CA blog from Mike Simpson

[Zenicetus]

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning.

If they could only ditch you and retain the fanboys and eyecandy addicts they'd carry on coining it

I don't think it could work that way. CA has ramped up the eye candy in recent games, and they've simplified some things like easier diplomacy contacts, and dumbed-down sailing for the naval combat, but they've also made other parts of the game more complicated. For example the tech trees, and more buildings besides the capitol in each province to manage. This is not a game that can appeal to the short attention span, twitch-reflex gamers who make up a huge part of the market.

They're also stuck with this game engine for at least NTW and the next major release after that, according to what I've read so far. That means the next major title will have to appeal to a certain number of hardcore gamers. They would need a completely new game engine, ditching much of the complexity of the strategy map, to go in a more mainstream direction. Or maybe just ditch the strategy map completely and go to a full RTS battle design with scripted interludes as a "plot" (err... if they're not already doing that with Napoleon? That does worry me a little).

[mountaingoat]

Hi

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning.

If they could only ditch you and retain the fanboys and eyecandy addicts they'd carry on coining it.

very good ,this is the way of the "corporations" . They just want to make money any way possible , and do not really care about the direction of the TW series or anything else related to that .

IMO they should stop making any more TW games , and maybe later on a small development team may pick up and release something new .

[fenir]

Antisocialmunky.

Yes, we as humans, like to ajudge ourselves, in a manner with our faults and flaws.

Take for example.
If I lead my old company into battle, and win a stuning victory that changes/ends the war. That will be promoted in the face of other failures. Other past failures. Real or Perceived.

THis is our way of hiding, if only for a short time, our flaws/faults/mistakes.

BUt we can only define this victory, because of the past....flaws/faults/mistakes. Because these are the benchmark.

Now yes, I can hear you saying, but it could work the other way, and therefore we define ourselves in regards to our happiness/victories.
Ahhh.... but....we as a specis are disstatisified or upset et cetera... more often than happy.


THis is why people tend to do things, that make them happy. Whether this is.....

Winning a battle/war.
Out smarting someone.
Completing a hard task.
Writing something intelligent.

It defines us as people. This is why people will complain. Why people will phone in to a shock jock radio station.

It is in our misery that shapes us.


After all, we're only human

Sincerely

fenir

[Beskar]

Brilliant idea with the blog Mike. We can’t let the supergeeks who hate Steam, or the people who don’t have proper computers bring down a work of genius such as Empire. I too can’t understand the multitude of bad reviews on Amazon, etc… Not to say there aren’t plenty of bugs. But the grandeur and brilliance of the game clearly outweigh any negatives that may pop up from time to time. Hopefully word of mouth will continue to spread so that more and more people buy it. I myself can’t wait to buy Warpath. And whatever else you’ve got in store for us. Keep up the great work!

Posted by Dave on October 1st, 2009 at 7:40 pm

[edyzmedieval]

Fanboy. He's a lost cause.

[NimitsTexan]

Hi

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning. . . .

. . .Let's face it: we are an inconvenient truth.

Regards
Victor

The truth is that us hardcore history buffs are the minority of players, and a even smaller minority of potential buyers. To date, I am pleasingly surprised CA has spent as much attention on ETW as it has.

Anyway, none of the CA games have been particularly historically accurate by default or bug free on release. While unfortunate, most followers of the series know this trend and should expect it.

Nor is most of the critcism of ETW valid. With one or two exceptions, the general bugs have been fixed, and those that remain are not game breakers and mostly are incompatibilities with a handful of systems, something that will happen with most complex games. As for the AI, the battle and campaign AI are generally the best of any TW series. Like the AIs in most any complex wargame, they will generally be outwitted by a competent human opponent, especially as humans have the option to reload a saved game to avoid any crushing defeats or huge mistakes, something not available to the AI. I know EU is often cited as an example of a better campaign AI. While I have not played EU specifically, i have played the WWII version (Hearts of Iron) in all its versions; considering that the EU/HoI engine does not even have to worry about tactical battles at all, I would not rate it much higher than the ETW AI. At least, to date, I have a much eaiser time taking over the Europe as a major power in HOI than in ETW.

[fenir]

Nor is most of the critcism of ETW valid.

Care to expand upon? Would look orward to you quailifing this.



Sincerely

fenir

[peacemaker]

Care to expand upon? Would look orward to you quailifing this.

I'm just going to take a quick stab at this...I had many games in 1.3 where I was completely left alone, and never experienced 'black knight AI'. Then I un-installed it, re-installed it, and it seemed like the whole game changed. Everyone attacked everyone, and so I ended up choosing Great Britain and just sitting on my island to watch the world's events unfold.
I've had times where the BAI just clumped up into a tight group and I've had times when the BAI utterly destroyed me, even when outnumbered.

The point is for some reason ETW is wierd ( in a good and bad way). Sometimes it "behaves" and sometimes it doesn't. To many people, it seems to work just fine and they don't bother commenting on how great it is because they're busy playing.

In terms of bugs, the only ones I had was the 1.0 fleet-on-trade-node-not-trading bug. I've had the occasional CTD, but I suspect it may be partly due to a mod not becoming fully uninstalled.

[hoccalugee]

Don't the eye-candy addicts and fanboys LOVE the fact that the dedicated modders create more beautiful (and more historically accurate) add-ons to the game? Don't the dedicated modders LOVE the praise, attention and fulfillment they get from making new mods? I do!

The modders and the fanboys/eye-candy addicts go hand in hand to make the game more successful and popular. Any person who buys the game, and realises that there are practically hundreds of FREE additions to the game that will indefinitely extend the playability of the game, will likely become a great fan of the series. The fact that the mods available cover nearly every major historical period and every major fantasy world make this game anyone's ONE STOP for a strategy game.

Why would SEGA/CA ever want to LOSE the thousands of free workers who make their great game even better? Because the free workers occasionally whine about how hard it is to make the mods? I doubt it. If they are so petty and un-businesslike, they'll all be out of a job soon enough, and the ORG and TWCENTER can take up a collection to buy up the rights to the series!

About STEAM: It is a terrible business model for those who have to pay for their data, as well as their bandwidth. For M2TW I'd have to pay triple the price to download it. For Empire, just not even worth thinking about. STEAM is about control of the product, not distribution. I doubt it's even viable from an emissions standpoint.

Smarter people are attracted to the series (strategy), and even smarter people make mods for it. Smart people desire quality from their products, so whining about bugs/mod-ability is inevitable, and shouldn't be discouraged, it's called FREE feedback, something good producers use to improve their products.

I remember a bunch of people groaning and getting upset about "finishing moves" being added to M2TW. Imagine the reaction, if, instead CA said:
"Hey, we've made M2 animation so mod friendly that you can even add your own animations - here's an example on how to add finishing moves..."

CA needs to follow the Bethesda model. Create the best game engine for the purpose with a good basic campaign, then let the modders create the real content. And maybe then the SEGA required copy-protection won't be destroying my DVD drive.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

About STEAM: It is a terrible business model for those who have to pay for their data, as well as their bandwidth. For M2TW I'd have to pay triple the price to download it. For Empire, just not even worth thinking about. STEAM is about control of the product, not distribution. I doubt it's even viable from an emissions standpoint.

A lot of smaller developers (and probably larger ones, as well) would disagree with you. Steam has a huge audience, and for a small studio that needs to move copies to eat, Steam offers an excellent way to reach consumers while being very reasonable in terms of the fees charged to work with them.

As for downloading the games, the only reason you have to complain is the patches really. You can still buy a physical copy of the game, connect once to verify the purchase, then run offline. You won't get patches, but if you're that concerned about bandwidth you wouldn't get patches anyway.

[hoccalugee]

I'll pay that, STEAM is probably very useful to indie devs.

You won't get patches, but if you're that concerned about bandwidth you wouldn't get patches anyway.

Hmmm, unpatched TW game...not so enticing. How about I buy it normally and download patches from the normal place, as opposed to buying it (hardcopy) from STEAM but not getting access to patches, which is what you seem to be saying...

BUT, as the profits from the larger companies may help STEAM to offer better deals for smaller companies, I'll just shut up now.

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

I'm really not looking to rain on anyone's parade here, but it seems to me that a reality check is in order.

hoccalugee wrote, "Why would SEGA/CA ever want to LOSE the thousands of free workers who make their great game even better?"

The answer is that CA-SEGA just does not care about the relatively small numbers of veteran/hardcore TW players. Nor are they (any longer) interested in the modding community or facilitating their contribution to the development of the franchise. The proof of this is obvious: modding tools for ETW were promised on release or "soon" thereafter. Where are they?

The economic logic is equally obvious and unarguable: CA-SEGA wants to milk their cash cow for all it's worth. Anything which distracts from sellable add-ons is competition CA-SEGA can well do without. The advent of downloadable content packs has hugely increased the profitability of small (some might say trivial) add-on releases -because of the massive reduction in the cost of distribution and elimination of several links in the distribution chain.

Why would CA-SEGA countenance foregoing this additional revenue for the sake of retaining the loyalty and enthusiasm of a few tens of thousands of veteran/hardcore TW players?

CA-SEGA's bean counters are only interested in the hundreds of thousands of 'casual' gamers who are content to receive plenty of eye candy and action ("sandbox" gamers) for their £35 - on the strength of shallow, misleading, and some might argue dishonest, reviews - but who never really do more than dip their toe into the complexities and intricacies that the developers may have have attempted to create.

I'm sorry, but much as I would love to be able to agree with your position hoccalugee, it just doesn't stand up when analysed in the cold hard light of economics and what we know about corporate behaviour.

It's time to board our ships and sail off into the West.

Regards
Victor

[Owen Glyndwr]

Sadly, your post pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Something to feel even more depressed about (a couple weeks old, but still pertinent)

Source: http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activisi...heap-games-you

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been on fire this week. At the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco he made a number of comments that seem to have been calculated to explode the heads of gamers, developers, and anyone who cares a jot about the industry. In a wide-ranging speech, Kotick – who earned $14m last year – dropped a number of bombs about Activision’s future plans, none of which were designed to make anyone happy apart from Activision shareholders.

Essentially, Kotick is in thrall to the almighty dollar to the expense of all else. Thus: “In the last cycle of videogames you spent $50 on a game, played it and took it back to the shop for credit. Today, we’ll (charge) $100 for a guitar. You might add a microphone or drums; you might buy two or three expansions packs, different types of music. Over the life of your ownership you’ll probably buy around 25 additional song packs in digital downloads. So, what used to be a $50 sale is a $500 sale today.”

This echoes a statement Kotick made last year when he explained the company’s lack of support for some new games, specifically ones that don’t lend themselves to sequels. Activision, Kotick said, has no interest in games that “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million franchises.”

Talking of $100m franchises, Kotick likes the way that World of Warcraft is heading. “The best of all margins – the 25 per cent operating margin business – has the potential as we can see with World of Warcraft to be a 50 per cent operating margin business. What used to be a low 20s return on invested capital business is now growing to a plus 40 per cent return on invested capital business.”

And he’s not just setting his sights on Guitar Hero and WoW fans. Talking about upcoming and expensive Activision titles such as Modern Warfare 2, Kotick said: “if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further.”

Having fired these encouraging salvos at the gaming community, Kotick then switched his targets to console manufacturers, who he seems intent on putting out of business by “untethering” Activision games from other-party hardware. “I think what the untethered Guitar Hero does is equal the playing field a little more and give you some leverage with first parties when it comes to downloadable content and the business model.”

Maybe the choice quotes of the event, though, came when Kotick talked about Activision’s developers; you know, the guys who actually make the stuff he gets so rich from. You’d think he’d have a bit of respect for them, right? Oh no, Kotick’s goal over the past 10 years has been – you couldn’t make this up – “to take all the fun out of making video games.” How? By instilling a culture of “scepticism, pessimism, and fear” amongst the company’s staff based around the economic depression and an incentive program that rewards “profit and nothing else”.

We’re having a hard time coming to terms with all this. While we tend to expect mega rich corporate bosses to be at least a bit evil, this flagrant display of gamer hate has left us dumbfounded. Activision is a mammoth company, with some of the biggest-selling franchises in the world under its umbrella, but at the end of the day its profits come from the pockets of gamers who don’t want to miss out on some great titles. If any other CEO exhibited as much contempt for his or her customers as Kotick has, their company would surely expect to face negative feedback or even a consumer boycott. But you just know that nothing like that will happen here. Apart from running the negligible risk of a few blogs printing pictures of him with devil horns or a Hitler moustache, Kotick knows that he’s invulnerable. The gaming “community” just doesn’t have the will or the organisation to, say, boycott Modern Warfare 2, and that – even more than Kotick’s comments – makes us truly sad.

[gollum]

Bloody hell, and i thought all that was conspiracy theories...

[Vlad Tzepes]

This is not depressing, this is gross.

[gollum]

CA was also published by activision (MTW/VI/RTW). RTW in particular impressed the big wiggs in Activision enough to grant CA another year to "finish" the game. I hope its clear now what exactly impressed them, if it wasn't before and something tells me it had something to do with having "the potential to become $100 million franchises".

Even CA at some point (after they became SEGA property) openly denounced Activision as a bad publisher with unrealistic deadlines and a lot of pressure due to commercial reasons. Not that many of the really big publishers will be all that different i would imagine.

[Zenicetus]

hoccalugee wrote, "Why would SEGA/CA ever want to LOSE the thousands of free workers who make their great game even better?"

The answer is that CA-SEGA just does not care about the relatively small numbers of veteran/hardcore TW players. Nor are they (any longer) interested in the modding community or facilitating their contribution to the development of the franchise. The proof of this is obvious: modding tools for ETW were promised on release or "soon" thereafter. Where are they?

The economic logic is equally obvious and unarguable: CA-SEGA wants to milk their cash cow for all it's worth. Anything which distracts from sellable add-ons is competition CA-SEGA can well do without. The advent of downloadable content packs has hugely increased the profitability of small (some might say trivial) add-on releases -because of the massive reduction in the cost of distribution and elimination of several links in the distribution chain.

Why would CA-SEGA countenance foregoing this additional revenue for the sake of retaining the loyalty and enthusiasm of a few tens of thousands of veteran/hardcore TW players?

Spot on. Digital distribution and paid-for DLC is the death of modding for PC games. Look at what Bioware is doing with all the pre-release DLC for Dragon Age, with continuing sales of DLC after initial purchase. I just hit a scene in Dragon Age where an NPC wanted to give me a new side quest. He told me all the initial information that got me interested (with a loot teaser at the end), and so I clicked to accept the quest. The next thing that happened is a screen popped up and asked if I now wanted to buy this optional quest, as paid-for DLC! Amazing. First time I've seen something like this directly embedded inside an RPG. You might say it broke the immersion just a little bit.

With all that in place, do you think Dragon Age will ever be a platform for the kind of amazing (and free) user-made content we saw with Neverwinter Nights? Not a chance. User mods for PC games were valuable for a few years, because they would extend the retail shelf life of a game. That was before so many people had access to Steam and the other retail digital distribution sites. I think we'll only see user modding in the future for a few of the smaller independent game devs like Stardock... unless they too, bite the tempting apple of DLC income, and lock up their games like everyone else. It's all pretty depressing.

The next thing to look for in a TW game, will be where you've met the requirements to start a building that will recruit some fancy new troop or artillery type. When you click to start the building, a screen will pop up asking if you'd like to buy that right now, as optional downloadable content. And it will happen right inside the game, like this thing in DA:O. That's the future, folks. You're going to pay $75 for a game that's 75% complete, and you'll be buying the rest of it piecemeal as you progress through the game.

[Peasant Phill]

That is indeed a grim future(?) you're painting there Zenicetus.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I think this kind of stuff is only ever going to end if gamers start banding together and outright refusing to buy games on a massive scale that pull stuff like this. DLC has been sneaking into the industry for the last 5 years or so, and the fact that we keep buying into it tells the industry they can go a little bit further with it each time. This is a free market, and the only way we as a consumer can tell the industry that this kind of action is not ok is by not buying the game.

[Vlad Tzepes]

The next thing to look for in a TW game, will be where you've met the requirements to start a building that will recruit some fancy new troop or artillery type. When you click to start the building, a screen will pop up asking if you'd like to buy that right now, as optional downloadable content. And it will happen right inside the game, like this thing in DA:O. That's the future, folks. You're going to pay $75 for a game that's 75% complete, and you'll be buying the rest of it piecemeal as you progress through the game.

Okay... You know what? After all, there are lots of good books to read, out there, and a life beyond the computer games. Maybe time is coming (for me, at least) to quit this gaming hobby.

[Owen Glyndwr]

Okay... You know what? After all, there are lots of good books to read, out there, and a life beyond the computer games. Maybe time is coming (for me, at least) to quit this gaming hobby.

That's a little too extreme for me. I prefer to play 5-10 year old games. They still have that old charm to them, and no optional-required DLC to boot!

[Cecil XIX]

That's a little too extreme for me. I prefer to play 5-10 year old games. They still have that old charm to them, and no optional-required DLC to boot!

Same here. I'm sure I haven't played X-com for the last time in my life, and that game's fifteen years old!

The way things are going, I'll never buy something from the videogame industry until it gets a price drop and a patch or two.

[antisocialmunky]

Same here. I'm sure I haven't played X-com for the last time in my life, and that game's fifteen years old!

The way things are going, I'll never buy something from the videogame industry until it gets a price drop and a patch or two.

I need to find a copy of the second one.

[ReluctantSamurai]

And to add my 2cents to what Owen and Zenicetus said.....an area that CA hasn't tapped into yet is the huge console market. With consoles able to d/l content, I can see TW being ported to PS3 and/or Xbox with the aforementioned scenario taking place.

No hassles, no need for a power gaming PC....just plug it in, drop in the disc, and you're ready to play. I can even foresee a subscription type of setup.....pay your monthly fee and be able to d/l the latest quests, units, etc.

Bleak.....................

[Krusader]

And to add my 2cents to what Owen and Zenicetus said.....an area that CA hasn't tapped into yet is the huge console market. With consoles able to d/l content, I can see TW being ported to PS3 and/or Xbox with the aforementioned scenario taking place.

No hassles, no need for a power gaming PC....just plug it in, drop in the disc, and you're ready to play. I can even foresee a subscription type of setup.....pay your monthly fee and be able to d/l the latest quests, units, etc.

Bleak.....................

Although maybe CA are hesitant to try again? Their console RTS, Stormrise was mostly panned from what I read and they even cancelled a patch for it.
Never know though, they might go console for all I know and blame piracy.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I doubt CA will ever go full console; they'll be eaten alive if their experiments are going to be par for the course.

[Martok]

I doubt CA will ever go full console; they'll be eaten alive if their experiments are going to be par for the course.

I concur with Krusader and Alexander the Pretty Good. CA's efforts in the console market have yielded only mixed results at best. If you check out Metacritic's scores:

1.) Spartan Total Warrior -- average score of 74

2.) Viking: Battle for Asgard -- average score 67

3.) Stormrise -- average score 47


Spartan was really their only halfway-decent console title, and that only barely. Viking was no better than mediocre, and Stormrise seems to be almost universally reviled to the point that many sites considered it a contender for Worst Game of 2008.



So yeah. However tempting it may be for CA, I doubt we'll see them switching over to mostly (or exclusively) console games anytime soon.

[gollum]

Originally posted by Martok
CA's efforts in the console market have yielded only mixed results at best.

Maybe that's why they've felt like throwing Empire "in the mix"

[antisocialmunky]

Empire scored better than Stormrise...


crap...

[Rowan]

With all that in place, do you think Dragon Age will ever be a platform for the kind of amazing (and free) user-made content we saw with Neverwinter Nights? Not a chance.

I would beg to differ. The game's not been out for two weeks, but Bioware's already published a toolset explicitly designed for creating your own adventures.