[dogscoff]

Walking the line between mainstream and hardcore appeal is difficult and dangerous, since disaster lies on either side: If it strays too far toward the mainstrema it will become so diluted and weak as to become unplayable *cough*MOO3*cough*, or it will go too hardcore and fade into obscurity as it caters for an ever-smaller niche within a niche market. Capturing the best of these two options is difficult, so I suggest that the game branches: Allow Aaron to finish the game and release the first version according to his original design. Allow a few patches to iron out any serious bugs, and then begin the branching- one patch for mainstream, one for hardcore. You'd end up with two games developping in parallel. The mainstream branch would include eye-candy, dumbing-down and stuff like that, while the hardcore branch focussed on improved modding options, greater depth and more features. Sometimes, popular (and suitable) features from one version might migrate across to the other.

The mainstream version would keep the bucks coming in, while the hardcore version would keep the game true to its roots and retain the franchise's credibility and direction. As far as I know this has never been done before, except in open-source games. It's the ideal solution, and now Aaron has a coding house behind him, maybe it could become a reality. Anyone else think this is a cool idea?