Community support of games…
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
I was a big fan of Titan Quest when it came out and played through the game pretty religiously for a month or two. Unfortunately, i’m not much of a min/max-er and i also tend to burn out on games if i play the same one too much… but conversely i ‘forget’ about or won’t be bothered to return to games if i leave them too long. I’m a bit ADD in that sense.
However, early on (from when the demo was available) i became a little involved with the fledgling community over at www.titanquest.net in trying to help sort out peoples’ problems with the game – of which there were a few before, at and after launch. It wasn’t an official outlet for the game or anything, it was just something that the fans had put together and as my interest in the game waned so did my presence there. However, i was subscribed to the newsletter and, out of general curiosity, never unsubscribed.
To describe what i have seen through that newsletter as heartwarming or inspiring would be an understatement. Though Iron Lore quickly went under after they released the expansion pack, Immortal Throne, the community lived on and not only played the game or talked about strategies but they improved the game… they fixed it by making use of the included editor. TitanQuest, fully patched up was at release 1.1, the community have pushed that to 1.17, trying to quash all the remaining bugs while keeping to what they see as ‘the developers’ vision’ for the game by adjusting things that may have been erroneously assigned when compared with similar things within the game. The last patch release was 1.17a which is specifically aimed at the digital downloaders out there (Steam, Direct2Drive etc) who may not have been able to play with those on the core fan patch or indeed to get the game working properly.
Outside of these fixes there are also complete, game-sized mods available within the forums… amazing feats of love and patience in my eyes considering the game was released in 2007, an aeon ago in terms of the game industry but relatively short in terms of producing content.
It just goes to show how releasing the tools to the community of a game can really add to the value and also the longevity of the title and it struck me especially considering the way Valve has so far handled the Left 4 Dead issue recently but also the tonnes of games that have been abandoned due to their fairly poor release state more than any other reason. Developers/publishers, give your fans a voice, a way to make the game live on and everything will be okay…. your game will continue to sell through time and people won’t resell.
(Please note that i’m still asking you to not release games with authentication DRM since none of what i’ve talked about would probably have been possible if it had been included in the game – thank you)
4 Responses to “Community support of games…”
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Kylie Batt Says:
May 19th, 2010 at 8:34 pmЗамечательно, очень ценное сообщение…
I was a big fan of Titan Quest when it came out and played through the game pretty religiously for a month or two…..
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