Collectors/Limited Editions and Added Value

Lucky Day said:

Hmm, I hadn't considered the the "if its the only one available" option but I've done that too.

Keep in mind the Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil editions of NWN2 available over in Europe were not the same as the North American Collector's edition. The collectors edition here didn't offer much except a couple of Pewter Rings, a nice box, and that Waukeen Feat.

I made a big stink that for an extra $10 Atari still gave us paper sleeves.

http://www.nwn2wiki.org/Limited_edition

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I *definitely* would not have paid extra for the NWN2 pack! Though my kids like the rings

xSamhainx said:

Depends. If there's a nice map in the box, I start drifting in the yes direction. I'm a sucker for a good map!

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Same here. A good map and some nice in-game extras are my main CE/LE/SE priorities. And I sort of like art books or (survival) guides, novels (like in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R limited edition Radiation Pack), bestiaries or any other additional lore books, too.
However, stuff like figurines, collectible cards, T-shirts, pendants, rings, making of CDs/DVDs or even the soundtrack CD are usually all useless junk IMHO. With some exceptions... the lightsaber pendant that came with the Jedi Knight II: Outcast CE and the Death Star toy that came with Star Wars: Empire At War were both pretty neat.

I voted sometimes if worth it, but I actually haven't bought a CE since Black Isle became extinct. IWD2 and BG2OA were my last two, and they were pretty cool--I still have my BG notepad with an enraged cyclops , various ungodly biowarean monsters and a brooding Jon Irenicus watermarked in the background.
I also bought all the old HoMM CE's and my cave* walls used to be adorned with cloth maps.
I don't know if my enthusiasm or my wallet has made this decision, but these days I just get the regular games.




*spouse's term for the computer room, as in "I suppose you're slithering off to your cave to slay and kill."

Moriendor said:

Same here. A good map and some nice in-game extras are my main CE/LE/SE priorities. And I sort of like art books or (survival) guides, novels (like in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R limited edition Radiation Pack), bestiaries or any other additional lore books, too.

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Actually the I've never seen a novel in a game package before. This seems to be good and interesting offer. Probably the only thing from your list that would trigger my attention. All those maps, medailons and other stuff like that doesn't appeal to me.

Danicek said:

Actually the I've never seen a novel in a game package before. This seems to be good and interesting offer. Probably the only thing from your list that would trigger my attention. All those maps, medailons and other stuff like that doesn't appeal to me.

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"Stonekeep" shipped with a short novel (around 100 pages I think) and I believe "Beyond Divinity" shipped with a short one as well. The StoneKeep one is even a hard-cover book Guess we won't see that anymore after the industry started to use DVD cases for games...

I put never as the "collector's" edition rarely has anything worth the added premium charged for it. The only times that I've gotten a collector's edition was because it was either the same price as the regular edition OR I was sent a collector's edition when I had just ordered the regular edition...

BD did indeed ship with a short novel, which in some ways was the best part of the game. I think it was only released with the UK editions though!!

Danicek said:

Actually the I've never seen a novel in a game package before. This seems to be good and interesting offer. Probably the only thing from your list that would trigger my attention. All those maps, medailons and other stuff like that doesn't appeal to me.

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Same here. Thats kind of extra I'm looking for

Shannara shipped with a massive paperback.

Actually, now that I think about it, so did the very first Buck Roger's game!!

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor - Collector's Edition shipped with a novel as well. As a matter of fact it was one of the best collector's editions ever as far as extra content goes (I know, I know... the game itself wasn't exactly the greatest).

The PoR:RoMD collector's edition came with the Pool of Radiance novel, the Pool of Radiance D&D PnP Module, soundtrack CD, and a full set of dice in a custom dice bag... all in a box that would fit about 10 of today's game boxes in it.

narpet said:

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor - Collector's Edition shipped with a novel as well. As a matter of fact it was one of the best collector's editions ever as far as extra content goes (I know, I know... the game itself wasn't exactly the greatest).

The PoR:RoMD collector's edition came with the Pool of Radiance novel, the Pool of Radiance D&D PnP Module, soundtrack CD, and a full set of dice in a custom dice bag... all in a box that would fit about 10 of today's game boxes in it.

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yep yep yep

this is the one I wanted to mention as the best CE I've ever seen. While the retailers couldn't pull the things off the shelf fast enough (to stick that tag on that says this game will corrupt your Hard Drive) I grabbed a CE for $20 at CompUSA.

I've never installed the game though. I played the demo and said no way. So in short..I bought the game for the extras .

Corwin, how was the Australian NWN2 CE? Did you grab that? Didn't we have a Kiwi on these boards too? It looks like the NZ version was different from the Oz version too. The Euro version had a solid plastic CD holders too I think.

We got the game, a cloth map, art book, manual, 2 rings and Blessed of Waukeen!! That was all!!

KasperFauerby said:

The StoneKeep one is even a hard-cover book

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Not here. Not in Germany. I just get the feeling that some country was favoured again ...

But there does exist a true novel for the Stonekeep universe : "The Oath of Stonekeep", which didn't ship with the game, but was an separate thing. I've never seen it this far and it's incredibly difficult to get, it seems to me (seen it only a few times on amazon). This should habe a hard cover.

I once emailed with David Pulver I think in 2005 or 2004, and we wrote a bit about it. He said he found it a bit difficult to make it kind of an romance.
He also wrote back then that he would like to have the rights of his story back, if possible.
The story says it was written by David Pulver and Steve Jackson, but both agreed (yes, I contacted Steve Jackson as well) that David did the far most part of it, so it's essentially his story.

Okay, I've found a few bits from the e-mail "chaT", and I quote them here, just for reference :

About the main characters :

I had known the two lead characters would get together, but writing the
romance between them was challenging, as I'd never done anything like that
before. Working with SJ on it was a rewarding experience - I'm very pleased
it touched you.

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About the translation into German :

I never new it had been translated into German! Actually, you're the first
person (outside those involved and close friends) who ever commented on it.

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Me on the question who might have the rights of the story :

>Currently I'm pondering about the rights of the novel - and of the Stonekeep
>game in general. The novel was copyrighted by Interplay, as far as I have
>understood it, but Interplay is out of business. So I wonder who might
>have the
>rights.

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His answer to that :

No idea, I'm afraid. Certainly not me or Steve, as the work was "work for
hire"
with all rights transferred to Interplay. I know Titus in France owned
Interplay,
but they went out of business as well.

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And:

I have no ownership of any material in Thera Awakening.

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I didn't know then that Interplay still exists - in some form.

And last a reply from Steve Jackson:

Yes, I'm that Steve Jackson. Chief credit for the story should go to
David Pulver, though!

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David Pulver wrote (I don't quote this here) that I was the only one giving feedbackoutside Interplay, SJ and "one family member".

The three e-mails I took this from have April 2005 as the date.

narpet said:

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor - Collector's Edition shipped with a novel as well. As a matter of fact it was one of the best collector's editions ever as far as extra content goes (I know, I know... the game itself wasn't exactly the greatest).

The PoR:RoMD collector's edition came with the Pool of Radiance novel, the Pool of Radiance D&D PnP Module, soundtrack CD, and a full set of dice in a custom dice bag... all in a box that would fit about 10 of today's game boxes in it.

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The European Collector's Edition was entirely different. The web site said they first didn't want to make any European Collector's edition at all !

And of course we got much less : http://www.poolofradiance.com/info/index.html
You can still see the differences there.

I still don't get it why even European companies give the american market so much more. I still don't get it why even European companies treat European customers as second class.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I still don't get it why even European companies give the american market so much more. I still don't get it why even European companies treat European customers as second class.

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I agree with you. I have noticed that many times the European collector's edition of a game will contain less items, or different items (that don't seem quite as nice).

There is one exception that I can think of... Gothic 3. There is of course no US collector's edition. I had to order my english version of the collector's edition from an online store in Sweden.

And that collector's edition is pretty nice IMO. I especially like the cloth map. It is made of durable, quality material, and it's pretty big. The entire Gothic series is one example of the Europeans getting the better deal. Unfortunately, I don't know of any other good example of that happening.

nwn2 is the opposite in this case as Atari's parent company is in Europe and clearly those versions were much better.

How long have CE versions been made? The first I can think of was the BG2 one with the Gold Disks before they realized that gold disks don't read as well.

I do remember the BG one with the novel but I thought that came out much later. BG had the the dual box with the BG and PotSC bound in a wrapper. That's the one I bought.

Some of the first games I remember were discount versions long after the initial release of the game. The HoMM Millenium Edition comes to mind.

The idea of multiple covers for the same game was another idea. Comic books did that initially to get kids to buy multiple copies. At $50 a game I can't see why people would buy more than one. These aren't CE of course but they are an added value idea.

Multiple covers ? Reminds me of Starcraft.

Another thing that strruck me a few days ago was the shift from "Collector's Editions", which appear after the last add-on or otherwise patch / extention, towards pure "Collector's Editions".

The first sort of CE's appear - as I've already said, at the END of the product cycle, whereas the second appears at the BEGINNING of the product cycle.

And I don't remember many CEs of the first sort recently.

Is this a global chance (global warming ???) or is just my memory not so good ?

Wait... now I remember... hubby once bought me the Duke Nukem 3D Atomic SE for my birthday because he thought I'd like the t-shirt coming with it. He knew that I had the regular edition, but he was right... I liked the t-shirt. I hadn't bought this SE on my own, but it was a welcome present.

The mac port of Baldur's Gate by Aspyr came with the Baldur's Gate novel. Actually by the time it came out Aspyr was selling a combo Tales of the Sword Coat + Baldur's Gate w/novel which is what I got for my mac thinking that since I used my notebooks more often that I might like Baldur's Gate better if I had the mac version... nope, still boring compunded by the trademark crappy Bioware might-as-well-be-RT-combat-system.

[EDIT]Actually, speaking of maps, I had entirely forgotten that my plain old copy of IWD came with a cloth map! I stumbled across it this morning while looking through a box, and originally thought that it might have been an Ultima map that went astray...

Interplay did a rigtheoud job on standard packins on that one, more like the old days where decent extras in the plain old version were the norm, not the you-pay-extra-for-trinkets of today.[/EDIT]