The Case for Paid Expansions

[Raphael van Lierop]

Yikes, ok well I guess this is a week for dispelling rumours/wild speculations.

Re: movie -- Jeremy Bolt, the PRODUCER (not director) of the Resident Evil films has been my collaborator on the film project for many years, to the point where I now consider him a good friend. There's never been a stronger advocate for creating an artistic, thoughtful film for The Long Dark, aside from maybe yours truly. No feedback (negative or positive) "put an end" to the movie project. Turns out making movies takes even longer than making games, especially if you don't want to "sell out", so as with everything we do, we're taking it slow, doing it our own way, and won't release it unless we think it's great. This is also a whole new industry for us that we're learning how to navigate (not easy) so it just takes the time it takes. It's not a licensed/cash-grab for us so we can afford to take our time and as we've always said, if we can't find the right partners for the film, we just won't do it. But for the moment, it's still unfolding in the (very far) background as we are mostly focused on our core business. 🙂

Please, I know you all mean well and it comes from a place of love, but rather than speculate "hey the company must be going out of business because they don't charge for DLC" or "hey the movie must be cancelled because it hasn't come out yet", just...you know...ASK. If we can answer we will. And if we can't answer, well we'll try to explain why we can't answer. For what it's worth, it's not uncommon for films to be in development for many many years before they ever see the light of day. This is entirely normal.

 

[odizzido]

I also wish to point out that games were successfully made for ages before the AAA industry came in and convinced people if they didn't buy 300 dollars of skins every month the project was a failure. They don't want just enough money, they want all the money and if they can't have it all it's a failure. Worthless AAA garbage CEOs are lying scum. I don't understand how people can support AAA when there are companies that are so much better like hinterland.

[Mroz4k]

My apology if I contributed to any rumours, I dont like using speculation but sometimes there is nothing more to go on. I mistook the two terms, on occasion that happens to me, Im pretty good at english but not perfect. When it comes to the movie, (except maybe for Milton maibags or Twitter, I havent read through all of that) there was no information past the original article in 2017, and then there was another from (I believe) SYFY news, which was 2020, but since that one quoted the 2017 article, there seemed to be no new information about it for the past 4 years. At least no information that would be easy to find. I also looked into Jeremy Bolt online but could not find a reference to the movie being produced. Maybe I should have kept digging. I dont mind waiting for many more years for the movie, if the quality of your games is an indication of anything, the movie will be great. It makes sense I did not find anything if the movie is in the stage you described it. Hope you can eventually find the right partners to make it real in a way you are satisfied with. Thanks for the new information and clarifications.

And with that, Im going to refrain from posting more on this topic, clearly not being helpful here. Also really dont want to be a part of this AAA company discussion, as much as I tend not to like the AAA industry. I have always admired the approach of Hinterland, proving by example that there is another, succesful way to go about making games.

[Luca Loquax]

Hooray for Raph and Devs! Yay!

Thank you for taking all of the time you need to give us the best.

It shows that you care. 

[RegentRelic]

20 hours ago, odizzido said:

I also wish to point out that games were successfully made for ages before the AAA industry came in and convinced people if they didn't buy 300 dollars of skins every month the project was a failure. They don't want just enough money, they want all the money and if they can't have it all it's a failure. Worthless AAA garbage CEOs are lying scum. I don't understand how people can support AAA when there are companies that are so much better like hinterland.

I'm really not sure to begin here. I suppose I should start by addressing a common misconception. There is no industry standard for how much a customer should be worth, and I can't even think of a game that expected three hundred dollars of revenue on average from it's players. The only people who can expect anything in that realm per customer are the people who own the market places, so: Valve, Nintendo, Sony, Tencent, Microsoft and EA on the digetal side. I would also like to mention the big merchandising juggernauts, but those games are almost all owned companies by i've already mentioned the exception being ZeniMax and Activision-Blizzard who may or may not be owned be largely owned by Tencent. (note that is per customer meaning lifetime sales to a person.) I don't really know on that last bit which may discredit me, or you take that as I really do know what I am saying for the rest of the stuff which while I may be typing in a way that is clear to understand, I mean I've switched the topic a bit to make Odizzido not seem stupid when he said something that I can only hope what at least highly exaggerated, I really do know pretty well what I am saying in this case even though my sentences tend run on a little long and my forums account is still bounded to my dumb Youtube email that I use for submitting spread runs. Anyway back on topic, It really depends on a lot of factors, such as place in a franchise, consumer trends, platform, et cetera under which no conditions have existed that makes an estimate of three hundred dollars a month per copy sold or per customer something any company triple a or otherwise that has ever released a game before would make.

 

     Your heavily implying an all in your statement of "Worthless AAA garbage CEOs are lying scum" so, I would ask you to explain how you could denounce the achievements of the following current and past chief executive officers of . For your aid I'll even link there wikipedia pages since there are few you could make a case that they have failed their company in some way: David Baszucki, Michael Morhaime, Fusajiro Yamauchi, Robert A. Altman I could go on, but  I really don't think I need to. As is easy to tell, many of these companies have been very successful as of late. That's only half what you said about them being lying scum well aside from those who don't make announcements very often like, Robert Altman who is probably not the first person you think of when you think of when you think of Bethesda. I'd like you to tell me when the following have been deceitful too their customers: David Baszucki, Michael Morhaime, Jamie Chung. 

 

     "I don't understand how people can support AAA when there are companies that are so much better like hinterland.". First off hinterland, while having not having done anything remotely illegal to my knowledge.(I say that with my little knowledge of canadian law outside of border laws!(That exclamation mark is the closing thing your getting to an emoticon  out of me.)) They have done a few moral questionable things that I won't name since Hinterland says not too and I like to respect their wishes on their platform, but if you have been paying attention you know what i'm talking about. As for "I don't understand how people can support AAA when there are companies that are so much better" Simple. These companies make some really great games. Fallout Three was a big inspiration for the Long Dark which was a triple a game. As you can see by my profile picture i'm a huge fan of starcraft two which is a triple a game.  Any thing Shigeru Miyamoto as every breathed in the direction of  has at least been serviceable. *insert Valve game here, was a rightfully deserved classic and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

 

    Postscribere. AAA is an informal classification used for video games produced and distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, typically having higher development and marketing budgets. Not a label of good or bad, or shorthand for includes a form of alternative reavenu.

[Raphael van Lierop]

5 hours ago, Dum_Gen said:

Thank you Raphael and HL team for the update! Hope you are considering to work on Ep. 5 right after Ep 4, since you released several survival mode updates in a row.

My hope is low that the questions will be answered, I asked it when Milton Mailbag was discontinued, but I repeat it just in case - did you fulfil your plan to have separate teams who work on Story mode and Survival mode to increase development speed?

As of paid DLCs, I think it is a great idea to start working on them when the story mode is finished and the studio fulfills their promises, like I understood their answer. I will even consider buying them, if they have some story content and it is NOT episodic.

I hope people will stop trying to encourage the studio to behave unethically - start working on paid DLCs untill they finish what they promised. Thank you!

For the record, I don't think this would be unethical at all. We have two teams working on two different aspects of the game. The remaining episodic story content will come out and nobody who owns the game will pay extra for it. Survival Mode has been as complete as any game for a while now -- what would be unethical about selling DLC for major updates to this portion of the game at this point in time?

I think it's a misunderstanding from some people in the community (and players of other games as this seems a common sentiment) that they have some entitlement to influence or dictate how a studio's resources are utilized. At the end of the day we will deliver all the things that have been promised. We also have to make the best decisions for our business. It's worth noting that while we love Story mode and have invested heavily in this part of the game, Survival mode is what drives the long-term engagement and ongoing sales of The Long Dark, which is the game's revenue lifeblood, and this also allows us to continue investing in episode development.

I encourage all our fans to consider the success and ongoing health of The Long Dark as a holistic thing and fall prey to tribal thinking about episodes vs. survival. I understand that everyone has their particular favourite but in the end it's still one game, and its success comes from both its parts, as they feed each other in a very symbiotic fashion.

[Admin]

As a note let us keep this discussion focused on The Long Dark and Hinterland. 
 

We don’t influence or control decisions made by other companies so unless you’re directly contrasting us to another studio/publishers turning this into a broader discussion of the industry is getting off topic. 

[Raphael van Lierop]

6 hours ago, RegentRelic said:

They have done a few moral questionable things that I won't name since Hinterland says not too and I like to respect their wishes on their platform, but if you have been paying attention you know what i'm talking about.

I would be very interested to know what morally questionable things you feel we have done. I ask because we hold ourselves to a very high moral and ethical standard in our business so this type of language is very disturbing to see. If this is about donations made to support different disadvantaged groups, I would say these are not a function of questionable morality as much as perhaps philanthropical decisions you might not agree with. Which is entirely your prerogative. And ours. 

[Sherri]

57 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I think it's a misunderstanding from some people in the community (and players of other games as this seems a common sentiment) that they have some entitlement to influence or dictate how a studio's resources are utilized. At the end of the day we will deliver all the things that have been promised. We also have to make the best decisions for our business.

 

46 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

If this is about donations made to support different disadvantaged groups, I would say these are not a function of questionable morality as much as perhaps philanthropical decisions you might not agree with. Which is entirely your prerogative. And ours. 

This x 100.

I've never doubted for a second that Hinterland will deliver on their promises. More than any other game I've played... Hinterland is forthright with their players and unwilling to compromise their ethics and vision.

Thank you Raphael and Admin for the excellent info, exciting hints for the future and reassurance for those who need it.

[Sherri]

Funny that people don't seem to have such a feeling of entitlement over how the big movie studios who make the blockbusters we love spend their money and resources. Something about the interactivity and investment players get into games seems to translate to a misconception of investment in the company. These are the same folks with hundreds or thousands of hours played who leave horrible reviews on Steam. Enjoy media for what you can get from it, then look to the infinite other options out there, rather than getting in a twist about some perceived beef with the game or studio. 

[odizzido]

I haven't seen any evidence of hinterland being immoral. I do see at least some evidence that the devs working on this game aren't crunched to death which is nice.

[Mroz4k]

Didnt want to post on this thread because of the off-topic conversation forming,  but something was posted that I wanted to quickly chime in on. 

7 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

The remaining episodic story content will come out and nobody who owns the game will pay extra for it. Survival Mode has been as complete as any game for a while now -- what would be unethical about selling DLC for major updates to this portion of the game at this point in time?

In the end, there are two major types of players - the ones that enjoy Story mode more, and the ones that enjoy survival more (well, I guess there are those who enjoy both). If there ever was DLC, it would be probably a good business to aim for both. There is a type of DLC we have seen in games that would very well fit in here. And that is a DLC of sort of "origins". There is a decent amount of side characters in Story mode. I believe a DLC extension of both Survival and Story mode is possible, with Story mode being some shorter one-time backstory stories for the secondary characters. Just some food for thought.

That is, assuming the DLCs become a thing, of course. 

[Mig_zvm]

     I actually believe the survival mode to be an industry game changer, particularly for future open world titles wanting to call themselves a sandbox game going forward. 

     The custom options and loot table selections alone are such a refreshing and much appreciated mechanic which could be expanded upon and tweaked exponentially.

[stratvox]

If there was survival DLC made, I'd certainly consider paying for it (ah, who'm I shitting, I'd buy it). I think that there's not really a lot of controversy here; Raph has said the remaining two episodes will be coming out under the original purchase price, which is the remaining obligation to their customers for this game, and I believe him... I just think it'll be a while  but that's all right. Certainly from my point of view this game owes me nothing; I've got a ridiculous amount of time in this game and I've enjoyed it all (well, almost all... some of those bear maulings were not very enjoyable; we're definitely not talking Marian Engel style maulings here).

As for them asking me for ten or twenty bucks for a collection of regions... I have something of an appreciation for how much work must be going into those maps; they are incredibly well made and Ash Canyon shows what that can mean; at this point they are creating really great video game art (or, just art, really) when they make these maps, so I certainly wouldn't have a problem with that. One of the things that I think would be very cool would be a bunch of regions based on the Killarney area in northern Ontario just north of the Georgian Bay and Manitoulan; it's beautiful country and I think it would be a great place to be TLDed, and if Hinterland were to release a set of five maps or so based on that I'd almost certainly buy it.

[Valuable Hunting Knife]

Funnily enough I've been thinking about DLC again recently having just started watching 'The Terror' on tv- it's a fictional depiction of the Franklin expedition, and last year there was a conversation on Raph's twitter about the possibility of some sort of Franklin based DLC I believe.

I think something like this could work really well- a 'reskinning' of the TLD game engine with a completely separate narrative, which would give fresh content to those that want it, but without leaving anyone else feeling they are obliged to buy to get the full TLD experience they expect from the main game.  Uninformed speculation on my part, but I'd guess it could also be useful from the development side of things to have a test bed for new ideas for future projects (like NPCs, advanced psychological factors, even new landscapes) without worrying about the messing up the balance of the main TLD game.

The darkwalker challenge was an interesting development for me, in that it seemed to be Hinterland possibly testing the waters into this sort of content.

[Gun Tech.]

Ash Canyon was great, it alone has made 2020 better!  DarkWalker was not for me but different strokes for different folks. Winter's Embrace was probably not amazing for most folks. Either way a year full of updates, and in my mind Hinterland has delivered far more than most bigger studios, whose players typically get cosmetics if anything at all.

I'm happy with my purchase, and I've gotten my money's worth several times over from the Sandbox mode alone. Story-only folks will play through it quite quickly, and when asked on stream I say this and suggest April and autumn 2023 as dates for Ep4 and 5. It's understandable to be worried in these times, but I know how long it takes to make a game, so I've seen no delay big enough to worry yet, especially with work put into the Redux versions to bring them up in quality. It's nice to see the reassuring reply from @Raphael van Lierop but I personally have never doubted the commitment. 👍

[RegentRelic]

13 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

If this is about donations made to support different disadvantaged groups, I would say these are not a function of questionable morality as much as perhaps philanthropical decisions you might not agree with. Which is entirely your prerogative. And ours. 

Mostly that isn't in side the realm of suspect or rumor. It just bugs me when a company uses its funds for political purposes rather than the re-investing it in the arts. I just know  that if any of the bigger companies had done what you have everyone would get up in arms about whether they should or not. I just look at hinterland and see a company deeply entrenched with the Liberal Party of Canada and those doctor people I forgot their name who last time I'm pretty  sure is or were owned by what's his bucket in the LPC. I'm not saying anything wrong with the LPC, that's not relevant to the point. What I am saying is that things start get precarios when adherence to the beliefs of a party start driving art as opposed to an ernest dissection of topic (A trial is meaningless if you've already decided what the answer has be to fit the rest of what others think) and that it's a minor betrayal of trust to start spend company money in ways that your customers don't expect. I don't what it's like in Canada, but here in the U.S if a company gives money to anything directly that they don't explicitly state there going to do they get boycotted and because all things must have opposition more people flock too by their product. Remember EA's Dante's Inferno's sin to win competition when they to use this to their advantage.

 Postscribere. Yes I do know that now I'm starting to poke the proverbial bear.

13 hours ago, Admin said:

is getting odd topic. 

There are like three conversations happening in this topic and only one of them is even on topic. This is indeed getting to be an odd topic.

Edited March 5, 2021 by RegentRelic

[RegentRelic]

I suppose I should weigh in on the actual topic. I would much rather see Hinterland make another game over dlc. After all I'm sure they have some great ideas that they would love to make, but making a new game takes time and money before it starts making any back. It seems then like making dlc before another game makes sense, but I actually think that making another game built largely out of assets from the long dark and charging full price would be the best option (see Fallout New Vegas from Fallout Three, Fallout Two from Fallout a Post-Nuclear Role Playing Game, Fallout 76 from Fallout Four, The Same Game Two from OverWatch, et cetera). I would have to crunch some numbers and have a little bit of demographic data that I can only extrapolate to know for sure and If hinterland makes something that obviously should have been  dlc to The Long Dark people won't be happy about, but I and many others would still buy it even while warning others not to.

 

[Admin]

Once again this topic is getting off track. To be clear it began with the (mistaken) belief that Hinterland was running out of money and needed to sell DLC or layoff staff or close, and was a discussion whether or not under those circumstances it was okay for the studio to sell DLC so we could finish Episodes Four and Five.

To reiterate, we are financially secure for an independent studio, have not cut anyone's hours, laid off staff, and have no intention of doing so. Episodes Four and Five will be coming and will remain a part of the initial purchase of The Long Dark. To be clear, if you own The Long Dark you will get Episodes Four and Five at no additional cost to you.

Whether we release future Survival Mode DLC is up to us. We have not ruled it out, be we currently do not have any to sell.

We don't feel the there is anything questionable about selling additional content for the game, as long as we deliver on what has been promised. 

@Raphael van Lierophas said all of this previously in the thread, we are just restating it to focus discussion. 

[Guest jeffpeng]

Bit late to the party (as I don't party as much these days, I guess), but without wanting to comment on the "controversy" I'm both happy to hear that HL is apparently doing financially well, and that DLCs are something to be considered.

I stated some time ago when there was a lot of talk about TLD2 that the game indeed has still has a lot of life in it, and that a DLC with a decent map-pack would make a lot of sense, especially for returning players. If I had to put 10 bucks out for the opportunity to explore an entirely new set of locations separate from the base game, with that all new feeling of being lost and not having all the maps memorized three times over (sadly I'm very good at this) ... heck yeah. Count me in, and I think there are enough people that would agree and hence make this something worth putting the humanpower into.

As to having the studio financed ... I think there are more revenue streams for TLD than some people realize. Alone bringing it to the Nintendo Switch must have opened up a few additional bucks. And there still are a few more platforms to consider. Frostpunk recently (finally) released a working Mac version, and apparently that alone has spurred some considerable sales from the nowadays equally considerable Apple community that doesn't "do" Steam, but relies on the App Store first and foremost. Heck, considering TLD runs on a Switch (which, in essence, is a Raspberry Pi on steroids) there is no feasible reason it wouldn't run on newer iPads. And yes, contrary to popular belief people do game on both Macs and iDevices. A lot. And they are actually willing (and usually able) to pay for software.

And TLD isn't just any game. It is a genre-defining staple. It's stable, mature, remarkably replayable with a strong product design and a unique lore. I guess giving it a last marketing push when Wintermute is (finally) done will most likely make the work put into the remaining episodes be much less of a financial loss than a lot of people anticipate - if at all.

My point is: I can very much imagine TLD doing well financially, and if they really needed to open up more revenue, there would be other options than DLCs - even if I would really like to see one (or ten, for that matter). HL doesn't have a big corporation behind them with an army of bean counters to maximize profits and then cut the rope as soon as they take a dip. As long as the ship is afloat, and apparently it is, there is no need to start treading water.

[Luca Loquax]

I have no idea how one could fit "Hinterland" and "Immoral" into the same sentence.  Raph and DEVs have all been class-acts in my humble evaluation and I am a huge fan of all of their work.

I paid for this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back during early access and have not had to pay a dime since.

I, for one, would be happy to purchase DLC content to enhance the game and to help support future development.

Raph and DEVs have worked very, very hard to make TLD the best game ever and I'd be happy to help support them.   :)