The audacity of DLC

[Kerbart]

I thought it's time to dig up this unconscious horse and start beating it again. Actually, this is what made me do it:

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/2017_best_sellers/

I'm not sure KSP was in it last year, but I assume they were at one point. But by now KSP has positively dropped out of Steam's top 100 list. If you're complaining on how Squad dare to charge money for content, here's your answer: without money there likely won't be any content. It surely isn't coming in large amounts from the sales of the game anymore, and developers don't like to work for free.

Most of us know this, but for those who expect Squad to develop new things without you paying for it: wake up.

[wumpus]

Other than Take 2 getting paid instead of Squad, I can't argue about that.  I'm just hoping they just stick to straight DLC and not try to glom more microtransactions into the DLC (Take 2's CEO has insisted that all new software allow microtransactions).

But we can't buy it until Squad/Take 2 releases it.  It was announced when? 2012? (The cutoff for "free DLC" is the date.  As far as I can tell, it is about a month before I bought the thing.  No complaints, I think there was a decent sale).

[Fearless Son]

I just think of them as "expansions" and this old-school gamer is happy.

[klesh]

Its not SQUAD calling the shots anymore, its Take Two Interactive.  

[Rocket In My Pocket]

13 hours ago, wumpus said:

Take 2's CEO has insisted that all new software allow microtransactions).

No, he didn't. Stop being fake news.

What he said was:

“We’ve said that we aim to have recurrent consumer spending opportunities for every title that we put out at this company,” said Zelnick. “It may not always be an online model, it probably won’t always be a virtual currency model, but there will be some ability to engage in an ongoing basis with our titles after release across the board."

So basically he's just saying there will be a DLC or an expansion or something like that for every game. He even specifically says it won't always include online curency and/or micro transactions.

12 hours ago, klesh said:

Its not SQUAD calling the shots anymore, its Take Two Interactive.  

Being a publisher isn't the same thing as calling the shots.

Do they have influence? Sure.

SQUAD still makes the game though and any new content. The DLC/Expansion was announced well before T2 bought the rights to the KSP intellectual property as well.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[klesh]

If SQUAD would say “no” to the owners of the game theyve been contracted to make, T2 could fire them and hire someone else to develop it.  Shot callers for sure.   

I’m sure the already planned dlc was part of the motivation for the IP being purchased.  

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 minute ago, klesh said:

If SQUAD would say “no” to the owners of the game theyve been contracted to make, T2 could fire them and hire someone else to develop it.  Shot callers for sure.   

I’m sure the already planned dlc was part of the motivation for the IP being purchased.  

Neither of these things is inherently evil though.

Everyone involved wants to make money; it's in T2's best interest to have SQUAD continue to develop the game, as it would be extremely cost prohibitive to make a new team reverse engineer the whole thing or start from scratch. We all have a boss in real life, and although he can technically fire us, it isn;t black and white like that; we all know in reality there is some give and take in that relationship.

We should just be glad the IP was purchased at all, or it would be dead.

[Kerbital]

22 hours ago, Kerbart said:

[...] If you're complaining on how Squad dare to charge money for content, here's your answer: without money there likely won't be any content.[...]

No idea why people have such hard time wrapping their brains around this simple idea.

[Frozen_Heart]

KSP has had things added to it since 2011 to my knowledge. That is 6 years ago. I don't understand how people thing Squad will continue to pay for more content without an income.

 

That said i'm only on board if they are proper DLCs with good levels of content, not this microtransaction stuff EA and Ubisoft push.

[Snark]

7 hours ago, klesh said:

If SQUAD would say “no” to the owners of the game theyve been contracted to make, T2 could fire them and hire someone else to develop it.  Shot callers for sure.

Well, yes and no.

At the end of the day, T2 (or any company, for that matter) doesn't actually care what anyone at Squad or anyone does, at the microscopic level.  What matters is results, i.e. business success.  And the secret to success for any business organization basically boils down to:

1. Hire smart people.
2. Listen to them.

When they bought Squad, they got a couple of things.  They got the KSP intellectual property... and they also got the company with all the people who make KSP.  Both are valuable.

Certainly there are cases where company A has bought company B, only because they wanted the IP (intellectual property), and so they lay off everyone at company B as soon as the purchase is complete.  But I haven't heard anything at all along those lines, here-- it sounds like the Squad folks are still the Squad folks, and they're still the ones who will be creating revenue-generating products for the franchise.  So let's dispense with that possibility right there.

Which leaves us with the presumption that T2 bought KSP and Squad because they want Squad to continue making KSP.  Which makes sense.

And here's the thing.  If you've bought a company of talented people with a proven track record of producing a product that people like and want to spend money on... don't fix it if it ain't broke.  In other words:  if you're some manager at T2, and if you're competent, you don't want to tell them exactly what to do.  Because they probably know how to do their jobs better than you do, and if you're a competent manager, you know this.  Your mission is not to tell them "add feature X to the game."  Your mission is to tell them "here's our revenue target" or whatever and then work with them to figure out the resources they need to do that, and then butt out and let them do their jobs.

Why?  Because you have no reason to try to do their jobs for them.  If you wanted to do their jobs for them, you wouldn't have bothered keeping them around.  And in any case, you're busy-- you bought them because you want them to do their jobs.

So yes, officially, as The Boss, you have the power to call the shots.  And as long as they're doing their jobs well and delivering value to the company, you'd be an idiot to do so.  Of course, if it turns out that they're falling down on the job and failing to generate the expected revenue, you might go in and start calling shots as a damage-control mechanism... but that would be a last-resort move, and you'd only be "calling shots" because you've been forced to.

Just to be clear:  All of the above is speculation on my part.  I don't work for Squad, and I am not privy to any kind of insider information about the working relationship between Squad and T2, or who tells what to whom, or how they make their decisions.  I'm just talking about "how do things generally work", based on a couple of decades of shipping software for a living.

 

[Just Jim]

17 minutes ago, Snark said:

And here's the thing.  If you've bought a company of talented people with a proven track record of producing a product that people like and want to spend money on... don't fix it if it ain't broke.

I read this, and I'm reminded of a couple factories I worked for right after I got out of the Army. One in particular, called Chenango industries.. which was bought out and re-named American Board. And let me tell you, when it changed hands, people I worked with flipped out!! Everyone was in a panic that they'd all be fired or laid-off, and everything would be changed around...

But in the end, ya know what changed? Nothing!!! Everything went on just like before. It was just like you said, the people that took over the company knew to leave well enough alone, and messed with as little as possible, not the other way around! 

 

[Snark]

25 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

But in the end, ya know what changed? Nothing!!! Everything went on just like before. It was just like you said, the people that took over the company knew to leave well enough alone, and messed with as little as possible, not the other way around! 

Which means that they weren't a bunch of noobs. 

Certainly there are plenty of examples of incompetence out there.  Business people can screw up and make dumb decisions, just like anyone else.  I've known (fortunately few) bad, incompetent managers who tried to micromanage their subordinates.  A micromanaging manager is always an incompetent.  Either he's trying to tell smart people (who know how to do their jobs) how to do their jobs, which is stupid; or else he hired incompetent people, which is also stupid.

But I haven't seen any evidence thus far that T2 is prone to that sort of problem.  Certainly they appear to be a successful company, which implies that they have at least a reasonable amount of clue as to how to run their business.  So I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, until and unless there's evidence to the contrary.

[Mako]

11 hours ago, Snark said:

When they bought Squad, they got a couple of things.  They got the KSP intellectual property... and they also got the company with all the people who make KSP.  Both are valuable.

I'm not disagreeing with your points here, but I do want to clarify something.

It is my understanding that Take-Two only bought KSP the Intellectual Property and not Squad the company. I believe Squad remains an independent studio that is contracted by Take-Two work on Take-Two's property. 

I welcome corrections to this if I'm mistaken, because at this point the argument for Squad charging for DLC is slightly different. I'm operating under the assumption that Squad is getting paid by Take-Two for the work they're doing whether or not the DLC makes any money. Whether or not it makes money is likely still relevant to Squad making money in the long term as I assume if the DLC does poorly then Take-Two may be less interested in continuing to develop KSP and continuing to pay Squad to do so.

[klgraham1013]

13 hours ago, Snark said:

When they bought Squad, they got a couple of things.  They got the KSP intellectual property... and they also got the company with all the people who make KSP.  Both are valuable.

Small correction.  Take Two bought KSP.  Squad is still contracted to work on KSP.  Take Two does not own Squad.

[cfds]

I do not see what is so great about "continuous development". It is just a buzzword for "publish unfinished content and bank on people continue to pay in the hope for a complete game down the line". And I seriously doubt that the money earned with the DLC is used to fix the still glaring holes in KSP like the "part balance" and the poor excuse of a career mode, the money will be used to create the next DLC instead.  KSP was the first and last early access game that I bought and it taught me the valuable lesson that all you get for buying an unfinished product is an unfinished product...

[Rocket In My Pocket]

4 minutes ago, cfds said:

I do not see what is so great about "continuous development". It is just a buzzword for "publish unfinished content and bank on people continue to pay in the hope for a complete game down the line". And I seriously doubt that the money earned with the DLC is used to fix the still glaring holes in KSP like the "part balance" and the poor excuse of a career mode, the money will be used to create the next DLC instead.  KSP was the first and last early access game that I bought and it taught me the valuable lesson that all you get for buying an unfinished product is an unfinished product...

Continuous development (like everything in life) has it's ups and downs.

On the one hand, everything you just said is pretty true.

On the other, lot's of players obviously enjoy being part of ongoing development. There is something to be said for playing a game as it grows. (even if said growth isn't always perfect or what we ourselves had in mind.)

Edited January 5, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Snark]

6 hours ago, Mako said:

It is my understanding that Take-Two only bought KSP the Intellectual Property and not Squad the company. I believe Squad remains an independent studio that is contracted by Take-Two work on Take-Two's property. 

4 hours ago, klgraham1013 said:

Small correction.  Take Two bought KSP.  Squad is still contracted to work on KSP.  Take Two does not own Squad.

Yep, thanks for the correction!

So basically what I should have said was "Take Two has bought KSP, and rented Squad," in effect.  But the substantive point I was making remains essentially unchanged.  If they've contracted with Squad to be the folks who continue to develop KSP (at least until we hear otherwise)... well, it seems reasonable to assume that they did that because they like what Squad's doing and have a reasonable amount of trust in their ability to continue delivering the goods.  If they didn't think that, they wouldn't have kept them on board.  So if you've hired someone to do a job... well, you let them do the job, if you're smart.

Doesn't mean that T2 won't have any input (this whole discussion was in the context of "who's calling the shots"), for example if T2 has long-range plans for the KSP franchise and wants to make sure that whatever-Squad-does fits with T2's planned future strategy.  But I'd expect that to be more about "broad strokes", if anything, and I'd be astonished if T2 tried to micromanage them.  Squad has a pretty good handle on what their player base expects and demands, so I see no reason T2 should feel compelled to tinker with a winning formula.

[Snark]

2 hours ago, cfds said:

I do not see what is so great about "continuous development".

It's a great way to get massive amounts of feedback from your users about what they do and don't like, as you develop things.  Developing software is expensive.  And any time any company produces any product (I'm not just talking about software here, this applies just as much to cars and movies and toothpaste as it does to KSP) there's a big risk involved.

The risk is that you have to do a bunch of capital investment up front before you start selling the thing and then find out whether anybody wants it.  If you spend millions and millions of dollars to develop something... and then it bombs... well, ouch.  That's been a fundamental risk of business since there has been such a thing as "business."  And businesses hate risk.  So, mitigating it is a win to them.

I think what KSP did with their continuous-development model is brilliant.  It's not just a win for them, but it's a win for the players, too.  Apparently you seem to be angry because you look at KSP and see a bunch of flaws that you think shouldn't be there.  Well... you're playing with a product that had millions of player-hours sunk into it by a vocal community, even before they hit 1.0.  You're playing with a product that had many major releases in between when they got people to start shelling out, and now.  Every single one of those major releases added big new features to the game, and every single one of those big new features was informed by a lot of player feedback.

So if you're griping and complaining about the state of KSP now... what the heck do you think it would have looked like if they had just sequestered themselves in a monastery or something for five years and written the whole thing with zero input from players?

Do you think it would have been a better experience for you?  Because I sure don't.  (And I'm saying this as a person who's been developing software for a living for over twenty years, and I can tell you that we developers positively drool over the chance to get early feedback from a lot of customers while a thing is in process.  It lets us improve the product and be more confident that we're actually addressing the needs of the customers.  And we don't get enough of it, we always want more.)

There's also the financing aspect.  Until the T2 acquisition of KSP, Squad was a little indie company that had to earn its own keep.  And little indie companies tend to be perennially strapped for cash.  Early access let them start selling the game and generating cash flow on the early versions of KSP that allowed them to fund the later versions of KSP.  I don't work for Squad and am not privy to their finances, but I've been around that kind of company, and I can say that cash flow early on can be an absolute godsend.  It may very well be that KSP couldn't even have happened if they hadn't done that.  (Now that T2 owns KSP and is presumably funding its development, that may change the equation about this aspect of it.)

So.  I get that you're fuming about the state of KSP, and it's not my place to tell you you're wrong... but it seems blatantly clear to me that if Squad hadn't done early access, here, KSP would have been a much worse product.  And there's a significant chance that it might not have achieved orbit in the first place.

So... if you think that early access is a bad thing for some reason... exactly what other strategy are you proposing?

 

2 hours ago, cfds said:

It is just a buzzword for "publish unfinished content and bank on people continue to pay in the hope for a complete game down the line".

Kinda scratching my head, here.  You're... unhappy, somehow?  You think they "did it wrong"?  You think KSP is a deceptive product, a switch-and-bait that doesn't deliver the value that meets its cost?

Tell me:

1. How much did you pay for KSP?
2. How much time have you spent playing and enjoying it?

I dunno about you, but in my case, the answers are "US $27" and "thousands of hours."  It's a spectacular win on the value-for-money scale, better than any other software product I've ever used.  I've spent $60 or more on big AAA titles from major industry players that I didn't play even a tenth as much as I've done KSP.

So, what exactly is your complaint?

Also, one other thing:

2 hours ago, cfds said:

unfinished content

...I hear this phrase a lot from people complaining about some aspect of KSP.  If there's something that bothers you, then of course that's your prerogative-- you like what you like, it's not my (or anybody else's) place to tell you what to want.

But what exactly do you mean by "unfinished"?

Folks who call KSP (or anything else) an "unfinished" product seem to just toss the phrase out there without explanation, as if it's universally understood 1. what that means, and 2. that everyone agrees with the assessment.  Which is far from the case.

• Do you mean "unfinished" as in "it's a crappy product"?  Because if that's what you mean, it's clear that most folks here would vehemently disagree with that-- otherwise, why do they keep playing.  Huge amount of play value for a tiny investment.
• Do you mean "unfinished" as in "it's not perfect"?  Well, sure, but by that measure, you've just described every software product that's ever existed, or will ever exist.  (Not least because it's physically impossible to be 'perfect' because different people want different things.)
• Do you mean "unfinished" as in "it doesn't have all the features that I want"?  Well, sure... but no two players are going to 100% agree on what features KSP should have.  Different people want different things.  In a lot of cases, people want diametrically opposite things.  That's true of any product, but it's especially true of a creative open-ended "sandbox" style game like KSP, that lets the player do whatever they want.

So it might be physically possible for a company to produce a product that you, personally, would consider "finished."  But I can guarantee you that someone else would disagree.  It would be physically impossible for them to satisfy everyone.  And packing more features in would have required raising the price, which I haven't been hearing you suggesting.

The only sane definition of "unfinished" that I can come up with is "doesn't deliver value for money."  And KSP is laughably far from that.  Heck, I started playing at version 0.23.5 when contracts and science and planetary biomes and decent aero and reentry heating and comms and a bunch of other stuff wasn't even a thing... and they could have sold it "as is" right then for US $27 and never touched it again, and I still would have gotten a whole lot more than US $27 use out of it.  Everything since then is just gravy, as far as I'm concerned.

So... what's your definition of "unfinished"?

 

2 hours ago, cfds said:

fix the still glaring holes in KSP like the "part balance" and the poor excuse of a career mode

Sorry, which supposed "holes" would these be?

Again, you seem to be assuming that your personal likes and dislikes are some sort of universally agreed-upon objective "fact," which is far from the case.

• There are people (such as yourself) who might not care for the part balance.  Then there are people (such as myself) who are perfectly happy with it and think that for the most part they've done a pretty good job.
• There are people (such as yourself) who think career mode is a joke.  And there are people (such as myself) who are pretty happy with it and spend all their time playing career mode.  (To be clear:  I don't think career mode is perfect.  There are additional features I'd like to see.  But spending time developing one thing means not spending it on something else.  And I've really liked all the features they've added, and am having trouble thinking of one that I'd like to see cut in order to have more career bells and whistles.)
• And on, and on, and on.

Find me one aspect of KSP that everyone (or, even, a provably large majority) of KSP players think it should have, hmm?  Because I sure can't think of one.  Oh, and while you're at it:  also include what existing feature you think should have been cut in order to enable it.  And the feature you're proposing to cut also needs to be one that everyone agrees on.

Is KSP perfect?  Of course not.

• For example:  As much as I've been raving about KSP here, there are things about it that I don't like, or that I wish they could do better.  For example, I think the "strategies" feature is a joke; it's completely useless to me, I think it doesn't live up to its potential, and beyond briefly playing with it when it first came out, I've never touched it since.  But I don't complain about it as a "hole", because there are plenty of other people who love the strategies because what they want out of KSP is not the same thing as what I want out of it.
• To take another example:  there are people who have been angrily demanding multiplayer pretty much ever since KSP has been a thing, and think it's a joke that we don't have it; but I have no desire whatsoever for such a feature, I've got about as much use for it as an elephant has for a skateboard, and if Squad did "waste" (from my perspective) lots of development cycles to add it, I'd be unhappy about that.

Every player is going to have things that they don't like about the game-- things that they think Squad did wrong, or left out.  But unless you can come up with something that's universally reviled, or universally acknowledged as "should be there and isn't", saying that there's a "hole" is just so much hot air.

Really, what it sounds to me is that you're saying, essentially, that "Squad made a bad judgment call in doing what they did, and they should have done something differently."  That's fine, as far as it goes, if you could cite any evidence or examples.  But you also seem to be basing that assertion on your personal, individual opinion, which is irrelevant.  What defines "right" or "wrong" for Squad's choices is what do most players want, and I haven't yet heard you give an example of a thing that meets that criterion.

Not saying Squad's perfect (they're not!), or that there isn't some feature that meets that criterion.  Just that I can't think of one off the top of my head, and I haven't heard you give any examples of one, thus far.  Got any actual examples?

 

2 hours ago, cfds said:

And I seriously doubt that the money earned with the DLC is used to ..., the money will be used to create the next DLC instead.

Well, there's no telling how the money flows without knowing the finances involved, which is especially true now that it's T2 and not Squad that owns KSP.  "This thing is used to finance that thing" can get a little fuzzy.  It may have worked that way when Squad was just a little indie company that only had one product and needed the income from that product to fund development on that product.  But T2's a lot bigger, it has much deeper pockets, and my guess would be that the finances don't work that way anymore.

I would assume that it's a simple question of profitability.  I would assume that it would work something like this:  T2 shells out X dollars to develop a DLC, then it sells and they earn Y dollars on it.  Then they see whether Y > X by enough dollars.  If it is, the reasonable conclusion would be "we've hit paydirt" and it would make sense to develop another DLC, and another.  Until the day that it stops being profitable, at which point they'd presumably conclude that the well has run dry and move on to something else.

I'm not privy to their finances, of course, but that's what I'd guess based on my experience in the business, at large and small companies.

 

2 hours ago, cfds said:

KSP was the first and last early access game that I bought and it taught me the valuable lesson that all you get for buying an unfinished product is an unfinished product...

Really?  Because the lesson that I learned was "if there's a cheap game that's incredibly fun to play, buy it".

Again:  1. how much did you spend, and 2. how many hours have you spent playing it?  Could you give us some numbers, so we can tell whether you have a serious point or whether you're just venting?  (And while you're at it:  if you think your answer for #2 isn't enough to justify what you shelled out, tell us how high the number would have to be for you to consider it a good deal?)

Because unless you find KSP to be such a dud that you just played it for a day or two and then put it down, I have trouble taking you seriously when you claim, in effect, that you got somehow ripped off.  I get that what you want is infinite perfect stuff for free, but it doesn't work that way, because math.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

@Snark did anyone ever tell you that "brevity is the soul of wit?"

Just kidding...but seriously. You spent about 5 pages worth of text deconstructing a one paragraph post!

How many keyboards do you go through in average day? 

Edited January 5, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[wumpus]

I think many of the posters are venting at the wrong people.  It took a bit of googling to even find the most recent (9 months ago) announcement on KSP DLC and then clicking around on it to get a current blog (at http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/ )to see that the DLC  was still being developed.  If you want us to buy the DLC, convince Squad to get it out the door.  That said, I have at least two views on DLC (at least as far as KSP is concerned):

Four years ago (when it was originally announced) releasing DLC would have been a mistake.  The game was in early access and needed to be completed (without cost) to those of us who bought the game.  Once it achieved 1.0 status (maybe 1.0.5 thanks to various bugs) this was no longer an issue.

Selling the planned DLC (now, or at least once it is released) makes all kinds of sense.  While theoretically there may exist more KSP buyers who would happily buy the game if only it had the polish of an AAA game, most gamers aren't willing to learn rocket science to play a game.  The current batch of KSP players are needed to finance this game and DLC is an ideal way to increase sales (hopefully including a bundle of KSP+DLC at a savings for players who haven't discovered KSP).

But you can't complain about people not buying a game that isn't for sale.

[Mako]

@Snark

Regarding @cfds's post which you broke down so nicely:

I believe they were stating their opinion about the benefit of Early Access to the consumer. While I agree with your breakdown of the business side of things, I have to admit I share cfds' feelings about ongoing development. I'm starting to miss the days when a game was just done and didn't keep changing forever. I felt like I could play a complete thing and move on. I realize this is specific to how I feel and what I want, so I'm now less interested in buying a game that is in continuing development. To be fair, KSP is not the game that has soured me on EA or continued development, but it hasn't helped my opinion either.

That being said, I appreciate that plenty of others users enjoy this style of release/development, and I totally understand the merits from a developers standpoint. I'm just finding it's not for me as a customer, and I believe that's what cfds was trying to say as well.

[AngrybobH]

My only concern with the DLC is my mods will probably be broken so I'll have to wait for mod development to catch up before I can really play with it. A paid DLC is exactly what KSP needs to inject some cash into it. Cost is not a concern at all when you consider the $ over time in game.

[pandaman]

As said above, DLC is one way of getting current players to buy something else and therefore raise extra revenue to keep paying the bills and the project alive.

This extra revenue can finance the continuous development which (although it causes the odd tantrum by breaking mods and not having a 'definitive' version that won't change) improves the base game over time (forthcoming v1.4 etc) at no extra financial cost to the current players.  And, if the DLC is successful enough, more will most likely follow adding more additional content that expand on the base game beyond the scope of the updates.

To me this is better than an alternative scenario where we have to pay again for each and every version update. 

As more updates are released I (presumably along with the vast majority of players) will download and use them for free.  As more DLC is released those who it appeals to will buy it and those who don't want it won't.  This means it is vital that the DLC is of sufficient quality and value if Squad want people to buy it.  This way I think we all win, we players get good quality new toys, both in the form of new free updates and DLC, and Squad get to carry on as a viable business.

[Snark]

5 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

You spent about 5 pages worth of text deconstructing a one paragraph post!

Sure, but that particular post is far from alone-- I see that general type of observation / complaint quite often, scattered around various threads from time to time, so I thought it was worth a dose of perspective.

And I figure if folks aren't interested they can scroll right past, no harm done. 

3 hours ago, Mako said:

I have to admit I share cfds' feelings about ongoing development. I'm starting to miss the days when a game was just done and didn't keep changing forever.

Fair 'nuff, but I'm confused and would love to understand your viewpoint better.  If you don't like the game changing, just pick a version you like and don't update anymore, yes?

3 hours ago, AngrybobH said:

My only concern with the DLC is my mods will probably be broken so I'll have to wait for mod development to catch up before I can really play with it.

My guess would be that from the standpoint of mod compatibility, it's not the DLC release that's particularly relevant, but the KSP 1.4 release.  (I'm assuming that Making History will require KSP 1.4 to run... don't actually know that that's been established, but it seems like a reasonable guess.)

From your perspective, it amounts to about the same thing, I suppose (i.e. "I want to play with the DLC" = "I have to have KSP 1.4" = "I have to wait for mods to catch up").  The somewhat-good news, though (assuming that I'm correct, here), is that since mod authors will need to update for anyone to use their mods, not just Making History purchasers, that gives them an incentive to update promptly.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

23 minutes ago, Snark said:

Fair 'nuff, but I'm confused and would love to understand your viewpoint better.  If you don't like the game changing, just pick a version you like and don't update anymore, yes?

I think more-so what he's driving at, is that games used to be a more "complete" package when you purchased them. Since they were physical hard copies, and there was no infrastructure to patch or update; they had to be complete and almost 100% bug free from step 1. When you went to the store and spent 40 or 60 dollars on a game, you could be relatively sure it was complete and finished. Not really so anymore.

There is also the argument of a game's defined rules being somewhat sacred, and if they are always changing...it takes away from the purity of the "game" a bit. Ie. You wouldn't "update" chess. It's perfect as it is, no need for a DLC to add a new piece, or to sell players different "boards" to play on piece meal. It's simple and elegant; a classic. Embellishment in this case would be desecration.

Personally I can see the appeal of both approaches. I enjoy growing with an indie game as it grows, and being part of a community of interested people, but I also miss the simplicity of just buying a game that was finished. (A rare commodity these days.)

Edited January 5, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket