Back in the days when I was playing the PlayStation 2 and the Original Xbox. I didn’t give a second thought to downloadable content (or DLC to us savvy gamers out there) or game add ons. I would spend hours on end happily playing and replaying games. Back on the PS2 I was playing things like Tekken and Soul Caliber happy in the knowledge that if I wanted that new costume or new character for my roster. I would have to work through the game to earn it.
I have been without Xbox Live for about two months now, and I am pretty damn surprised on how much stuff I am missing out on. I feel like that the games I got for Christmas are significantly missing something without access to DLC. I have had Fallout 3 for some time now and haven’t bought any of the story Add on packs, I feel like I only have half a game now, god knows if Boarderlands will follow the same suit.
So are game developers crossing the line here? Well for starters I can think of some perfect examples where, without a shadow of a doubt, Developers are taking the biscuit. Lets take Soul Caliber IV into consideration here. Now your probably have a pretty good idea on what I am gonna say here but, for those of you who don’t know, when soul caliber IV was released they released star wars own Yoda for the Xbox 360 version and Darth Vader for the PS3 version. Absolutely no problem with that, seeing as Soul Caliber 2 did the same thing (They released Haihanchi for PS2, Link for Game Cube and Spawn for Xbox.) So when you played through Soul Caliber IV and eventually unlocked all the characters there was still a blank space for a character. About a month later Namco releases Darth Vader for Download on the Xbox Live Market Place and Yoda up for grabs on the PlayStation Network, you have to pay for both of these characters in order to down load them. A bit stingy to my mind seeing as Soul Caliber 2 had no option to get the other console exclusive charters. It was then uncovered that both Vader and Yoda had already been programmed into both the PS3 and Xbox versions of the game, meaning you were paying for a means to unlock the character as opposed to actually downloading it. What….The…..F&$£!
'Scuse Me While I Go And Waste Money On Something That I Already Have
Street Fighter IV did the same with downloadable costume packs, but it is not only the fighting games that are being a little cheap with DLC games such as Ninja Gaiden II which also had downloadable costumes. But the DLC saga doesn’t stop there. Before the release of GTA Episodes From Liberty City the lost and damned and the ballad of gay tone were DLC only, they had all these new element to add to the GTA IV environment which weren’t in the original game, meaning that when they came out Niko’s city seemed really empty compared to the city that Johnny and Luis were in. With that example in mind, it does beg the question whether Developers are making half arsed attempts of games? Because in the back of their minds they are thinking, ‘Oh, its ok we can bulk it out with DLC at a later date, also means more money for us‘ (Que Pound Signs in the eyes).
Even though there are Developers out there who are just milking the cash cow of each release they have. There are some out there who I have the utmost respect for, because they are making and releasing their titles with minimal DLC and putting the new improved stuff in the next game. Perfect example is Left 4 Dead. First game had the minimum of killing zombies with guns and explosives and fighting you way through the hordes to survive. Left 4 Dead 2 is an improvement on that with much more, like gun upgrades, melee weapons, new enemies etc etc. So why the hell did L4D fans start complaining and boycotting this game just because they thought it would be better as a DLC pack!? Back on the PS2 no one thought ‘Hang on a second. I refuse to buy GTA Vice City because its only an updated GTA III, I want a game add-on disk!‘ It just doesn’t make sense. To my mind DLC has made the gaming world go a bit barmy, with Developers thinking money money money and games not knowing really what is makes really good DLC.
A Welcome Addition To The Zombie Slaying Sequel
For me some DLC can be justified, other are just taking the mickey. I can understand story add-ons to make the game longer but new costumes you have to pay money for? Really? Rockband and Guitar hero must be laughing at the moment. I hate to be the poor soul who went and bought the Band kit then every single DLC song under the sun. They have probably spent more money on that than the console they are playing it on.
Garv
I just hate shit DLC really! As I said on Lorna’s article this morning, the Fable 2 DLC was a total waste of money as far as I was concerned. Was boring, repetitive, utterly pointless and really only came down to one thing… “look how pretty the snow is”.
I don’t think I put my point about DLC being existent within the original code well enough though… I’m not condoning it to say that it’s still worth the money if the content was in the game in the first place, but I do understand why they do it that way. First important thing would be that it places no strain on XBL or PSN because there’s nothing to download other than a software key, and the second is that it’s easier to release it bug-free if it’s part of the original build.
I love Fallout 3 (did I hear a rousing sarcastic “Noooo really?” there??) and I paid more for the individual DLCs (in total) than I did for the game. Some were good, and some were bad. If they were built in to the game, I’d have been a LOT more annoyed at paying 1200 MS points (or whatever it was) for each one if they were crap. If they were good, I wouldn’t have minded as it expanded my game play.
I can’t remember how much I paid for the Burnout “Boost Special” cars but I had to download that from scratch after paying my points, and it was a total waste of money. Two cars, and they weren’t even that good in the first place.
I get where I’m going now lol… I’d rather pay for GREAT content to be unlocked even if it was there the whole time, than pay for CRAP content that was written after the game was released and needed a specific download. I’m a gamer.. I just want to enjoy the games, for as long as possible
I think we’re more or less on the same track really, my main problem is this: How is it fair to purposely withold content that’s already been created just in order to score another buck or two? Fair enough if *some* data toward future DLC development is already there, but the idea of being charged for something that that required no extra cost or manpower to the company after the initial release of the product seems wrong. I understand how it’s more efficient *data wise* but I’m in the mindset that if the content is already created it should be part of the initial product – I’m not saying we don’t want the content, just we shouldn’t be charged extra for it.
Perhaps a better analogy would be buying a house. Now, the house already has an in-built master bedroom, but the seller locks the door to that one room, so you can only use the rest of the house – and then charges you for the key to the extra bedroom at a later date. It’s no more cost to the seller, just a way of holding back a room (which is already in your house, untouched by anyone), dangling the key over your head and saying “Nurrrr, you’ve got to pay extra if you want it!”. Now, if I were *extending* the house, so new materials and manpower would be needed, I’d be happy to pay the costs – since it would be paying for the costs, and paying the seller for their time. Its basically just a way of selling you the product at a higher price by masking the unlock as “the extension thats already there”.
I mean, I will mostly pay for good DLC, and I wouldn’t necessarily refuse to buy it if it was a mere data unlock, because I simply don’t want to miss out – but I’d still feel ripped off for it. I just feel that many developers are taking liberties, simply because it’s so simple to do. And without DLC, I feel many games today would feel very incomplete as a stand-alone product. Considering games costs have risen, shouldn’t we be getting more content than we used to?
I’m with Leon about the Rockband DLC really. I just don’t wanna know how much all the DLC costs on top of the full game and band kit
Hmm, I agree with most of the article – and I agree that content should NEVER be sold when it’s already part of the disk – if it’s on the disk, it should be part of the product. The only reason DLC should be acceptable as an extra cost is if the company has put in extra work *after* the title’s release. Games are expensive enough without developers holding back content just to squeeze even more money from consumer. I mean, that’s like buying a Snickers bar and then being told you can’t have the nuts unless you pay an extra price. (EDIT: I didn’t actually read Garv’s crisp analogy until after I wrote this but hey, great minds think alike)
The real thing is, look at the PS2 – without DLC it was important that the game would be at peak condition before it was sold, because that was it, the final product. And games were cheaper then, too. But comparing say, GTA San Andreas and GTA4, the earlier title contained far more content at a cheaper cost – why? Because the game alone had to provide the content and earn the reputation. GTA4 extorts people by making them pay for a game that would be lacking as a stand-alone product (a more expensive one, at that), and then makes it out to be the best game ever due to the DLC add-ons. But personally, I’d say that GTA:SA is probably almost as big as GTA4 with all of the expansions, and at probably at half, maybe even a third, of the price. But it’s so easy for people to spend money via Xbox Live or PSN without really feeling they have spent anything – or it’s just so drawn out between purchases that the sum of the costs isn’t so obvious. If the initial GTA4 game had contained the content of all three parts, and had the price tag of all three combined (around £80), people would have been disgusted. It’s all down to clever marketing. And DLC makes this possible – sell us what we should have had in the first place, and make it seem like “special additional content”. I understand the business side of it, but essentially it’s just exploiting people and I think it’s sickening.
LittleBigPlanet did a respectable job of the DLC – the initial product was decent with plenty of things to work with, feeling like a complete product, and all of the DLC was created afterward as *additional content* – some of it was free, and most of it was only aesthetic and unimportant to core gameplay value. And since then, the two level packs that have been released (Metal Gear and Pirates of the Caribbean), have both been priced rather cheaply considering the amount of actual dev time that went into them – and it’s right that people should be charged for the extra work and costs that went into doing so. And considering how good the tools are, they’ve been priced rather fairly (under £10 each)
On the case of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, though, I totally agree with the DLC they provide. The core products all contain a decent amount of tracks and you get what you pay for – and there is so much available DLC that they couldn’t have possibly made it all available on the initial product with the £40 price tag – it’s the sort of game that suits DLC perfectly, allowing you to selectively choose the tracks you want, and pay the reasonable price tags attatched (which partly cover the costs of the conversion to RB/GH format, regular development work and costs of dealing with getting the rights for the music, etc. Rock Band in particular is probably my favourite game in the DLC market, simply because I’ve been able to tailor the track selection to my wishes at a price I felt was fair.
Totally agree with you on the last bit there. If one person has the DLC then the game should be inteligant enough to block it while online. I mean if someone had unlocked all the characters on street fighter and their apponent hadn’t, the games compramises, it should be the same with DLC hands down.
As with the paying to unlock things. I still find it a bit of a con. I mean most games are happy to give proper downladable content which i am plenty happy to wait for to download. But to lock something up to then later pay for? Thats like buying a packet of crisps which then suddenly close up again when you have eaten half the packet then demand another 60p. :p
God, I’m not sure which side of the fence I’m on here! I may just plonk myself firmly atop and speak for both sides, undoubtedly ending up with each hating me as much as the other!!
As a programmer, it makes SO much sense to include the content as part of the core package and then just switch it on at a later date. Having to retrofit something is a royal pain in the arse, plus it’d take a lot more time to download a full bundle rather than just a software key to unlock certain parts of the game. Certainly, with our ecommerce software, there are aspects which are already there in the system but have been switched off by default so that the client has to pay an addon fee for that feature to be unlocked for them. When you’re charging as little as we do, part of the revenue stream comes from a drip feed of people paying for something that’s already there.
I’m sure you’re probably aware that, years ago, if you bought a PC with 256mb RAM and took it in to PC World to get upgraded, or called out the engineer from Dell (I’m talking before people felt comfortable messing with their own systems) and you said you wanted to expand the RAM to 512mb… they’d take the machine away into a back office, open it up, flick a jumper switch and close it all up again… because it was cheaper to build the machines with full RAM and switch it to half RAM with a jumper setting. To me, that’s a nasty way to do business… but what we do with our software, and what the DLCs are doing is exactly the same… but without a tangible product and so it never seems as bad.
What I DO object to with DLC is if you want to play online with someone who doesn’t have the latest DLC installed… they have to buy it in order to play alongside you because you’ve already downloaded it. That’s actually unnecessary in my eyes. If you’re playing Burnout with someone who has the Big Surf Island pack… the game should allow you both to play and just limit you to the mainland and limit the other person’s choice of car so that you don’t have to have the meshes or textures.
I could go on forever here… I may just blog this at some point to get it out of my system