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Dr. Ray Muzyka on Content Updates And Sequels

BioWare co-founder and CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka participated in a GDCSF session yesterday entitled "Fireside Chat: Building a Blockbuster Franchise," along with Bungie Creative Director Joseph Staten. We had the opportunity to ask Dr. Muzyka about his views on content updates versus expansions or sequels.

Photo Credit: Game Developers Conference

When building a franchise, what is the threshold to decide to patch something, issue a DLC, or another title versus a sequel?

Dr. Ray Muzyka: Our future portfolio is much more oriented around a service mentality where we launch products to get people into the service, then we do everything we can to retain them and grow them and recruit new customers through acquisition and retention. We do it in our MMOs with Mythic studios and Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer and Ultima Online. Well do it obviously with Austins SW:TOR.

And with our other products, Dragon Age or Mass Effect, were doing it as well releasing post-release downloadable content. We have the free Cerberus Network for Mass Effect and were viewing this as an ongoing experience. We have a franchise team for all those products; dedicated to short term and long term initiatives where people move back and forth. There is a new expansion pack coming out for Dragon Age right away, and we obviously started on that way before Dragon Age got launched in the fall last year. So we had long term plans for that and were now able to launch because we had that vision to get it out within 6 months after [Dragon Age] launched.

It is all about having a plan. You may doubt the plan because of what the consumers say, so our post-release download content plans are very dynamic. We have something coming every month for our products. Maybe big updates every six to twelve months and full products every twelve to twenty-four months, but to have that vision you have people working on things and taking feedback and dynamically adjusting the plans in real time. But really, it just comes from a service orientation of an ongoing product spread. Its not just one discrete product anymore -- it is a longer term thing. And it expands beyond games to advance all your products.



We're working on larger pieces with our view on how this and other GDCSF sessions may all relate to Star Wars: The Old Republic, but we found it interesting Dr. Muzyka stated expansion content is worked on prior to initial release.

Comments

  • Keegan-Vol's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 120
    #4 Keegan-Vol Posted 3/19/2010 12:09:28 AM
    So will the subsribers have to pay for downloadable content in SW:ToR? Or just the expantions? In Dragonage you can download new areas to explore and better gear is this the direction for ToR? I hope not. Also if you use game cards and not credit cards how will that type of user be able to access the downloadable content? just some things to think about.
  • DirectX's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #3 DirectX Posted 3/12/2010 5:39:10 AM
    Nice endorsement for Pepsi Ray. Subtle... very subtle
  • Revix2k9's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 153
    #2 Revix2k9 Posted 3/12/2010 5:30:28 AM
    pretty much confirms that SWTOR is gonna be full of content :D T_T im starting to feel negative about all content i don't have life as it is this game will destroy me :P
  • Infamous's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 71
    #1 Infamous Posted 3/12/2010 2:25:32 AM
    Most content that fits well with the original is created along side it, or if the product is not released, concurrently. Any lapse n developmen time means lapse in players before that content goes live.
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