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Denver, 5:15 AM
Sun Nov 29
8 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/28/09
It will probably equate to heavy Facebook saturation for coming games and continual updates to those games.
Personally I accept and agree with this strategy for a number of reasons. First, as a consumer, I get more value for the product. Usually these games are going to be free to play, monetized by exclusive content. So I get to try a game that I may or may not enjoy and not bet $60 on it.
The power of F2P gaming is huge. It means more people are playing your game because the risk/reward is in the consumers favour. It also means that the philosophy of a game being 'finished' when its released is no more. Because its distributed digitally, constant updates can be added to the game. Essentially, the game just begins when its released to the market. This means the longer people are playing, the more fun they're going to have.
And my personal favourite reason for the F2P games being the next standard model of development is that it makes developing new IPs a successful venture. People dont want to pay $60 for a game they never heard of- but they are willing to drop $60 on a game with an established IP (look at the selling difference between Assassins Creed and Assassins Creed 2, its staggering). However, if you make a new IP completely free to the user, then you have more people trying the game. If a lot of people are playing the game, then the IP is established, making it a success.
Free to play games are the future. Scratch that, Free to play games is now. Look at the success of Battlefield Heroes. It would have NEVER been successful if you needed to pay $60 for it. But make it free, and you have 2 million+ registered users within a year. Thats success if I ever saw it- and it has proven the business model for EA. Expect a lot more free games, because its working well for developers.
#speakout
11/28/09
I now will not consider any C&C from C&C4 and up to be considered official story. I'm not going to let them rape the shit out of my favorite franchise!
11/28/09
Fact 2: New World Computing's games in the late 80s and early 90s did, in fact, rock my socks.
Fact 3: He's earned some good credit in my book to put to use.
(Caveat 1: I am not a C&C fan and thus am probably not as invested in this idea as most.)
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11/27/09
You have no friends in Common
Would you like to confirm Kane as your friend?
11/27/09
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Can it even beat the juggernaut that is Mafia Wars?
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11/27/09
I've heard that song before, but it's been years, and I don't even think I actually heard the whole thing. Thanks!
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11/28/09
I don't think it's a "meme," sorry. I just remember hearing it in one of those music montages present when collections of older music are being sold in television ads.
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11/27/09
The more recent games focused heavy on Esport which WC3/SC has a strong foothold in, but without the proper community support they can't expect to get anywhere quick.
COD'4 - ifying the series is probably the best way forward for EA, by this I mean the whole rewards, perks, exp system for playing as much as possible. I think this is the direction C&C 4 is going towards.
As for the facebook thing, it can't be too big of a deal. One of the finer details almost everybody missed at Blizzcon '09 Battle.net presentation was their "aggresive" social networking plans in which they highlighted facebook, twitter and myspace. Makes sense for EA to follow suit as well.
11/27/09
As expanding the product to a wider audience strips away from it what makes it appealing to the audience it has, and spreads quality too thin to satisfy anyone...
This is the problem I have with Nintendo, except they seem to have done it right(when in reality it seems they simply swapped audiences to a bigger one, nto expanded).
It just doesn't work. When you choose to forgo making a game better for its audience in place of trying to get more people to like it, you also deserve to lose a big chunk of respect...but that doesn't usually happen.
blah blah blah
product = butter, toast = audience, trying to spread it too much makes all the bites unpleasant
11/27/09
And by the way - who will develop this title? I thought the whole C&C team got the boot? The Sims developers? :P
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11/27/09
Maintaining integrity to the core concepts of your game is vastly more important than catering to any particular group of players. Accessibility and ease of use so that more players can access what you do is an engineering problem, not a conceptual issue. These sorts of issues don't need to impact what the game is *about*, just how it's expressed. The reason why this gets botched so hard all the time is because we don't really do a good job of understanding what the game is about in the first place.
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Hmm...I suppose I may be yelled at and called a non-gamer....
but I'm kinda excited to see what they do on facebook...mostly out of curiosity.
I love time killer/wasters...
11/27/09
(Ironically I'm reading Kotaku, watching Goodfellas, and feeding my fish on facebook atm).
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11/27/09
Haha I know what the porn term atm means but I'm not quite getting the fish reference.
Edit Oh wow urbandictionary to the rescue. Hahaha
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