www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
RSS Feed
Thursday, August 22, 2024
Permanent revenue stream
The Steam page for Civilization VI quotes as its first entry unter reviews PC Gamer saying “I’ll never need another Civ game in my life besides this one”. But now Firaxis announced Civilization VII, and I'll guess that Civ6 comment will be forgotten. I played all the Civilization games, even those that weren't called Civilization, but I am getting increasingly sceptical about the added value of yet another Civ game. At what point do sequels stop bringing technical and gameplay improvements to the game, and are just there to create a permanent revenue stream. While Firaxis certainly isn't the worst in this respect, with over 8 years between Civ6 and 7, there are a lot of game series that produce a constant stream of game, DLC, DLC, sequel, DLC, DLC, sequel, etc., and then expect us to buy all of those products.
That isn't limited to videogames. The "improvement" of what is now apparently called "D&D 2024" over "D&D 2014" is marginal. Pre-orders have started, and you're supposed to buy another Player's Handbook, another Dungeon Master's Guide, and another Monster Manual for $50 each. Not to mention all the other books that added rules to the 2014 D&D 5th edition, which are now not necessarily compatible with the new version anymore. I'm sure WotC will soon happily sell you an updated version of these books for $50 each. Meanwhile the only thing that really interested me about the 2024 version of Dungeons & Dragons, the official virtual tabletop, is nowhere to be seen. Which isn't surprising, as D&D has decades of history of promising great digital products that then either disappointed or were never fully realized.
The Sims 4 is free to play since 2022. The Steam page lists 82 DLCs available, with a combined retail price of €1284.19. The original retail price obviously was insignificant, compared to the permanent revenue stream from 8 DLCs per year. The Sims 5 has been announced to be free to play from release on. On the internet one often finds people arguing for the buy to own business model. But isn't that just an illusion? If you are buying the DLCs and sequels of a buy-to-own game, aren't you just paying an extra initial fee in addition to providing a permanent revenue stream to the game company?
- posted by Tobold @ 10:01 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
<< Home
Newer› ‹Older
I feel like DnD peaked at 3rd edition (actually 3.5). However, when I run it I tend to run DnD Basic. It has the simplest rule set, and yet is one of the best options for roleplaying because of the stripped down rules. Instead of digging into the minutia of endless rules that seem to branch out fractally as you include more optional material, you can just play. It's a very good system for people new to PnP RPGs.
If the DLCs or sequels add value then I see no problem with it. Gone are the days when games couldn't be changed after being shipped. If developers are taking advantage of that to offer people more content of course they should charge for it. Although I think there's a fine balance between taking advantage of that capability and taking advantage of the players. Kingdom Come Deliverance had some DLC I wanted and some I didn't. I think choices like that are good and I felt that the base game was a complete game. So whether this is good or bad I think is highly dependent on the developers approach.
Civ 6 brought a lot of new features compared to Civ 5: districts, great works, eureka system, to name a few, and many features were significantly improved (culture and cultural victory, religion, city states, leaders gained randomized hidden agendas). The game felt very differently from the predecessor, and I expect Civ 7 won't be a carbon copy of Civ 6 either.
Post a Comment
<< Home
