Skyrim Lead on the death of video game expansions: “after six months, the audience has moved on”
Skyrim Lead on the death of video game expansions: “after six months, the audience has moved on”
Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith explains why most games no longer release huge expansions outside of Bethesda Game Studios.
Lol. Lmao.
Bethesda is impressively out of touch.
Sell DLC that isn't just a bullshit cash grab and people will buy it.
Say that to CDPR and phantom liberty. If you make an actual expansion it can keep players interested. If it's a new weapon or something then who cares
Path of exile disagrees
minecraft and rimworld too
Same with Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, all of the dark souls games, The Witcher 3
I remember that six months in 2011 where everyone played Minecraft. I wonder whatever happened to that game…
We should look up the lead developer! I'm sure they have been an overall positive influence on gaming culture
He has got to only be saying this because Starfield DLC did poorly. The audience moves on if the game isn't interesting. Personally, I buy all the DLC for games I enjoy. I don't know many people that don't either.
I just upgraded Alan Wake 2 to play the expansions, which are AWEsome. I played all expansions for Alan Wake and Control as well and enjoyed them a lot. Remedy is one of the few developers that I would play a game from on day one or even preorder. Bethesda, not so much. I can still remember being unable to play Skyrim for months on PS3.
Had Starfield been contained to like a dozen star systems with way denser planets it probably would have done better. Its just too damn big. And BGS is scared to death to go for what everyone really cares about, the species that built The Armillary. Had they focused on that I'd still be locked in. I like the game. But its too big. They went all the way in on the "kill, loot, return" playstyle and neglected everyone else. I never cared about that shit. I hated it in F4. Give me lore, story, details, actual faction choices that actually matter.
My very first playthrough of Fallout 4 I sided with The Institute because I had plans to take over and free the synths. Imagine my fuckin' surprise when the credits rolled. They lost the plot long ago. And if they don't have a "come to jesus" moment and figure that shit out then ES6 might be their last game. Big Daddy Microsoft isn't gonna keep humoring Todd and Emil. They want their goddamn money back and a cargo ship more as interest.
Factorio disagrees
Bullshit.
Was gonna say - how long after Elden Ring did Shadow of the Erdtree DLC come out?
Skill issue
Guild Wars entered the chat
Coming from the studio that gave us horse armour DLC.
We re-re-re-re-re-re-re-released Skyrim once again over the last 10 years, it just doesnt have the same traction. It's just that these audiences are only interested in a game for 6 months max.
Factorio: Space Age has entered the chat
Literally Paradox's entire business model...
gunfire reborn released each of it’s dlc packs ~1 year apart and i’ve bought all three. going on 4 years since initial release and the game still feels fresh as hell.
That's true, IF AND ONLY IF the game in question has failed to retain players that long...
IMO Bethesda games are perfectly positioned to get a lot of initial interest because they look great and seem like they are full of depth, especially when in the midst of the opening quest chain, but the longer I look around, the more disappointed I end up with it all and then lose interest.
It's this weird mix of deep and shallow. Like in starfield, I walk up to a building and see a rich interaction between an NPC that wants to go in to talk with someone but the guard won't let her in because he's busy and no one can see him but then doesn't bat an eye as I just waltz right past him and talk to whoever I want in there.
Or I watch a confrontation between other NPCs and then try to interact with them after and it's just generic responses, not a word about the heated argument that just ended.
It's like it's in the uncanny valley, where it looks good enough to think you can RP at a certain level, but when you try to do so, it turns out to be all a facade unless there's a quest.
And in Skyrim, the NPCs were completely unable to handle stealth characters. You'd figure someone would have a magic spell or think to use a torch or raise an alarm when they get shot with an arrow. Nope, must have been the wind or my imagination that killed my buddy over there. I didn't try stealth in starfield to see if they had improved on that at all.
Each of their games feels like the same game with a new skin. It was fun for a while, but I'm over it now. I tried starfield on xbox game pass but have since cancelled. It's on my steam wishlist but I won't be grabbing it without a heavy sale, and even then I'm not really sure I want to allocate the disk space it wants to it.
I'm currently playing Skyrim again. It's still fun as hell if you don't expect any depth. Disregard the main quest, hike around the countryside with a 2-handed warhammer, pick all perks that increase damage, and bash most enemies' heads in with a single blow, watch the finishing move animation, then loot their corpses.
Listen to Sabaton in the background.
After 6 months VC money demands they move on into live service and other ways to screw their audiences
I was still interested 2 years after Elden Ring came out for its DLC because Fromsoft's DLC has commonly been like expansions of old.
Maybe if the industry actually made expansions more than drip feeding meaningless, smaller bits of content, people would stay interested longer.
It's not like the desire for old school expansion packs went away. Y'all just stopped making the damn things.
The issue is doing DLC for an open world game is hard. The way it's been done in the past is broadly one of the following:
- add a new zone that doesn't interact with the rest of the world
- add a new location, a few new maps that link to the original zone and some quests The issue is that that's not enough to necessarily make an entirely new playthrough worthwhile, but also an existing near-end save might trivialise loot and content.
The solution is so some combination of the following:
- Make the content spread throughout the world
- Balance the game so that new gear are choices rather than straight upgrades.
- Add new systems to engage with.
Fundamentally Bethesda as discounted the latter. It's done with classes, it's not added races, or new systems or new skills in years. They can't add content throughout, that would require creating the space for the content to exist in ahead of time.
Not that it can't be done, but that they don't have the future awareness to make room for it.