AGEOD Expansion Packs

[marvingardns]

Expansion packs have been such gaming cash cows as far back as I could remember. I'm reminded of the Do 335, Go 229 and P-38 expansion packs for Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. If the game is nothing but a good thing, then keep cashing in on them! You know I'll buy them.

So... why not issue an expansion pack for BOA2? I'm thinking of Wars in the West. The map could stretch from San Francisco to Kansas City, from Ft. Laramie to Mexico City. Then you could cover such conflicts as the Apache Wars, Mexican-American War, War of Texas Independence, Pueblo Revolt and Sibley's Invasion of New Mexico.

Or take the new and beautiful NCP map. You can recreate several 18th century wars from the Great Northern War through the First Coalition! I would buy those in a heartbeat!

It sure beats keeping quality staff chasing after time-draining patches that bring in ZERO revenue.

[MarkShot]

Gee, activate a guy's ID and look what happens!

Expansion packs can be tricky. Not enough content or wrong price point and customers can feel like they are being milked.

You cite the SWOTL example, but that was back in the day prior to the WWW (and the easy patch via download). Patching games was a real costly proposition and companies did their best to avoid it. This mainly entailed quality assurance and testing at levels which have largely dissappeared in the software industry today. The Internet made the growth of small niche developers much more feasible by reducing many aspects of operational expenses. At the same time, it led to a general decline in software quality across the board.

So, going back to your example, many expansion packs were a bundle of game patches, minor enhancements, and new content. Effectively, you were partially paying for the patching process and it was called an expansion to make it feel acceptable. (These days it is really hard to make customers PAY for patches or tolerate games which are not finished/playable with release 1.00.)

[MarkShot]

Also, I would argue that part of AGEOD's value proposition to the customer is, in fact, the extended level of support (patch, enhancement, and back porting of features) to games that have been released for some time.

As has been noted in conversations which we have had at the http://www.wargamer.com, this also represents a form of non-invasive anti-piracy. If you distribute your serial #, then you get black listed and denied the future value of the game's evolution.

[Flop]

(These days it is really hard to make customers PAY for patches or tolerate games which are not finished/playable with release 1.00.)

Personally, it's the combination of those two things that tick me off. I don't mind waiting for a game to be patched (as long as I know it actually will be patched), but I don't like paying for an unfinished game, and then having to pay again to get the "full" game.

In the same way, I don't like expansion packs that add features, which should have been in the original game. Paradox, for example, has done this with both EU3 and Rome, as far as I'm concerned, and I've reached a point where I'm not sure I'll buy their games anymore (I've bought every game they've made, since EU).

On the other hand, I don't mind paying for an expansion that adds on an already good game. Extra campaigns and scenarios, and stuff like that, is fine by me. All in all, though, I think expansion packs are better suited for other genres, such as RPG's, in which there's a story to expand on.

[marvingardns]

Funny. I'm asking to get milked. :-)

Very enlightening response though, Markshot. You are a business advisor for good reason.

[Jayavarman]

Personally, it's the combination of those two things that tick me off. I don't mind waiting for a game to be patched (as long as I know it actually will be patched), but I don't like paying for an unfinished game, and then having to pay again to get the "full" game.

In the same way, I don't like expansion packs that add features, which should have been in the original game. Paradox, for example, has done this with both EU3 and Rome, as far as I'm concerned, and I've reached a point where I'm not sure I'll buy their games anymore (I've bought every game they've made, since EU).

On the other hand, I don't mind paying for an expansion that adds on an already good game. Extra campaigns and scenarios, and stuff like that, is fine by me. All in all, though, I think expansion packs are better suited for other genres, such as RPG's, in which there's a story to expand on.

Of course there are a lot of features that you want to have been in 1.0 that were later released in expansion packs. It is a natural psychological and financial sentiment. However, there were the same feature wants for EU2 and HoI1, but no expansion packs. Understand?

[MarkShot]

Some more thoughts on expansion packs ...

Also, the nature of games have changed greatly since the days of SWOTL. How so?

Modding of games have become a major aspect of the game scene.

The WWW among other innovations made the possibility of group modding and distribution of mods a reality for the first time. Prior to that, you had a few talented individuals who mainly modded for their own use, but not for the community at large. Still in the mid-90s, modding of games meant that modders had to figure archaic file formats and parse through bits, bytes, experiment, and use hex disk editors. It was a lot of work for slow gains. There were two reasons for this:

(1) Memory and disk were still quite expensive relatively. Thus, there were tremendous pressures upon developers to save a byte of disk or memory. Why put "POSTURE=AGGRESSIVE" in some text file which is going to take something like 50 bytes or more when I could encode it in a fix field as "101" in 3 bits?

(2) The potential of community modding had yet to be realized. What it could mean for extended sales and product longevity.

Compared to the mid-90s, many games now have their data encoded as easy to read/edit plain text. It doesn't take a technologist to mod a game anymore. It has even gone as far as the actual complex behavior of game objects is stored in plain text of an interpreted special purpose computer language. (Example: Sonalysts Sub Command and Dangerous Waters use text doctrine files to programmatically control the behavior of subs, weapons, etc...)

With regards to making a market for expansion packs, this leaves today's developer with two key choices:

(1) Produce a closed and hard to mod system in order to facilitate the expansion pack market. You may well facilitate the exansion pack market, but be shooting yourself in the foot at the same time. Since you may be crippling the growth of the game's community, it replay value, and the product's longevity.

(2) Produce a highly open and moddable game system. Assuming the game is popular, then fans will ultimately end up producing the expansions themselves.

Finally, this brings me to my point. Expansion packs are a harder business model today, since if you mainly add content without game features, then you put yourself in competition with your own customers. Also, customers ask why should we pay for these maps and battles when we can download them for free? This leaves the developer just one area (if one neglects the Open Source movement) where they can add value that the community cannot; and that is in terms of functionality, since only the developer has access to the code. Although code hacking does exist, the level of productivity of code hacking modders would fall way below that of the developers who have the source and right tools.

In summary, this is another reason why the expansion pack business model makes less sense than it did in the early 1990s.

[Flop]

Of course there are a lot of features that you want to have been in 1.0 that were later released in expansion packs. It is a natural psychological and financial sentiment. However, there were the same feature wants for EU2 and HoI1, but no expansion packs. Understand?

Actually, I was quite satisfied with EU2, and I thought that the expansion for that game was good. Imo, EU3 wasn't worth playing untill IN, and I still consider Rome a poor game, even with the expansion.

[Jayavarman]

Actually, I was quite satisfied with EU2, and I thought that the expansion for that game was good. Imo, EU3 wasn't worth playing untill IN, and I still consider Rome a poor game, even with the expansion.

Perhaps EU2 was satisfying, but remember that it was released only 9 months after EU1. Many called EU2 a $40 expansion of EU1. Johan spent his Christmas 2001 making a patch for the game because gamers were so pissed.

[Generalisimo]

Perhaps EU2 was satisfying, but remember that it was released only 9 months after EU1. Many called EU2 a $40 expansion of EU1. Johan spent his Christmas 2001 making a patch for the game because gamers were so pissed.

Didn't know that...

[PhilThib]

Most likely EU1 was rushed for release in order to turn out cash at a critical time (and it worked) and EU2 appeared in fact in 'due time', as it included everything (almost) that was designed to be in the 'normal' EU

[Flop]

Perhaps EU2 was satisfying, but remember that it was released only 9 months after EU1. Many called EU2 a $40 expansion of EU1. Johan spent his Christmas 2001 making a patch for the game because gamers were so pissed.

I wasn't able to play EU2 at release, since I was sailing at the time, so I probably played the patched version (don't quite remember, actually). Anyway, the point is that Johan spent his christmas making a patch, not an expansion, to fix the game.

The point I was trying to make in my initial post was that Paradox used to be highly supportive of their games, releasing patch after patch to improve on them. Granted, that was usually necessary to make the games playable (still is), but now they release a few patches, and fix the rest with expansion packs.

[GlobalExplorer]

I like the idea of "Wars in the West" very much. But I think condering Ageods situation it should be sold as new game, full price. Yes.

Secondly, with VGN in full production, and plans for a new Napoleonic game with grand campaign, as well as RoP, there is not much likeness this will ever be done. When are they supposed to make it?

Realistically I'd rather have VGN in fall and then pay for addons.

[Jayavarman]

I wasn't able to play EU2 at release, since I was sailing at the time, so I probably played the patched version (don't quite remember, actually). Anyway, the point is that Johan spent his christmas making a patch, not an expansion, to fix the game.

And the point is EU2 was an expansion. Ever play EU1?

The point I was trying to make in my initial post was that Paradox used to be highly supportive of their games, releasing patch after patch to improve on them. Granted, that was usually necessary to make the games playable (still is), but now they release a few patches, and fix the rest with expansion packs.

Show me where those past glorious patches added anything approaching the equivalent of today's expansions. Most of the content in patches for EU2 post-1.05 were just rule changes for MP and miscellaneous historical setup fixes.
You are still letting time, emotion, and lack of information cloud your judgment.

[Clovis]

EU2 got on release a lot of consumer complaints until things got fixed by 3 or 4 patches.

I wouldn't name it an expansion but an enhanced version. New game features and mainly events were introduced. This only point is beyong the qualification of expansion.

[Hohenlohe]

I think that AGEOD needs no expansion packs although some content patch updates will be welcomed by the community.I prefer a total improved game with a new version of the AGE-engine for example with AGE v3.0 for a NCP2 so I can get the chance to play a total new game.

greetings

Hohenlohe