Comments on: New Blizzard Add-On Policy

By: Monday Morning Followups @ Imaginary Cogs

Monday Morning Followups @ Imaginary Cogs — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:12:27 +0000

[...] completely different news, two other people came up with my clever addon/plugin App Store idea, except they both thought it was an April Fool’s joke. [...]

By: Bryant

Bryant — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:17:20 +0000

It definitely complicates matters, but I don’t think it makes them impossible. Apple’s navigated those waters successfully for a while in the OS space. They haven’t yet been faced with that problem on the iPhone, but at some point they’re going to want to incorporate iPhone app functionality into the base OS, and I think they’ll just do it.

It’s sort of a long-term revenue question vs. a short-term revenue question. Do you go for the immediate dollar, or do you try and improve your base functionality such that acquisition and retention is easier? Good companies go for the latter.

Oh, and I should note that making those addons easier to access for casual players is right on target for Blizzard’s current design goals. Which are smart goals for most developers. (Not always; there is a niche market for the more hardcore games.)

By: Chris K

Chris K — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:16:54 +0000

I think it complicates matters that addons can improve the UI of the game in ways that Blizzard might incorporate directly into the game. The ground has been pretty thoroughly tilled at this point, so I don’t imagine we’re due for a change as fundamental as auto-loot, but Blizzard winds up in a tough position when it costs $x extra to play the game with a better UI design, and now Blizzard, the addon authors, and the addon purchasers all have a reason to keep that functionality out of the main client.

That said, I’d pay $10 for an annotated, expanded ignore list, easily.