See, all I see this as is evidence for why a toolset should always be available for modders. I don't expect Bioware to do everything; they have limited time and resources, after all. This is the kind of thing modders excel at, and another reason why giving modding communities as many tools and as much freedom as possible to modify the game is a great thing.
If there's no toolset for DA2 I will be very dissappointed. Most of the RPGs I play have new leases of life when their mod communities have had time to produce some quality work.
Can DA2 have an ending like this...
Débuté par
Arius23
, oct. 23 2010 11:47
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#152
Posté 16 novembre 2010 - 07:54
Tony_Knightcrawler
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Might I play devil's advocate for a moment? Isn't the issue on whether to include content like development tools essentially the same as whether to include preorder bonuses in games? The idea is that using preorder bonuses, more people will buy the game sooner rather than later, and it also looks good on financial reports to investors. These two things increase profit, to a small extent before release (investors) and to a larger extend immediately after release (people buying the game at full price). This increased profit can be used to hire more employees for future projects, thus increasing the size of future games. You simply pre-allocate some of these resources to reservation bonuses so that you can keep the cycle going and fuel future releases.
That famous "Dragon Age DLC" trailer was made with the development tools, and I'd be surprised if it didn't convince at least a few thousand people to buy the game. There are also a number of people who buy a game with development tools because they like the community aspect, because they want to explore their creative sides, because they're interested in game development, or simply for the principle of it. Let's say that for the people where these reasons were the straws that broke the camel's back, as well as others whose attention was drawn to the game by fan-created content, we're looking at around 10k or 15k people. Let's say they didn't all buy it at launch, but they did all buy it for PC (clearly), so we're looking at on average around $40 per person, taking into account some average purchases of DLC.Take out $5 profit for packaging.
Doesn't this mean that the inclusion of the development tools may have led to $350,000 - $525,000 in increased profit. That's enough wages for 3-6 programmers (or 2-5 programmers, 2-3 testers, etc etc etc) working exclusively on development tools for one year. Wouldn't you say this would pay for enough man-hours to justify development tools? And I feel I'm being fairly conservative with these numbers, here.
I must say that I personally was on the fence about DA:O. What convinced me was trust in Bioware, cross-promotion with Mass Effect (yes, I'm dumb), and the development tools. If it was just two of them, I may not have made the purchase, or at least I would have made it later.
That famous "Dragon Age DLC" trailer was made with the development tools, and I'd be surprised if it didn't convince at least a few thousand people to buy the game. There are also a number of people who buy a game with development tools because they like the community aspect, because they want to explore their creative sides, because they're interested in game development, or simply for the principle of it. Let's say that for the people where these reasons were the straws that broke the camel's back, as well as others whose attention was drawn to the game by fan-created content, we're looking at around 10k or 15k people. Let's say they didn't all buy it at launch, but they did all buy it for PC (clearly), so we're looking at on average around $40 per person, taking into account some average purchases of DLC.Take out $5 profit for packaging.
Doesn't this mean that the inclusion of the development tools may have led to $350,000 - $525,000 in increased profit. That's enough wages for 3-6 programmers (or 2-5 programmers, 2-3 testers, etc etc etc) working exclusively on development tools for one year. Wouldn't you say this would pay for enough man-hours to justify development tools? And I feel I'm being fairly conservative with these numbers, here.
I must say that I personally was on the fence about DA:O. What convinced me was trust in Bioware, cross-promotion with Mass Effect (yes, I'm dumb), and the development tools. If it was just two of them, I may not have made the purchase, or at least I would have made it later.
Modifié par Tony_Knightcrawler, 16 novembre 2010 - 07:56 .
