Community

Jun 23, 2012 -- 4:23PM, Ironhorse75 wrote:

Jun 23, 2012 -- 10:53AM, Splattercat wrote:

I'll say again. If hundreds of thousands of people bought DotP '13 and someone made a decision to withhold DLC that's just-this-side-of-guaranteed hundreds of thousands of sales, that person needs to kill hmself immediately.

Marketing has probably done their homework.  

It's more profitable to hook a very small fraction of these hundreds of thousands on the paper game than to get an additional one time purchase of $5-10.  

The risk of getting them hooked on a game that players dump hundreds if not thousands of money into each year far outweighs DLC revenue.

Is it worth the risk of losing all future sales of '13 DLC?
Hundreds of thousands of people buy the game (we'll say 100,000). a few thousand get the DLC (we'll say 10,000) because it's limited to only a certain percentage. The other (we'll say 90,000) do not. All to hook, what maybe 1000 or so people to Magic? Those 1000 people aren't guaranteed permanent players either.

Meanwhile, they've just jeopardized sales of all their future Duels DLC which is typically worth 1.5x that of the core game.
So they risk losing well over a million dollars in guaranteed sales for the possibility of a getting possibly a couple hundred thousand a year?

As soon as I started playing Yeva's deck I wanted some Birthing Pod 's! I doubt we will ever see Phyrexian Mana though.

Just looked through all these again. Every deck gets some nasty stuff. Certain players will have a big advantage if they don't allow everyone access to these. I hope Wizards thought this through, for everyone's sake.

Jun 23, 2012 -- 8:20AM, Stevolutionary wrote:

The issue though of unbalancing games for people who pay extra or buy associated products is now the way all of gaming is going. "Free to Play", Microstransactions, Paid "Shortcuts" (that only exist because content is arbitrarily locked) exclusive pre-order/limited edition bonuses and Day 1 DLC (again, comprising of stuff we used to get on disc) is the norm. DOTP now even has in-game adverts! On a paid product!

It's the emergence of the Facebook-type gaming crowd and their fat gullible wallets who love to throw money at shiny things. Games like FarmVille and the huge and rapid rise of Zynga, drowning in money from those gamers, caught the covetous eyes of many a publisher. EA have stated all future games will contain microtransactions (like the booster system whch almost ruined Mass Effect 3's otherwse great multiplayer) and Crytek recently revealed they're going completely Free to Play after Crysis 3.

DOTP, and to a lesser extent Paper Magic, and to a growing extent gaming in general is now less about skill, but more about power fantasies. The audience these days don't care about testing their skill, but revelling in delusion over often fake and unearned victories. That flash of a win screen, the chime associated with levelling up. People of that mindset will pay anything for that hit, and so are an audience that is now front an centre in the minds of all publishers. I've even seen a lecture at GDC a few years ago where they openly talked about this method of creating addiction (quoting this exact technique, and without shame - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioni...)

In the same way gaming opened up after games got more inclusive and allowed everyone to complete games by lowering the difficulty, now multiplayer is the main focus due to online and social media, this is the way they give that same thrill of victory to people in that arena - make multiplayer in no way balanced or fair, and allow people to pay to achieve that.

Due to this, it becomes an actual strategy to unbalance games so everyone, even the worst player imaginable, can get that hit of victory and have that power fantasy. Games are now essentially drugs. The old audience who care about balance and skill are being left behind, because we aren't big enough marks, or have so little integrity as to splash out and pay for advantages like they will. It's a reason why the community as a whole has collapsed in quality over the years, as these people are some of the worst people around.

It's why after 25 years of gaming, I've approaced a semi-retirement from the hobby. Gaming is on a bad path and is only getting worse, and it isn't one I want part of.

I haven't read the whole thread yet but this posting is simply legendary!

Spot on, well formulated and even more important: sad but true...

Gaming isn't the same anymore. You want an example? Play Rock n Roll Racing (SNES) and then play Diablo 3 (PC) (or for the sake of simplicity compare Diablo 2 to Diablo 3). Same developer, diferent age and just a sad sad development...

I grew up in arcade halls and right now, I'm losing interest in games at a really really fast pace. Maybe I'm just growing too old but maybe the industry just isnt catering to my interests anymore.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what exactly it was that he said. Anyone care to paraphrase that?

Jun 24, 2012 -- 4:51PM, Ljas wrote:

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what exactly it was that he said. Anyone care to paraphrase that?

It's being suggested that the decks' 10 unlocks described in this thread are going to be limited to a gaming store release. As in they wouldn't be available through Steam/XBLA/PSN.

If that turns out to be true, and a Wizards executive actually made that decision, he needs to go away because more than any other, that move would kill DotP's DLC sales which are pretty much guaranteed money at this point.

Paraphrased: it's the stupidest move they could ever make.