Close, but not quite there
A couple of months ago I made a post called "A turn based cash cow waiting to happen". In it I mentioned Games Workshop latest computer offering, Dawn of War. A game I have since purchased. Just a quick note, I off-handedly made a comment that they only thing they didn't have was resource gathering. I was wrong, they do have it, just in Warhammer 40K fashion. So in many ways it is a typical RTS game. Ah well, it is at least a very well done RTS game, and I don't even care for the genre.
All that said, it seems like part of my idea is being implemented at Relic. In fact, they had announced a new army for Dawn of War way back in May of this year, about two months before I made the post. While I was talking specifically of using turn-based games as a perpetual revenue stream, this is pretty close to what I was proposing. In short, Relic is going to implement the Imperial Guard army alongside the existing Space Marine, Eldar, Ork, and Chaos armies already in the game. Seems really cool, right? Just like I proposed, right? Well, yes and no.
Dawn of War: Winter Assault is pending a release of September 20th, 2005. That is a year, to the day, since the original Dawn of War was released. At this rate, by the time they add another army the game will be two years old. Actually, I hope it won't take that long. The good news is it took about 4 months from the time the expansion was announced to the time it is supposed to be released. Considering they are adding a single-player campaign and special units for the other four armies, that's fairly impressive.
The time issue aside, I think they are trying a little too hard here. They could just as easily have added more special units in another expansion or offered it as a download. Shoot, I'd be willing to pay for individual units. Of course, they can't do that because of the way the game's mod manager works (combining new armies is a real pain and running multiple mods concurrently is nigh impossible) and it would mess with multi-player games. In short, the game's architecture was designed to run mods but it was not made to be extensible. That may sound a little weird but anyone who has loaded a mod in Dawn of War knows what I am talking about.
Of course, some people might ask why you would want to run multiple mods at the same time. The answer is simple. If Mod A introduces the Imperial Guard and Mod B introduces the Tau, then you basically cannot play the Imperial Guard against the Tau. Considering they come from the same background "universe", this is a little troubling for WH40K fans. There are ways around this, but it is no small matter to get it to work correctly. For instance, I have a special mod that combines three mods together. It works, but I have custom files that I have to copy over the original game files. I have to keep a back-up of the game file because my custom file will mess up other mods. It's a bit of a hassle.
Which makes one wonder, if you cannot run multiple mods that introduce different armies, can they even make another expansion for the game? Why use the mod manager at all? Shouldn't that be reserved for user made mods?
Don't get me wrong, it's a step in the right direction, but hardly a perpetual revenue stream for Relic or Games Workshop.
All that said, it seems like part of my idea is being implemented at Relic. In fact, they had announced a new army for Dawn of War way back in May of this year, about two months before I made the post. While I was talking specifically of using turn-based games as a perpetual revenue stream, this is pretty close to what I was proposing. In short, Relic is going to implement the Imperial Guard army alongside the existing Space Marine, Eldar, Ork, and Chaos armies already in the game. Seems really cool, right? Just like I proposed, right? Well, yes and no.
Dawn of War: Winter Assault is pending a release of September 20th, 2005. That is a year, to the day, since the original Dawn of War was released. At this rate, by the time they add another army the game will be two years old. Actually, I hope it won't take that long. The good news is it took about 4 months from the time the expansion was announced to the time it is supposed to be released. Considering they are adding a single-player campaign and special units for the other four armies, that's fairly impressive.
The time issue aside, I think they are trying a little too hard here. They could just as easily have added more special units in another expansion or offered it as a download. Shoot, I'd be willing to pay for individual units. Of course, they can't do that because of the way the game's mod manager works (combining new armies is a real pain and running multiple mods concurrently is nigh impossible) and it would mess with multi-player games. In short, the game's architecture was designed to run mods but it was not made to be extensible. That may sound a little weird but anyone who has loaded a mod in Dawn of War knows what I am talking about.
Of course, some people might ask why you would want to run multiple mods at the same time. The answer is simple. If Mod A introduces the Imperial Guard and Mod B introduces the Tau, then you basically cannot play the Imperial Guard against the Tau. Considering they come from the same background "universe", this is a little troubling for WH40K fans. There are ways around this, but it is no small matter to get it to work correctly. For instance, I have a special mod that combines three mods together. It works, but I have custom files that I have to copy over the original game files. I have to keep a back-up of the game file because my custom file will mess up other mods. It's a bit of a hassle.
Which makes one wonder, if you cannot run multiple mods that introduce different armies, can they even make another expansion for the game? Why use the mod manager at all? Shouldn't that be reserved for user made mods?
Don't get me wrong, it's a step in the right direction, but hardly a perpetual revenue stream for Relic or Games Workshop.
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