Downloadable Content

[Admiral Donutz]

I'm making a seperate, dedicated thread to discuss DLC here rather then in the DragonAge thread (here):

I just watched my brother play the game for a bit, he showed me a guy with a DLC mission and how it frustratede him when he found out he would have to pay (after making an account and all that). I quite agree, downloading content is weird enough (just include some stuff in patches or expantion sets) but having to pay for it is even worse. It has "money hungry bastards" (EA) written all over it.

Since I don't know anything about DLC (I am a PC gamer) I did a quick google to understand what DLC is all about. Wiki explained how paying for DLC through "points" was introduced by MS (what a suprise.. ), and how you can buy fixed packages of points such as 100 or 500 points. Sounds like a rip off if when you can't just buy the exact amount of points you need, it makes it more tricky to determine the price for the content and I find it a sign of pure capitalist greed to begin with. *spits on EA and MS* . The hell with DLC.

I much prefer thegood old "extra missions and gear through patches, expantions and collectors items editions" such as the extra options available for those that bought NWN2 collectors edition (and could laster on also be downloaded of the internet, for free, for everyone else).

So this DLC stuff looks to be a bit of a stain to me. I just ain't too font of the idea of DLC (for money/points). Bleh.

To sum up the advantages that I can think of:
- It potenially allows the developers to keep supporting a game after it's release with "bonuses" that are too large to release as part of usual patches, yet are too small to release as part of an official extention.
- This extra income can be used to offer better/more services to the customers

To sum up the disadvantages that I can think of:
- The risk of patches being release just to visit tecnical issues and not to improve or extend gameplay a bit (ie polishing the game experience)
- DLC may be the death of "community care", being a kind developer that gives out small extra's at no charge. showing how much the developers cares/loves both their product and the people who play/bought the game.
- Hindering or even outright preventing community releases: custom content made by people in the community such as custom maps, missions, items and such by the peoplel for the people. At no charge. Again under the banner of "I hope you like the game as much as I do". Since if you'd allow mods or "even' support them people would be less inclined to buy for such additional content.
- Cashcow: Try to suck every dollar/euro/yen out of your customers, putting profit above customer care, introducing a cooling in relations with the public and so on (just look how many people feel about EA and MS...). In the long run people might even become to dislike, hate or distrust you. Which could mean you loose (once loyal) customers.

Compare it to the customer who still goes to the shop around the small shop around the corner. Where the owner knows most of his/her costumers and doesn't seem to hold on to every cent. The relaxed atmosphere, putting service above profit. Were the customer feels like the owner will do his/her best to be of service and won't rip you off or see you as a walking bag of money. No BS about "sorry but your warrant expired yesterday" or "technically this isn't covered by our service/warranty/whatever but let's not mkae a fuss about this". Where the customer and the owner feel a bond of some sort. A bond that neither party sees to be broken and keeps up be continuing to shop there. Which is in the interest of both parties ofcourse as both profit from this.

[Snow_Flake]

You summed that up really well, I agree to the note that DLC ain't all that.

[MrFancypants]

This is just a new form of an old trick used by game developers to make some additional money.
Most of the resources involved in creating a videogames are related to the game's various engines. Creating content for such an engine (additional quests, weapons etc.) is rather easy in most cases. It is in fact so easy that players create additional content themselves in form of mods, even if they don't have access to the tools used for creating such content.

Back before the days of e-commernce developers either used the same engine with a different story to sell a new game or to ship an expansion. In both cases it was easy to notice just how much effort went into it though.
Nowadays additional content can be delivered in smaller and smaller packages up to the point where the money you pay doesn't really have much of a relation to the work that went into it. If you pay 5 dollars/euros for DLC today the costs behind that are probably mostly related to the delivery method of the DLC rather than the content.

I think DLC will become very popular for developers since there are enough drones out there who will gladly spend money for everything bearing the official logo of their favorite company (just as it is in most other markets).

[Admiral Donutz]

Originally Posted by MrFancypants

This is just a new form of an old trick used by game developers to make some additional money.
Most of the resources involved in creating a videogames are related to the game's various engines. Creating content for such an engine (additional quests, weapons etc.) is rather easy in most cases. It is in fact so easy that players create additional content themselves in form of mods, even if they don't have access to the tools used for creating such content.

Back before the days of e-commernce developers either used the same engine with a different story to sell a new game or to ship an expansion. In both cases it was easy to notice just how much effort went into it though.
Nowadays additional content can be delivered in smaller and smaller packages up to the point where the money you pay doesn't really have much of a relation to the work that went into it. If you pay 5 dollars/euros for DLC today the costs behind that are probably mostly related to the delivery method of the DLC rather than the content.

I think DLC will become very popular for developers since there are enough drones out there who will gladly spend money for everything bearing the official logo of their favorite company (just as it is in most other markets).

I guess they'd have to rely on the "drones" that don't wonder if the price is in any relation to the production costs.

I myself would question say a 5 euro fee for one hour of gameplay or one euro for a new item. I'd wonder what the cost would be for the time spent on developing that item and how much a fair charge would be to charge every customer. That item, made in say a day (and very likey much less) would be bought by hundreds, probably thousands of clients, the actual cost would be very small. I'd could get away with paying a few cents and they might still make a very small profit.

Add that to the effort it requires (accounts, making the purchase, what to do when you reinstall the game and so on simply puts me off. I rather wait for a nice expantion on a CD/DVD that pay for once and can install and deinstall as much as I want. Install the game, install the 1-2 expantions, download the patches and play... no trouble with having to download a ton of small "updates" one by one and such on. Ugh.

[Nittany Tiger]

I do miss CD/DVD distribution and I hope that never dies. DLC doesn't bother me. But complacency is how the companies win.

Since I don't know anything about DLC (I am a PC gamer) I did a quick google to understand what DLC is all about. Wiki explained how paying for DLC through "points" was introduced by MS (what a suprise.. ), and how you can buy fixed packages of points such as 100 or 500 points. Sounds like a rip off if when you can't just buy the exact amount of points you need, it makes it more tricky to determine the price for the content and I find it a sign of pure capitalist greed to begin with. *spits on EA and MS* . The hell with DLC.

I wished that as well as paying for X-Box live time. You can buy it over the X-Box, but I'm not sure if it's pre-set time. Also, a think I hate about subscription time is that it runs even when you're not playing online or at all. Makes it a waste of money for those who don't have much time to play online.

I used to think the Live fees were in support of servers, but with IW going the same route and learning that it runs on someone else's machine, I'm questioning that now.

Also, Sony uses actual money and not points or another currency for their products. I don't know if the Wiki mentioned that. I also like how MS is fueling the console wars by tacking their logo on the end of multi-platform gaming commercials.

Also, I think Microsoft does include handling fees in their DLC prices. This is probably why the last L4D DLC was free on PC but not the 360.

Overall, I think DLC charges are to pay the companies for the work they did on these maps. I may be wrong. Charged DLC did start with consoles, so maybe they moved it over to the PC.

Also I do love how IW blatently screwed PC owners over. I don't know if the game is any different, but Mr. Bowling didn't care. His interview w/ Best Buy showed that. "PC game will have keyboard and mouse support." Don't all PC games have that? "Adjustible graphics." Don't all PC games have that? It's bad that IW took the CoD series, their only series, that was rooted in the PC and was focused on having a great story and SP game to something obviously geared to console multiplayer with a short tacked-on SP campaign, which I heard was only 5 hours long and that is inexcusable. For all of the hype put into this game, they should have made the SP at least twice that. To be honest, though, I haven't played MW2 so I don't know if it is good for the time. A lot say it is, but those reviewers are accused of being bribed, and the story with Activision and IGN supports that. All I know is that actual player reviews, especially on IW Net, are mixed.

But hype is what sells games, no matter how shitty they are, and companies get away with this because hype sells the games before anyone realizes how good or bad they really are.

The worst thing of all, again, is complacency. This is why these companies get away with this shit. It's the same reason why US politics suck. There are too few people that will actually do something to stand up against these companies, and thus are negligible against those that are pissed off by the tactics pulled off by the companies, but shrug their shoulders and buy it anyway mainly because they want the game. Fortunately and unfortunately, these companies are running out of ideas. For me, it seems like the games coming out recently have a similar formula based on their genre. This means that everyone will start becoming complacent to these games and start buying less from those companies unless one of them actually delivers something good. This also means that we're going to see less and less interesting snd innovative games though, so it's lose-lose.

If current trends continue in gaming, and I hate to be pessimistic, I think we'll eventually head towards another video game crash with the giants (except Microsoft) falling and the Indie game companies emerging to fill the void and start everything over again. And if these new giants please the people, they will stay alive.

[thebrassthief]

Originally Posted by Admiral Donutz

To sum up the advantages that I can think of:
- It potenially allows the developers to keep supporting a game after it's release with "bonuses" that are too large to release as part of usual patches, yet are too small to release as part of an official extention.
- This extra income can be used to offer better/more services to the customers

To sum up the disadvantages that I can think of:
- The risk of patches being release just to visit tecnical issues and not to improve or extend gameplay a bit (ie polishing the game experience)
- DLC may be the death of "community care", being a kind developer that gives out small extra's at no charge. showing how much the developers cares/loves both their product and the people who play/bought the game.
- Hindering or even outright preventing community releases: custom content made by people in the community such as custom maps, missions, items and such by the peoplel for the people. At no charge. Again under the banner of "I hope you like the game as much as I do". Since if you'd allow mods or "even' support them people would be less inclined to buy for such additional content.
- Cashcow: Try to suck every dollar/euro/yen out of your customers, putting profit above customer care, introducing a cooling in relations with the public and so on (just look how many people feel about EA and MS...). In the long run people might even become to dislike, hate or distrust you. Which could mean you loose (once loyal) customers.

For someone who doesn't know about DLC and did some research, you hit the nail on the head to hard to spiked through the earth and came out the other side.

I see it this way: there is good DLC and bad DLC. Good DLC can be seen in a game like Fallout 3. Now, I didn't like Fallout 3, but they way it was supported by it's DLC to extend the games life much farther than originally intended was fantastic. It was a true effort to give worthwhile DLC to people who enjoyed the game. Bad DLC is horse armor (from Oblivion on 360). That is just a complete waste of money to anyone who buys it and shows no effort from the developer trying to use DLC as a benefit to the people who play the game.

Now, as far as DLC is concerning Dragon Age, that is good DLC. It extends the games life a bit, enhances the game, and supplies one of the most hilarious characters ever (Shale is awesome). I don't mind paying for Dragon Age DLC because it holds the same high standards as BioWare's full games.

[gravy666]

Originally Posted by Admiral Donutz

It has "money hungry bastards" (EA) written all over it.

*spits on EA and MS* . The hell with DLC.

(just look how many people feel about EA and MS...).

EA stopped being an empire years ago. In the only video game boycott that worked, gamers protested EA because they were planning to release DLC weapons for Battlefield: Bad Company for a price. EA listened, still managed to turn it into a marketing opportunity for a bit, and the game paved the way for Battlefield 1943 and Bad Company 2. EA eventually released the codes for four of the five guns, leaving the last one exclusive to veterans of the Battlefield series. Everyone wins.

They stopped making "cookie cutter" games (games that use proven gameplay mechanics and are essentially reiterations of stuff you've already played before) not so long ago either. Tried stuff like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge, but after all the complaining no one actually bought them. Right now the Burnout guys are working on a new Need for Speed.

They keep making some DLC cost money, like Madden NFL 10's DLC, because they know that people are going to pay money for what are essentially cheat codes.

Obviously some games have DLC for extra content, such is the case with the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter series- those had several co-op mission packs. Meanwhile other stuff is an obvious cash-in, such as Oblivion's... horse... armor...

Usually the bigger the publisher, the more overpriced the DLC is. But it also depends on the distributor- for example, Valve wants to release some PC mods to the Xbox 360, but Microsoft wants to make sure that MS can make a profit out of it.

[thebrassthief]

Originally Posted by gravy666

They stopped making "cookie cutter" games (games that use proven gameplay mechanics and are essentially reiterations of stuff you've already played before) not so long ago either. Tried stuff like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge, but after all the complaining no one actually bought them. Right now the Burnout guys are working on a new Need for Speed.

Uh, Dead Space sold very well, to the point where they are announcing a new one December 22. Both games sold over 1m in '08. While it's not a winner in EA's eyes, that's not bad for two new IP's.

[gravy666]

Originally Posted by thebrassthief

While it's not a winner in EA's eyes, that's not bad for two new IP's.

Well that's the thing, because those IPs and some other recent titles did not do nearly as well as they should have, EA has had to lay off people like crazy. In case you haven't heard, they recently shut down Pandemic Studios (killing off all hopes for a Star Wars Battlefront 3). They are also are planning to lay off a total of 1,500 workers by April 2010.

[Schofield]

I agree that paying for DLC is total BS, unless its an actual expansion (Shivering Isles from Oblivion). Game developers like Naughty Dog who release content for free make me happy.

You want to know who is really money hungry? Capcom. The Resident Evil 5 DLC came with the game, but you had to pay to unlock, all you did was download a file which unlocked it, and it wasn't even worth it in many peoples eyes.