After reading the plans that the DLC will feature more maps, I have a few thoughts and questions, and wish to encourage an open dialogue on this subject.
- Historical Precedent
When looking at games that have provided revenue streams for upwards of 10 years, via repeated retail sales only, a trend begins to become evident: Games which support community mappers/modders with an SDK release last on average, 5 times longer than games that do not.
Examples:
Half-life 1998-present
Gave rise to Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike, and Day of Defeat, all available from valve at a later time for an additional retail sale.
Quake 3: 1999-2009
Without the experience mappers gained from this game, even your own RTCW:ET may not have enjoyed the success to allow a large enough player base to be interested in team-based objective FPS gameplay to even allow development of ET:QW or for BRINK to succeed at launch.
Unreal Tournament: 1999-2008
Simultaneously, as counter-strike was introducing players to objective based gameplay, Tactical Ops was introducing more players to the first incarnations of sprint and ironsights seen since COD2 on PC.
Starcraft 1997- 2011
The included scenario editor gave rise to custom games such as cannon defense, which inevitably was continued in further blizzard games with Tower Defense, which is now it’s own game archetype, participating in retail sales.
Warcraft III: 2002-Present
Again, blizzard’s inclusion of a scenario editor gave rise to DOTA, creating a whole new game genre, MOBA, opening up a whole new playerbase, which like all mods, required the purchase of WCIII in order to participate.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Activision’s release of an SDK allows this game to continue to support an online community, 2 sequels later, mainly due to the sequels shunning the map development community. Consequently, these two sequels, COD: MW2 and COD: Black Ops, carry a reputation for being dominated by “hackers” and other unsavory modders.
Upcoming Professionals:
I think it would be safe to say that the developers of BRINK love gaming, and were amateur modders/mappers themselves before making an entrance into the industry.
Without the tools supplied by the above example games, the experience your team would have had would be limited to professional education from entertainment schools, or by violating TOS agreements and reverse engineering/ini tweaking. Denying your player base, which is an extension of yourselves if you put anything of yourselves into this project, the same opportunities to gain experience doing something they love, would be a slap in the face to the players that play maps and mods by little known developers, which any modder or mapper can tell you, is crucial to improvement.
DLC:
When Modern Warfare II was released, the PC gaming community collectively decried the lack of dedicated servers and SDK. After being told enough times by the console players, which have hardly experienced the joys of playing a map made to look like a wal-mart in counter-strike, or ever having experienced any Rats/turkeyburgers style map, that we should shut up and enjoy what we’ve been given, we caved.
Then Activision releases 2 map packs via DLC, complete with PORTS from the previous game, for a fee. To me, and I assume may others, this reeks of elitism. The idea that the community is incapable of developing their own content, which to further enjoy the game, while having to pay for more levels to play on, including a very rudimentary port of past maps, is mufch like selling a man a hotdog and then charging extra for the bun.
For the TL:DR crowd:
Do not want to pay for more maps from the same developers without having community-created alternatives, although DLC packs with weapon skins or more character customization options would be awesome.
Feel free to flame/comment/whatever.
