The future of Mass Effect should be in the cloud
Posted on 22nd Dec 2009 at 10:49 by Richard Swinburne with 11 comments
Firstly, I have to apologise. I've succumbed to the marketing gimmick that is “the cloud”. However, there is a point to this so don't worry - you’re not reading a press release.
After reading and getting excited about Mass Effect 2 – how it will be possible to carry on your player profile, and the in third release sometime in the future – the player will apparently be open to “wildly different conclusions” leading to massive diversity of story.
What gets me, in the traditional model of selling one game, then another, then another, why Bioware didn’t opt for the more “MMO”-esq model of having things tied in extensively online. The limitations of adding these epic, whole game updates is that users lose save games and profiles after a year or so between releases, or, you still have to pander to those who didn’t buy the earlier releases to some extent because your publisher wants every successive release of the franchise to sell more. In a model that requires you to buy previous games, the opposite is true – you’re more likely to lose people that fall out of gaming, forget about it or lose love for it, than attain more.
After reading and getting excited about Mass Effect 2 – how it will be possible to carry on your player profile, and the in third release sometime in the future – the player will apparently be open to “wildly different conclusions” leading to massive diversity of story.
What gets me, in the traditional model of selling one game, then another, then another, why Bioware didn’t opt for the more “MMO”-esq model of having things tied in extensively online. The limitations of adding these epic, whole game updates is that users lose save games and profiles after a year or so between releases, or, you still have to pander to those who didn’t buy the earlier releases to some extent because your publisher wants every successive release of the franchise to sell more. In a model that requires you to buy previous games, the opposite is true – you’re more likely to lose people that fall out of gaming, forget about it or lose love for it, than attain more.
