Just like EA does.

Oh, wait...

free content keeps the game fresh in the minds of gamers, making it easier to sell a sequel.

But if it sells like gangbusters, there's no need to keep it fresh—it already is.

~J

'cos people don't get tired of playing the same levels over and over. i'm not going to eat a two-month-old apple just because it was fresh when i bought it.

Since they announced the beta, their forums have been flooded with people who're interested in the game but have no idea what Shadowrun really is. It's all dependant on if this thick slice of nubcaek (read: target demographic) likes this game.

That's hilarious.

I wish.

the fact that a free mod is what made Half-Life so insanely popular doesn't strike you as being somewhat counter to your point? 'sides, HL's a fluke. show me a trend, and you'll have an argument.

edit: hah, just noticed my pun.

No, it doesn't. If you make a game moddable, you can, if you do your creation of the original game and the modding tools correctly, sit back and wait for other people to do the free work to give you extra replayability. Regardless, my point is that people, at least some (significant) number of people, do not get tired of playing the same levels over and over, even the same level, singular, over and over and over and over.

I'm not seeing any benefit for giving away more than a token amount of content for free when they could sell it, assuming the game is a hit.

Edit: as for trends, I seem to remember one or two maps in Halo being overwhelmingly popular, but I don't do a great deal of pick-up multiplayer gaming so I can't make any far-reaching statements.

~J

you're mistaken in your point. you've provided a single example and base your entire argument on it, without considering that--as i said--your example is basically a fluke. it's something other game manufacturers would love to duplicate, but rarely manage.

new content, free or not, is both advertising and an excuse to advertise. whether or not to charge for that content is something that basically boils down to a question of whether or not you think you can get away with asking for money. a new skin, a new level that is mostly re-used elements from other elements, stuff like that? no reason to charge for it--the intent is to get it out to as many people as possible, so that your game continues to generate buzz; and the content itself is minor enough that most people wouldn't bother shelling out for it anyway. you could save it up and release thirty skins and five maps all at once, for $15--but then you wouldn't be constantly feeding the gaming community new stuff. and it's not like that stuff takes much in terms of man-hours--you can have your newbie employees cut their teeth on it, gaining them valuable experience without detracting from more important projects.

yes, HL was a kickass game by itself that would have generated a sequel without help. no, HL would not be nearly as popular as it has become without CS. as for free--like i said, pumping out new content isn't a process that has to involve very many high-value man-hours.

Look at NWN. The biggest reason it succeeded so well is its toolset and GM client.

With enough time and effort, you could make anything in that game. There was a Firefly game out there (though I never played it, I did hear it did well), people were working on the d20 Modern Mod (and still are, I hear), Persistant Worlds all over the place, user-made modules, CEP, PrC pack...

Seriously. Give people a way to mod a game, and that launches the game to a whole new level.

I don't see how you can mod an XBOX 360 game. Seeing as how this is the flagship product for "Live Anywhere", I doubt they will encourage anything that could potentially undermine the PC-XBOX crossover community. There will be no user mods.

You can also rule out Micro-payment-soft offering something as major as a completely new game mode for free, except as an incentive item if the game does poorly at retail.

It's for Vista as well, if I recall.

The Dungeon Siege series was released on MS's lineup, and those are moddable as well. Halo for PC can use mods.

Dungeon Siege is already an established franchise on PC, with a single-player game focus. You can't compare the two. And I haven't seen any news regarding PC-XBOX 360 crossover games other than Shadowrun. Where did you get that info?

What, SR being on Vista?

Check the webpage. It has icons for X-Box 360 and Vista.

Halo (the original, for PC) supported mods, IIRC. I don't have it, but I'm pretty sure I saw them floating around when the game came out for PC.

Just checked the SR video game boards - definintely no mod support, for the reasons I listed above. can't have mods in an environment where PC and console play against each other.

So why not just make the Xbox 360 run Windows Vista? Seems like that would have saved them tons of trouble in the long run.

They're just not going to let you run home brewed mods on their console. It represents a risk to their machine, the integrity of fair online play, "Hot Coffee" incidents, and it giving up control of content distribution.

Microsoft and Sony have shown how you do that -- by taking a loss. They'd just be taking more of a loss.

Also, you get some kilometerage out of the fact that, as alluded to earlier, consoles don't need to perform some tasks nearly as well as a general-purpose computer, so you can save resources (and cost) on things like out-of-order execution and other stuff that, not being a console developer, I'm not familiar with.

~J

Which is why you just make sure that the BSP on both chips can handle the Vista system calls. It doesn't actually have to be the same hardware, that just makes it easier.

Console development is similar to other dedicated systems development, but it's halfway between PCs and a strict one-purpose unit. The PowerPC itself is just one of a bunch of options for "tighter" chips. You could write it so that Vista ran on the PowerPC if you wanted to. Most of the work on a console is going to be done by peripherals like the video card and input device (controller/keyboard/mouse) anyway.

The problem is RAM. Vista, or any complete operating system, is going to eat a lot of RAM. Video game consoles have very fast RAM but they never really have enough of it. Heck, many PC games have to be downgraded to fit console RAM limitations.
Its okay if your just going to run basic programs, but having a highly advanced game running through a full OS is just asking for trouble.

Not if Vista were designed well (yeah, right).

Bring it back to the SR game specifically please or to general gaming.

I'm aggravated about the Shardowrun 360 game and pin a lot of the blame on Halo - one of the least intense or innovative FPS in years that is fun when played in large groups but otherwise is a waste of time... i mean, the single player in that game is like a b-sci fi film.

Anyway, Shadowrun 360 looks like it'll be one of the few 4 person split screen games available on the Xbox that might actually sell. I own a 360 and can personally say that having bought 4 controllers immediately isn't worth the partial graphical improvements of X-Men Legends 2 for the original X-box... I feel that SR is supposed to warm up the multiplayer FPS market to sate people's appetite for Halo 3, and not to sell on it's own. I mean why else go full force into multiplayer split screen? I love counter strike and all, but a console shooter is nothing compared to a computer shooter and besides as much as X-box live might seem neat it's not as nice as steam which may eat memory but not extra cash.

In any case, I signed up for the beta of Shadowrun because even though I hate what they did to the lore and seem full tilt toward making excuses to us while pumping up console shooter fanatics with 1337 pwnage I feel it's worth a bit of my time to beta. And even if I don't get in, it might be worth trashing the game on the forums but spending some cash to shell out in hopes that maybe next time they'll make a game that actually has something to do with Shadowrunning. They say they can't change now because programming it again would be a pain? Well, that's believable enough, after all the game was under wraps it seems until the lore was already gutted, but supporting the franchise or name brand is more important in my opinion. Shadowrun needs no video game franchise, but done right it could be pretty sweet.

If they butcher the game a second go around though... I'd pass on supporting.

Oh and no, if I didn't have an Xbox 360 already I wouldn't bother considering the game.

I just do not understand what they were trying to do with this game. I actually did not start avidly getting into the Shadowrun universe until earlier this year at the GenCon in INDY where I tested it out. I did a test run and loved the game and knew I was going to have to buy it, then the game wins two ENYs and it was just icing on the cake. The only reason I had been upset before was because I was a huge fan of the SEGA game and then I heard the crap they were pulling with this amazing IP. After I had gotten into PnP Shadowrun I realize how much of a terrible and egregious deviation they had made from canon. They could have done so much to make this game live up to the potential any Shadowrun IP title deserves, instead they blacken the eye of the fanbase, and quite possibly its creators and freelancers(I do not know I can not speak for them).

The question that keeps going through my mind is why they even bothered to call this game Shadowrun. Lets be honest, even though they "fixed" some of the problems with the story and background, they were not sufficient. All they accomplished with that is the attempt in dressing up a sewage dump to look like the Hermitage.

The truth is, this could have been a really cool and awesome game that would have SR fans everywhere rushing to the stores to buy it. Now they have alienated the fans which made up the market they wanted to tap into. Everything seems so backwards. Would anyone in their right mind make a Star Wars game that isn't even representative of the universe.

This is terrible execution. The game itself doesn't even look that spectacular. It isn't anything we haven't seen before. There is already a better dystopian game out there and it is free and gets even better and better. Not surprisingly this game is called Dystopia, and it is a mod for the Source engine.

Why don't these guys have any sense? Please answer this question.

EDIT:
Maybe, with this game all they saw was green. They thought about the lowest common denominator. They saw games like Halo and Counterstrike that were very successful and thought, "If only we could pull this off with Shadowrun it would be amazing." I don't think I will be picking up this game. Do they realize who they are going to be going up against? It is coming out sometime in 2007 my guess is spring. They already missed the oppurtunity to release the game before Gears of War. Lets look at a list of games they will be competing against for the X360.

Alan Wake
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Lost Planet
Half-Life 2 (improved for the X360 with better textures and graphics, comes with the expansion too)
GRAW 2
COD3

Realize these are just the games that have release dates listed and are FPS. There are plenty of other FPSs that are TBA and other cool games in other genres. In the PC market the competition gets more fierce.

Add everygame in the X360 list except for Lost Planet
In addition:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
UT 2007
COD3
Crysis (Possibly)
Quake Wars (Possibly)

If they wanted to get away with releasing this game they should have released it before Gears of War. Now it is slated to be released late Q1 or Q2 of 2007. Not to mention this game doesn't even come close to delivering in the graphics department which is what the X360 market is all about. The game looks last gen which isn't a very good thing when you are competing against an already released game like Gears of War.

Alright I better stop because I could really go on the whole day.

Possibly.

But the devs they gave it to know FPS. So they decided to create an FPS.

Maybe they should have picked a different group of devs, but they didn't.

We've all accepted that it's not the genre we'd have picked. The argument now is really whether the change of genre kills the game, or just creates an odd situation.

Deus Ex was Shadowrun-ish, but hardly what I would consider to be a glowing example of how to make a Shadowrun game.

I consider it to be a proof-of-concept. I wouldn't want Deus Ex with Trolls, no. That said, mind explaining your objection?

~J

I think the whole FPS excuse is a cop out. They could have made an FPS with at least some RPG elements. Maybe even something like what Natural Selection does with their upgrades, or some of the CounterStrike source RPG mods out there. Pretty much you gain levels in the game as you do better. They could have even done something as huge as Battlefield 2's system. Heck I hate to say this, but I think even EA could have done a better Shadowrun game and I despise them.

I partly agree with the Deus Ex idea. I wouldn't be surprised if Deus Ex ends up being closer to Shadowrun than this game. I just look at the time they spent developing this game and I don't see where all that time went. They began development on this game with the original Xbox, and the graphics show, but not the gameplay. How long does it seriously take to regurgitate a videogame?

Alas, poor Starcraft: Ghost.

We still mourn for you.

I don't agree with your definition of FPS (though I admit that mine, perhaps somewhat unhelpfully, does not draw any distinction between FPS and RPG—they're orthogonal, much the same way a painting can be both square and blue), but if for the sake of argument I accept your definition I cannot significantly disagree with your conclusion.

~J