Welcome to the planet Shear. Please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times and remember...the Goliath is more scared of you than you are of it. One final note before we send you off into the jungle, *PLEASE* keep your weapons pointed OUT of the vehicle and do make sure they're loaded. Parents, help your children. Safety first, everybody.
This week's podcast was recorded a LITTLE early because at least one of us is going to the Happiest Place on Earth. That's right, Ryan is headed out to the Magic Kingdom of Disneyland. I am quite jealous because I genuinely love Disneyland. I've been many times throughout the course of my life and it's one of the few places on Earth I can imagine myself returning to until I'm dead or too old/heavy to be pushed around because I'll be more machine than man at that point.
This week will also see the release of Evolve. Not only from the perspective of the game being put on the shelf but hopefully from the seemingly never ending torrent of poor PR decisions regarding DLC and other add-ons. What a bizarre ride this game has been on.
From the very first moment Evolve appeared in the public eye, up until the moment of release (and probably beyond, but time will tell on that), this game has been marred by some bad choices of phrasing by the devs and some interesting overall choices in it's marketing by 2K. Talking about things like DLC, Special Editions, or any other monetized add-on PRIOR to the game even being *shown* to the public is probably not the best business decision that's been made.
For Turtle Rock and Evolve, this has got to be not only frustrating and possibly embarrassing, but a little scary as well. As the DLC plans have become more and more clear (well, as clear as they can be and that's depending on whether or not you've successfully deciphered the Evolve version-matrix), the public outcry has become louder and louder. Both Phil Robb and Chris Ashton, Co-Founders of Turtle Rock, have been pretty adamant about keeping the community together by providing all DLC maps and modes for free forever. This is important because making these things free directly affects the pricing structure of any other DLC, including new characters, monsters and skins.
What kind of blows my mind about all of this is the fact that I don't recall even one member of Turtle Rock or 2K just plainly making a statement laying that out. All they had to do was explain that DLC pricing had to be adjusted in order to cover the costs of making new modes and maps. That's it. It's very plausible that a statement or press release outlining the how and the why surrounding DLC pricing could have quelled some of this storm but now it's too little too late.
While I'm sure their game will break even financially, I'm left wondering what (if any) kind of damage may have been done here and how easily this all could have been avoided with a bit more deftness in PR.