Quote:
Originally Posted by Les
In one of the interviews from a while ago, Oleg was asked about how the online/offline aspects of SOW would work. He said (in my own words) they were still deciding, but were considering making offline planes open to all, so anyone from hacks to pro's could do whatever they want. He also said online would be two-tiered, with one form of online play open to all, and with another form locked down and using only official or officially sanctioned Maddox Games planes.
I think that could be a workable solution.
In fact, something similar has been done with a racing sim called 'rFactor', where the sim developers made the overall sim, including some generic cars and tracks, then let the modding community do with it (almost) whatever they wanted. From there you got a huge amount of crap and uncompleted cars and tracks, but also some top quality stuff too. This is seperate to other developing teams who licensed the sim engine and released other commercial products (similar to the console games made from Il-2).
The thing is though, while racing sims for the PC are a niche market, flight sims are even more so, and combat flight sims are even more so than that. And (!) Oleg has raised the bar so high with the SOW plane models, I'm not sure how many modding teams there are out there who could actually model planes to that standard. Remember too that some of these third party developers just might not be capable of stretching their products over multiple sims, or might just prefer not to for whatever reason.
Same with the customers in that last regard. Some people could see their favourite third party plane modeller making a plane for SOW and still not buy it (and SOW) just because it's not in the sim they're otherwise used to and have often invested a lot of time and money in.
Not trying to be negative. I just felt like trying to sort some of this stuff out in my own mind by writing about it, and to maybe play devils advocate a bit too, by suggesting this reliance on third party content might not have the results we'd all hope for.
Like all of you I want all the best for the SOW series and its developers, but there's a gamble being taken here to some extent, and while not knowing of course all the plans and behind the scenes goings on, I can't help but be skeptical about the third party aspect of it.
I hope for example as many potential plane-modelling teams as possible have already been notified of SOW's development and that they're all lined up to get the SDK's or whatever info it takes to at least see if making extra content is viable for them, or will that all happen later (and delay by months or years whatever 3rd party stuff we do end up seeing)?
I'm just hoping Oleg and his team, with their limited resources, can keep the series viable on their own if they have to and that they haven't gone for a business model that's too dependent upon what just might not happen. That's not meant to be an insult to Oleg's business sense, I trust he/they know what they're doing, it's just me expressing some doubts based on a lack of knowledge about something I'm interested in (how the SOW series will play out).
I think too I'm just trying to keep my expectations in check and preparing myself for a much more content-limited series than we've had so far, by imagining what would happen if there were no or very few decent third party add-ons made for it.
I find that a helpful approach to take in general too, hoping for something good, but not expecting it. Saves a lot of unnecessary disappointment and resentment if/and when things don't turn out the way I'd like, remembering I'm owed nothing, and my hopes an expectations are two different things. Nothing worse than ripping yourself off by creating false expectations and then blaming others for it when they're not met...
Edit- Posted this and then saw the man himself posted just above this while I was writing, I would have talked to him and not about him if I'd known he was actually here at the time.
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Good points and well argued if you ask me. Also, playing devil's advocate is my favorite sport as well, as we need to see the opposing viewpoint too if we expect to draw any reasonable conclusions.
My idea is that it will play out just like you said. The main content and gameplay will be based on official expansions just like it was in IL2. From then on, a myriad of 3rd party add-ons that range in quality from poor to excellent will be available, either for free or payware. Some of those might end up getting officially sanctioned status and some won't.
I think this is actually the best of both worlds. For example, i won't be forced to buy a plane model just to fly one map on my favorite server because i'll be using the stock models provided by SoW. However, if i have spent money on an aftermarket model of the same plane that's done to a high enough standard and keeps the playing field level, i might be allowed to fly that on the same server as well. For example, it would be like clicking on the aircraft selection menu before spawning and choosing between the stock 109 and the A2A 109.
As for single player now, Seeker makes a good point as well. Having the abbility to integrate 3rd party aircraft into the automatic mission creation/dynamic campaign framework is what will make or break the use of 3rd party add-on aircraft by other developers.
11-10-2010, 12:26 AM
Hybrid Mode
