Extending A Game’s Life- Do DLCs and Free Updates Work?

How long would a lifespan of a game last?

In the early days of gaming, games are difficult by design due to their arcade heritage- where its business model is to ensure people keep coming back and put in more coins to progress, or the game designers have become terribly good with their own creation which made them to up the difficulty. Its rare for somebody to beat the game, a true test of skill.

Or maybe it was cheat codes.

Anyway, as time progresses, a shift of game design happened as games are designed for more players being able to see all the content offer. Nowadays, most games are beatable by the average gamer, some for a good 20-30 hours, some even in just one sitting.

The question of today is how do games present themselves to be valuable longer than just a playthrough? What if developers can provide more content than just what is in the disk?

On that point, let’s discuss about extending a game’s life.

Guitar Hero Live Might Live As Long As Ever

There’s a new Guitar Hero announced, as expected by the rumour mills. In case you’re not familiar, Guitar Hero is the music game that has once a phenomenon across the world. Along with its rival Rock Band (which shares a history- both series was started by developer Harmonix), everyone was into playing plastic instruments. It’s easy to pick up and play, anyone, even non-gamers, could easily join in. It was the go-to party game, the new karaoke.

Both series grows in popularity with each new iteration of their games, until they reached the plateau by the end of 2010. The popularity was a fad, and it fizzled out quickly afterwards.

Now,it is official that Guitar Hero is announced, as well as a new Rock Band announced earlier, plastic instruments are coming back.

But first, watch the trailer.

In case you cannot watch it, let me explain why I think the new game is doing something clever.