Downloadable Content, the new wave douchebaggery?

[Krandor]

On the subject of DLC, read a funny comment from Sony's UK managing director Ray Maguire about exclusive DLC and Microsoft's strategy with it.

Obviously, what we have to do is make sure [...] we have the amount of money to invest in games rather than investing in stopping other people making games and progressing.


So I would much rather that we were investing money into making sure that we've got great R&D and we start producing games like LittleBigPlanet, rather than paying other people a huge amount of money to stop people playing their product.

[Brill Weave]

It depends. I've downloaded a bunch of shit since I first got my 360. Of course a lot are songs for Rock Band etc. But I've also downloaded the new maps for CoD, the extra mission in Mass Effect, clothes in Dead Rising, a few strongholds in Oblivion etc. I think that it definitely adds something to games and it keep games from ever getting really stale.

The downside is I really don't like how expensive it is to download some of the stuff. I would love to see a price cutoff. Like 500 points to get the most expensive thing(barring game downloads from the xbox arcade.) You're tossing out what, 12.00 dollars just for 1000 points? And every song worth downloading for rock is 160 credits. I mean for fuck's sake that equals 6 songs.

6 songs for 12 dollars. For 12 bucks I can go out to Best Buy and get a cd with twice that amount. Using that kind of pricing, if they applied it to Rock Band there would only be a total of 30 or so songs. Make songs 50-100. Make scenarios and extra missions etc up to 500 credits.

[Elesirdur]

As a long-time PC gamer, the concept of paying for DLC sticks in my craw like a rusty railroad spike. PC gamers have been so treated over the years to modding, hacks, total conversious, and developer-released and bundled SDKs that asking us to pay $12.50 for a series of 8 quests and some snazzy but mediocre armour is tatamount to asking a Canadian citizen to pay for their hospital visit. For you non-cannucks let me translate - Does Not Fucking Compute.

I wholehartedly agree about the unbalanced DLC content allowed by buying multiplayer weapons. Thankfully Valve realized that is a bad idea and made it so you had to earn your TF2 Medic/Pyro/Heavy upgrades, not just buy them and be that tool who bought a lvl 75 FFXI character and can't figure out how to use a macro. Althought I swear some people with the Kritzkreig are like this anyway.

Free DLC is a great way to add new multiplayer maps and maybe some fun skins. I will also be buying the GTA IV DLC since the game is just so full of things to do, I want more and more and am willing to pay. But having to pay extra for difficulty settings in MM9? Capcomp can kiss the hariest part of my taint before I lay down a penny for a game feature.

[BadKarma]

What game would that be?

well i used weapons as an example but EA has a history of offering faster cars for games like need for speed for cash which is bullshit, etc things like that

[Elesirdur]

I think Battlefield Bad Company allowed users to pay for better weapons; almost in the vein of Hellgate: London which allowed people to play for free but with severe limitations on their gear, abilities, and where they could go.

[Zosi]

I think Elesirdur and Sono bring up an interesting point with the comparison with modding. PC gamers *have* been enjoying "free" DLC for ages in a lot of games, and honestly, a lot of the mods and user-created content is BETTER than both the original game and the official pay-for-it DLC. Some companies have embraced this, while others fight it because they see it as a threat to their precious official DLC profits.

Oblivion is a prime example, the Bethesda DLC was alright, but pretty minor stuff. Horse armor, nice houses (which were all way too nice to get for "free" in game, even if you paid RL $$) and a smallish series of quests. On the other hand, some of the third-party mods are genuinely amazing. In particular, OOO/MMM/Fran's almost qualify as total conversions, the gameplay doesn't just improve, it transforms. The custom UI that doesn't look like shit at high res is almost a necessity, as are some of the various texture/model replacements if you have a high-end system. Open Cities and Harvest Containers/Flora do wonders to make the game more immersive. There's literally thousands of new pieces of weapons and armor, the best of which are well-balanced and beautiful. There's also no shortage of mods that add quests, player houses, substantial balance tweaks and simpler gameplay mechanics improvements like lock bashing, getting drunk from beer, etc. If Oblivion hadn't supported modding, it'd be dead on the PC.

Even if it's simpler than full-fledged mods, there's still a ton of potential. Starcraft/Warcraft maps are the obvious examples. Simple editor, bit of encouragement from Blizz in the form of "official" free DLC, and the community just went wild making cool shit. This is where I'd put LittleBigPlanet, and it is indeed a shame that MS is less open towards user-created content than Sony.

What I don't want to see is a shift towards monetizing DLC at the expense of free modding. If you want to offer console users DLC for money because you have to test it and get it certified by MS, that's fine. But don't try to apply the same logic and prices to PC DLC while simultaneously preventing us from modding the games ourselves. If you can't allow modding because you can't compete with user-generated content, then too bad, we'll play games from a company with a better attitude.

[Mayareira]

Solid expansion packs and other similar, worthwhile additions are always welcome, but "unlocking" stuff that are already in game? Paying for a "cheat"?

Oh come on!

[_chuchu]

Solid expansion packs and other similar, worthwhile additions are always welcome, but "unlocking" stuff that are already in game? Paying for a "cheat"?

Oh come on!

Yeah, that's crap

[Kaylia]

I can understand people being pissed off about DLC like megaman 9's with having to pay for difficulty settings but really its the consumers choice to buy DLC if you dont like it no used bitching about it, just dont purchase it and move on.

It's not a question of buying/not buying it. It's more like what we used to have for free vs what we have to pay for now.

[edit]
And what's the real cash value of the content we are paying for.

[Krandor]

Yeah, so much DLC just feels like (or is) unlock codes for stuff that's already programmed into the game.

[gt_killa]

The point is with all the "extra" stuff that you are so exicited to get from DLC to expand your game such as Difficulty setting in Megaman 9, Songs for Rockband, Better weapons in Oblivion or Battle Field,etc... could've been easily added to the original game when they were first released. They already have them by then, but left it out to milk your $$$.

[Zosi]

For XBLA games, the devs *ARE* required to have the DLC done prior to the release of the game. I learned a lot about their process by reading the Castle Crashers dev blog, apparently according to the standard MS contract, XBLA authors are only allowed one update to their game, which has to fix all known bugs at the time of update as well as enable the pre-existing DLC. The DLC itself has to be in the game and tested prior to the game coming out at all, presumably so that it won't introduce more bugs when they activate it.

Makers of full games have more leeway, but MS is still pretty nazi about how things are done.

[zoobernut]

Expansions and Version Updates tend to be good.

Little bits and pieces are usually crap.

Most DLC tends to be stuff that you would normally earn by beating the game.

I think consoles get a real bad dicking when it comes to DLC anyway. What PC gamers get free console gamers have to spend 1/5-6th the original price on. This is ignoring fan DLC like mods and maps.

This. I think the Yoda/Darth Vader thing was crap the empty character slot is already there the character fits into the game fine it should just be something you can unlock. Now map packs and large items that would not fit into the original game are worthwhile DLC in my opinion but not little crap like extra guns or extra characters or armor.

Going with the SC 4 analogy again rather than characters being DLC they should introduce new game play styles or another different tower of souls with different levels and different treasure boxes, they could also allow for new arenas to be available. Also I think that consoles should get more free DLC as computer games get plenty.

[Metah]

Game companies have to recuperate piracy losses somewhere, I suppose.

=D

[SephYuyX]

lol, article on Kotaku saying that sackboys will cost 1~2$ per full costume.

[BRP]

If you like companies that do DLC right, buy Burnout Paradise. Something tells me EA was told to bugger off by Criterion, Criteria, whateva

[Kiarax]

lol, article on Kotaku saying that sackboys will cost 1~2$ per full costume.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/...station-store/
Yeah I laughed. The prices aren't too bad in comparison to other games, but that's still ridiculous imo.

[BRP]

Couldn't someone just make them with tools in the game? Or copy it from someone else? I think you can do that right?

[Kiarax]

Afaik all you can do is recolour things with stickers. So you wouldn't have the right models for them.

[fantasticdan]

Yeah, so much DLC just feels like (or is) unlock codes for stuff that's already programmed into the game.

This is the main thing I have a problem with. A good example is the katamari damacy they released on 360. It was pretty short compared to the past two ps2 games, despite being double the retail price. Than they had a huge batch of pay DLC either at, or very shortly after launch. And it turned out the DLC levels were actually on the disc, the DLC only unlocked it.

I don't hate the entire idea of pay DLC in general thou. I mean, if some game devs occasionally release batches of new maps/levels/missions or whatever for few dollars, that's cool. But it seems like most of the time, they're just holding back on content, and charging for shit that should have been (or already is) there in the first place.