DLC communication used to be good. For example, for Lords of the West, the original announcement was a bit heavy on the exclamation marks, but generally very clear and descriptive:
Lords of the West—the first official expansion to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition—is now available to pre-order or add to your wishlist for the holiday season. Here’s what it brings to Age II: DE:
- Challenge your friends with two all-new civilizations, each of which include unique units and technologies for you to explore!
- Battle across Western Europe and the Mediterranean in three new campaigns—including the British king, Edward Longshanks!
- Claim victory by means of sheer military might, diplomatic prowess, or through overwhelming economic power!
- New achievements to earn on your Xbox or Steam account! Check out the full list, below.
Lords of the West will be released on the Microsoft Store and Steam this January 26th, 2021!
This was accompanied by information about the new civs and campaigns, and screenshots that accurately depict the units and buildings available to the new civs:
Things started to go south with Dynasties of India. I’m not opposed to releasing teaser images before any factual announcement, but the images were misleading since they showed players with combinations of units from different civs, e.g. here we have Bengalis with chakram throwers, shrivamsha riders, and bombard cannons, fighting a player who has chakram throwers and ghulams:
The official announcement was similar to Lords of the West though – still factual and descriptive, although it featured some of these misleading screenshots.
I think the communication became actively bad with the “road map”, which was vague and nonsensical, and obviously designed to incite speculation without being at all informative. This seems to have been the approach to communication ever since. At this point, the communication also started to read as if it was written for children by adults who don’t understand children – the tone is just completely off, especially for a game whose audience is predominantly adults, many of whom have been playing it for 25 years.
A good example of this comes from the patch notes from December 2023:
2024 is going to be a great year for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, with some surprises we’re pretty sure you’ll simply never guess. Try. Give it your best. We’re hyped and can’t wait to see the reaction as some of these things get announced!
It just feels like adults talking down to children.
Now vague communication could actually be fine if the DLCs themselves were in the traditional format – if the audience knows roughly what to expect, then releasing a couple of (accurate) teaser images before the full announcement could actually work well to generate a bit of hype without misleading anyone. But four of the last five DLCs have been unpredictable experiments that, by and large, have added little of value to the game as a whole. If the DLCs are going to be non-standard in this way, then to avoid creating discontent among the playerbase, the communication needs to be explicit up front – no vague previews, no patronising nonsense about “surprises you’ll simply never guess”, and certainly nothing misleading or false.