they have a lot of free-floating ideas. So what used to be a business model based on low-expense money printing becomes a mine for corporate to excavate an entirely new sequel, to hell with long-term profits.

The solution is to say "Hey, L4D is gonna make lots of money with shitty-ass updates for the next 4 years, improving code, adding levels, and staying topical through stupid PR stunts like having movie tie-ins and modding competitions which we can use to repackage 'community content' for big profits... why don't we make a different type of game in the meantime?"

Oh shit! Not re-using all those assets for the very next game? HERESY. But yeah, that's why. It's short-sighted. Game companies are often run by and staffed by people who are video game illiterate, strange as that sounds. Or at least their level of video game understanding doesn't rise above the Halo or Tetris level. If they had left L4D as-is and use those code and crowd AI principles to create a different kind of game for source they could tap TWO demographics, and make tons of money. Surely that was someone's plan. Surely that person was not in corporate.

Remember, these are the same people who tell me to work on the 4th of July, and when I ask if that entitles me to holiday pay (time and a half) they say no, since they recognize the 4th of July holiday as taking place on the 3rd of July.

[Jade Falcon]

When was the first payable DLC for the PC? The first that I can remember were the Euro Forces and Armoured Fury booster packs for Battlefield 2, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were earlier ones.

[Nephtys]

When was the first payable DLC for the PC? The first that I can remember were the Euro Forces and Armoured Fury booster packs for Battlefield 2, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were earlier ones.

I do remember 'Unit-a-week' for Total Annihilation. That was back when? 1998?

[2000AD]

I'm still laughing at all the people saying Valve broke a promise on things that'll be released for L4D. They've already said at E3 they're still going to support L4D1 and they've got (at least) till L4D2 is released to make good on those promises. That's about 5 months, assuming they make the Nov release date for L4D2 and to be blunt meeting their stated release dates isn't exactly Valves forte. Valve ain't broken any promises yet IMO, and given thier past performance I'm willing to trust them.

[Stark]

ITT 2000AD doesn't understand what 'splitting the population' means and displays exactly the laughable attitude towards Valve people laughed at on page one.

[Nephtys]

Here's a different scenario, 2000AD. Imagine if at E3, instead of L4D2, it was TF3.

And it looks like TF2. Only the Spy is now Italian, the Engineer is now British, the Heavy is now German, the Scout is now Norweigan and the Doctor is now from Boston. Also, the graphics are somewhat darker and edgier.

Imagine the uproar. And that's for a well established game with lots of additional content and two years of maturity already. A sequel being released, that's pretty much the same damn thing, within the lifespan of the original.

With L4D, it's a lot shorter, and their FIRST content pack was JUST released a month ago or something.

...

As to Valve's (historical) past performance.... let's develop a game, scrap it, scrap it again, and release it seven years later. Oh hey, it turns out it came out pretty good. Please wait as we try to produce another product within the next decade.

As to Valve's (recent) past performance... Remember Half Life 2? Remember how it sorta was boring, had stupid vehicle levels and idiotic physics puzzles, then got fun really for about two levels with the city 17 giant revolt, then sucks again?

Episode 1. Where your only weapon for the first HALF of the game is the physics gun, so you can solve THE SAME PHYSICS SEESAW PROBLEM, then you get a pistol and shotgun for most of the remainder. Oh, and then the game gives you a magnum with six bullets in the very last room. Yes, those four hours of levels and one new zombie enemy (ugh) were so worth 20 bucks.

[Stark]

Release dates massively broken = not broken any promises!

[Straha]

It's the economics of it Stark.

Think about it this way:

You've got a video game company with a team of developers who've just finished a successful video game that got a fair bit of press. Over the next six months to a year would you rather have the developers release a DLC package every month for $5 a download, get maybe 20-50% of your target market to buy it while having your marketing/publicity team basically sit around smelling its own farts and burp out every so often "Well.... we've got downloadable maps, and guns, and shiny toys now! Yeah it costs extra, but it's worth buying an old game to get at these kinda nifty add-ons!" Or would you rather have those same developers put together a half assed sequel that has all originality chucked out the window in favor of getting it out the door, while your publicity team promises fans the sun, moon and the stars and says "Rather than try to fix a broken old game, we've decided to start fresh and give you a spiffy new game with all the features you've been asking for! Except for some of them. But we can always release DLC later to add those as well!" Get a fair bit of gaming media attention and, hopefully, have everyone who plays the original game buy the second one for $40-60? Especially considering that, in a recession, people probably don't want to pay $5-10 a month to get shit add-ons to a mediocre game when they can wait a couple months, save up their money and buy a whole new, and hopefully better, game.

To a cash strapped accountant the second looks much better for the bottom line than the first. Moreover, going the second route doesn't preclude outsourcing DLC to a dirt cheap overseas developed and having them release piles of shit for $5 a pop and getting that die hard fanbase to buy it because they'll buy anything.

[Nephtys]

It's the economics of it Stark.

Think about it this way:

You've got a video game company with a team of developers who've just finished a successful video game that got a fair bit of press. Over the next six months to a year would you rather have the developers release a DLC package every month for $5 a download, get maybe 20-50% of your target market to buy it while having your marketing/publicity team basically sit around smelling its own farts and burp out every so often "Well.... we've got downloadable maps, and guns, and shiny toys now! Yeah it costs extra, but it's worth buying an old game to get at these kinda nifty add-ons!" Or would you rather have those same developers put together a half assed sequel that has all originality chucked out the window in favor of getting it out the door, while your publicity team promises fans the sun, moon and the stars and says "Rather than try to fix a broken old game, we've decided to start fresh and give you a spiffy new game with all the features you've been asking for! Except for some of them. But we can always release DLC later to add those as well!" Get a fair bit of gaming media attention and, hopefully, have everyone who plays the original game buy the second one for $40-60? Especially considering that, in a recession, people probably don't want to pay $5-10 a month to get shit add-ons to a mediocre game when they can wait a couple months, save up their money and buy a whole new, and hopefully better, game.

To a cash strapped accountant the second looks much better for the bottom line than the first. Moreover, going the second route doesn't preclude outsourcing DLC to a dirt cheap overseas developed and having them release piles of shit for $5 a pop and getting that die hard fanbase to buy it because they'll buy anything.

You missed my previous post though. The team required to make a new game is FAR, FAR different than the glorified mod crew that it takes to churn out DLCs. A real new game needs tons of new artists for all of the assets, coding all sorts of new engine modifications, and various other assets such as sound and models which really eat up the money. Not to mention organizing such an effort, and directing all of it to appear more than a literal reskin of older materials it may have some basis in, the cost of publishing, advertisement, etc.

A tiny DLC crew can skin three new guns, one new badguy and make a new level. Oh hey, it's a brilliant new L4D expansion right there.

[Stark]

Yeah that's it; you can just have a pair of monkeys shit out maps or gun reskins or new mechanics without any real investment. Stuff like the FO3 and Fable2 expansions are different of course (but actually marketing those DLC would be a good idea).

[Straha]

[
You missed my previous post though. The team required to make a new game is FAR, FAR different than the glorified mod crew that it takes to churn out DLCs. A real new game needs tons of new artists for all of the assets, coding all sorts of new engine modifications, and various other assets such as sound and models which really eat up the money. Not to mention organizing such an effort, and directing all of it to appear more than a literal reskin of older materials it may have some basis in, the cost of publishing, advertisement, etc.

And they already have this team sitting around from making the last game. Instead of breaking them up and changing their focus from "make video games" to "mildly improve existing game," they can keep them around, tell them to rush out a sequel as quickly as possible and sit back and wait for the inevitable money flow in five years time. As for marketing... it's a lot easier to market a brand new game than it is to market an old game + DLC. For one, marketing any old game is incredibly hard so as to make it almost not worth the effort. Second, marketing DLC is essentially a waste of money because of the tiny target audience that will either love or hate what you give them regardless of whether it's any good. Third, marketing a sequel is about as easy as can be. You simply say "Remember all the good stuff from the last game? It'll be back. Remember everything you wanted in the game? We're putting it in this one. And we'll have DLC to add even more." Moreover, since you haven't released the game nobody can tell if you're lying out of your teeth until after they've bought the game. And by then, nobody cares.

A tiny DLC crew can skin three new guns, one new badguy and make a new level. Oh hey, it's a brilliant new L4D expansion right there.

I know. And I don't know why they don't do both. Frankly, you'd think Valve could go out there and recruit a dozen hopeless fanboys with programming talent summer interns, pay them in 'experience' and have them program a bunch of add-ons which are then released through steam for pure fucking profit. I'd lean towards a mix of accountants' overwhelming concern towards the bottom line and marketing execs seeing it as pointless to spend money on an every shrinking target audience for small amounts of profit when you can bag a big target audience for a massive dose of profit in six to twelve months time.

[Stark]

That's bullshit. The implicit message behind your post is probably true (ie, the industry DOESN'T KNOW HOW to market or deal with these concepts) but saying it's impossible is stupid. PS, people who will buy l4d2 without knowing anything about it would ALSO buy a dozen $5 tiny mods for it. Now that Steam has DLC framework, they should have a very high adopt rate (much higher than 360 games, say, because you NEED steam to play steam games and while you're there hey buy a red pistol) and if not, Steam is a marketing tool.

It's pretty funny that you can straight-up describe the market for map packs for (say) Halo3 as 'ever shrinking' (ps 3 maps = $10) or selling to old games 'small amounts of profit' when Burnout Paradise is still going strong. Indeed, saying it's 'small amounts of profit' is kind of the whole issue; why is it small amounts?

[2000AD]

ITT 2000AD doesn't understand what 'splitting the population' means and displays exactly the laughable attitude towards Valve people laughed at on page one.

Well, they've already said that stuff made in the SDK now will be compatible with L4D2, so that's the map making population less likely to split. Given that the map making tools are compatible I wouldn't be surprised if the origional maps were too.

Release dates massively broken = not broken any promises!

Yeah, but that's pretty much the only thing they flake on, but when it comes do delivering good games and supporting them I've been more than hapy with Valve.

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Here's a different scenario, 2000AD. Imagine if at E3, instead of L4D2, it was TF3.

And it looks like TF2. Only the Spy is now Italian, the Engineer is now British, the Heavy is now German, the Scout is now Norweigan and the Doctor is now from Boston. Also, the graphics are somewhat darker and edgier.

Imagine the uproar. And that's for a well established game with lots of additional content and two years of maturity already. A sequel being released, that's pretty much the same damn thing, within the lifespan of the original.

With L4D, it's a lot shorter, and their FIRST content pack was JUST released a month ago or something.

Maybe if it was like that I would be, but it's more than just skin changes. 5 new campaigns (25 maps assuming same length as previous ones), 20 new weapons, 3 new special infected, god knows how many hours of new voice acting to go with the new characters and new changes to the AI Director. That's just the things I recall off the top of my head.

Yes, L4D is shorter, but I got it when the sale was on for under £20. Since then I've ploughed over 300 hours into the game, met new people for my friends list and had a hell of a lot of fun. That's definately value for money IMO and it's only going to get better given that they've already stated there's more stuff to come for L4D1.

As a side note, TF2 is defiantely an excptional game, I can't think of any other game that has as much support as that does. It is the high end standard, not the norm that every game should be compared to in terms of support and new stuff. That Valve has also held off releasing the new stuff on the XBox because they want to release it for free and MS wants to charge for it also demonstrates their character in terms of not screwing over fans.

As to Valve's (historical) past performance.... let's develop a game, scrap it, scrap it again, and release it seven years later. Oh hey, it turns out it came out pretty good. Please wait as we try to produce another product within the next decade.

As to Valve's (recent) past performance... Remember Half Life 2? Remember how it sorta was boring, had stupid vehicle levels and idiotic physics puzzles, then got fun really for about two levels with the city 17 giant revolt, then sucks again?

Opinions differ, I really liked HL2 and still replay it from time to time. Given it's metacritic score of 96/100 from critics and 9.3/10 from users, it seems like a lot more people liked it than disliked it. And as long as their quality remains high then if Valve's developement cycle gets quicker that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Episode 1. Where your only weapon for the first HALF of the game is the physics gun, so you can solve THE SAME PHYSICS SEESAW PROBLEM, then you get a pistol and shotgun for most of the remainder. Oh, and then the game gives you a magnum with six bullets in the very last room. Yes, those four hours of levels and one new zombie enemy (ugh) were so worth 20 bucks.

Yeah, Ep1 was a bit of a let down, and if you used pistol/shotgun for a long time then that was your choice as I damn sure got most of the other weapons through the game.
But I got it as part of the Orange Box which more than made up it's value for money with the other games.