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When DLC Goes Wrong
kube00 writes "Poorly done downloadable content is one of a gamer's worst nightmares right now. Where a publisher stands to make some money, gamers get screwed. Whether it's the overpriced extra maps/costumes DLC, on-the-disc-at-launch DLC, or DLC that is nothing more than a remake of other content, no game is safe from bad DLC. That includes Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2, Uncharted 2 and a host of many other popular games. Is there a chance to fix this system?"
As an ex senior game developer, you and I know very well that the problem is that we write two (or three or four) games for every one that's published. And we do this because most of the industry is institutionally incompetent.
Writers who can't make themselves understood; designers who say "give me an engine then I'll tell you what I really needed it to do"; engine devs who think they're writing the game; game devs who think they're writing the engine; artists who view resource limits as only applying to lesser talents; testers who are just frustrated designers; project managers who want to be producers; producers who want to be distributors; distributors who want to be writers, it's a massive dysfunctional clusterfuck from beginning to end. What amazes me is that anything actually gets released.
If we had the discipline (as an industry) to write just one game for every game released, they'd all be AAA, and turn at healthy profit at $30 retail.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.