EA… UBI… Activision… you should listen!
by BlackThunder on Aug.27, 2011, under News
I guess one reason why I started to play more Indie games is not just the fact that they are quite fun, but it also feels like you are “in touch” with a fellow gamer. With someone that creates a labor of love and not just someone that looks at the bottom line. These fellow gamers, or entusiasts of great game ideas need our support! So don’t be too much on the fence when it comes down to supporting these! Don’t buy Torchlight two on sale, but spend the whole (gasp) $20. Even if you don’t plan on playing the heck out of Red Orchestra 2, consider helping them with $35 so they can make another game that supports dedicated servers, server admin tools, sdk to mod the heck out of their game. Buy SPAZ just and get a second copy free for a friend.
Realize that your money will make a difference! Help yourself 3-5 years down the road when that small dev house makes something that hits your play style even more because they could feed their families!
What made me think of this is kind of the unrelated article on PCGAMER. Talking with Riot games they tickled this little nugget out and I wished that some big companies would listen. You wouldn’t need some crazy DRM, lock me in some software that wants to scan my entire hard drive and be big brother or make sure I have my internet always on because you want a real money auction house. They way you think of your user base makes a difference! To Riot, I am a gamer! To Cliff Harris I am a fan and it shows how he deals with people that want to talk to him.
We had a chance to catch up with Riot Games this year at Gamescom for a chat about the future of League of Legends, and Riot Games’ attitude to players who pick up League of Legends, play it every day, but never buy any items.
“We actually don’t say ‘How can we monetize our users?’ or anything crazy like that,” says Lead Champion Designer Ryan Scott. “We just go ‘How can we make players super happy”’ and then players will buy what they want and then all of our free players are also super valuable because they’re in there, engaged with the game, and in the community. We’re totally fine with that, we love that.”
“We renamed our customer support group “Player Support Group” because we didn’t want to ever give the impression that we only cared about people who paid in the game,” adds Lead Producer Travis George. “People were like “Why did you do that?” and we’re well, it’s because we want that subtle mentality shift to be part of everything we do.”
August 27th, 2011 on 5:35 pm
Go play league of legends!
But I just want to be very clear that not everyone in big company just look at bottom line. Their game designer also pull their heart for their games and they also have a family to feed. By all means BT ain’t saying we should be indie fan boy. Don’t buy a game you don’t like, also don’t buy a game because of a company.
Bottomline, buy a game because you like that game, what company makes it should not be a reason . If you like battlefield 3 , buy it. If you hate torchlight, don’t buy torchlight 2. Personally I don’t consider gaming a necessary, donate your hard ran money to charity. We are gamers, we play good games, no politics side taking.
August 27th, 2011 on 7:08 pm
Says the guy who owns Activision stock and wants it to perform well.
This has nothing to do with politics, it has to do how we mature gamers choose to spend our money and in a sense set us up to be treated 2,3 or 5 years down the road.
I agree that you should by all means spend your money on things you want. But I remember when one of us wouldn’t but a game that he kinda liked for $5.99 because it might be yet a bit lower on a Christmas sale. It’s important to realize that for the small devs 2-3 bucks per game can be a real difference.
On a different note and worthy of a bigger article or even a podcast, I can not in good conscience say buy any future EA game and I certainly won’t until they agree to keep their hands of my data. There is no reason why you would need anything off my computer that has nothing to do with your game. In so many ways this is much worse than what UBI did or does. At least they only check their software.
August 27th, 2011 on 8:23 pm
I don’t think owning actovision stock has anything to do with this. Although if you are smart you would get their stock as well. But I just think gamers need to be smart and play games. But buying a game that you don’t play just to support is the definition of fan boy lol
August 28th, 2011 on 12:04 pm
I will buy Torchlight 2 because they have already earned it prior to release. I’ve spent more than a AAA title in LoL because as they said I get real joy from the game which has value to me. EA should be going out of there way to make me excited about BF3 so I would buy all the expansions and sequels without question. Instead some of these larger companies seem to be exchanging short term gain for long term loss. Good post.