14 DAY TRIAL // Developers have long debated the merits and failings of the Steam concept of distributing video game digitally, and now the team that is working on action-adventure title Magicka say that their launch showed that positive aspect of the service.
Patrik Lasota, who is one of the members of the Arrowhead Games team working on Magicka, has praised digital distribution for making it easy to quickly update the games that are available, saying, “The benefits with digital distribution are huge. Digital distribution means a bigger cut for us developers and that we can keep a lower price for the customer and better margins.”
He added, “Another benefit is the closeness to gamers. We get really close to our community and we can push patches daily if we want to. For any game, the community is important, but more so for indie games.”
But the developer also says that digital distribution has one big flaw when it forces gamers to always be connected in order to have access to their games, with an option like the offline mode from Steam being a must to make sure that players do not become frustrated when they cannot access the content that they have paid for.
The developers further said that, despite the apparent simplicity of the concept, Magicka could not be developed for mobile gaming platforms.
Magicka puts the player in the role of an apprentice wizard and tasks him with a quest that involves fighting a huge array of typical fantasy baddies.
The big innovation is that players are free to mix and match eight elements in order to create the spells, offensive and defensive, that are needed to take out the enemy creatures.
There's a lot of potential for failure in the system, but there is a very big number of spells that can be created and a lot of the joy of the game is linked to the freedom that it offers.
We have a full review of Magicka on Softpedia, but be advised that the game received a few more patches since it was posted, dealing with some of the mentioned bugs.