Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Rob Bartel, Co Lead Designer

Digital Distribution: Yes, the onus will be on us to ensure that the DD content is of sufficient value to the community. If we release a bunch of trash with a price tag on it, the DD Project will sink and sink fast. Personally, I'm pretty excited by what we have in store.

Further:

Unfortunately, we're still in the realm of 'if' rather than 'when.' We're very close now, though, and have convinced everyone we need to internally here at BioWare. There's a specific clause or two of our contract with Atari that's still in the process of being renegotiated but, provided we get the green light there, things will start moving pretty fast. The Live Team programmers are already working on integrating the necessary functionality into NWN and our three-headed web-monkey is hard at work on developing a storefront and working out the back-end issues. Our first wave of DD content is feature-complete and in the testing/polishing phase and some second wave-content is underway as well. Some things are stalled while we wait for the aforementioned green light but there's still plenty to do in the meantime.When we have a 'when,' we'll let everyone know (I'll be on the rooftop with a megaphone, I assure you).

Further:

Given the $1 / hour of gameplay figure that's often bandied about, a 30-40 hour DD module would probably cost (surprise!) $30-40. I suspect most people aren't willing to spend that amount for something as ephemeral as a download. What's more, the development and testing time required for such a module would probably swamp the Live Team's available resources and you would probably only see about 1 release a year or so. Personally, I don't think that's sufficient to sustain interest in a 2-year old game, let alone enough to build or generate new interest. Rather than competing with traditional retail projects such as the original NWN or its expansions, I think both the Live Team and the community will be better served by a broad selection of smaller modules that can be played as a larger series.

Once a series is complete (WW, for instance, is now planned out as a 5-part series), we may consider bundling them into a larger, more expansion-like package for those who want it. It might even transform itself into a boxed retail product, who knows. But for now, it and any other DD modules will probably be in the 3-10 hour range, with most hovering around the 5 to 7-hour mark. Pricing hasn't been decided yet but the $1 / gameplay hour seems like a reasonable guide for the time being. Hopefully that explains our perspective on the matter a little better

More on Digital Distribution: Well, there are a few ways you can approach this. As both of you allude to, you may end up purchasing DD modules more to support the ongoing efforts of the Live Team than for the modules themselves. This is a perfectly valid approach (For instance, I've purchased NWCon shirts for two years running now - the shirts were nice enough but my main reason for purchasing them was to help support the Con itself). As those who have played WW1 can attest to, the DD framework (smaller modules, a more focused team, a non-licensed setting) allows for some very different gameplay experiences than the official campaigns. Some of them may catch your interest and spark your imagination more than the OCs did. For that matter, there's nothing stopping us from developing a downloadable Persistent World module along the lines of Nordock, either. The sky's the limit, really, and maybe there's a DD module or two that will take you by surprise.

Also, we still haven't sorted out the precise details of how we're going to handle the inclusion of custom art & audio resources but current debate seems to be leaning towards the 'delayed free release' model that emerged in one of the threads on this board. Under that scenario, builders may end up purchasing the DD module to gain advance access to some of the new music, monsters, or tilesets, knowing that the content will be more broadly available by the time they're ready to release their magnum opus.

Further:

I think the biggest hurdles Steam will face will be technical ones, to be honest. After quite a long time in development, Steam continues to have significant stability issues. Even more importantly, it's designed in a very invasive fashion and is substantially harder to use than it really needs to be. It's like the iTunes / SonyConnect dichotomy - iTunes' success shows that a large body of people are perfectly willing to pay for what they used to get for free. But the true key to their success lies in the streamlined and easy-to-use nature of their site and iPod player. Until SonyConnect can offer a similarly sleek (or even sleeker) interface, they're pretty much doomed to fail.

I don't have any significant issues with the underlying vision of Steam and the concept of a commercialized mod environment. My original vision for the DD project, to be honest, was a free-wheeling central marketplace where modders gathered to swap their individual creations in exchange for a cut of the proceeds from any resulting playable content. In my opinion, the free community can coexist with the monetized community in a mutually beneficial fashion. High-quality art & audio content created for the monetized community would be made available at no cost for use within the free community while newcomers and old-timers alike would release playable content within the free community in order to build a following or promote a new series.

In my opinion, the games industry is becoming increasingly corporate and we're losing touch with our 'garage developer' roots (BioWare, for instance, developed our first title, "Shattered Steel," in Joint-CEO Greg Zeschuk's parents' basement). I think the industry as a whole can be greatly invigorated through the creation of an 'indie circuit' where individual game designers and small development teams can make a reasonable living doing what they do best. Game modding is an obvious place for that to start and, with its story-oriented tools and established community focus, NWN is on the cutting edge of the game modding movement. For now, BioWare's DD Project isn't heading in that direction (and, to be honest, it may never head in that direction) but that's what I'm going to be trying to push it towards over the longer term. As you say, these are interesting times and I, as both a game developer and a game consumer, am very excited by the future.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Leftover dialogues: I am sure there are some leftover plots / dialog options that have been disabled before the game shipped, you will find them in most of our games. They are not neccessarily censored, they might just been cut because they were not finished in time or because QA didn't like them

Gold edition: The gold edition distributed in Europe different from the US version. The US version contains disks, a combined manual, a custom installer we build for it, patches, bonus modules, etc and apparently someone from Atari Europe thought it would be a nice idea to have a gold edition as well, but without the manual/bonus material/patches.

From what I hear on these boards, the Gold Edition in Europe contains just the CDs for NWN and SoU. If you want to know the reason for this, you will have to contact the company distributing this Gold Edition in your country. We were quite surprised when the first people came to our boards claiming that their Gold Edition was missing stuff, until we figured out that basically Atari Europe created their own Gold Edition, that was quite different from the Gold Edition sold in the US. BioWare had no input on this. Bottomline: If you want to voice your opinion about this, please contact your local distributor, BioWare has no influence over international distribution, this is completely up to the publisher. I suggest that you contact the distributor responsible for your country (i.e. Atari Germany) and not Atari US about this.