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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 18</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Beaker's 
          Bent</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          Game Add-Ons the Games Workshop Way</font></p>

        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Rich &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:rich@loonygames.com">Beaker</a>&quot; 
          Wyckoff</font></b></font></p>
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        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">With these realities, the 
          current industry standard of only doing expansions for the most successful 
          games and always giving them plenty of features makes sense. However, 
          Internet publishing, where you pay for and download a game directly 
          from a publisher’s website, stands ready to change this. Internet publishing 
          is not yet a reality because it is still not feasible for most people 
          to download more than ten or twenty megabytes at a time, and because 
          there is still much fear about internet commerce even with reputable 
          businesses, despite there being about the same chance of your credit 

          card number being stolen from a phone conversation or a written bill 
          as over the internet. This fear seems to be easing given the number 
          of internet stores now advertising on television, but the download size 
          will remain an issue for at least the next year, until cable or ISDN 
          connections are as common as 33.6 modems. There also continue to be 
          reliability problems with the Internet and with server software, leading 
          to interrupted downloads when connections are poor and crashed servers 
          when demand is high which will probably keep internet publishing from 
          being a standard for full products for some years yet, and I personally 
          hope that physically-published software never entirely goes away, because 
          I like having a physical disk for a lot of reasons. What is completely 
          possible today is Internet publishing of software add-ons. It is entirely 
          possible to download twenty or so megabytes without problems and without 
          an incredibly long wait even over a modem, and with the right content, 
          as I’ll soon describe, there is no reason why expansions have to be 
          much larger.</font>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Being able to publish over 
          the Internet opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, and I hope 
          publishers are creative enough to see them. Internet publishing allows 
          publishers to have products available for much longer with no shelf-space 
          worries and no need to spend what essentially amounts to graft to get 
          their products more prominently displayed in stores (next time you go 
          to a software store, look at the games which are displayed at ends of 
          isles or on small individual displays - this is not some accident or 
          gift of the retailer, it was paid for by the publisher). Just as Games 
          Workshop does with their magazine, a publisher can get maximum advertising 
          exposure and control for its product by just putting pages up on their 
          website. Internet publishing also means that existing marketing notions 
          about perceived product value go out the window. These ideas come from 
          decades of traditional marketing experience based mainly on tangible 
          products displayed on shelves. In the intangible, infinite Internet, 
          much of this experience doesn’t apply. Once we are rid of existing notions 
          of perceived software values, it will become possible to sell software 
          for small amounts of money, like five or ten dollars. At a lower price, 
          the software can have a smaller amount of content. Consumers might balk 
          at paying $49.99 to download a full game off the net if they didn’t 
          get a box, manual, and CD, because they are used to getting those items 
          for that price, but they will initially have few expectations for the 
          $4.99 or $9.99 product.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is where we get back 
          to the Games Worskshop model. In the paper-game industry, there are 
          far fewer restrictions on expected prices, and Games Workshop is able 
          to sell products ranging from their sixty to seventy-five dollar games 
          to fifteen dollar character packs for their &quot;roleplaying light&quot; 
          game <b>Warhammer Quest</b>. Minimum-priced computer game expansions, 
          around five or ten dollars, could consist of as little as three levels, 
          or a single character, or a new weapon or group of similar weapons. 
          Higher-priced expansions could consist of short adventures, like back 
          in the old days of shareware games where <b>Doom</b> was sold in three 
          parts, or an entirely new side for a real-time strategy game. Getting 
          these expansions out could become a lot easier. It is still entirely 
          feasible for a game character (just about any sort of game that has 
          a character) to be put together by one, maybe two people, in as little 
          as two months. Groups that small can work far more quickly than groups 
          even slightly larger - if you have worked in any sort of team environment 
          you are probably aware that the larger the group, the slower the decision-making 
          process, even with extraordinary leaders (who, sadly, are often lacking 
          in our industry). Small expansions also make it effective to take new 
          hires or individuals from other teams and put them on a game they have 
          not previously worked on, because they will not need to have as comprehensive 
          an understanding of the game if they are only working on a small part. 
          Simultaneously, consumer expectations for low-priced, small expansions 
          will be lower: five nailguns with different types of ammo aren’t tremendously 
          exciting if they are the weapons which come with the <b>Quake</b> level 
          pack half a year after <b>Quake’s</b> release, but at a month after 
          the game’s release and a price of five dollars they suddenly seem interesting. 
          These add-ons could be published every couple weeks until interest in 
          the game drops off or another game is published. Even with only a few 
          major titles a year or long gaps between products, publishers can maintain 
          their presence throughout the year, one of today’s most pressing problems.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Although small, Internet-published 
          expansions open up a whole new realm of possibilities, for true effectiveness 
          they will also require some design changes in computer games. The significant 
          difference between paper games and computer games is that the vast majority 
          of paper games are either competitive (like <b>Warhammer</b>), or cooperative 
          but not pre-plotted (like AD&amp;D if played without modules). It’s 
          extremely easy to make additions to these games - just start fighting 
          against that new army, or introduce new monsters and rules in your next 
          AD&amp;D session. Enhancing your typical single-player plot-oriented 
          first-person shooter would currently be more difficult. It would be 
          fairly easy to add in new characters with different powers which could 
          be selected at the beginning of the game, and since many of these games 
          can be finished in 15 hours and are often re-played, it’s reasonable 
          to believe if an add-on character changed gameplay in noticeable ways 
          many people might want to use it to replay, but new weapons and monsters 
          would only be usable in new levels or non-plotted play under the current 
          typical FPS design. Any game which is set up for a largely random distribution 
          of weapons and monsters like <b>Diablo</b> or <b>Ultima Online</b> can 
          very easily have new items added, provided the underlying engine is 
          capable of handling a constantly-growing database. Many games are going 
          to be headed to online play within the next few years anyway, and all 
          will need flexible databases and flexible designs and backstories which 
          can constantly accommodate new material, folding it into the existing 
          levels to as large a degree as possible. Single-player games can take 
          routes such as having a plot where it makes sense for the protagonist 
          to continue having a variety of rather random and unconnected adventures 
          even after the main plot is done, or introducing new protagonists in 
          the expansion packs. Any basically competitive, strategic game like 
          your typical <b>Dune II</b> clone can handle almost any changes thrown 
          at it through expansions.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The time is ripe to change 
          what consumers expect from games. Despite the attempts of many severely 
          misguided developers, games are not movies and are not the ideal entertainment 
          to be consumed and then thrown away. The amount of time it takes to 
          play through the average game works against the throwaway mentality. 
          To me at least, it is depressing to spend fifteen or twenty hours of 
          my life on something and then forget all about it. Computer games, no 
          matter how good their plots ever get, are still about interactivity 
          at the core, and it only makes sense to allow and encourage players 
          to return to their favorite games and enjoy more of that interactivity. 
          And although Moore’s law does make any game obsolete about two years 
          after it is released, the long-standing paper game tradition of finding 
          ways to translate &quot;data&quot; from old or different games and use 
          it in new ones could be adopted by our industry as well, and has even 
          been attempted a few times in the past, like in the <b>Bard’s Tale</b> 
          games (if I remember correctly), which could import <b>Ultima</b> or 
          <b>Wizardry</b> characters. Ultimately, everything I’ve described here 
          is the best way to prolong the lives of games, and perpetuate their 
          memories. Let’s hope it happens.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; 
        <p align="RIGHT"><i><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">- 
          Rich "Beaker" Wyckoff is a game designer on the game <b>Trespasser</b> 
          for <a href="http://www.dreamworksgames.com">DreamWorks Interactive</a>.</font></i></p>
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Beaker's Bent logo illustrated by and is &copy; 1998 Dan Zalkus. Beaker's 
      Bent is &copy; 1998 Rich Wyckoff. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't 
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