Ritual License Steam and Source for SiN 2

Kangy

Kangy

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Ritual, a developer with strong ties to Valve Software previously (they created Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes and ran a version of Impossible Creatures on Steam in 2002) have further cemented their ties by releasing SiN 2 exclusively over Steam.
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[br]According to this article at CVG, Ritual are set to release SiN 2 episodically over Valve Software's Steam online distribution system, in several episodes, lasting roughly 6 hours each. One episode is set to cost $20 each, and will not be available in any retail store. The first episode is expected this winter.
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[br]The game has been developed on a tweaked version of the Source engine used in Half-Life 2. Publishing their product over Steam allows developers to break free of the hold that some perceive the major publishers to have over development studios.
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[br]An advergaming site has sprung up to raise interest in SiN 2, called Legion Pharma. Investigating the site has led to music clips, movies and concept art.
 
20 dollars for 6 hours of play, sheesh
 
Atomi said:
20 dollars for 6 hours of play, sheesh
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$20 for 6 hours works out to being $3.33 per gameplay hour. When you consider that you will get about 12 hours from most FPS games nowadays that cost $50 and that works out to $4.17 per gameplay hour, it's more economical for the consumer.
 
Half-Life 2: 15 hours, price: $50 (or was it $60?)
Three Sin 2 episodes: 18 hours, price: $60
 
uuuh did you check out the links? Is this a joke? I feel like it is since the deleted scenes are a joke (quality-wise anyway). and it seems pretty rediculously expensive.
 
Vlave's plot to take over the world with steam has started. They plan to take over the world in 2006, but with the delays and shit the world will be theirs in 2008.
 
OMFG YES!
i love sin, this is going to be ****ing sweet.
:cheers:
 
this actually kicks ass!, cant wait to check it out... but 20 bucks for 6hrs.. why cant we just buy a full retail game??
 
the website looks like one of those non-standard advertising campaigns oh and type in doom as a keyword and and article pops up
 
If you check the alternate text on the 'Our products' link, it says 'Its not what you think' :O
 
deleted scenes was so, so, so, very, very, very bad... Im not really looking forward to this lol
 
Deleted Scenes was a lot better than people gave it credit for IMHO.
 
While deleted scenes was pretty pathetic, even for ye olde modified quake-engine, this might actually turn out good. 20 bucks for approx. 6hours of gameplay is steep, especially since developers tend to blow up those figures slightly, but on the other hand that kind of potential cashflow might be exactly what ritual needs to crank out an AAA-game. For me, personally, steam is the perfect delivery-platform and USD20 is rather affordable if the game is indeed AAA.

To sum it up: Sin2 just made it onto my top10-wanted-games-list. If it has the quality I desire (which titles like project snowblind, republic commando, and area 51 does not) I will most certainly buy it.

If this means more money for jolt and proteinbars to the codeslaves@Valve then Yay for that!

.bog.
 
If it's using a source engine that hasn't been customised much then I won't be buying. I'm tired of all this stuttering crap. All they need to do is change the way the files are stored to get rid of it, get everything out of those damn .gcf files.

I'll wait for a demo.
 
Licensing Source? Great! Licensing Steam? There goes my interest. :(

I also hate that new form of advertising: Make the customer work for table scraps of information. Screw that. Entertain me or look elsewhere for business. :p
 
StardogChampion said:
If it's using a source engine that hasn't been customised much then I won't be buying. I'm tired of all this stuttering crap. All they need to do is change the way the files are stored to get rid of it, get everything out of those damn .gcf files.
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If your hard drive is going while you stutter, it's because things are being read from the pagefile. Turn on +showbudget and you'll see absolutely no cache file accessing at all.
 
I need some real media. I have no idea what this game is about. Is it a fps? What was the 1st part about?
 
Bah predictions were that developers bringing their products online would made it cheaper because there was no middle man what also toom profit.

But it looks they just want that share themselves, and now they have the taste of big bucks they want even more?

No thanks I rather spend my 20$ on a MMO then, you get alot more in return there :)
 
SINteresting stuff. Oooo I made a pun. Now it's time for all of you to laugh. Heartily.
 
The original SiN was an FPS that put players in the shoes of a badass cop, who was always kept up-to-date with crucial info by some tech guy back at base (think Jamie from Deus Ex). At its core, it was a simple run-and-gun game however the other new features in it, as well as the character development of the plot were big positives.

The basic plot had the player following up on a seemingly innocuous bank hiest, which eventually lead to some evil corporation which was doing all sorts of inhumane mutating experiments, and it was down to you to sort it all out. It was actually a pretty good game, with a lot of innovative features that were ahead of its time (such as giving the player a turret on the side of a moving helicopter to blow the crap out of enemys, complete with exploding scenery such as cars, plants etc, and interactive computer terminals that were actually shown on a virtual screen. Sort of like the ones in Doom 3 but not quite as slick.) These features were present well before I saw them appearing in other FPS's. There was also some stealth missions whereby you couldnt let the alarm get set off, IIRC.

Unfortunatly the game was released almost simultaniously with the original Half-Life, and due to it being rushed out of the door by the publisher, had a fair few bugs and went largely unnoticed. Having said that, I'm looking forward to SiN 2, or SiN Episodes as it is apparently officially called.

Here's a picture of the cover of the next PCG, showing some concept art http://photos19.flickr.com/23534570_e323ab0b1c_o.jpg
and here's some screens of the original sin (keep in mind this was released about the same time as Half-Life)
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/sin/screenshots.html
 
I could get 6 hours of fun for FREE by going to the pool or pay $50 for HL2 with an undefined play time. And it doesn't look that great, hell, I haven't even seen ANY media for this whatsoever, and I have no idea what SiN is or what the hell this news post is even about. But yeah, if they say $20 for 6 hours, no thanks. $20 bucks could get me a couple porn mags.
 
You can't think that "HL2 with 15 hours of play for $60". You got along CS:S and later HL2dm which add a lot more to the package. $20 for a level seems quite steep to me. That's 16 something euros and I think it's much. Damn, I bought Deus Ex for 60 bucks, and it's long as hell.
 
I think you're all comparing it wrong.

Let's say there's three episodes. That means it'd be around the same price of the average game. That means there'd be 18 hours of game play for the same price as an average game. The average game doesn't have 18 hours of gameplay. It often has much less.

Plus, if you add in the bonus that if you don't like the first episode then you've just saved yourself 2/3s the price of an average game then you're on to a pretty good deal.
 
I bet it hit's retail at some point, and only then would I bother getting it probably. Not too easy if I don't have a credit card. But yeah, I'm sure after it's all coompleted we may see a retail release. Sin 1 was pretty cool but, I never got it but played the demo to death.
 
Half-Life alone with CS:S is 50$, so don't compare with the silver package. If you do, then your comparing the hours of HL2, HL, OP4, and CZ.

And seeing as how there is no publisher, the game SHOULD be cheaper than a normal game. When I see reviews for this game, and not by a PC mag, but by the community, I'll make my decision. But, I don't like the idea of 20$ an episode, with no replay value (for all I know). HL2 had CS:S, even if you don't like it, it still has replay value. You can buy a game for 20 dollars, so what if it's not new, it's better than 6 hours. I also don't like the idea of prices probably never going down. IMO
 
Personally, i think this is a good idea. A episodic format with the option for paying for each would benefit those who don't like to get ripped by buying a full priced game only to find the game mediocre(doom3). It would encourage developers to focus on better gameplay and plot so as to hook the consumer into buying more episodes rather then the taking 50$ from the player and letting him see if he got ripped or not.
 
Chris_D said:
Deleted Scenes was a lot better than people gave it credit for IMHO.
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Deleted Scenes was bad. Laughably bad. Poor gameplay, uninspired and bland level design.
 
WritingARequiem said:
Half-Life alone with CS:S is 50$, so don't compare with the silver package. If you do, then your comparing the hours of HL2, HL, OP4, and CZ.

And seeing as how there is no publisher, the game SHOULD be cheaper than a normal game. When I see reviews for this game, and not by a PC mag, but by the community, I'll make my decision. But, I don't like the idea of 20$ an episode, with no replay value (for all I know). HL2 had CS:S, even if you don't like it, it still has replay value. You can buy a game for 20 dollars, so what if it's not new, it's better than 6 hours. I also don't like the idea of prices probably never going down. IMO
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whos to say it wont include multiplayer? Sin had multiplayer and for a while it was quite popular. It wasnt a Quake 2 killer but people played it thats for sure.

I don't however like the idea of chapters, I mean 6 hrs can be done in one sitting, I don't wana have to wait another month or so to continue the story. Anyway, I still think theres a good chance it'll find it's way into stores, the problem with them doing it over steam is they are only going to hit the people that play valvue games, maybe a select few others. People who hate steam (lets be frank, thats a huge number of people) and people who havent touched a valvue game (and thus dont have steam) may never touch this game based on the steam only decision. Furthermore they limit their ability to sell this to people that buy games on the spot and dont read reviews, many will never know this game is even out regardless of how good it is.

A bad move if you ask me. (and its not like its any cheaper anyway, so there goes the no1 advantage of steam down the loo)
 
And seeing as how there is no publisher, the game SHOULD be cheaper than a normal game.
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Going episodic is hard and dangerous. Going episodic first...

You'll probably be able to get each episode cheap once the next is released.
 
I don't think they are selling over steam because they think it is better that way. I think they are selling over steam because it will be better that way in the future. If every developer thought like the majority of posts on here (And lets be honest, most do), then games would still come on floppy disk.

With all new systems, there will be kinks and problems, and the only way to get them is to do it anyway and fix the problems as you can see them. It is worth it for the possibility of having any game you want at your fingertips in seconds when every game is realeased via steam or similar CDS's.
 
Kangy said:
Ritual, a developer with strong ties to Valve Software previously (they created Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes and ran a version of Impossible Creatures on Steam in 2002) have further cemented their ties by releasing SiN 2 exclusively over Steam.
Click to expand...
Impossible Creatures (formally Sigma: the adventures of Rex Chance) was developed by Relic, creators of Homeworld and not Ritual.

I must say, the Steam / Source release of Sin2 has elevated my interest far above the "how the hell cares" of a week ago. Released Episodically, I can now try the first set of chapters to a sequel to a game that I played the demo of and didn't particuarly like. I think Steam was made for this kind of buisness model...
 
Hehe, that'll teach them to copy from my EA posts. :p
 
Link said:
I don't think they are selling over steam because they think it is better that way. I think they are selling over steam because it will be better that way in the future. If every developer thought like the majority of posts on here (And lets be honest, most do), then games would still come on floppy disk.

With all new systems, there will be kinks and problems, and the only way to get them is to do it anyway and fix the problems as you can see them. It is worth it for the possibility of having any game you want at your fingertips in seconds when every game is realeased via steam or similar CDS's.
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But jumping into things too quick can sometimes be a disarster. Imagine if say for longhorn they decided to make it x64 only. How many people would buy it then unless they were getting a new system. I'm not totally against doing this online, but instore purchasing does exist for a very good reason and they are pitching it at a price which discredits the arguement put out by several developers that bypassing the distributer will result in cheaper games for the consumer. Infact I'd wager games in stores are cheaper as they are competing with other stores, games will go on sale and the like. I got guild wars 20% off 1st week due to an EB sale. If they are selling only via steam then who will they compete with for prices?

It may be the future but it wont help them today, and retail stores aren't going to stop selling games anytime soon. Dont forget alot of people still have dialup, maybe not in the US but not everyone lives there.
 
Smigit said:
But jumping into things too quick can sometimes be a disarster. Imagine if say for longhorn they decided to make it x64 only. How many people would buy it then unless they were getting a new system. I'm not totally against doing this online, but instore purchasing does exist for a very good reason and they are pitching it at a price which discredits the arguement put out by several developers that bypassing the distributer will result in cheaper games for the consumer. Infact I'd wager games in stores are cheaper as they are competing with other stores, games will go on sale and the like. I got guild wars 20% off 1st week due to an EB sale. If they are selling only via steam then who will they compete with for prices?

It may be the future but it wont help them today, and retail stores aren't going to stop selling games anytime soon. Dont forget alot of people still have dialup, maybe not in the US but not everyone lives there.
Click to expand...

I don't for a start. I take your point, however, I am assuming that digital delivery will mean that any given game (In the future) will be available from more than one system. What I expect to see is various companys doing steam like systems, and game developers selling through more than one of them, giving the competetive edge that drives prices down.

And yes, many people still do not have dsl, but eventually you will not be able to get a "less-than-dsl" connection. I consider this to be a major factor in my vision where digital content delivery is the standard.

I don't think we are near to a time when this business model will be the best, but unless someone takes the first steps, its going to be never.

btw, my view on all this is, I admit, biased by the fact that I prefer to buy games digitally than go down the shop to get them. I loved the way HL2 was avalible instantly and I look forward to the day when all games can be bought this way.
 
I haven't played SIN in a long time...I do remember the beta was very popular at the time(1997-98'ish). There was a level created that has been copied many times since, it was a map called dm_behindzebookcase or something, very similar to cs_rats or spinoffs like that but at the time no one had ever thought about making characters 4 inches tall in a den or kitchen..there was also other deathmathc maps where there was a serum or something that would turn you into a raging creature 10 feet tall or something. I enjoyed the multiplayer more than the single player game, it did go largely unnoticed as Half Life was released shortly after it came out..interesting read though, I'll be looking for more info
 
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