From the business aspect of gaming, I think 2009 was one of the most important, because of the expansion and diversification of the distribution of gaming software content.   Nearly every publisher posted losses during the calendar year, and much of these losses are associated with the risk/reward of long development cycles of games.  The typical new IP takes 3 years to develop and publish, and quite a few have even longer publishing frames.  This is why the events of 2009 were so important to gaming from the business aspect.  Looking at the VG Awards this year, the addition of best downloadable content speaks to the growing importance of this avenue of revenue for developers and publishers, and why it makes so much sense.  Some important factors are:

Cost - Games are made to make money, and looking at the escalating cost of game development, the risk of failure becomes more and more pronounced if it isn’t managed.  What this means is that there is less of an appetite by these guys to take chances and make huge investments into new IP.  For example, looking at this year’s VGA…only one candidate is a new IP, and THAT game now has a sequel, so developers have to be conscious of this in there crafting on new IP. 

Timing – This is another important aspect, since this is analogous to blockbuster movies, where summer flicks rule the Box office dollars, but there are other “dead spaces” to slot a game’s launch.  In gaming, the window is the holiday season, since most consumers are going to be looking for gifts.

Marketing – Poor marketing strategies will weaken; if not totally kill a project, not more to say about that.

So, of course there are other important factors like quality, appeal, etc. but I think a lot of them can be tied/linked to the one’s listed above.  2009 saw a significant rise of DLC/DLC-like releases that many publishers are probably going to be looking at in the future to heal bring revenue and profits back into the black in coming years. 

Normally, a standard game sees the development team working to the wire to get the product in a releasable condition.  There are always things that won’t make the final cut and would normal have to be planned into the sequel, but that scheme drastically changed in 2009.  Specifically, this happened with Broken Steel, GTA DLCs and Halo ODST in 2009.  There were a lot of DLC in 2009, and there has been major DLC in the past, ie… . Oblivion’s Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles, but given the financial realities of 2009, I think the ROI of DLC has really illustrated its value in 2009. 

Fallout 3 was a very good game, and personally, I wasn’t thrilled with the original ending, but what Broken Steel illustrated what that if a game is well crafted, you can expand the experience, and imho, it in no way detracts from the original storytelling…contrast that with Mass Effect and you can see the difference.   Developers who utilize DLC correctly add significant value to the IP, since they allow fans to continue the experience as we await the next full experience. 

If a developer correctly plans its DLC, they basically provide a revenue stream to support the development of a proper sequel that delivers a marked improvement in the sequel, ala Gears of War to Gear of War 2, or even more brilliantly as the case is with Uncharted to Uncharted 2.  The latter just well deserved win of GOTY, based on what I’ve heard about the game.  A proper DLC strategy really promotes better game development, since the while the core team is working on taking the IP a notch up for the full sequel, the rest of the labor force can work on getting some quality DLC out of the door.  There is risk involved, since you don’t want to perception of horse armor, or people feeling jilted at instead of getting the other DLC of Deliberately Left-out Content, rather than Downloadable Content. 

This is kind of why I mentioned GTA…in the past, these would have been termed expansion, but they are instead high profile DLCs.  The Timing and Cost really factor into this, since when you look at GTA, the game released last spring, and these 2 DLCs have really extended the lifespan of the game.  I’ve been playing Gay Tony, and the episodic nature of the game is really pronounced in relation to the original game.  Imho, the standalone DLC was perfectly priced and marketed…sure it didn’t have a top billing launch/success of the original game, I’ll be willing to wager that from an ROI perspective, these DLC have delivered results comparable, if not higher than the original launch.   

Lastly, you got ODST and to a lesser degree L4D2, which were full launches, but some wondered if they needed to be priced as such.  From the business standpoint, the appropriate price is what the market will bear, so while these games were launched as full priced titles, a lot of NA retailers had instant rebates and other mechanisms to reduce the cost to $49.99.  I read an article that basically, ODST was born out of Bungie having the team working on the defunct Chronicles projects sitting around, without a project, and they got the game out in 14-18 months.  Looking forward, with Hal Reach on the way, and more Left for Dead content, it’s obvious that have a programmed episodic content at a reasonable cost can really deliver positive results.  You’re able to keep teams employed on profit generating endeavors, while pushing along the development of a new game. 

Looking forward in 2010, there are so many options for games to output 6-10 hours DLC content to keep players enjoying the games that they invested so many hours in.  I’ve played 3 out of the 5 DLCs for Fallout 3, and I’ve really enjoyed all of them, with Broken Steel really setting a new bar on what you can do with this new option.  Anyway, just some thoughts on how some developers/publisher can get healthy again.