Steamrolling SiN

“I’m not sure if a launch that is completely independent of boxed sets is the way to go just yet.”

Well, someone has to be first. I, for one, am encouraged that it’s happening so soon. To have enough confidence in your product that you’re willing to release it in chapters and trust that people will continue to play it also pretty impressive. I’ll be keeping my eye on this pretty closely. Heck, even with as underwhelming as the first SiN was, I’ll probably still end up buying at least a chapter or two!

Yeah I am also all for this move. At 6 hours a chapter you get more gameplay than a typical action game (8-10 hours) for $10 less. Digital distribution is definitly going to change the face of gaming. Happening so soon is quite a relief. I am far more likely to drop $20 on a portion of a great game or even a game I am not sure about than I am to drop $50 on a title.

SiN 2 (I think they should call it “Episodes of SiN”) was announced in a way just as interesting as its distribution. Relic created a fake website for a pharmaceutical company with the announcement hidden in a code of letters. Certain employees had similiar names of the characters and/or relations to the characters of the first SiN game. The real announcement was a “skip every x letter” type of code which announced a main character was “back!”.

The Fake website (Legion Pharma) is being constantly updated with new puzzles that slowly trickles out information. The most recent one was another code (hidden in the HTML source) that led to a link to this hidden part of the site: http://www.legionpharma.com/about.php?4yoUreyesonly
Tell me that is not a screenshot. I love marketing like this and I personally think the smarts behind this beat the pants of the “I love bees” campaign for Halo 2. There is also a huge number when you go to www.sin2.com which has been counting down for a couple weeks (it is at 2 now).

The ideas of shorter development time create a lot of innovative scenarios possible. What about genre changing between titles but continueing the same storyline. For example you start with a FPS game in a futuristic war time scenario. You play a grunt under the command of a certain general and its all squad based combat. The next installment has you playing that very general in an RTS setting. The next installment you go back to the grunt who, as a subplot during the general’s campaign, has now refined his squad into an elite spec ops unit. So the third title is a stealth/spec ops style game.

This may be more of a pipe dream for me but the potential is there. I find myself getting bored with a certain game-type if the game is of decent length without any changes to the gameplay as it progresses (I could never keep interest in WarCraft 3 past the orc campaign). I really like the idea of seeing the characters of the same storyline is a vastly different setting.

The most interesting thing about this to me, is actually something that’s been going on behind the scenes for years. Ritual have been itching to make Sin 2 since they made Sin, but that game suffered in the post Half Life release window just like anything else did.

They’ve been trying to get it off the ground for years, and no publisher wanted to go near it. When the rumours started up again, and seemed pretty solid, I was really interested to see who was going to handle the publishing. The Steam release in that way makes perfect sense. It lets Ritual essentially self publish the title, and its probably the first ‘named’ game to go that route. If it’s a success it’ll be the first of many.

An episodic release makes sense too because there’s less risk. If the first episode fails, then they’ve not wasted developement on an entire game. It’s still taking a risk, but with other big projects on the go such as the ‘can’t help getting free PR’ 25 to Life, they’ve obviously got the money to lose.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Sin for many of the reasons it stagnated on store shelves, but I’m really looking forwards to the first major episodic game.

Never played SiN myself.

Seems like a reasonably sensible idea to release things bit by bit but . . .

The fact is by releasing through STEAM they are depriving themselves of a, small but still perhaps significant part of the market.

Namely the people who do not have broadband.

Now I got Half Life 2 when I still only has a 64k ISDN connection. I got it up and running through STEAM eventually.

NEVER again.

I would never find it worth going through all that hassle again even if what was being delivered was the “Best game EVAR” TM.

I’ve got broadband now so I don’t have to worry but people without broadband are going to suffer here.

That’s the main flaw that I can immediately spot.

There’s plenty of other things that oculd go wrong too but it seems like a sound idea.

Also if it hits off it may encourage develoopers who can’t get there games published because they might not take off to try and release their content themselves on something like STEAM hence perhaps allowing some more creative ideas that would never see the light of day to be released - and perhaps even become successful.

It seems to me that a dual published route of 2 episodes for 40 dollars in a box versus 20 dollars each would be a better solution than eschewing retail entirely. At this point you’re leaving a whole lot of money on the table, i mean like a TON. On the other hand you make your money at a rate of 2 to 1 on digitally distributed games so you only have to sell half as many to make the same amount. So 500,000 digitally distributed games is the same as 1,000,000 at retail so maybe it’s not such a bad way to go.

the great thing about steam though, is that most of the problems have been ironed out, and, that there’s much less outlay. i’m not sure how valve handle it, but now they have the bandwidth to support demand, they could in theory charge Ritual based on the bandwidth people use downloading the game. i’m interested to know how that works and hopefully we’ll find out.

you don’t have to spend all that money up front on manufacturing all the copies of the game… and while it’s unfortunate for the sector that potential miss out, it’s nothing new. whether it’s having to have a specific graphics card, there are plenty of games that every now and then make a steep requirement on players. the only major difference here is that broadband isn’t available everywhere. it is, though, available in many more places in America than it was, and recently we’ve seen Verizon double the speed of ADSL for free to try and keep up with the ridiculous bandwidths cable offers.

this is inevitable really, and i salute Ritual for taking the risk to see if we’re ready for this kind of thing by the time the first episode is released. whether or not it’s a good game, it’s a fascinating experiment.

Broadband uptake is definately becoming less and less of an issue. I know in Australia, we’ve been lagging behind the rest of the OECD countries in broadband rollout, but the past 2 years have actually seen us take some really big steps towards good value and good speed - and now with ADSL2+ starting to roll out down here, things are going to get even better very soon.

I used to be on dialup so I know how frustrating it is when very cool games come out that require a fast connection for any manner of things. But from a game developer standpoint, they have a lot to gain by aiming at the many gamers with broadband. At the same time, they have very little to lose by not catering for those without it.

That said, although the broadband issue is closely related to that of digital or physical copies of their games, I think the separation comes when you meet people who, despite having cable, prefer to have real copies games in their hands. I know quite a few of them.

I am pretty sure this is how things may roll of for Ritual. At least how it is planned. Ritual must be pretty certain that SiN2 is a great game. If they have been trying to find a publisher for it for song long it doesn’t sound like they do not want to put it on store shelves.

However, if they prove themselves through steam (I believe more HL2 was sold through steam than boxed) I am sure a publisher will pick up the title for retail sale. Vermouth’s idea of a retail version containing 2 episodes (about the size of a standard game) seems pretty spot on. Not only that but if it is a huge sucess on steam ritual rakes in a good deal of profit. Ritual does not seem to be in a dangerous position with this choice, unless the game is poor of course. But that is the position most all developers are in anyway.

I am one of those people that prefer having a real copy in my hand.

If a game was only available online and I really wanted it then I would get it that way.

But if their was a choice of downloading or buying the physical item I would always choose the latter.

I think they should call it “Episodes of SiN”

Looks like you almost got what you wanted there, Holl.

Close but I figured Episodes of SiN would be much like Wages of SiN. Using the game title as both the game and the word Sin itself.

I suppose it wouldn’t really make sense if I didn’t provide screenshots on the game itself, so here’s a bundle:

http://www.bdgamer.net/?itemid=19251

That big brown gooey thing on the mid right looks fun.