Fracturing communities

I have mentioned stacking boxes before. One big pitfall in this though is the fracturing of communities, which I haven't touched really. Still not sure why I didn't but here it goes.

Addon packs, DLC, and anything else of that ilk, which make it only possible for a fraction of your playerbase to enjoy a certain content with one another (not talking single player content) will fracture your playerbase. No brainer, right?

Let's look at a general multiplayer game, such as Battlefield 3. The first pack is Back to Karkand, which coincidentally was given for free to everyone who preordered the main game. Those buying it later, not getting the pack had to shell out additional cash. Some will not. Just like that, you already have two different groups, the one only having the core package and those having the core and the expansion. Fracture started.

Now ok, Battlefield, there it's not so dramatic. For various reasons, but it's a lot more visible on the developers side when we go for MMO's.

Where the story becomes the game

A particular genre of "games" has thankfully died a long time ago, that of the interactive movie. Imagine a game where you mostly just watch things and occasionally do a couple of things to get more of the story, though that doing part is maybe one percent of the overall experience.

"Wait", the clever reader says, "that sounds like games today, but with less doing things" and you are right of course. Essentially we have come down to sports games (including just driving around), sandbox games (mmo and non mmo) and then comes what is essentially the furtherance of a simple scroller game. Especially that last one adheres to the principle of going from point A to C by passing point B. No way around it. Although you have elements of sandboxes in many MMO's but really, if you look closely at it, things like WOW and SWTOR are heavy based on the quests you have to do in a pretty predefined order (to experience the story).

So, now that is the big selling point, the story.