CA blog from Mike Simpson

[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.