Episode 15

Great episode guys, I have a few points I would like to comment on:

– With regards to the first Guild Wars being a free to play MMO RPG, the way NC Soft, or ArenaNet made the game free to play was by using an online store, much like the one League of Legends uses, in which you can buy items with real money. That business model is what Guild Wars uses, and many other free to play MMO’s use like Sword of The New World (now called Sword 2) and several others to keep their games free and servers up.

– It might be difficult for companies such as Activision who make console games (or some PC games) that have free online multiplayer to start charging their player base money for their multiplayer modes due to the fact of having an already well established target audience. If they do decide at some point to add a fee for Call of Duty, for instance, it would spark some other kind of competition between the developers into trying to make their games free to play to shift other gamers into playing their games. That would hurt their brand and in any case, stop that business model in taking effect.

– The way developers make money now to extend the lifetime of their games and maintain their servers is DLC. DLC is, by all means, a hit nowadays, and especially when considering games like FPS and the like. Adding new maps will pay off for the developers, and you can see that happening clearly with Call of Duty. Many of the millions that play that game do purchase the new maps, although they still re-release their old maps into their bundles to continue feeding their audience, and ultimately, lure the people who still play the older CoD games. You can see some CoD: MW maps showing up in CoD: MW2.

– DLC will eventually become a staple in future games. This can be seen through the rise of the digital distribution model in the market. Games are being released for download and are becoming quite popular now. If you want to go deeper into this, consider the following:

Developers release their games to retailers and the money really goes to the retailers more than to the developer themselves. At least a good portion of it. If the developer can release it through digital distribution, they would get all profit for themselves, saving up on costs such as manufacturing, packaging and shipping for instance. The games would also, somewhat, become slightly cheaper as well.

– With regards to the value of a game, $60 games nowadays have a lot to live up for. When someone throws 60 bucks at a title they’d expect somewhat of a high satisfaction level from it. Super Street Fighter IV is a $40 game. It is, arguably, better than some $60 games out in the market and has a lifespan that surpasses most games with regards to multiplayer. Some video game genres such as sports titles, for example, the Winning Eleven series as proposed in the podcast can be quite a deal. SSFIV can live up to it’s next sequel, but sports games that are released annually have a lifespan of usually a year until you shell out another $60 for the next in it’s iteration. Interesting, right?

– Mass Effect 2 had some bad DLC and good DLC. Content that contains additional story elements are indeed worth buying and extending a single player game. BioShock 2 will have new story DLC to look forward to as well. Good DLC will open doors to a good digital distribution future.

And that is all I have to say. Feel free to take or drop whatever you guys like, I thought I’d share the bulk of what was on my mind as I listened to the episode. Sorry for such a long comment. ^_^;