RAGE Diary: Minigames and Core Content
When I thought of a first person shooter from id Software my mind wandered to well crafted guns, smart enemies and cool combat situations but it seems that in the coming years the development studio wants players to also think about racing and card mini-games.
RAGE is a shooter but the people working on the game have worked very hard to give players something else to do than simply take out enemies with gadgets and guns.
The card mini-game is surprisingly deep, with special cards that can be found in the world and after some mini-boss battles, and could be a game unto itself, without the need for RAGE to support it.
The racing is more problematic because the various vehicles are primarily used to take out enemies on the road and move quickly to locations for firefights and the various challenges tend to be pretty boring when weapons are not involved.
Both the two side mechanics are not actually necessary to the core of RAGE and I would argue that they would have served the game better if they were tied to the universe but released via alternative means by Bethesda.
The card game would have made a wonderful Facebook based teaser for RAGE and could have attracted a lot of players if it was launched about one month before the main product, with a free-to-play model and some incentives to play it to get more items or weapons in the core experience (kinda how Dragon Age 2 used the Legends spin-off).
The racing, which also forms the core of the multiplayer experience, could have been separated out to a secondary game that could have been launched on the PlayStation Network and the Xbox Live Arcade for a lower price and with some sort of interaction with RAGE for those who own both titles.
As it is today a number of players might only play RAGE for the shooting and miss out on the rest of the content while still paying for it.
