I promise you that
nothing was "CUT" from the full game of Impire for any nefarious or dubious reason. The game you get if you buy the release of Impire today contains exactly what was intended from the beginning (and what was possible with the budget and timeframe of the project). The only concession that has been made is that of multiplayer which we are releasing in a beta-state. (We figured that since Impire is mainly focused on single player you would rather be playing it sooner than later and that instead of holding back the whole game or just patching in MP later, your wishlist ideas and feedback is invaluable for us in trying to give you the best experience possible. And while I can't
promise a fully-fledged skirmish AI, the team IS looking into ideas on how to implement some kind of solo-play skirmish functionality in the future.)
In regards to "Day-1 DLC" (and I'm not speaking of Impire specifically or for
every game project out there, but
games in general), after a game "goes gold" (but before it gets released), a team will, if they are not reassigned to a completely new project, focus on post-release polish (in case new bugs are discovered), small DLC packs or larger expansions for the base game. This holds true for programmers, artists and designers alike. Extra content, whether they are smaller DLC packs or larger expansions have budgets and project plans of their own and are not scoped into the base game, thus cannot be automatically included "for free" as if they were because their development needs to be sustainable-
the people making them need to pay the rent even after GM.
Where do we draw the line at how much content to include in a game-? What if day-1 DLC wasn't released immediately, but included in a larger expansion pack to be released several months later? It would still be finished early and you would still be paying for it- just in a larger chunk later down the line. So why not release it early if it works better for the game? Extra content that is given away "free" comes with a cost to the budget of a project- sometimes it can be done (to give something back, as a gesture of goodwill or for whatever reason) and sometimes it can't. I can't speak for the
entire industry of course, but here at least, we try to be as transparent as we can instead of dealing in greedy shenanigans.
Speaking specifically about Impire-There's no cliffhanger ending you have to pay more to see the rest of, there's no pay-to-skip-grinding or things like that. It's all there as one cohesive experience.
Oh, and you will definitely start seeing reviews soon. I'm looking forward to hearing what people have to say about the finished game!
Now if you'll excuse me I see a couple of guys in black suits and sunglasses looking intently in my direction... I think "someone" ou there in the matrix may not be too happy about me revealing stuff about how the industry works and is sending his minions to shut me up! Oh, crap they're coming over...!
Help!
