Out of the Box Issue 153

Cate Archer deserved better.
The groovy spy babe from the Age of Aquarius seems to have died a quiet death with the retail failure of last winter’s No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way. While you’ll have noticed from this month’s cover story that a stand-alone expansion/prequel is on the way this fall, it replaces our paisley-clad secret agent with a guy and changes the focus to more traditional shooter action. If Contract JACK is successful, will Cate only live twice? While both the latest game and its predecessor had problems—emphasizing the Lara Croft x-factor in a first-person game where you only got to see the heroine’s charms in cutscenes and reflections was a little annoying, as was the overly quirky storyline—they should have received a better fate at the cash register. Monolith gave us real character and fantastic innovations with gameplay mechanics, to which anyone who employed the banana peel in a tight spot would attest.
What’s really frustrating about this situation is that NOLF 2 wasn’t given a chance to catch on with gamers. One of the most important facets of a shooter is mod support, but Monolith and its publishers at Vivendi Universal chose to ignore this community for months. Although the game arrived at the end of last September, deathmatch play wasn’t added until the version 1.2 update, posted at the end of November. Further official mods were held back until mid-March, when version 1.3 debuted with bug fixes and the Team Deathmatch and Doomsday modes of play. The Editing and Source Code Tool Kit didn’t see the light of day until early May, by which point the game in question had been dumped into the bargain bin.
It’s great that all these add-ons and editing toys will be available right away for those who buy the prequel, but this whole thing was handled poorly. If you’re going to make mod support a selling feature, you’ve got to get tools available as soon as the game hits stores, or sooner. Recent examples prove that waiting isn’t a good policy. EA Sports turned up the thermostat for FIFA 2003 by releasing the Creation Center editor before the game was published last fall, a strategy that allowed modders to have new league and player files online before anyone even got the chance to rip off the shrinkwrap. Relic Entertainment jumped the gun on the Impossible Creatures launch by unveiling the Relic Developer’s Network, an online resource designed to assist mod developers, and the IC Tools editor. Even Atari, which somehow managed to downgrade Unreal II: The Awakening from one of the biggest blockbuster sequels of the past few years into a pipsqueak that couldn’t compete on the charts with Backyard Baseball, got the mod thing right. The game might not have contained any multiplayer options, but at least it featured the Unreal Editor and the box blurb highlighted how it could be used. Fans have already come up with king of the hill and botmatch mods, which is remarkable when you consider how many people gave the game a pass due to missing multiplayer and the 10-hour single-player campaign.
These are just a few of the many ways to make sure that mod community support is tied in with a game launch. Every developer and publisher uses slightly different strategies. Except for Vivendi, which apparently didn’t use any strategy at all when promoting NOLF 2. Unless you’ve got a certifiable smash waiting in the wings—and very little qualifies for that status right now aside from Half-Life 2 and Doom 3—you can’t get away with ignoring modders. In an age where two or three nights’ play will get you through the solo missions in most shooters, every game should come with publisher and developer guarantees that consumers will get more bytes for the buck than what’s on the disc. You want to make a blockbuster today, you’d better toss in a lot of bells and whistles. Even if they’re half-assed, because crappy tools and editors are better than no tools and editors at all.
NOLF 2 also provides a cautionary tale for publishers planning the roll-outs of this year’s titles that aren’t sure-fire, knock-’em-out-of-the-park hits. Eidos should take note of what happened here and make sure that the same fate doesn’t befall its own quirky, bubbling-under cult franchises Deus Ex and Thief. Neither Deus Ex: Invisible War or Thief 3 is a guaranteed chart topper, despite effervescent preview prose. Good games are still needed underneath all the snazzy editors and toolkits—although tossing in these frills makes it easier for us to discover those good games and gives modders a chance to make them great.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #153