rootninja

Interesting story lines, chilling realism, humorous dialog, wicked interfaces, re-playability, the list goes on and on. Add them all up and they’re quickly being outpaced by the importance of profit, profit, profit.

It’s sad but true. Reading this story about the executive level restructuring at blizzard only reinforces my thoughts. There’s nothing on the surface that screams we need more money from these people!, but the writing is on the wall.

http://www.massively.com/2010/03/31/acti-blizz-restructuring-assigns-new-executive-to-blizzard/

In the future, expect less for more. Nickel-And-Dime’d for downloadable content (DLC), map packs, limited edition items and other expansion content… it’s all available, for a fee. Don’t expect it to get better any time soon.

Map packs for Call of Duty 4 may have been free for PC gamers, but not for PS3 and xbox. Do you really think you got it for free because they just thought you deserved it since you paid $50 for the game? I can only imagine how much scrambling has occurred to make sure future ‘downloadable content’ will generate profit in the next iteration of map packs through the miracle of steam.

Oh but business is business, can you blame them? yes and no. It was never this way in the past and it doesn’t have to be. The best thing you can do is support the indie developers! Game such as Alien Hominid, Savage 2, World of Goo, and many more deserve our support. Ideas like free-to-play with a $10 upgrade fee is almost unthinkable for a game coming from one of the big dawgs.

But if Savage 2’s developer S2 Games can put their game out there for free with the option to pay $10 in lieu of the traditional $49.99-$59.99 retail release, doesn’t that say something to where the profits are really going?

Support the developers. Break free from the big box companies’ strangle hold and support the industry from the right end. Check out all the goodness available out there and vote with your dollar because sadly, nothing else really matters. Boycott a game, join a facebook club to express your outrage, do whatever you will. Net effect will be zero, zilch, nada, because the only thing you can fight with is your hard earned money.

Worth checking out before you send another dime to a mega publisher:

* http://www.savage2.com
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribblenauts
* http://www.jowood.com/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschalon:_Book_I
* http://www.blitzarcade.com/
* http://www.x-plane.com/

Not all publishers are evil, but there are a few at the top that have lost focus on what really matters. There’s no reason to repeat their names, so just check out a few of these guys instead:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthPeak_Interactive
* http://www.thq.com/territory.php (publicly traded, but still pushing out great games!)
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_Systems (nostalgia, gobbled up by a mega corp today)