Many thanks, RCIX (and everyone else who has commented on his OP)! I really appreciate it, and am glad to see we make such a difference. I've added your blurb to our
press and player reactions page.
I would make note that we won't necessarily be doing a ton of (free or paid) DLC, or any expansions, for every game we make. We'll always have excellent support for all our games, of course, but AI War is particularly special in how it continues to grow so much over time. I think that's basically more a factor of what a good strategy game needs to do in order to really develop into something beyond the basics, but I don't feel like that level of ongoing growth makes sense for every genre.
Take Tidalis for example: we're packing a ton of features into that, and we'll be valuing player feedback and such during the initial creation process, but then once it's done that's pretty much it: it's done. If there are bugs we will fix those and release updates, and it's possible we might add a couple of major (free) features later in the life of that game if we don't have a good matchmaking service at launch, etc, but overall it's not going to be seeing continual content updates from us. There's just no way we could manage that without adding a new staff member for every game we put out, and that's just not feasible (and, again, I'm not sure how much enthusiasm there really would be for ongoing content additions with a puzzle game, even a really good one). On the flip side, though, our theme editor, adventure mode map editor, and puzzle/level editors will all be public with Tidalis. So player-created content will be able to flourish there in a more traditional way compared to how we get player involvement with AI War.
With AI War we'll never do a sequel, I've said as much many times, because then you lose all the past content. That remains true, and will likely be true for any other strategy games we might do in the future. Again, it's a genre thing. For a lot of other genres, I feel like often sequels are more appropriate than expansions, but that will depend on the title and what players want at the time, etc. I consider the likelihood of an expansion to Tidalis as very low at present, but if it's popular I expect it could see a sequel or two down the line. Lars (Fiskbit) has all the sequel rights, so either Arcen will negotiate those with him, or he'll develop out something independently; just depends. That's his IP as far as the game mechanics go, anyway, so that's in the end his decision; Arcen just owns the specific code for this implementation of the game, the art and music for this version, rights to sell this version on the PC, etc.
When it comes to Alden Ridge and A Valley Without Wind, those will also have level editors so that players can make custom content, including custom storylines and entire adventures. The same tools we use to make the game will be available with those, to really encourage player-created content (something I'm very much in favor of, for many genres, just not as much for strategy units because of the specific balancing requirements, etc). Anyway, those two games are also ones that I consider unlikely to see expansions, and unlikely to have much in the way of DLC aside from bugfixes after initial release, but they have a great potential to see sequels down the line. We'll just see.
So, anyway, just don't get mad if every game we put out isn't having the crazy amount of DLC that AI War does. It needs that because of the nature of the game and the genre that it is specifically in. Other titles will largely rely more on player-created content for if you want more of those given games prior to a (possible) sequel or expansion, but we'll of course keep up the support and bugfixes to the same level as with AI War. Given that those games won't be changing so much in terms of code, I expect that ongoing bugfix load will quickly taper off. That's the nice thing about making games that are a discrete, defined unit, unlike AI War.
Anyway, just my notes to make sure there are no nasty surprises later.
