How'd You Like Your Game Ending to Be DLC?

[MisterBob]

The simple truth is stop selling discs for 60 goddam dollars and you'll cut down on renting and resale immediately.

That's impossible. MS/Sony/Nintendo charge massive royalty fees on games that are authorized to release on their systems. The vast majority of game developers get completely shafted by this, and it's the reason why Game Dev is still a "B" industry despite how much they sell. It's actually relatively rare for a developer to actually profit on a game. Usually its either a hit, Wii Shovelware that didn't cost anything to make in the first place, or a loss.

[Reality]

the global economy (especially the US) is in the shitter right now, 60-70 dollar games are not going to fly off the shelves like they may have in the past, people will want to know that their investment (60-70+ is a LOT of cash for the majority of people on this planet) is going to be fruitful and not pissed away on a 6-10 hour game (I'm looking at you Crysis)

$19.99-$29.99 games, even for AAA titles, would sell a shitload more and probably curb piracy a bit as well, this is my thought process anyways

[Katlan]

Pro tip - Make your fucking game entertaining and long enough, so that renting is not an option.

This... Maybe releasing an alt ending via DLC would be cool, but if I pay 60$ for a game (I don't rent and only ever buy a used game when the 2 gamestop's I go to don't have a new version - so very rarely) it better have an ending. Some DLC is good, but too much DLC is a way to just milk money from you and it's pretty-much solidifed the console wars to a whole new lv via exclusive DLC.

Next your gonna see DLC endings, but a diff ending for PS3 DLC & 360 DLC lol

[BRP]

Am I the only one who used to rent SNES RPGs for additional weeks? Length doesn't do anything.

And like people even finish RPGs these days, they'll rent them for week or two and then get bored.

[Beckwin]

Oh I'm aware of costs for triple A titles and how MS, Sony, and Nintendo make sure they get their piece of the pie, but that doesn't change the fact that the best way to deal with problems of renting/resale is to offer better price competition. The consumer generally doesn't know or doesn't give a shit about how much it costs to get an Unreal license or how much Sony takes from each disk; the consumer wants to get the most gaming miles out of his dollar.

Now strangely, even though Hollywood and the recording industry share the pirating problem facing the gaming industry, they don't seem to reel so much at the rental/resale market. I think a lot of that has to do with prices, other ways to generate revenue (merch/concerts/etc), and what the game industry is reluctant to say: rental outlets purchase a fair number of copies; these are guaranteed sales.

You'll notice now that there's a trend for smaller studios to put out less technically spectacular but still quality titles for cheaper prices and actually do well; the larger titles could shoot for a model of cheaper retail prices but much larger sales figures.

[Dmitry]

Could someone quote the article for me? Kotaku is blocked on this network at my school.

On the topic of paying for endings, whether it was serious or not, it's not going to sit well with anyone paying for the games. Also, why are Xbox and PS3 games priced the same, even though the Xbox still uses DVDs but Sony has Blu-ray?

As for used sales, I understand it hurts the industry, but it's so exploitable it's not funny, so sometimes the retailers get shafted also.

[Reality]

How'd You Like Your Game Ending to Be DLC?
By Owen Good, 3:00 PM on Mon Nov 10 2008, 9,259 views

Downloadable content as a weapon against second-hand resales is, nothing new, but Epic's Mike Capps has heard other ideas for how it can be used with devastating effect. If you hated the idea of DLC weapons in Bad Company, well, you're really going to hate this.

“I’ve talked to some developers who are saying ‘If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free’. We don’t make any money when someone rents it, and we don’t make any money when someone buys it used - way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it.”

That would reduce everything but a retail sale to a demo, in my view. This doesn't sound like Capps specifically advocating such a bastard-ass move. But these two sides — developers and retailer/resellers — need to arrive at some sort of truce or else the only ones who'll get screwed are the gamers.

I can't imagine the Amazon and Metacritic reviews for such a game. It would make the Spore DRM backlash look like a polite disagreement. Seriously, games industry, you want to start spewing douchewater like the RIAA, go for it. They can tell you what it's done for their sales.

giddy up

[Reality]

GM doesn't make any money when i sell my car to a private buyer

Shut the fuck up, idiot game developers

[TheDirtyHobo]

Am I the only one who used to rent SNES RPGs for additional weeks? Length doesn't do anything.

I rented Grandia three times before I beat it, and I was so damn enthralled by the game that I went out and bought it after. But, that's one of my favorite and most replayed games of all time so it hardly counts. I wouldn't do that for just any game.

If you want to sell me games without having me go out and rent them first, then make better game demos. After playing the Left 4 Dead demo last night, I'm absolutely sold on that game. I was looking forward to it before, but I hadn't seen and heard enough of it to be a faithful purchaser on release day, I probably would've given it a rental first. Likewise, Dead Rising was another game where the demo solidified my opinion of buying it or not.

Bioshock and Mirror's Edge demos both got me really excited for the game, but they didn't provide enough to make it seem worth the 60 dollar price tag. The demo really limits what you can do, and though it's meant to be a short portion of the story, I'm only getting a portion of the game experience as well. Without access to a ton of plasmids in the Bioshock demo, I know that I'm going to get a whole bunch more, but I don't know if they'll be fun to use. Mirror's Edge only has you interact with like 4 or 5 different types of obstacles, and although it's fun, I don't know how the other ones will perform.

The simple "Play one level from really early on" is just a lazy way to chop out a chunk of game code and give you that partial version for free, it's not a demo in my eyes. It doesn't explore just what exactly you're going to be capable of in the game, the demo really has to be custom made to sell the game to you. It's not just a preview, it's a form of advertising, and a lot of companies fail to realize this. The only reason the Left4Dead demo could pull off the lazy route was because the game isn't about the weapons and interactions with the environment, it's about the interactions with the other survivors. If they hadn't had the online mode where I can actually play with my friends, I wouldn't be half as excited for it as I am now.

[Pikarya]

Sony getting flamed hardcore on their forums for charging 2 dollars a model in LittlebigPlanet lol.

[Correction]

No, the point was that people who buy the game first hand from a retailer get all that shit for free. The people who rent, buy second hand or pirate the game, would have to pay for shit like the ending. Maybe all consumers would have to download the ending, which is stupid but if it's free isn't really a problem (more of a hassle).

Essentially, the pirate would ideally give a shit because they wouldn't have access to the ending, or would need to pay up the ass for it. I hope it doesn't catch on, because it would be fucking stupid and basically eliminate the reasons for renting a game or buying second hand. Eventually I would bet that like DLC is doing already, even more obvious parts of the game would have to be paid for and downloaded.

The pirate is going to crack the DRM that protects the DLC and trick the executable into thinking the ending is 'paid for.'

Meanwhile the paying customer is still fucked having to wait for a download just to beat the last boss.

[Elcura]

I think you give to much credit to pirates. Cracking that stuff on a console doesn't seem all that easy, perhaps they can or perhaps they can't. What you're saying sounds like a lot of hassle to go through to get an ending to a game they can't be bothered to pay for.

In the end, the pirate goes through so much extra effort to get something the paying customer just does without trouble. If the customer has to wait to download it, the pirate sure as hell has to wait to download it as well.

[Pikarya]

The pirate is going to crack the DRM that protects the DLC and trick the executable into thinking the ending is 'paid for.'

Meanwhile the paying customer is still fucked having to wait for a download just to beat the last boss.

I agree fully.

[Kohan]

On the topic of paying for endings, whether it was serious or not, it's not going to sit well with anyone paying for the games. Also, why are Xbox and PS3 games priced the same, even though the Xbox still uses DVDs but Sony has Blu-ray?

Because the media isn't considered nearly as important of a factor as other costs. The game cases, their inserts, manuals, and so on also cost different amounts of money to produce, and that has never been factored in either.

[Correction]

I think you give to much credit to pirates. Cracking that stuff on a console doesn't seem all that easy, perhaps they can or perhaps they can't. What you're saying sounds like a lot of hassle to go through to get an ending to a game they can't be bothered to pay for.

In the end, the pirate goes through so much extra effort to get something the paying customer just does without trouble. If the customer has to wait to download it, the pirate sure as hell has to wait to download it as well.

The crack needs to happen only once, and once it's done it's trivial to write an .exe so anybody can do it.

There's no such thing as 'giving too much credit' to pirates. We're talking about 17 year-old straight-A high school kids with at least 10 hours to themselves 7 days a week. This is all they do, and they don't need a good reason to do it.

[Katlan]

everything can be pirated in this day-and-age. movies, pc/console games, books, music, ect... and everything has suffered a price increase due to this. Forget a PS3/360 game costing 60$, what do you think about a DS game costing 50$. Cause honestly the diff between a DS game and PS3/360 game should not be only 10$, but emulators have caused DS games to go through the roof.

Even the price to rent games is stupid. I remember when it was like 4$ to rent a game, but now-a-day I refuse to spend 10$ on a rental when I can buy the game for 40-50$ more dollars. No point in investing 10$ on a game you may want to eventually buy, at least that's my ideology

[Pikarya]

Personally I don't think I ever paid for one DS game when I had my DSlite a year or so ago lol.

[Correction]

Gamefly isn't even worth it unless you can complete two games in a month. How much money are they losing on rentals? lol

Maybe they should stop selling stock to GameStop if they're losing so much money on the secondary market.

[Elcura]

The crack needs to happen only once, and once it's done it's trivial to write an .exe so anybody can do it.

There's no such thing as 'giving too much credit' to pirates. We're talking about 17 year-old straight-A high school kids with at least 10 hours to themselves 7 days a week. This is all they do, and they don't need a good reason to do it.

Fair enough, but you make it sound like the inconvenience goes mostly to the paying customer when really it doesn't. In the end, pirates are still getting what they need for free and paying customers are still paying for it. Even if the ending is a download away, the game itself for the pirates is also a download (arguably a bigger/longer one). It's not bad for paying customers at all (ignoring that paying for shit like this is fucking stupid).

[BRP]

Actually I would say paying customers do get a bad deal out of this. For a PC user, it's almost impossible to lock out pirates. The more ridiculous your measures are, the more suffering your legit customers have to deal with. If you do something too stupid people will just pirate it more(ie SPORE).