Video game companies make games to generate revenue in order to create other titles and come out profitable just as any company or business should hope to do.
No matter what business you are in, you produce widgets, sell the widgets for a profit and hope to make more widgets for a greater profit.
Historically, as a video game company you either made competitive, insightful, thought provoking, cutting edge games... or you made
total crap. Obviously those companies which made total crap didnt last long... and some of the game companies that made
good games were purchased up by the buying power of companies that made *
great* games.
of late, some video game companies have greatly modified their business strategy - that is to say that some companies stopped producing and selling widgets for a price and switched to producing widgets and making them available to consumers in such a way that you had to continuously pump money into the widget for it to keep working.
Picture 1980... atari makes pac man available in the home!
"Awesome, Thanks Atari!"
except in this alternate 1980 it wasnt on an atari, it was an affordable arcade console you have to put quarters in to play and every two weeks an atari rep comes to your home to collect the quarters....
"I was going to buy more games with those quarters"
i was around in 1980
i was a kid in 1980
i played games in 1980
i know 1980
im here to tell you... that would have gone over like a fart in a crowded elevator
This business strategy however works well with some games:
World of Warcraft has been a cash cow for about a decade. I've never played it myself, the medieval fantasy, ghouls and goblins, dungeons and dragons bit has never really been my thing, but it is popular enough with a large enough group of people that WOW continues to get away with charging a monthly fee for the game
a fee which my research indicates is about $15 per month
assuming you have been a hard core WOW player since 2005... that translates to a game which has cost you almost $1500 not including any money spent on expansion packs, initial install or hardware upgrades etc
obviously some games work well with this type of marketing
other games however...
dont
I have been a hard core
Microsoft Flight Simulator player since my early Tandy 1000 days way back in 1985.
a bazillion times this computing power is in my jeans pocket now.
for over 20 years, the franchise has more or less defined PC flight simulation to a wide fan base made up of office chair novices to experienced real life airline pilots. The series helped inspire me to become an aviator in real life - not just on the PC.
"Ass, cash or gas... nobody rides for free ma'am"
When Microsoft decided to re-market
Microsoft Flight Simulator as
Microsoft Flight, a pay to expand / pay to play "game" - the 25 year run of what many consider to be the most successful flight simulation franchise in history -
was over.
My fear is that the same may be true with our own beloved
Silent Hunter Series.... which could put an undeserved black mark on the face of Submarine simulations as a whole.
Silent Hunter has perhaps been one of the most successful and longest running Sub Sim franchises available.
Silent Hunter is now entering its sixth release title -
Silent Hunter Online - which is thus far being received with mixed fanfare after Ubisofts failure to complete two back to back silent hunter titles leaving behind a jaded, unhappy and skeptical fan base for the latest entries of the series.
no caption required
In any game which spawns sequels, the subsequent releases in the series simply must offer more than prior releases in order to be successful.
at the time Silent Hunter III was announced, sub simmers have been interfacing with 2D gauge panels, disengaging atmosphere, a somewhat unattractive 3D environment and listening to the voices of our disembodied or invisible crewmen for decades. Part of what drove SHIII to the top of the subsim charts was simple... it changed everything.
literally.
a single
changed everything. It set expectations, high expectations. and to the pleasant surprise of subsimmers across the land... in mid march 2005 - those expectations were delivered upon by Ubisoft when the highest rated silent hunter in the history of the series hit shelves.
rich, good looking environment, 3D interactive crewmen, a mostly functional and fairly detailed 3D submarine interior not to mention the various playable u-boats... these were all the ingredients necessary to breathe new and vigorous life into the series. and it worked.
according to
subsim.com
"March 2005 - Silent Hunter III is released to wide acclaim and praise. Subsim adds a new server to handle the increased traffic and mods."
"Its true. Seriously... this is my serious face."
Though i do not have data immediately available to support this claim, i can certainly imagine that any data made available would indicate a major leap in new subsim.com forum members and additionally a dramatic increase in the number of individuals who play submarine simulations in the short time following the March 2005 release of silent hunter III.
unfortunately for the series, each of the following releases of Silent Hunter have seemed to be a step backwards from the glory of Silent Hunter III... a glory ubisoft has been thus far unable to reacquire.
Silent Hunter IV and V have both been good indicators that Ubisoft has been hearing the voices of the community... but not necessarily listening to the words.
Silent Hunter IV - we wanted fleet boats in the pacific, we got fleet boats in the pacific.
we also got a long list of bugs, a half finished game, a poor interface and an eventual shut off of support from ubisoft as their gamble appeared to be that the community would make Silent Hunter IV complete through mods. While many improvements have been made over the years, Silent Hunter IV never stepped out of the shadow of Silent Hunter III.
Silent Hunter V - players wanted a fully modeled interior, and more interactions with crew, a more believable 3D environment and more engaging campaign options... we got these things.
but we also got a severely limited number of playable boats by comparison to earlier releases, and the interactions with the crew were made through a very linear story line which developed at an agonizingly slow pace. The crew and u-boat "upgrades" and "special skills" were a poor joke. Instead of more realistic campaign options, we got a static capmaign that would be the same upon every replay of Silent Hunter V... and even the campaign failed to offer the player the full 1939-1945 war years.
Wolfpacks... which the community had been longing for since before Silent Hunter III were still ominously missing.
"Wolfpacks?.... i know nothing! nothing!"
major steps backwards.
Silent Hunter Online is an ever growing speck on the horizon visible from the conning towers of roughly 10,000 subsim.com members daily, many of whom are still frustrated by their experiences of SH IV and V. Needless to say, Silent Hunter Online is under the microscope here and elsewhere.
Simply based on what we already know, some assumptions are fair to make at this point in time.
Silent Hunter Online will be free to play
this unfortunately means it will be pay to win
very very likely a fledgling U-boat skipper will start out with a Type II or an early Type VII U-boat free of charge.
want a Type VIIC/41 or better flack or better batteries? Want a Type IX boat or a better conning tower emblem?
thats fine and well but the odds are at least some of these options will require a paid subscription or a credit card, simply meaning that crew skill upgrade costs you real tangible money.
we can also make the assumption that Silent Hunter Online will be mostly a 2D interface based on screenshots and video we have observed.
after nearly 10 years of 3D explorable interiors, a 2D interface could be a massive step in the wrong direction for the series.
finally, aside from being pay to win and aside from being a huge step back in the interface department... Silent Hunter online is a browser game, much to the chagrin of the hard core elite.
enough hell was raised over Silent Hunter 5 requiring a connection to play, one would only speculate that Ubisoft would have figured out the community has a problem with being online to play its games.
one good thing i can see about the browser format... almost no matter what your laptop or PC physical specs are, supposedly if its got an internet connection Silent Hunter online will probably be playable. this translates to a great deal of portability which gamers like myself who travel almost constantly will appreciate.
will silent hunter online be successful?
or is will ubisoft prove itself insane by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?
tell us... what concerns you most about SHO?