STACK #160 Feb 2018

GAMES FEATURE

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DROPP

DLC Video games are no longer a one-off purchase. Words Alesha Kolbe

good - and profitable - fit post-release? In the case of Ghost Recon devs Ubisoft, it's standard practice to plan in

along the way, both in terms of content and features.” If you ask a different company – say World of Warcraft and Overwatch developers, Blizzard – they’d be inclined to agree. “There is a maxim in the industry that game development is the art of fitting 10 pounds of great ideas into a five pound bag,” offers Travis Day, senior producer at Blizzard Entertainment. “Suffice to say, there’s no shortage of ideas. The process of determining what goes ‘in the bag’ begins way in advance, which can mean months or years, depending on the scope of the idea. It’s a very organic process.” He goes on to elaborate on how everything actually comes together. “Once an idea is greenlit and actual implementation begins, we go through a tremendous amount of iteration throughout the development process. This high level of iteration and refinement, from the initial idea to the final delivered feature or piece of content,

advance. “DLC content is planned way ahead of the main game’s launch”, Benjamin Dumaz, content director on Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands’ Fallen Ghosts and Narco Road DLC releases tells us. “Production usually starts at least one year before. We see DLC as a way to propose something fresh, something that will renew the players’ interest, and we invest a lot of resources in designing and building content that will be worth its price, both in terms of quality and quantity.” For Narco Road and Fallen

Overwatch

L ong gone are the days when you’d run down to the local store after school to pick up a copy of the latest game, run home, chuck it in the console, and play it 'til you fell asleep on the couch. Now,

Ghosts , Dumaz says the two packs were designed and built at Ubisoft Montpellier. “We worked closely with the team from the lead studio in Paris in order to make sure we remained consistent with the game’s promises, through

...game development is the art of fitting 10 pounds of great ideas into a five pound bag...

T r a v i s D a y

is one of the hallmarks of [Blizzard’s] creative process and something we strongly believe is important to delivering epic entertainment experiences.” Day emphasises that

you’ve usually got to wait for a ‘day one patch’ to download, and then you’re permanently connected to the net during your experience. If there's a problem with the game, where once it was ‘too bad’, now the devs can push out patches that’ll fix anything. Multiplayer servers are constantly under maintenance, and new maps, weapons and other content is being dropped all the time; some of it paid, some of it free. The paid variety is usually larger, more substantial drops of content, sometimes even fully-fledged DLC packs. For example, last year saw the release of Horizon Zero Dawn in March. The developer, Guerrilla Games, followed this with The Frozen Wilds DLC in November, an extensive expansion that delivers tens of hours of fresh gameplay. But is this DLC premeditated, or is it a new idea that is think-tanked by the dev team as a

frequent workshops and internal reviews. We had great discussions with Sam Strachman, narrative director from the

there are a number of different elements and teams that come into play when beginning to create

the content. "At the highest level, the World of Warcraft dev team is comprised of five departments: Art, Design, Engineering, Audio, and Production. All our sub teams fall into one of those major categories. Our partner teams within Blizzard Entertainment are also essential to the creation of any expansion pack or patch and help make World of Warcraft possible. “Expansions are a large undertaking involving all of the World of Warcraft development team, and our partner teams across Blizzard," he continues. "While not all of them may be

main game, to be able to capture this feeling of authenticity for the missions while creating new and different characters. We also worked closely with the open world team to place the new locations and mission settings in the best places possible in order to be authentic and consistent with the main game world.” Ubisoft’s Dumaz also notes that community feedback is key to the development of DLC. “We use many sources for feedback – and, of course, community feedback is a great source of inspiration. Many adjustments are made

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FEBRUARY 2018

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