http://www.simhq.com/_air11/air_341d.html


Doug: What do you think about having players connect to the Internet 100% of the time as they are playing?

Oleg: I am not a big fan of these things. Many players, especially in less developed parts of the world, still to this day play only single-player and barely use the Internet even if they have Internet access at all.

Doug: What do you think of the business model to create a basic set, then purchase additional planes, vehicles, terrain as additional items online?

Oleg: Flight simulators are not exactly the genre for this model to be successful. Probably quite the opposite. Generally this business model is viable and has the right to exist, and details depend on the genre. With a flight sim, it’s perhaps more viable if the core engine with a couple of planes was released for free.

This only makes sense when your game already has a nice set of features for more than a couple of hours of gameplay. New downloadable planes or vehicles add a lot to gameplay, which makes them appealing to larger audiences. So this can be very interesting if the new content has a good set of features of its own, including planes, ground vehicles and gameplay maps, to attract an even larger audience.

This can also be done when the base sim already has a good set of aircraft, 15 to 30 or more, and the new content offers something new. Especially if it offers an advantage in an online battle, many players will want to buy such an add-on. Greater acceptance drives more people to buy the content. But once again, in my personal opinion, this model is more attractive in other genres with bigger potential audiences than flight simulators.

I’m not completely refusing to consider this idea. It is actually not new.

With a flight sim, individual aircraft offered for free or for a fee should mainly be made by external developers, while the core development team should develop major new releases, again giving the external developers new opportunities to further expand the game.


Aviar

It's nice that Oleg is in agreement with most gamers but unless his next sim is self published he will have little say in what kind of DRM BoB will have. It is the publishers that enforce the DRM and not the developers.

That isn't necessarily true. He has creative rights and can decide who he wants to publish his product. He can stipulate that his game cannot be published with certain kinds of DRM and can pull his support for the company if it doesn't live up to its part of the bargain.

In fact, Oleg would be downright silly if he didn't ask about methods of distribution and the DRM that will go along with it. Lets face reality here, ultimately he has to be concerned about his sales and if a game is released with a method of DRM that is distasteful to a large portion of the population he will be the one hurt financially.

Oleg Maddox is a very savvy guy, he has never seemed to me to be the type that will simply ignore things like distribution.

Yes, but the dialogue in the interview just before the opening line of Aviar's quote says:

Doug: What are your current thoughts on CP and DRM?

Oleg: I dislike any copy protection, but that’s up to the publisher to decide. In general, it’s a very complex question, and to properly address all the issues I’d probably need at least as much space as the rest of this interview.

So, while I would hope Oleg's opinion would prevail, he's saying the ultimate decision lies with the publisher. We'll have to wait at least two more weeks and see what happens .

I bet 1C is the publisher and they seem to be DRM prone to me.

1C has also made a deal with Aspyr to release some games in North America without DRM. Let's just hope their co-operation continues and BoB gets the same treatment.