Tldr- use crowd funding to finance adding new levels.
Hey IOI, I love your Hitman series. It’s really the only stealth/sandbox game worth it’s salt these days.
It also has enormous potential that the premium escalation contracts don’t live up to. I’ve bought the seasons hoping for the best, but I find the escalations on rails, and it takes all the creativity and replayability out if the game. Meanwhile adding new targets and new challenges on existing levels could be great. Even better new special assignments or new levels would be awesome.
That said, I get it. You have a big 007 project and all hands have to be on deck to make that successful. But this means you starve your community and potential future base of customers on Hitman.
So have a proposal:. Crowd fund making new levels in hitman. Get the community to vote in a few concepts, and seek a finding level that will cover the salaries of a full time people to cover costs. The beauty of this model is some will be willing to fund a lot to get a new level, and finance dlc that will earn your revenue later. If you don’t meet the goal, you refund everyone and move on.
Anyway, I think Hitman 3 could be like GTA. You just to a business model to help you justify creating content that allows the sandbox / multiple challenge nature of the game to shine.
I don’t think crowd funding would be the best as it can change month to month, add-in new maps "Which from Noclip and few other blog posts) looks to take 8 months -14 months all requiring considerable amount of people (That is also excluding the hiring process for new devs and training). So already asking people alot to invest in. Plus Developers with already stablished studios and opening more with major IPs being developed would feel kinda sketchy to ask for funding from fans for new things.
Then all the grey areas. Do they need each fan to fund £30 each, what happens if they don’t get the required amount?, Request more?
When it does come up, would the DLC be half that price so fans who funded get ripped?
Best to hope for a few months down the line is Bonus level quality of remixed maps.
But all good things come to end.
Also I don’t think Hitman could be the same level as GTA Online as soooo many differences on how they are played and audiences. Plus GTA Online’s MTX model is what I personally find quite horrible.
This is the other approach for sure. Make the tools available and let other extend the game. I’ll assume that with PC and console versions, this will be hard.
I am sure that IOI would appreciate us flooding them with cash up front through a crowd funding campaign.
IOI will continue to make Hitman and other content to please their fans as long as there is a market for it, and money to be made. They supply the goods first, and then you will pay for it if you want it as a consumer.
IOI will milk as much as they possibly can out of the ~eight years that they have been putting together the Hitman Trilogy (2013-2021).