Some Players Want Day-1 DLC, Says BioWare

An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at GDC Europe this week, BioWare Montreal's Fernando Melo spoke about how the oft-disparaged first-day downloadable content for video games is actually something a significant amount of players want. 'Melo argued that on the occasions when BioWare hasn't provided DLC from day one, those players who complete the game quickly then complained that there was nothing more to play and asked for extra content. If DLC isn't provided for these players, they may well move on to a different game and never come back to play DLC later on. As proof that day one DLC also works in terms of sales, Melo said that 53 percent of all sales for the first Dragon Age: Origins DLC pack — which was released on the same day as the full game — were made on release day."

Comments

Are you serious?

[NettiWelho]

They want the frigging Day-1 DLC because the content currently in Day-1 DLC was supposed to be in Day-0 product.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed.

What this shows is that the serving size of the base game was simply too small.

And that some people would rather order additional sides than go to a different restaurant with larger mains...

Re:Are you serious?

[trunicated]

Day 1 DLC is generally worked on in the months between going gold and certification. Would it be better for them to add an arbitrary delay so that the DLC, which is completed in time for day 1, is instead delivered on day 30 or 60? Granted, this is generally the reason with Console games, but then again most day 1 DLC is for consoles (and their PC versions).

Re:Are you serious?

[Internetuser1248]

I don't know about consoles, but in PC games this is called a patch. If there is still work to be done in the 30-60 days before release that can't be included in the main release, you release it as a patch on day 1. What is the difference between dlc and a patch you ask? Easy, dlc is a patch that costs money. Support companies like tripwire interactive. Their game Red Orchestra patched in 3 separate content expansions over the game's lifetime, and users weren't charged a cent. These expansions contained new maps, vehicles, skins, weapons, just about a complete new version of the game. Tripwire is also just an example, there are many companies that continue to support and reward their customers for the initial purchase. Bioware used to be good. New bioware can suck my dick, and if they are very very good at it they might get some liquid dlc.

Re:Are you serious?

[Seumas]

I have a better idea.

Stop milking the current game and work on the next expansion or the next title in the franchise or something entirely new? Think of all the wasted time in "let's add five new stupid missions to this open world game!" and "let's add fourteen new hats and twelve tee-shirts!" development.

How is it that a game used to be able to launch and six months or a year later, they could release a huge $30 expansion pack with a crap-ton of content and a lot of thought put into it? Yet, today, they have to release new content every two to four weeks from and including the date of launch -- mostly filled with meaningless crap and padding rather than full-fledged content?

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality. During that process only bug fixes go into the product. Once approved for physical media, there's manufacturing and logistics to get the game in the stores, etc. that also adds significant delay.

Bottom line is, for a AAA game, there's a good 2 months at the very least before launch when nothing much goes on with the game. DLC is worked on in that period, and if it doesn't hit the mark and needs 2-3 weeks more, it's not a big deal. Risk management.

I'm a game developper and I know people like to rag on DLC and how it's bad and mean (But 20$ expansion packs were totally cool back in the day, go figure), but it's extra content. Yes, there's on-disc DLC (most often tied into promotion with different stores) and stuff like that. Yes there are DLC packages that are a total rip-off. But it's just a delivery method...

Re:Are you serious?

[Rix]

And there's absolutely no reason they couldn't just release it as a patch.

If they want to make a full expansion, no one would complain.

Re:Are you serious?

[lessthan]

Actually, the difference between DLC and a patch is a that a patch is supposed to fix and DLC is supposed to add. I liked the Bioware DLC for Dragons Age. It wasn't a part of the story, but it added to it.

Re:Are you serious?

[Doctor_Jest]

Since we have delays all the time in the gaming world, why not wait until the DLC is done, or better yet, stop working on DLC as an add-on and fix the original game? That way, when the game's out for a while, a company can extend the life of the game (not horse armor *cough*) adding additional quests, etc. Adding "new armor types" and so forth (unless tied to a quest) would be pointless and milks the dough of the user who already likes the game because he purchased it.

I would say that slicing up resources so a game can have DLC at launch is needlessly spreading development thin and allowing game-killing bugs to creep into already complex games (Fallout, Fallout:New Vegas, Skyrim anyone?)

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, it doesn't feel like extra content! People felt expansion packs were totally cool cause THEY _ARE_ TOTALLY COOL. Day 1 and Month 1 DLCs feel like aspects that were planned for the game and then taken out during the meeting with marketing & sales, or budgeting. DLC should NOT feel like the missing parts of a game. What were "expansion packs" of yesterday feel like the of sequels today, and yes, they are still cool. DLC feels like crap.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be a valid argument if it were actually true, but the DLC are planned months or years in advance and worked on well before the gold date. The new Sim City, for example, had day 1 DLC announced alongside the game. Even in the pre alpha stage they had already begun planning and developing the DLC for the first day of release.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, it doesn't feel like extra content! People felt expansion packs were totally cool cause THEY _ARE_ TOTALLY COOL. Day 1 and Month 1 DLCs feel like aspects that were planned for the game and then taken out during the meeting with marketing & sales, or budgeting. DLC should NOT feel like the missing parts of a game. What were "expansion packs" of yesterday feel like the of sequels today, and yes, they are still cool. DLC feels like crap.

This person hits in on the head. In the old days expansion packs were more like sequels (or intermediate episodes until the actual sequel), they always took place after the game.

DLCs on the other hand tend to be content that didn't make it into the game, this is apparent in that they are usually set inside the timeline of the game rather than after it. It's really obvious when the game refers to the DLC content, making it apparent that it was cut out (or deliberately held behind). Fallout: New Vegas is a good example of this with the Lonesome Road DLC, right from the first hour of the game NPCs are already referencing it. Also unlike Fallout 3 which had DLCs retcon their entrances into the game world where they didn't exist before (entire buildings popping out of nowhere) in New Vegas the entrances to the DLC locations are not only already in the game world but even have quick-travel points on the map.

The developers of Fallout: New Vegas admitted that the game needed another several months to truly be finished, just about everything in the DLCs was meant to be in the game itself (and would have been much better integrated into it) and even the game world map has huge areas that you never visit (that empty space to the West is where The Divide is located). However the publishers would much rather put those parts into DLCs so they can charge more for it, then later release a new edition of the game with all the DLCs included (and the price jacked up to cover it).

Re:Are you serious?

[FatLittleMonkey]

It seems to me that the main game is what we used to get as a playable demo. A few hours of free but limited game-play to give you a taste of the full unlocked game. Now those two-to-four hours are the full game.

If over 50% of your players finish your whole AAA game on the release day, you're doing it wrong.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.
You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

Sure I can. Know why? The user base is increasing. The effeciencies are getting better. Sure there is more production value and more complex mechanisms going into games but they sure are not getting longer by any significant amount. I certanly don't weep for the game companies. They are ruthless with firings of staff and yet they reap enourmous profits. If they are not fleecing the consumer then fine but when they start giving us the middle finger then I start getting a little frustrated.

Re:Are you serious?

[DragonTHC]

I come from the old school of thought on that one too, but I've accepted DLC.

The reason I want day-1 DLC is because I don't want to have to play the game over again in 3 months once it's all released.

Looking specifically at Mass Effect 2 and 3, The DLCs aren't extra. They are part of the original story line. Downloading new DLC after you've finished the game means you'll have to either restart it or load a save game and continue just before the point of no return.

Re:Are you serious?

[Sir_Sri]

Kinda....

Games used to have things like pre-order bonuses and so on. That was fine when there were a lot less games, getting a guaranteed pre order was trivial and when you could have reasonable confidence that a developer wouldn't make crap.

But times change. If you're a bit OCD, a bit of a completionist or if you just want everything having all the goodies some people get for 'free' (or bundled with things you don't want like a statue) you still might want that same content, which is DLC, and might be willing to pay for it.

Some of the Bioware DLC then makes sense, in the scope of say an extra character or an extra mission that you want to see when you play the game. And for say 5 dollars it's still cheaper than a 10 dollar special edition with an art book that you don't want. Think of some DLC then as 'a la carte' limited/collectors/special edition parts.

Day-1 DLC was supposed to be in Day-0 product.

That's both subjective on a case by case basis, and really hard to argue in a lot of cases. Charging 5 dollars for day 1 DLC is partly a way of increasing the price by 5 dollars but cutting the various middle men out of the process. If you are a semi indie studio and you sell a game for 50 bucks at Walmart, walmart takes about 15 bucks (steam, gamestop about the same), your publisher takes 17 or so, and you're left with 17. But you get 100% of the DLC. So rather than getting 17 dollars for a copy you just got 22 (without having to push the whole cost through the chain). Usually publishers these days are smart enough to demand a cut of the DLC so it goes from being the publisher getting 35 bucks to split with you to getting 40 to split with you, but either way, the developer still takes home a lot more cash this way.

Most DLC is also not really major, relative to the price. A 5 dollar DLC doesn't have 1/10th the content of the game in it, if you're really lucky it has 1/20th, so you're significantly overpaying for that one piece of content in the hopes that more money goes back to the people who actually made the product than the people who distributed the product or left it in a box in their bathroom waiting for you.

Lets take a non bioware topical example: Guild Wars 2. Every retailer near where I am sold out on pre -orders of the collectors edition day one. Too bad I was away that day on business and missed my pre-order chance. Now with a 'digital deluxe' or similar edition I'm basically buying in a bundled DLC, call it whatever you want, you're paying for day 1 DLC. So I can't get the collectors edition, or at least, I can't be sure I can get the collectors edition, but I can be reasonably sure I can get the important game content one way or another.

In short: your concept of DLC and his aren't necessarily the same thing. You're not wrong, but neither is he. That perspective matters a lot. He's talking to other game developers, and in that sense he's right. Day 1 DLC (including in collectors editions or content that could have been in collectors editions but a player didn't buy that) is hugely popular, and that should be obvious enough to everyone.

Extra less relevant bits:
Dragon age origins (the product in question) launched with 3 version. Regular retail. Collectors (physical) and digital deluxe. The digital deluxe had a *code* to download the day 1 DLC for free (so he's counting that in his stats almost certainly since it wasn't technically bundled), but the digital deluxe had a soundtrack and some desktop theme crap too. Why pay for the sound track and desktop wallpapers when you can just buy the actually game content for 7 bucks or whatever, save yourself 3 dollars, (or maybe 13, i can't remember). In his context a significant portion of the launch day had people buying basically the 2 special editions or a la carte versions of the special editions.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes and no - cost and required revenue are higher, but the latter partially follows due to market growth rather than unit price - the market for a PC game is far broader today than in the 90's - computer/console penetration is far more widespread both domestically and internationally.

Re:Are you serious?

[foniksonik]

If the game was deficient in content then it required a "patch". Next up, games that come with no content. You have to buy it all, no discount on the "game".

Re:Are you serious?

[Johann Lau]

Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality.

And that process does not apply to DLC content? Are you sure?

Re:Are you serious?

[Johann Lau]

Sorry, I meant downloadable DLC content :P

Re:Are you serious?

[cpu6502]

Question:

What happens 10 years from now when I want to play my favorite classic game on my Windows 11 PC, but it won't work without the "patch" or downloadable content & the company no longer exists (or does exist but won't supply the files online)???

This looks like very obvious planned obsolescence to me. Release a game that is incomplete in the store & only works due to an internet download/patch, but later erase the patch so it can never be played again. (Thereby forcing people to buy new games instead of playing favorite classics.)

Re:Are you serious?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

If the game was deficient in content then it required a "patch". Next up, games that come with no content. You have to buy it all, no discount on the "game".

1. If [Company releases additional content for Game], then [Game was deficient in content].
2. [Company releases additional content for Game].
3. Therefore, [Game was deficient in content].

This is called affirming the consequent and is a formal fallacy. It's not necessarily true.

Also, if some folks want to attempt to redefine the meaning of the word "patch" to put DLC in a bad light, that's their prerogative, but it's not very rational.

Re:Are you serious?

[Johann Lau]

You have Downloadable Content, and downloadable downloadable content content? WTF!

I didn't make the rules, I just play by them.

Re:Are you serious?

[interkin3tic]

Then... who would buy the actual game? I think you're extrapolating way too far there.

Re:Are you serious?

[aztracker1]

That was my first thought... if your game doesn't offer enough play/replay value out of the box to justify the $50-70 purchase, WTF!? why are you charging more to make it so? It's worht noting that I stopped playing games 6-8 years ago since DRM became so common... I didn't want to follow it... I have done a couple humble bundles, and donated for the ouya kickstarter though.

Re:Are you serious?

[geminidomino]

The problem with this excuse is this: It's becoming more and more common that the "Day 1 DLC" is actually ON the damned disc, which means it was done BEFORE "going gold" (creating the master disc).

Re:Are you serious?

[tlhIngan]

Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality.

And that process does not apply to DLC content? Are you sure?

Downloadables are faster.

You might not know this, but once a product is finished, there's often a 2+ month lead time before it can be sold. In that time, the pressings have to be scheduled in, followed by the warehousing and distribution.

If the game is ready, it goes into cert, which can take a month while issues that come up are fixed and resolved. In the meantime, you have a bunch of developers sitting around (rarely do you get something that involves the entire team - those kind of bugs are usually caught before it goes into cert). Once approved, the discs can be pressed (alongside with other things for special and limited editions), which can take another month, from then it's another month to ship it to the various retailer warehouses and for them to ship it to their individual stores.

So there can easily be a 2-to-3 month period of idleness for developers. You could either lay most of them off, keeping the few you need to handle launch day issues, or have them producing DLC in the meantime. As it's downloadable, once it's passed cert, it goes into the store - no waiting for pressing or distribution (which are the slow parts).

The process can be sped up if you're doing a console exclusive title or if the manufacturer really wants your game, but you're still looking at over a month.

Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution. Who might as well work on DLC and probably finish some stuff they couldn't do during main development. Leading to more day-1 DLC.

Re:Are you serious?

[box4831]

Is that what you intended to put for step 2? If so, it appears your example is a legitimate use of the Modus Ponens

Re:Are you serious?

[Durrik]

Its a different process. I also work in the gaming industry, and on consoles.

The base game is usually a 10 week lead time from 'gold' (or final) till its on the shelves. Most of that time is certification with 1st party. There's one first party that wants 12 weeks of cert time. I've also worked on a game with an accelerated release schedule. Final, cert and ship in 3-4 weeks

Patches are usually 2 weeks, though maybe 4 weeks sometimes. Though I've had patch go through in two days before, of course that was the second submission of the patch, and the change was as stupid icon change (We put it on the left, where it fit better with the art, they demanded it on the right).

If the DLC doesn't have compiled code in it, then the DLC usually breezes through, maybe taking a week, though one 1st party likes to take 6 weeks with them.

Anyone in the industry that's had to deal with certification can tell you what a pain it is. There's no consistency to the process. One game might submit following one process and a game released three weeks later might follow a different process, it all depends on how much the 1st party wants your game on their console. Or how much they want to screw around with you.

Re:Are you serious?

[Kasar]

They've trained me well enough. I may not even buy the base game if I know there will be extensive DLC until it's a year old and the "Platinum" or "Complete" versions roll out for $20-30. I'm not sure how that helps them, but even DA:O had a Gold and Platinum version. I bought the gold too early, then bought the platinum later, and combined it was still less than the launch price.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.
You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

The fuck?

I've played plenty of games in the late 90s and early 00s that were fully voice acted and had LAN if not online play. Hell, fucking Command and Conquer 95 (which came out in 1995) had fully acted FMVs with actors and sound stages. Jesus Christ. Ever played Half-Life (the first one), that was 1998. You're full of crap.

The problem has nothing to do with production costs, it's the business model that's changed. The gaming industry used to be made up of people who loved games and wanted to make a reasonable profit producing new awesome ones. It's now made of suits that treat their product as a line item in a spreadsheet and a check-list, there's no drive for quality or fair dealing; very few people want to make a good game nowadays, they just want to make McDonalds — something that achieves maximum revenue with a minimum of investment or artistic integrity.

"DLC feels like crap."
So don't buy it?
And if the main game isn't worth the money, don't buy that either.

Can you teach me how to see into the future as well? I don't see how else I can avoid paying for a non-refundable product that sucks even though I can't know that it sucks before I paid for it.

Re:Are you serious?

[Stalks]

Then how does most DLC manage to get on the original disc? It is just "unlocked" when you purchase it.

Re:Are you serious?

[mwvdlee]

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.
You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

"Back in the day" there weren't quite the quantity of sales either, so I guess you CAN expect increased production values and features for the same price.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention you could find players that tried to excuse the Diablo 3 always online douchebaggery as well, never underestimate the ability of the fanbois to take a good asspounding by the corps and beg for more.

Personally if they want to sell hats or some other non game changing crap? I have no problem with that. A good example would be Saints Row 3 and the silly costumes, hell I bought a few of those on the last Steam sale because I thought some of it looked like a good goof. But yeah when they are selling core gameplay day 1? Fuck you greedy bastards.

Re:Are you serious?

[del_diablo]

Most modern games also have several people working manually on generating trees and doors, and manually placing rocks in terrain. Doesn't mean it actually increases production value.

Re:Are you serious?

[Carewolf]

Bottom line is, for a AAA game, there's a good 2 months at the very least before launch when nothing much goes on with the game. DLC is worked on in that period, and if it doesn't hit the mark and needs 2-3 weeks more, it's not a big deal. Risk management.

That doesn't explain the "DLC" that is now commonly shipped with the games to minimize the downloading process.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention Valve has already shown us that with digital distribution its better to have LOWER not higher prices if you want maximum profits. I wish I'd thought to save the link because there was a little article I read when origin was about to roll out where one of the guys from Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700% because it doesn't cost shit to distribute digitally and the amount of people they had buying caused their returns on the game to go through the roof.

People hate the day 1 DLC because its often EXACTLY what it feels like, core sections of the game removed and then resold, so that a $60 game becomes a $90+ game just to have a complete working game, its a fricking ripoff. There is only ONE type of day 1 DLC that doesn't piss me off and that is the non gameplay related silly shit, the TF2 hats and SR 3 silly costumes kinda stuff where you can tell its just the devs goofing off. I mean nowhere in SR 3 that I saw were the characters talking about how they needed to get a witch costume and fly on a broom or drive around in a people shooting Genkimobile.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

But on the fliside compare a modern shooter to the late 90s ones. You could take a game like duke 3D or Redneck Rampage or Blood and actually get lost in the huge levels just looking for all the cool stuff and places to go, now its "straight line, cutscene, lather rinse repeat".

Take Bulletstorm for example. i bought it because I loved the previous People Can Fly games but its just another "on rails lead you by the nose" borefest. Sure it had cute scenes with decent acting, but so what? Who gives a shit when you are BORED out of your damned mind because you feel like you are shooting pop up targets in a shooting gallery? NO exploration, NO cool things to find, just walk to the next spawn point, wait for bad guys to duck behind cover and pop their heads when they pop up...yawn. Hell even the weapons were boring and from PCF that is saying a lot, after all painkiller had a fricking stakegun.

If there are any devs out there? Hi, seen how much games like Limbo have made without super graphics? I'll be happy to take a shooter game with Far Cry 1 or even No One Lives Forever II graphics if you give me 1.-large levels to explore, 2.-AI that isn't retarded, 3.-More than 2 &%&$&%$& guns with lousy amounts of bullets!, 4.-A halfway decent story. Is that REALLY so much to ask for? Hell you could make that in the 90s, why not now? Fuck hiring Tommy Lee Jones to voice grunt #2 and just give us decently large levels with fun shit to do in them please!

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...didn't they do this already? I seem to remember a major stink last year when one of the racing games, may have been a Gran Turismo but don't quote me as I'm not into racing games, had only 5 or 6 cars and tracks out of the gate and the rest were all paid DLC.

The only nice thing I can say about this is all the AAA douchebaggery has left a ton of money on the table for the indies. Now if we'll only get some indie shooter devs like we have for the puzzler and platformer genres I'll be a happy little camper.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

The problem with your argument is thus: Most here are not against CONTENT being released we are against GAMEPLAY being released. As an example Fallout:NV where the DLC is talked about in the original game and even fast travel hubs to the DLC is already in the original game. That isn't a content release, that's a gameplay release as its obvious those bits were meant to be in the game but were cut out to sell later. An example of content being released is SR 3 costumes or TF 2 hats, nobody in those games talk about the need for a costume to finish a mission or needing a hat of ultimate coolness.

I think you'll find many don't mind and in fact enjoy extra content, because its just cool little treats you can take or leave without affecting core gameplay in the slightest. What has people royally pissed at is huge gameplay chunks missing with a "pay $X to get what used to be here" sign. Most of us would consider that epic asshole behavior and try to avoid games that do BS like that.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

10 years from now? Try buying "Minerva's Den" for Bioshock II off of GFWL, you can't do it, at least not in anyway I could find. you can buy it for the X360 but not Windows anymore. It royally sucks as my oldest got Bioshock II off the Steam sale and I was gonna just give him Minerva since frankly the story in Minerva was better than the story in Bioshock II but they don't even have a way to buy it anymore. I guess if my GFWL account ever screws then I'm screwed as i don't think anyone ever released a pirate version of Minerva.

Re:Are you serious?

[gl4ss]

day 1 patches are NOTHING NEW.
ASKING MONEY FOR DAY 1 PATCHES IS NEW!

there said it. and in case of for example dragon age 2 they would have needed to make an entire another game for the game to be worthwhile... it would need a dlc the size of the original game so that it would feel like something else than fan made mod for nwn, I mean, fan made expansion for da1 would feel better..

Re:Are you serious?

[Bensam123]

I don't think the problem is with day 1 DLC, but the fact that it almost always appears as a integral part of the game they cut out. So even if they do work on it after the game 'goes gold', it should still be a part of the original game. They just planned around working on it while shipping the game. I'm sure you're smart enough to realize they could just ship the game earlier with part of the content missing and add it as soon as it's read as a DLC.

Re:Are you serious?

[aaaaaaargh!]

1. If [Company releases additional content for Game], then [Game was deficient in content].
2. [Company releases additional content for Game].
3. Therefore, [Game was deficient in content].

This is called affirming the consequent and is a formal fallacy.

Looks like perfectly valid modus ponens to me.

Re:Are you serious?

[Cederic]

So don't buy it?
And if the main game isn't worth the money, don't buy that either.

Which is why I'm buying 3 year old games in their super-discounted "Includes all DLC ever released" incarnations after their genuine sequels are already available - with even more DLC.

Added bonus: They're really really pretty on my year old laptop.

Re:Are you serious?

[Cederic]

They don't do any bullshit DLC

Erm. You can use real money to buy in-game content in TF2.

Although as that's free to play and you don't have to pay money, I guess it may not be "bullshit".

Re:Are you serious?

[Cederic]

i don't think anyone ever released a pirate version of Minerva.

Your Google skills need a little training.

Re:Are you serious?

[drinkypoo]

Do you mean gameplay or story? Because the content is where the gameplay comes from.

Re:Are you serious?

[grumbel]

So don't buy it?

The problem with DLC isn't one of money, but that it fractures the game. Instead of one well designed product that fits together, you have a dozens of products that sort of kind of fit together. Bonus DLC weapons are often out of balance, the story DLC often doesn't quite fit in, multiplayer maps just make it more troublesome to find people to play with and costumes are just useless. "Don't buy" isn't a solution, as the main game still might reference the missing content, so when you don't buy it, you still know there is a piece missing from the game that makes it feel incomplete and sometimes you don't even know you got it, as it automatically comes with your Game of the Year edition. There is also a general lack of quality in DLC, as most of it ends up being far less quality then the main game.

Sometimes there is of course DLC that takes more the form of an expansion pack and truly does tell a piece of story that is completely optional to the main game and still doesn't feel like a useless addition, but even those can be a little annoying, as DLC means they have to be short and cheap. Thus even when they are actually good, they just end up feeling short and a full blown expansion pack would have been better.

In the end DLC is nothing but a money grab and nobody can honestly tell me that it's somehow the best way to deliver a game to give the user the best experience. DLC has done nothing but make gaming more complicated and frustrating. From a business standpoint it makes sense, from an entertainment point of view it's a really shitty idea.

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting,

Voice acting has been a normal feature since 1993, it has been around for a while. Network play existed even earlier and plenty games on my Amiga had Modem support. 1080? Nothing all to special, a good CRT could give you 1280x1024 long before any HD-TV was around.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

When I say gameplay I'm talking about missions and other levels and the like talked about or mentioned in the original non DLCed game, which makes it obvious that it was original content that got yanked. For a comparison look at SR 3, where you don't have anyone in the missions going "hey did you see that witch flying around? We really need that broom!"

I'd say SR 3 is a perfect example of DLC done right. Even the two little side quests they offered, Send In The Clones and Genki Super Ethical Reality, are obviously goof off shit some dev cooked up that doesn't affect the actual story gameplay in the slightest. My two boys got the full game with all the DLC on Steam while I took just the game and the 3 DLCs I actually cared for, the tank pack, Genki, and the Genkimobile, and we play the story co-op it doesn't affect anything in the slightest....well unless you consider me LMAO at some of the costumes the boys wear in the thing as affecting the game...I mean a walking shitter?

But if its required to finish the story as talked about in game, such as Fallout:NV then i would consider it core gameplay that had been gutted and that's just douchebaggery. You could buy nothing but the game itself and you and i could play the entire SR 3 campaign and not get any difference in our games whereas with NV you'll hear all this talk and see places on the map marked off you can't even get to without whipping out your CC now THAT is just bullshit. if they want to throw in hats or crazy shit like witches brooms and walking shitter outfits? NO problem with that, just don't be cutting core bits of the story out and trying to make me pay twice for the damned game just to finish the thing.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

Apparently so since I sure as hell can't find it, but that doesn't change the fact that there is an entire STORY missing in Bioshock II you can just go and buy anymore which sucks balls.

I mean did you try it? Anybody that said B II sucked should have gotten Minerva because its story is damned near as good as the first IMHO and unlike the original B II they actually have new weapons and enemies that feel fresh and new. The combos you can pull off just with the different kinds of bots is just unreal and it makes you try to plan ahead since you can only have two bots.

But it taught me a valuable lesson, don't buy from GFWL anymore. I've had no problem picking up older DLC off of Steam, in fact most of the bundle packs simply include all the DLC, so I was frankly shocked when I went to buy Minerva and found I couldn't even buy the damned thing anymore.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

The difference is the silly hats don't change the game in any way, unless you call looking funny a change. I'll never forget watching my oldest win $50 in Steambux in a TF2 contest as he had decked his sniper out in some of that crazy outfit stuff and there was someone on there that kept saying 'Will someone take down that damned sniper? Not THAT one, the one that looks like a damned VC!" and I had to actually explain to him what the hell a VC was.

But the big diff is that stupid outfit didn't give him a single advantage, it didn't make it easier to play, boost his power, or anything else, he just bought it because 'I think it looks cool". I have zero problem with day 1 DLC like that, such as the silly costumes in SR 3, because you can still play the game all the way through without it and not feel cheated. The problem is when they rip out what was obviously levels in the actual game so they can resell them as DLC, or sell gamebreaking weapons that make it "he who spends the most wins" because then you feel cheated and rightly so.

An easy rule of thumb is if it feels like it was supposed to be in the game from day 1 and the game feels incomplete if you don't buy it? its douchebaggery. if its just stupid shit that doesn't change the game and doesn't affect the story? Meh if they want to offer extra crap like that who cares, I might even buy a little of it like I did with SR 3 or the DLC for Just Cause II where they mounted a fricking tank gun to an ice cream scooter. stupid? Hell yes but funny and fun which is what DLC should be, just stupid fun stuff that didn't end up in the game but some dev thought was cool.

Re:Are you serious?

[UnknownSoldier]

> Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700%

Actually L4D1 was 3000% more sales ;-)

You're probably thinking of the 1600% new steam customers.
i.e.
"Newell also mentioned that new Steam customers jumped 1600% over the same weekend, according to G4TV. Retail sales remained constant."

They also revealed gamers are extremely sensitive to pricing. (Digressing slightly, Hell most of my steam friends don't buy new games until they go one sale for $10. We already got a big backlog of great games to play, we'll get all the patches, plus we'll have better hardware to run a 2-year old game on.)

"The massive Steam holiday sale was also a big win for Valve and its partners. The following holiday sales data was released, showing the sales breakdown organized by price reduction:"
                10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
                25% sale = 245% increase in sales
                50% sale = 320% increase in sales
                75% sale = 1470% increase in sales

References:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/20/steams-left-4-dead-sale-increased-purchase-infection-by-3000/
http://www.shacknews.com/article/57308/valve-left-4-dead-half

Re:Are you serious?

[DavidTC]

Except it takes just as much worked to dike out the content in the first place.

They had to sit there and create places the DLC would be, and a rough grasp of the DLC, and make the game work _without_ the DLC...

I know everyone thinks 'Of, that's what they're working on when the game is done'...but that doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's true, but it took just as much work during development to build 'the place the DLC might or might not plug in' as it would have to just put the content in the first place.

But to realize this, you have to actually look at how DLCs are set up. No one would have an issue if 1-day DLC had things like 'new costumes for characters', or 'an independent adventure', stuff that idle developers could have actually worked on. (I'm reminded of Batman: Arkham City, which had DLCs exactly like that. The DLCs alter the main storyline not a bit.)

But drawing a circle around actual game content and spending the time and effort to make the game work with or without it is just as complicated as actually writing the damn content at that time and putting it in the game in the first place, and is not really fooling anyone.

Re:Are you serious?

[DavidTC]

That's not why you shouldn't buy 3. There's a much much better reason you shouldn't buy 3.

Re:Are you serious?

[DavidTC]

Okay, I keep hearing people talk about New Vegas DLCs, and I have to say: I have no idea what you people are talking about. I played NV without any DLCs (Well, I think I got some Steam weapon pack or something) and I don't remember _anyone_ talking about _anything_ I couldn't do. I remember maybe a single reference to the Sierra Madre Casino in the original game, and that's it.

Now, yes, the DLCs were obviously actual content cut from the game, and actually belonged in specific places on the map. I don't disagree with that.

But I realized that after I bought them and played them. There's no indication that anything is missing while playing. Unless you count the fact the map is rather larger than the actual areas you can get to, which I thought was actually more realistic than in FO3 where mysteriously you were locked in a square.

I think people's knowledge that the stuff _was_ cut from the game is altering their memory of the actual game, which didn't have any obvious missing areas when playing. When the DLCs were added, there's no place I went 'Oh, _that's_ what goes there.'. (Which has happened to me on plenty of games.)

That's not to say that New Vegas doesn't seem to have parts missing. It's a strangely lurchy game, where the plot sort of falls apart in the middle. Which it does because you have near-total choice over what you can do next, but, still, it loses some forward motion once you deal with Benny.

But that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the DLCs, unless they were somehow supposed to be tied into the game in ways I don't quite see. (Perhaps Lonesome Road was supposed to be, but that was the _last_ DLC and hence presumable the least likely to have been diked out of the original game. I have not played Lonesome Road yet.)

Re:Are you serious?

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

I'm still laughing my ass off about this. "Yes, people want DLC so when the game sucks and doesn't have enough content, you have something to download and play".

Wrong problem pal, and the wrong solution to that problem.

I love watching people contort themselves to prove their own point.

I'm not buying any games with DLC content that would cost me money to buy in order to play the entire game as sold, because the game will be next to worthless on the used market where I usually recoup half of my purchase price. Since the game is no longer worth much used, its worth a lot less to me new. I'm certainly not paying what I used to pay for a used game, then anteing up another $8-10+ for the missing 'first day dlc'.

These guys think they found a way to kill the used game business. As far as I'm concerned, they found a way to make me buy one of the 8000 used titles that came out without first-day-dlc. Then wait a year or two for all of the new titles to drop to the $5-10 they're now worth rather than the $10-20 I used to pay used. Then it'll make economic sense.

However, I'm sure the vast majority of drooling masses will keep buying the new ones, never try to sell them used, and will never notice that any of this is going on.

Re:Are you serious?

[frosty_tsm]

So some developers use DLC as a crutch rather than as extra content (as the game developer ggp mentioned). Sometimes developers don't get the 6 months they need because their publisher has a specific deadline to hit (that's just part of the game business).

You can always find a negative case where the developers made an unpopular decision. Doesn't change the fact that others are doing great things with DLC.

Re:Are you serious?

[mjwx]

Day 1 DLC is generally worked on in the months between going gold and certification. Would it be better for them to add an arbitrary delay so that the DLC, which is completed in time for day 1, is instead delivered on day 30 or 60?

So in other words, they deliberately plan to leave some content out so it can be purchased for an aditional fee on the day of release.

Why don't they put all the content in before going gold and spend this time actually testing their product instead so you can get a patch out on day 1 to fix all the bugs.

Oh wait, they cant charge us for that...

Re:Are you serious?

[mjwx]

I'm a game developper and I know people like to rag on DLC and how it's bad and mean (But 20$ expansion packs were totally cool back in the day, go figure)

Because DLC is not an expansion pack.

Often DLC is nothing but a new gun, shirt or hat that they charge you $5 USD for (some how using the 1:1.03 USD/AUD exchange rate it works out at A$10). Expansion packs were developed months after release rather than being planned from day 1. They had to have significantly more content in them, often expansion packs had significant gameplay changes. Take Starcraft and Brood War for example, A world of difference between the two and over six months between release (this was with Starcraft practically guaranteed to make money).

but it's extra content.

You may be too young to remember this, but there was a time before DLC where developers gave you extra content for free. Yep, bits often get cut from a game due to time constraints, a lot of Devs from the 90's and early 2000's liked to give their customers that content for free if it was finished a few months down the track. Hell, Valve still does that.

Re:Are you serious?

[mjwx]

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.
You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

Has your voice broken yet?

I was playing games that were capable of 1080p in the 90's, so few monitors actually supported that resolution that most support was 4:3, I still played a crapload of games at 1600x1200 on my 19" CRT (same on a 21" CRT nicknamed the "back breaker"). I can go back to Empire Earth, released in 2000 and fucking 1 and that has support for my 1920x1200 monitor.

you didn't have voice acting

Voice acting, Go back to play System Shock 1 (1994), that had voice acting. The quality of voice acting in System Shock 2 is amongst the best of any game and that's 15 years old now. Now we're going way back to 1992 and Star Control 2, that had voice acting and brilliant writing to boot. In fact if we take into account the quality of script writing, we've gone backwards since the 90's.

online play

Online play?

Ha, I remember when it was harder to network your PC to another in the same room than it was to play a network game. I remember when the multi-player mod for Doom came out, we still did TCP/IP networks over coax. I remember LANs from the 90's with Counter-Strike and the first Unreal Tornament. I remember playing starcraft over fucking dial-up. With C&C or Red Alert literally I'd ring my friend using my modem to play as trying to use their online service in Oz was a fucking nightmare.

Online play is not new. Not by a long shot.

You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

I cant expect that, but all I'm seeing is quality going down and more companies trying to nickel and dime me to death with DLC.

There was once a time where game developers gave out extra content they couldn't finish in time for free... You're probably too young to have experienced that.

Now get off my 16 colour lawn. I spent all fucking day trying to get that to work on my CGA card.

Re:Are you serious?

[nabsltd]

Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution.

Based on the number of bugs we are seeing in "certified" games, there should never be idle developers.

That "down" time could be used for more rigorous testing like finding and fixing of bugs not caught by the "certification" process. I'm playing Fallout 2 for the first time right now, and the nearly 500 extra bug fixes from the "unofficial" patch makes the game much more playable. Add in the nearly 300 bugs fixed before this by official patches, plus the fact that about 30 or so of these bugs were of the "game crashed, hope you saved" type and I really wonder what the developers and testers were doing before the game was actually released.

Yes, I know that games are big and complicated, but the reality is that they are made up of many small parts, and it's pretty easy to make sure each of those parts works as intended. The problem is that it costs money to do that testing, and game developers have long ago crossed into the "prettier pictures, bigger name voice talent" realm at the expense of game play and reliability.

Re:Are you serious?

[Jarnin]

I've played most of the big releases from Bioware since 2008, and there is not a single one that can be finished in any sense of the word in two to four hours. Even if you ignore the side missions/quests and focus only on the big story moving content you're still going to be playing for 10-12 hours.

I just did a Mass Effect trilogy run a few weeks ago and this is what I ended up with: Mass Effect: 36 hours played
Mass Effect 2: 29 hours played
Mass Effect 3: 24 hours played

I understood why people were complaining about the Day-1 DLC with Mass Effect 3, specially after completing the game in only 2/3rds of the time it took to finish the first of the trilogy. It's actually quite obvious that the From Ashes Day-1 DLC was originally intended to be part of Mass Effect 3. There's simply too much exposition and interaction with Javik to have had him tacked on after the fact like they did with Kasumi or Zaeed in Mass Effect 2. With Kasumi and Zaeed, when you interacted with them in their quarters on the ship they had very simple replies; Zaeed usually talked about his past missions and Kasumi mostly jabbered about your other crew mates and her past heists. There was no interactive dialog, no questions you could ask them. It was basically click and hear them say something.
Ashley Williams, who was a late addition to your crew in ME3 core game was implemented like Zaeed and Kasumi. She'd say something if you clicked her, but there were only a couple instances where you'd try to interact with her and you'd get a cut scene where there was a Q&A.
Mass Effect 3 AND Dragon Age 2 seemed to me to be rushed games. Both seemed like they were lesser games than their predecessors and both had a huge amount of outcry due to Day-1 DLC, as well as claims that the developers cut corners (particularly the end of ME3) to get the game to market. All of this seems to have happened since Bioware was acquired by EA (no big surprise there really).

Re:Are you serious?

[kamapuaa]

Just think about what you're saying. If this was really true in the general case, every single publisher would sell their game for $2. It's a weird hubris to think that from playing games, you understand the finances of game companies better than people who are trained at their jobs, privy to the company's sale figures, and works at it full-time.

Re:Are you serious?

[LurkerXXX]

Wait for reviews? That's what I do. Anything with less than a steller rating that I don't know I want 'right now', I wait for a year or so for when it's on a big sale on Steam, and I get get it for a price that I think it's actually worth.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

Dude look at the fucking numbers the guy above you posted okay? that's not bullshit, that's actual sales figures showing truly insane profits brought about by lower pricing.

The problem is you aren't thinking like a PHB like the head of EA. There they don't see price reductions as a way to generate more sales they see it as money slipping away. they'd rather have 1/10th of the sales at assrape prices than 3000% sales at cheap prices because they care more about the STOCK and its perception than they do the actual revenue. You see when some rag puts out "Game X sold Y at $60 a piece" that makes the day traders drool and stock goes up, this is what happens when an investor market becomes pure speculators market as we have now.

Again look at the numbers and realize that once you hit the sweet spot frankly you can get insane sales on even shit games because it becomes an impulse buy. I personally bought K&L II Dog Days, F3AR, and Bulletstorm even though the reviews were all bad because they were on sale for less than $8 a pop and I know a hell of a lot of people that did the same. It doesn't really matter how bad the reviews are in the $3-$10 bracket because most of us figure no matter how shit the game is we can at least get that much entertainment out of the title. Would I have bought ANY of those games for even $20? Not on your life.

Look at those figures and remember it was 'experts in the field" that nearly destroyed the financial markets. just because you've spent years in the field doesn't mean you're not a dumbass, it just means you have experience.

Re:Are you serious?

[Your.Master]

Obviously he got point 1 backwards but the point stands.

Re:Are you serious?

[AbominousSalad]

parent post is almost exactly what I came here to say. now gamers are not only happy to buy buggy products, they're also asking to pay five more dollars for a costume the same day they buy the game? I smell freshly cut Astroturf.

Re:Are you serious?

[Shagg]

So how does the day 1 DLC get certified?

Re:Are you serious?

[Shagg]

So you're saying that the pressing/distribution process is slow and inefficient. But, rather than come up with ways to improve it, they use it as an excuse to charge more for content that doesn't have to go through pressing/distribution. Something there doesn't add up.

Technically, putting the bare minimum on the physical media and have the rest of the game available via digital distribution makes a lot of sense. However, I don't see how that is a valid explanation for why they charge full price for the minimum that was put on physical media and then charge extra for the rest of the game that was made available via digital distribution.

It's a grab for more money, plain and simple.

Re:Are you serious?

[Keith111]

Then if the game is worthy then the same thing that happened to FF7 will happen to it. People have been fixing and making the game compatible for years and adding new content even. I played FF7 on my Win7 pc only a couple years ago. Of course now you can just buy the re-released version from SquareEnix directly, but I'd be a bit careful about it because they added random crap to the game and considering SE's track record lately it may just be safer to replay the old version.

Re:Are you serious?

[Dahamma]

I don't buy that argument. DLC also has a certification process. If they were able to complete the DLC and get it debugged and certified before the release, they should have put it in the original release.

The publisher's argument that "those players who complete the game quickly then complained that there was nothing more to play and asked for extra content" is even more absurd. So he practically admits many players consider the game too short and his solution was to charge MORE to fix it?

Re:Are you serious?

[sd4f]

That brought back some memories, its sad that so many people are completely oblivious to how much catching up consoles had to do, considering pcs where doing so much so long ago.

Well fuck.

[XiaoMing]

You know what that really means? We're now going to "get what we want" because more companies will just leave out things that would be in the game otherwise and monetize it into "Day1 DLC" instead.

Re:Well fuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and if your game takes me only a day to complete I doubt I'm going to bother to pay for your DLC.

Re:Well fuck.

[ifiwereasculptor]

Yeah, well, Piratebay is great to unmonetize content, so we'll see how that DLC strategy goes.

Re:Well fuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is stupid.

It makes no difference to the company whether you play a game or not, the only thing that matters is whether you pay for it. If you pirate to save money, then yes that's wrong. If you pirate because you were not going to buy it anyway, then that's fine.

Companies need to learn to offer good games. Day 1 DLCs are scams. Short games are scams. DRM is a scam. The moment your game has any of these attributes, I do not buy it. However I do buy a few dozen games and spend over $1000 a year on games that do not have any of the above.
And if you still don't like the fact that I pirate your DRM-ridden game, well just tell yourself that you scammed all the people who bought it and didn't deserve all that money in the first place.

But more importantly: I did not pirate until recently. I was in full boycott mode when it came to music, movies and games I didn't like.
But then some companies decided they could violate our rights to make profits - you've heard of SOPA I presume. From then on, this was war. I no longer care about being nice and doing the right thing and not using what I didn't pay for. Now I download for free from all the companies who supported SOPA or tried to make DRM circumvention illegal, etc. Now I want to take advantage of those scumbags. Thank you for the free games, EA and Ubisoft (and others). That's what you get when you fuck with me.

Also, what are you going to do to stop me? Pass SOPA 2? LOL!
Go cry under a couch, clown.

Re:Well fuck.

[poity]

Seriously, who are these people who finish an RPG in 1 day? Do they pay for a hooker and finish in 2 minutes? Do they order a fine steak and drink it out of a blender? What the world?

Re:Well fuck.

[poetmatt]

Code monkeys can and do get paid.

The jackass who thinks you shouldn't have all the content available on day one of the game (even though development is finished) not only shouldn't be paid, but should be fired and has no place in this business.

Quit making such an asinine argument, bioware blowhard.

Re:Well fuck.

[cheekyjohnson]

But more importantly: I did not pirate until recently. I was in full boycott mode when it came to music, movies and games I didn't like.
But then some companies decided they could violate our rights to make profits - you've heard of SOPA I presume. From then on, this was war. I no longer care about being nice and doing the right thing and not using what I didn't pay for. Now I download for free from all the companies who supported SOPA or tried to make DRM circumvention illegal, etc.

What's that going to do? Whether you download it or boycott it, the effect is almost exactly the same (except that in one scenario, you have a game). It's not as if they lose money they already possess if you download their game, so you might as well have just continued boycotting them.

Re:Well fuck.

[cheekyjohnson]

and by stealing they have the moral high ground. Guess what - they don't.

Well, this matter is about copyright infringement. But whether or not they have the "moral high ground" (whatever that means) is completely subjective. I think it's rather pointless since it's not as if you're taking away the company's existing money, but it's still an opinion. The fact that it's consistently stated as a fact doesn't mean it is a fact.

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

And the company that pays them teleports the money in from the Aether. Of course.

Your logic is flawed.

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

If you pirate because you were not going to buy it anyway, then that's fine.

No, it's not. Clearly you've decided you actually want the game and will derive some enjoyment from it. Therefore it has a value to you, and you're just pirating because you're cheap. This "I wasn't going to buy it anyway" line is the biggest load of bullshit ever spouted, because 90% of the people saying it are just spouting the party line to justify that they're cheapskates who don't feel they should have to pay for someone else's work.

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

No, it makes perfect sense to rational people, and I have no intention of wasting my time trying to argue with your flawed justifications.

Re:Well fuck.

[Pentium100]

Yes, it has value to me. However, games only have a value of up to ~10EUR to me, so if the game is sold of less than 10EUR I am likely to buy it (and I buy the indie games that I think are worth it, I also buy some games when there is Steam sale), but I will not pay 50EUR for a game. Instead of buying a game, I'd rather buy another tape deck, buy a bunch of records or build some circuit - I would derive more enjoyment from any of those alternatives than the game, so a game is not worth 50EUR to me.

And yes, I have bought games after pirating them - when the price dropped to the "worth it" level and I thought the game really deserved it.

Re:Well fuck.

[Mashiki]

No one completes a RPG in a day. The real problem are the CoD/BF kiddies who buy the crap for their action games. Developers and publishers have seen this as a "OMG MONIES" mechanism and believe it will translate over into PC gaming, to a point it has, and to a point it hasn't. Plenty of gamers have said fuck you, plenty like me who play in ladder tournaments(Shogun 2) don't have much of a choice, if we want to keep up with other people. But I just wait until there's a sale on that stuff, I'll buy DLC, if it's cheap. But I won't pay $4.99. $0.99 sure.

Re:Well fuck.

[noh8rz7]

ouch. you better watch out for the bounceback when you use phrases such as "flawed justifications."

Re:Well fuck.

[hairyfeet]

I doubt they are talking about the RPGs and RTS genres, most likely talking about the shooters that have been getting criminally short lately. I picked up Bulletstorm on the Steam sale and that thing I blew through in about 3 and a half hours and I wasn't even trying to rush, there simply wasn't much to it and the MP was shit. If I'd have paid full price I'd have been royally pissed which is why I've been getting all my shooters from Steam lately as i don't feel like I've been ripped if I only pay $7-$10 for those 4 hours.

Kinda sad though, a good shooter used to be able to last you for at least a couple of weeks and by the time you were finished the modders had started putting out new levels and you could squeeze another few months just playing the new stuff. Now I get a hell of a lot more for my money with the sandbox games than i do the shooters but even those are starting to shrink, as SR 2 takes about 40 hours and SR 3 is like 16.

Re:Well fuck.

[Cederic]

Clearly you've decided you actually want the game and will derive some enjoyment from it. Therefore it has a value to you

Maybe he had to download it to play it before he knew whether it had value to him?

Or haven't you seen the studies that correlate high rates of piracy with high rates of expenditure?

Except that of course, the person you're replying to has already told you that he's pirating games because their publishers have already tried to fuck him over, and so he owes them a good kicking. Piracy is his form of protest.

You may not agree with him, but at least acknowledge his reasons instead of using spurious and ungrounded arguments to push your own unreasonable beliefs.

Re:Well fuck.

[Cederic]

there is no justification for theft (unless it's for food or medicine for a starving or dying/endangered person).

Oh cool. So after spending 45% of my income on rent, another 45% on various taxes, utilities, transportation and other unavoidable costs of living in a Western society, and 10% on food and clothing, I can steal for entertainment purposes?

thanks! Because I have friends that are skinny because they can't afford food. £35 on a computer game? That's a week's income for one of them, and she's working for a living.

Re:Well fuck.

[Dekker3D]

If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. If those "40 year old mouthbreathers" are not going to be able to buy it, what do the companies lose if they pirate it?

Yeah sure their piracy may boost the download speeds of other pirates a bit. Or may lower it a bit. Horrible news, I know.

Re:Well fuck.

[argStyopa]

Have you tried many recent titles?

30 hours of gameplay is common, sometimes less if they can rely on "online matchmaking" to supply gameplay they couldn't be bothered to.

Re:Well fuck.

[Voyager529]

What's that going to do? Whether you download it or boycott it, the effect is almost exactly the same (except that in one scenario, you have a game). It's not as if they lose money they already possess if you download their game, so you might as well have just continued boycotting them.

True, and in fairness their fancy Excel spreadsheets and quarterly earnings reports are unlikely to show a major difference one way or the other. The difference, however, is in principle.

If you truly boycott a game, you are doing without. If I do not desire a product, I do without it. If I do not wish to support a company, I do without their products or services.

If you "boycott but pirate", citing that they get no money either way, you're sending a very different message. The message you are sending is that "This game is worth something to me, but I choose not to provide value to you, the developer/publisher". Sure, you may be but one number in a raw stat of downloads on TPB, but every drop of rain water raises sea level.

Pirating whilst boycotting sends the message that the game is worth enough to you that, should piracy be rendered impossible, you'd have purchased a copy. Even if you wouldn't have, a nontrivial part of the seeders on your torrent would. This is the stance Ubisoft has taken, and from an extremely high level view, it's rough to fault them for it. Now, don't mistake me as a sympathizer with Ubisoft as their implementations have been repulsive and anti-customer and I fully feel that everyone who contributed a line of code to their DRM scheme ought to be ashamed of themselves, but when the top brass sees tens of thousands of people getting their product for free, the only natural course of action is "plug the leaks".

Completely doing without sends the message that their product isn't worth your time or money. They may not truly know whether it's due to the game not being one desirable to you, an issue with their DRM mechanisms, a problemw with pricing, an aversion to day 1 DLC policies, or because you don't like their official corporate stance on some controversial political topic. Ideally, a handwritten letter sent via postal mail will help clear that up. Whatever the reasoning though, not showing up in either the piracy stats column or the raw sales column is the best way to protest and show that you're actually committed to the cause instead of simply being cheap.

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

My belief is not unreasonable. And my argument is not spurious. He cites companies supporting SOPA as a reason for him pirating their products, but no game developer/publisher currently supports SOPA. EA withdrew their support. Ubisoft never supported it in the first place. Epic Games, Microsoft, and Runic actively opposed it. I can almost guarantee that the GGP has pirated a product from one or more of the last four listed companies.

On a slightly related note, I agree with you that game companies need to offer demos more. I don't know why you can't just go down to a local game shop and get a DVD with 5 or 6 demos on it for free or $1. You know, like the shareware floppies of old.

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

This I agree with. Deciding that you won't buy it at $X, but will buy it at $Y, and waiting until it becomes $Y is not only perfectly reasonable, it's a damn good idea. Since taking up watching Steam sales, my Steam collection is actually almost larger than my boxed collection, and rapidly coming close to overtaking it.

I simply cannot agree, however, that disagreeing with the price or distribution mechanism of a product entitles you to not pay for it.

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

€

Stop typing the Euro sign manually. Use the HTML entity € instead.

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

It sounds like what you're actually arguing is that games should have decent demos, and that they're overpriced. You'll get no argument from me there (in fact I'd support that wholeheartedly). That's still not an excuse to pirate though.

(On indie games: it's ironic that an indie developer can get people to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars for a game simply by putting it on Kickstarter or Humble Bundle. Doesn't that kind of obliterate the "it costs too much" argument? I don't know. You decide).

Re:Well fuck.

[Kalriath]

That is true to an extent, Some people do pirate because there is no demo for a game, and honestly I can see why you'd do that (I've been burned by buying a game with no demo before - it didn't work on my PC at all, and Valve's response was "no refunds" until I kept at them and they refunded it "as a one time good faith gesture").

However the person I was replying to said that it's OK to pirate if you weren't going to buy the game anyway. It's not, because that means that if you do pirate it then you have decided the game has value to you but you just don't want to pay. What you're talking about is when you aren't sure if you're going to buy it and you're downloading it to decide if you will.

Re:Well fuck.

[Pentium100]

Different people have different amounts of money, so something can be "cheap" and "expensive" at the same time (to different people). Also, the developers usually offer extras (like adding your name to the list of credits) if you pay a lot on Kickstarter, those extras might also be worth it to those people that pay for them.

And yes, games need demos, the game may be buggy, it may suck, or I may just not like it and I would want to find that out before paying money for it.

As for piracy - well, I'm not going to buy the game either way (not not at least), so I might as well pirate it (and maybe I'll pay for it later, when the price drops, assuming I manged to finish the game and did not delete it 10 minutes after stating to play). Despite what the companies say my piracy does not make money disappear from their bank accounts.

Re:Well fuck.

[Shagg]

Therefore it has a value to you, and you're just pirating because you're cheap.

No, it says the value placed on it by you is lower than the value placed on it by the seller. I wouldn't say that "you're cheap" vs "it's overpriced" are necessarily the same thing.

Re:Well fuck.

[poetmatt]

The point is, release what you promise to release. Don't call it a game and then remove 10% which people have to pay extra for. That has nothing to do with completeness of a game and everything to do with a profit extraction. What the hell is this BS about focusing on how complete a game needs to be? the focus is on not charging EXTRA. If a game is $40 to play, the game is not $50 to play (DLC). Simple and fucking done.

DLC? really?

[tulmad]

Or you could, I dunno, release the whole fucking game all at once.

Solution

[Mystra_x64]

I have a solution for you. Just release half of your game and put the rest in DLC. Pure genius. Too bad it's not just my imagination.

Re:Solution

[White Flame]

Even better, release the first half for free and do like the classic shareware model (without the sharing, I guess).

Re:Solution

[stms]

I know you're being sarcastic but episodic gaming would be a better solution for what these companies want to do. You could either buy a game pass for $60 and get all the DLC as it comes out for free or you could buy each individual DLC as it comes out which would be a bit more in the end. They could charge some people more for their game and would piss fewer people off the only downside is they couldn't do a big release all at once.

Re:Solution

[Exitar]

Just release the loading screen and put the *whole* game in DLC!

Re:Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind the episodic approach at all, even if all 15 episodes were available on day 0, so long as they were reasonably priced.

But they'd probably fuck it up by selling a disc containing all 15 episodes, then asking for individual payments to unlock each, and a month wait between each before they will accept payment for the next.

Re:Solution

[LeperPuppet]

Regarding episodic gaming, are there any companies apart from Telltale that have managed to acceptably use the episodic model?

Re:Solution

[gl4ss]

in recent years? I suppose valve but they never got around to releasing ep3 so..

episodic worked for companies in the commander keen / doom / duke3d era though.

Re:Solution

[stms]

Halo 4 is planning on using an episodic model so we'll see how well it works.

I bet those players...

[Anonymous Coward]

...would prefer if that content was included in the game in the first place.

Still doesn't explain why...

[Sydin]

They don't just take that "Day One DLC" that everybody wants so much, and just makes it a part of the initial release at no extra charge. Why does it have to be DLC at all? It's already finished and ready to be played, right? So why isn't already on the disk with the rest of the content I bought? If people are finishing your game and complaining they want more to do, it doesn't mean people want to pay MORE for more content. It means people didn't feel they got $60 worth of content in the game, only for the publisher to turn around and demand more money if you want to be satisfied. If somebody orders a full cake, you cannot only give them 3/4's of it, charge extra for the remaining 1/4, and then turn around and claim that people are obviously clamoring to pay for that extra 1/4. That's now how it works, Bioware.

Re:Still doesn't explain why...

[Imrik]

I agree with making it part of the release at no extra charge, but there is a reason for it to be DLC. From the time the game is finished to when it actually goes on sale there's a period of 1-2 months. During this time you can either take the people that worked on the game and assign them to a new project or you can have them work on additional content for the game that wasn't finished by the deadline. (note that this doesn't apply for the on disc DLC that some companies have put out)

translation

[Trepidity]

When he says there are players who "want" Day-1 DLC, what he means is that there are players who will buy Day-1 DLC. Therefore Bioware is going to keep doing it.

Re:DLC? really?

[White Flame]

I'm old and crotchety and can't stand that sort of whining either, but I think it's less "I want it now" and more to do with what publishers can get away for their boxed releases. I think the gaming audience does have some legitimate complaints about this sort of stuff.

Re:DLC? really?

[TFAFalcon]

Exactly. It's interesting that the Bioware drone mentions Dragon Age, since the DLC was advertised IN the game. You reached a quest giver, and he told you that you had to buy his quest!

Yeah

[netdigger]

Yeah I want day one DLC but I dont want to pay for it. That shit should come with the game.

Ugh, not this again.

[DrEldarion]

People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. Especially with giant sprawling games, once you near the release date, there are a lot of specialists who have completed their contribution to the final project. Artists may be done with their portion, story writers may be done with their portion, certain programming teams may be done with their portion, etc. They need something to do, so they start working on DLC.

"Ah, but they could put that right on the disc in the first place!", you may say. No, they can't. By this point, the game needs to be finalized so they can thoroughly test it, create a master copy, and begin mass production. In the month(s) that this can take on a large title, there's plenty of time to get a significant DLC pack out.

Now, I'm not saying ALL day 1 DLC is because of this (especially rageworthy is something that's on-disc but a day 1 "unlock" DLC) but a very significant portion is. They're not trying to cheat you out of content you should have had, they're just making good use of the time it takes for a game to go from finished to available in stores.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[Dyinobal]

There have been times where the 'day 1 dlc' data was on the disk, and all buying the dlc did was allow you to access it.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[DrEldarion]

How often do YOU write code for ridiculously complex systems that always works for every use case anyone ever throws at it and stays bug free forever?

I'm not in the game industry, but with the projects I work on things are somewhat parallel. There are people (DB admins, UI designers, etc) whose contributions are mostly in the beginning of a project who can start working on V2 features once they've finished up the V1 stuff. Bugs happen, and they need to be fixed after people start using the product in weird ways and uncover them.

I'd think that Slashdot of all places would have people who understand how this stuff works.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[LMariachi]

So why doesn’t the DLC require the same amount of thorough testing, mastering, etc.?

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but some games have been so horribly broken that it's simply unacceptable. Make up whatever lousy excuses you want; I'm not buying it (or any games from that company).

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[medv4380]

The Console gaming industry is a bit different. You get a set spec where you know what the hardware will be. And up until the advent of HDD being included "Patching" wasn't an option. QA is much better when the industry doesn't rely on patching and DLC to correct their games.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[Kalriath]

Perhaps instead of devoting those specialists to DLC, they could devote them to fixing the broken game instead (seriously it took 5 fucking patches to get Skyrim even playable) so that the Day 1 patch makes the game playable?

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[reub2000]

It's not illegal to crack a game in order to unlock content? It would seem to be that when a person purchases a disc, they've purchased all content on said disc whether or not it is easily accessible, right?

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[10101001 10101001]

People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. Especially with giant sprawling games, once you near the release date, there are a lot of specialists who have completed their contribution to the final project. Artists may be done with their portion, story writers may be done with their portion, certain programming teams may be done with their portion, etc. They need something to do, so they start working on DLC.

Politician's fallacy. And thanks for even putting it clearly in the right format. :) Seriously, isn't it the job of managers that if people are finished with project A, they can move right on to project B? The idea that because some people get done earlier than others on project A doesn't change that. It just means that when scheduling for project C, you can make considerations that some people might be done even earlier and figure out what else they can be doing with their time. That DLC might come up as an option might make sense, even as a project B. But, it's not a natural consequence of things as a point.

"Ah, but they could put that right on the disc in the first place!", you may say. No, they can't. By this point, the game needs to be finalized so they can thoroughly test it, create a master copy, and begin mass production. In the month(s) that this can take on a large title, there's plenty of time to get a significant DLC pack out.

Great, so what you're saying is, (1) the process of putting out discs is generally outdated because it results in an absurd lag time of months, (2) that even if you accept (1) and are unwilling to wholly get rid of discs you can offer at least part of the content as free DLC (or more precisely, it's effectively part of the purchase price but it can be freely downloaded since it's only of use to a legitimate owner), and (3) there's no real need to put up barriers to obtaining that DLC like charging extra for it, locking it down to a specific system, or limiting who can download it. I mean, you do realize people aren't generally complaining per se that the content isn't on the disc (except perhaps if the content would fit on a second print of the discs and you're unwilling to remaster the discs for the content) but in how that DLC is being treated as both (a) a core function of the game and yet (b) something extra you have to purchase or at least is locked into being only available to the "original buyer" (which is in the same level of absurd as if you had to register your game first to play it, as if the developers curiosity or interests should extend into any effect past their sale of a copy of the game)?

Now, I'm not saying ALL day 1 DLC is because of this (especially rageworthy is something that's on-disc but a day 1 "unlock" DLC) but a very significant portion is. They're not trying to cheat you out of content you should have had, they're just making good use of the time it takes for a game to go from finished to available in stores.

See above about project A and project B. I don't want to be a dick or anything, but if you get done with a project early and the company can't find work for you on another project, it makes more sense to lay you off for a period than to pay them to twiddle their thumbs on "DLC" or whatever the buzz word of the day is. I'd presume that's precisely why BioWare (and others) want to monetize DLC because they simply aren't as committed to finding new demand itself (ie in creating new games) and are trying to make a market. I'd generally find that admirable. The only problem is because of the above mentioned point of project A being finished to project A released and having DLC released on day-1, it doesn't do the fan base justice to really enjoy project A and mull an actual demand for that DLC; instead it comes across as more of a bait and switch where only part of the game was included. It

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[Turksarama]

You missed the point someone made earlier about how day 1 dlc is content you need to pay for, whereas if the only reason it wasn't on the disc was because it was too late then it could have been released as a free patch.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[blahplusplus]

"People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. "

No this is all because of modern development costs and team sizes, in the late 90's early 2000's game team sizes were orders of magnitude smaller as well as costs to develop said game. DLC is a way to try to exploit gamers for extra cash by cutting up and parcelling out pieces of the game that you already had planned from the get go during the design phase. When content was less costly and lower resolution you could produce more content per unit of time per dollar, Modern games have expensive assets so you get a lot less for the same money because each asset takes so much longer and is more expensive but adds less to the actual game (so you ARE actually GETTING LESS). But gamers are just consumers that grew up with games so they see these new tactics as exploitation (and they are) because they are stop gap measures to deal with rising team sizes and development costs that have to be solved over the long term. Twisting the facts because of your ignorance of gaming history isn't a good idea.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[bidule]

So why doesn’t the DLC require the same amount of thorough testing, mastering, etc.?

It could. What's the lead time for printing boxes, pressing cds and shipping them to retailers?

Now, I don't buy DRM or DLC so I don't care anyway. Maybe that's why I can play fair.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[AdamStarks]

Mod parent up. I'm a programmer in the games industry, and have in fact worked on DLC. We even had Day 1 DLC, but it was free!

DLC is frequently (though I'm sure not always) additional content made between the game's hopefully-gold release candidate being sent out for certification/distribution, and the actual release.

If you know that you're going to have a couple months of downtime, then you might even spend one or two days adding in NPCs as hooks for the DLC that you plan to make during that time (like what BioWare did with Dragon Age).

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[Imrik]

It is far from the norm, but it does happen.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[DigitalisAkujin]

Stop apologizing for complexity! Movies are also incredibly complex to make and you don't see movie studios forcing you to pay extra to see the last 15 minutes of a movie.

There are plenty of examples of companies that make excellent money without bullshit DLC schemes. See: Valve and Notch.

The DLC money machine will end with these companies dying from stupid marketing decisions and good riddance for that.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[Bensam123]

Soo... what happens if they just knock up the release date by two months and then finish the rest of the game and release it as a DLC to speed the process?

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[perlith]

Sincere question: If that's the case, why not make the first set of DLC free? "Hey, we wanted to include this in the base product but had to draw a line somewhere". I understand there's a cost to publish/distribute through a console vendor (Microsoft being the worst). If there' a cost to publish/distribute, charge that amount only (say $0.99 or $1.99). Charging customers an additional 10-25% on top of the base product within a day or two of release really doesn't sit well with most folks.

Zaeed DLC for Mass Effect 2 introduced an interesting but noncritical character two days after product release. Additional DLC followed. I paid for most of the Mass Effect 2 DLC due to the high quality of the first DLC that was released. The DLC purchases added another 20 hours of total gameplay to a 40 hour game which I really enjoyed

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[DavidTC]

That DLC might come up as an option might make sense, even as a project B. But, it's not a natural consequence of things as a point.

And half the time it seems clear that work is required to make the game work _without_ the content. In every place the content would have effected, the game has to check if it's there or not.

Which requires _more_ work and _more_ debugging.

I find the entire premise of this rather dubious to start with. Yes, developers could work on extra content after the master is made but before the game is released...and they used to, with stupid armor packs and maybe an extra two hour quest to go along with it, and sell it for $3.

But as we both know, that's _not_ what's going on with DLCs now, and that's not what people are complaining about.

Hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that just a few posts down is an article about EA putting themselves up on the market because social gaming is apparently kicking them in the knee sales-wise.

DLC to keep players engaged?

[Anonymous Coward]

So there are players that complete the game quickly, say 20 hours of playtime, and they require day one DLC because that extra (less than 20 hours) content will then keep them engaged for a month or so until the next snippet of content is released?

Does that mean we will now get day two DLC, or should we as gamers just wait until the whole game is released and then buy the GotY edition for less than half the price from when the first instalment is released?

Re:DLC? really?

[ifiwereasculptor]

True. And that's mostly because they are now making games too full of shiny. Lots of cutscenes, voice actors, gorgeous maps and models, a plethora of sidequests... which is great, really, but it drives the cost of the thing way up. And in the midst of all that, they often forget to make the game interesting to play. Or even finish the damn thing. Me, I'd rather have lots of 9.99 games like Braid than 59.99 + 9.99 DLC like Mass Effect 3. The first is way cheaper to make, but incredible from start to finish and never, ever, feels stale. An engrossing experience from start to finish. The latter is amazing mostly because of its magnitude, but its gameplay is quite repetitive, most of its characters feel superfluous because of the current trend towards extreme story modularization (which is The Way Of The DLC, BTW) and... let's just not speak about that sorry excuse for an ending, ok?

Re:DLC? really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one that gets me is the "DLC" that isn't even DLC. Instead, it just unlocks content that was already on the CD/DVD.

Re:DLC? really?

[Tapewolf]

Exactly. It's interesting that the Bioware drone mentions Dragon Age, since the DLC was advertised IN the game. You reached a quest giver, and he told you that you had to buy his quest!

And that is the reason I never completed the game, I got sick to death of having the suspension of disbelief ruined by its blatant attempts to nickle-and-dime me.
  Okay, so I was kind of pissed that I wasn't going to get the Werewolf Army I'd hoped for to battle the undead, but what pushed me to breaking point was finding someone on the way to the Dwarf City who was desperate to have their Significant Other rescued or somesuch. I figured it would help me get over losing the wolf army, so I agreed - and he demanded money for the privilege of having his beloved back. So I played System Shock instead.

Just wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until the "game of the year" or "platinum edition" or "gold edition" or "diamond edition" or "complete edition" goes on sale for $10 and you'll have ALL the DLC on day 1. On top of that, most of the compatibility and quest bugs will have been squashed.

Problem solved.

Re:Just wait

[game kid]

But then I'd pay $40 for a "$60" game instead of $120! Why would I want that to happen!?

Re:Just wait

[VortexCortex]

Yarrr Maytee! I be one of yon vocal minority wot rattles 'is sabre in opposition to the phoney copyright and patent artificial scarcity scams. Boycott be unto any lilly livered bilge rats playing Project $10, or foisting a fools booty on the lot of us with their intrusive DRM. Though I be a right fair and upstanding merchant myself and abstain from scuttling their digital ships, raping their virtual wenches, and absconding with their intangible "goods", they're within right to count me a Pirate! Dark days are on the horizon, and it'll be a worse before it gets better -- Best be picking the winningest side if you catch my drift. Those low down dirty scallywags will keelhaul themselves before it's all over with!

No lending establishment worth their salt would ante up over a business plan whereby me crew sells water to thoroughly drowning men! What witchcraft makes men think selling 1's and 0's to folks with automatic number crunchers a strategy worth investment?! What be scare be not ye bits! 'Tis that skill of arranging them titbits just so wot's worth anythin' at all!

Listen here new sailors of the digital seas: If your product be invisibly reproducible at no cost to you, then what you've done did be called Pure Pontificating Labor! Now, there's not nearly anyone else wot can ponder precisely as fancy as you. The rest will pay up to save our headaches, but we're not fools! You get paid Once for doing think-work Once! AAaarh! Say you? True, any fool can re-think such a fine fancy idea after you found it for them. Obvious, yes? Ye don't work lest ye be sure to get paid first!

Once yer mind wares be made, the works' done, too late to shop for investors then. We'll pay fair for fair work, but only Once. Ordering up an adder machine to re think wot be pre-thinked 'tis NOT WORK, Fools! Try all ye might, Imaginary shackles can't hold folks in reality! Artificial scarcity be a tool of the corrupt yellow bellied delusionists in an economy that don't exist. I know not much, but unlimited supply means zero price; Use your fancy number logic on that and tell me game rules are worth buying after they're made?

Some sad souls get lost in a phoney web of cranial constructs, when what's real is right there, plain as a knave is crooked. Welcome to the Information Age.

Re:Just wait

[RedDeadThumb]

If you haven't noticed, the human species is extremely impatient. This is especially true of the younger members. How many people pre-order stuff? This is nuts unless they include a bonus for doing so. But a lot of times they don't and people still pre-order. Why? Because they are fucking impatient. They want the thing the second it comes out. Doesn't matter that it is the same (or even better) game or movie a year from now. They want it now! I am sure this is why Day 1 DLC is sold, too. People don't want to wait for DLC, they want it now. "Gime gime gime, want want want, now now now!" That is the typical person. They can't think past their base animalistic desires to realize that day 1 DLC is ripping them off. Maybe later once the buzz has worn off a few brain cells may register that. But by then they are already in line for the next new thing.

Re:Just wait

[kamapuaa]

Right, and it's the supermarket's fault when people steal things. It's not right that the people selling things decide what price they want to sell it for.

Re:Just wait

[Simploid]

Wait until the "game of the year" or "platinum edition" or "gold edition" or "diamond edition" or "complete edition" goes on sale for $10 and you'll have ALL the DLC on day 1. On top of that, most of the compatibility and quest bugs will have been squashed.

Problem solved.

That's what I usually do but I can see why this doesn't always work

• For multilayer games you can be late to the party if you wait that long and the base has moved to something else. People prefer to play with their friends.
• Interesting parts of the story or twists are spoiled for you while you're waiting, "so S**** doesn't exist? really!"
• People want to be part of a culture by experiencing while others do so they are not left out in conversations

Still I think that most likely for most people, the anticipation and hype can be too much to wait and get a bargain.

Re:Just wait

[FlynnMP3]

That's what I do. I still haven't purchased ME3 or DE: Human Revolution. I'm waiting for all the DLC to come out and the game is already in the discount bin.

DLC is simply an experiment to see what the market will bear in terms of pricing. And it makes me sad to say this, but I think a large portion of the game consumers are that way. Kids who need instant gratification. Besides, it isn't their money, it's their parent's money.

DLC this!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I suspect all those 1st day DLC people were just grabbing it since it was available, rather than that they finished the regular game that day and went elsewhere bored.

Contrary to what companies think, even easy upgrades are still a pain in the ass, and it's far easier to just add another thing to the cart at the same time as the main game, than it is to come back and root around later.

Just wait

[Charliemopps]

In a few months we'll be hearing how all their loses in revenue as of late is due to piracy... and has nothing to do with their "Lets squeeze blood from a stone" business model.

Depends on the kind of Day 1 DLC

[flimflammer]

Day 1 DLC that was on the disc to begin with is not content anyone should be paying money for. It is the most perverse form of DLC and all you're really "downloading" is the key to unlock it.

Day 1 DLC that is a result of work done after the game is gold yet still having the business end finalized are welcome in my opinion. This is the content I can see people finding value in. This is the content I would not mind spending money on.

Of course the distinction between these are often lost to the masses who either don't understand or choose not to listen. BioWare should have clarified that no one wants content locked in the disc, but they don't really care one way or the other, I'm sure.

Re:Depends on the kind of Day 1 DLC

[flimflammer]

The issue is that if the DLC is already on the disc, then development time making the "base game" was spent on it, therefore it should be in the base game. Developers have no reason to delay the launch of the game so they can make all their DLC ahead of time just so it could be on the disc, so anything in day 1 DLC that's on the disc should have been part of the base game. It's really as simple as that.

Re:Depends on the kind of Day 1 DLC

[Imrik]

If the DLC is on the disc it was finished before the game went gold. If it isn't on the disc it is usually the case that the additional content was written after the game was finished. At that point the programmers have already done the job they were paid to do, having them do more work for the 1-2 months between the game being finished and release requires more money. Some companies are willing to include the additional cost in the base game, but I can't really fault the ones that charge for it. (as long as the additional content is actually additional, not part of the main game)

Re:Depends on the kind of Day 1 DLC

[kamapuaa]

Why? Do consumers have an inherent right to everything a company does?

What if a company wants to sell a "lite" version of a product for $20, and the full product for $40?

Since when do they care what customers want

[Dorianny]

A lot of customers want games without draconian DRM protection schemes and I don't see that happening!

Completely serious

[Anonymous Coward]

So long as people keep paying for the Day-1 DLC, publishers will keep releasing games in pieces like this.

If you want them to get the message, don't hate on the forums. Hate by keeping your money. That is the only language they understand.

Re:Completely serious

[aztracker1]

If you aren't buying the DLC and they aren't making money, it's because of all the pirates... arrrggh

X-Com

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I have been playing that game for about ten years now, and there was no DLC for it.

MOO 2? Same.

I think they are just trying to justify alternate revenue streams by lying.

Re:X-Com

[the_Bionic_lemming]

heh, brain burp there, I have had x-com for almost twice that long.

(I went to an Italian Birthday Party yesterday - Grappa has done some work on my noggin)

Re:X-Com

[calmofthestorm]

Ditto, except MOO 1 not MOO 2 (I play it some but it's just not as good as the original).

Speaking of not as good as the original, I also still play TFTD. Tacky and unoriginal as the story may be, it has some elements I like.

BTW have you seen XComUtil? (ironically, the guy's now at BioWare): https://sites.google.com/site/stjones/xcomutil Speaking of DLC...

Also http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts/ and http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/News (I've played the latter, it's excellent).

Re:X-Com

[the_Bionic_lemming]

You rock.

That was some really cool stuff to add, and I hope some mods +1 informative you
!

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Just make Day 1 DLC free

[Plastic Pencil]

Everyone is happy then, right?

Hard to believe we survived generations of consoles and PC titles in the 20th century without DLC. Dark times indeed.

Bioware is full of shit and why DLC is bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bioware are blatant liars and greedy money mongers. Nothing else. Ever since they have joined with EA they have gotten worse and worse and worse. For many many years bioware made great games but ever since they joined with EA they have just been pimping dlc left and right and creating games that for the first time in their history have been garbage. All the DLC codes they were whoring in dozens of products for mass effect. Dragon age was pimping DLC before its release and it was a shit game. Even knights of the old republic is a major let down. Bioware's prestiege and pedigree has gone right down the crapper since joining EA.

Bioware before tried to say "Well the reason we had day 1 DLC for mass effect 3 was because we finished the game 6 weeks before it was released and that finished product had to have 6 weeks to be approved, then packaged and shipped to store. So in that time we decided to create the day 1 DLC to keep our teams busy blah blah blah". Bullshit. You cant tell me they suddenly at the drop of a hat decided to write, design, storyboard, create, build, code, debug, trouble shoot, beta test, bring voice actors in to record dialouge, have artists create the levels, sound guys put in effects, compile the code, submit it to sony/microsoft for approval to be uploaded and then uploaded it in less than 6 weeks? Horse shit.

Then what happens when mass effect 3 turns out to be yet another bioware turd? They blame the gamers. That bitch at bioware actually had the balls to say "gamers arent developers so dont act like them" because gamers didnt like the game. Ok sure Im not a developer, but that doesnt mean I cant know if I like something or not. Im no chef but I damn sure can tell you mcdonalds hamburgers suck, Im no director but I really hated the transformers movies, Im no author but I dont like the book atlus shruged. Just because I dont make games doesnt mean Im not able to dislike them and it doesnt mean I should automatically like everything just because the creator tells me I should because they say so.

So in short. Fuck bioware.

And now. Why DLC is bullshit.

1) When you pay for DLC you are telling developers "I want to pay more for my games. I am willing to pay you more than 60 dollars for my game". The more you buy DLC the higher the chances of games costing more instead of less because you prove youre willing to spend over msrp for a game.

2) Its all digital and you will never own it. DLC is digital content. You pay for it but you dont actually own it. You cant sell it, you cant trade it, you cant let a friend borrorow it and in 10 years from now Im willing to bet you wont even be able to download it again.

3) DLC encourages developers to split up content for the game you paid for full price for to sell you later. They design a game they say "We will take out this part and that part and sell it to them as extra" instead of saying "They paid full price for a game so they should get the full game". Developers/publishers would probablly sell more games if they would actually give their customers full games instead of selling partial games at full price and selling the rest for even more money.

4) DLC pisses off gamers when its sold as incentives at different stores. Say a game is coming out and 3 different stores has bonus DLC codes with each one being different. Now for gamers who really want that game and to play everything thats a asshole move.

Bottom line is I dont support developers that pimp DLC a lot, especially before the full game actually comes out. I buy their games used so I dont give them a single cent.

Fuck bioware and fuck every developer like them that forces DLC down our throats and then says we want it. Dont buy their games new, buy them used or pirate them.

Bioware WAS a good company once...

[Morpeth]

Loved these guys in the Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights days, they supported a huge modding community and made in-depth, long RPG games that were a joy to play. Not so much now, though graphically Dragon Age is of course superior, I'd still take BG/NWN over DA any day.

Not sure if it's because they sold their soul to the devil (EA) or just greed, but they've become just another "rush it out the door, and nickel and dime them later" big company that forgot their roots imo. They don't even really support the mod community now, since they want to make their money by releasing ridiculously short RPGs (too much shiny fluff, not enough meat) then charge for DLCs from day 1. Patooeee...

This is why I hardly by games when they're released anymore. I'll wait until a year later when the special pack with the original game, patches, and all the DLCs comes out for 1/2 the price or less. I got like 9 premium titles with all the DLC/expansions during the Steam summer sale for like $55 a few weeks ago. They'll keep me busy for more than a year, easy.

Re:Customers, again.

[Squeeself]

You forget the most important thing in any business regardless of sector: customers.

Give them what they want (regardless of how silly or selfish the demand) or they will go elsewhere.

With digital content there is another factor to consider. If I feel slighted by a company that I give money to, why would I give them any more when any torrent site can give me a better product, faster, and for free?

Seems that you are the one with the entitlement issues. Customers don't owe you a salary, they don't owe you anything. It is up to you to prove that you are worthy of your salary by making the customer feel good about giving it to you.

Wow...You're complaining about entitlement issues? You're the one advocating stealing a company's product because you feel slighted by them trying to cover the ever-increasing costs of making all that content for their customers. And you wonder why companies are resorting to horrible DRM and day-1 DLC? Just look in the mirror for the real reason companies are reacting this way.

Re:DLC? really?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Or you could, I dunno, release the whole fucking game all at once.

They don't need to. It's right in the summary:

Melo said that 53 percent of all sales for the first Dragon Age: Origins DLC pack — which was released on the same day as the full game — were made on release day."

That means that people are willing to pay for it as extra DLC on release day - it would be a poor business choice to include that content when so many people are willing to pay for it.

Bioware's DLC

[Dr Fro]

So, for their next game, will Bioware promise their Day 1 DLC will allow you to not destroy the entire galaxy in one of three colors..?

Re:DLC? really?

[sa1lnr]

I'm old and crotchety and can (and do) wait until you release the GoTY/Complete version at a fraction of the original price.

and other players

[Anonymous Coward]

want you to die in a fire, with the would-have-originally-included-the-stuff-but-now-we-can-extract-more-money greed-fest that is DLC. expansions are one thing, but things like levels that would have been created by the users in the pc-gaming past are now just some bonus cash for these swine. open the shit up as it (i.e. let users create console levels on their pcs or even the console if it isn't a super complex thing a'la tony hawk's pro skater skatepark editor) was, and we ALL win. let users be creative not just passive drones.

Children with dads credit card

[funky_vibes]

What do you expect from children getting their new toy and borrowing mum/dads credit card?

They're the ones with time on their hands and the ones to quickly get fed up with their toys and move on.

Re:Children with dads credit card

[Lord Chaos EOG]

Or you know, we have a job and make good money. i don't care if I have to pay for additional content, often I buy it even if I don't have the time to play it. But I don't have problems with money either, its so little you pay for a game or DLC.

Re:Children with dads credit card

[funky_vibes]

Money entitles you to be douche, where have we heard that before?
Anyway, I'm sure that's what they're counting on, frivolous buyers who only pay for packaging. They'll never notice that it's an empty shell.

Don't buy games the day they are released

[LordNimon]

A lot of problems would be solved if you wanted 3-6 months after a game is released to play it. The game drops in price, most bugs are fixed, and a lot of DLC becomes available, sometimes at a discount. I haven't played ME3 yet, and I'm glad I waited.

Re:Don't buy games the day they are released

[Sycraft-fu]

If I were you I'd wait until "never" to play ME3. Seriously, that game just ruined the ME series for me.

I did not buy dragon's age

[Dan667]

ea crapping on their Customers has lead to them selling the company. That is what day-1 DLC gets.

Re:I did not buy dragon's age

[Legion303]

It didn't help that the game itself was generic and shitty either.

Re:Uhg, not obvious astroturfing/apologism.

[VortexCortex]

How it actually works: the game studio cuts features out of a game to make the release date. Before money-grubbing-fucksticks came up with the idea of nickle and diming their customers, this cut content would be released when the main game was complete and the bugs were worked out.

For free . As were small and medium expansions of the game to keep people buying it.

Now, not only are those bug fixes and missing features being turned into paid for "DLC", but games are planned from the beginning to have nickle and dimed bullshit from the first day of release.

This! Additionally, once the decision is made to turn the "side" content into DLC, some of the experienced folk who make awesome stuff more awesome are instead assigned to head / work on the DLC team. This means your core game would have been even more awesome than if the DLC hadn't been made. No game is ever finished, we always have more cool ideas to put in; However, making day 1 DLC only after the game has gone Gold isn't nearly as common as it once was. It's lucrative, so now it's actually part of the release plan. Furthermore, the premise that Day One DLC is made while waiting for the game to ship completely ignores the fact that pre-production on other projects is underway before said game release -- You know, so we can actually have more work to do and keep our jobs.

True.

[Altanar]

Despite what people may like to hear, there are a lot of people like me who, if there's no DLC available when they beat the game, don't ever pick up the game later. Even a couple weeks after I beat the game is way too long. If it's not there, I'm not going to spend the time popping in games I consider over and done with 3 months after the fact just for a small snippet of DLC.

Here's my opinion internet

[Mystery00]

All I can say is:

I liked Mass Effect 1 quite a bit.

I completely loved Mass Effect 2, one of the best games I've ever played.

I am not getting Mass Effect 3.

The ball is in your court BioWare.

Re:Here's my opinion internet

[Mystery00]

At your feet where you.

*Sunglasses*

Dropped it.

http://instantcsi.com/

Re:Bioware is full of shit and why DLC is bullshit

[Alarash]

I understand you are pissed off at Bioware, and I am too, but Dragon Age: Origins is not a *shit game*. I pre-ordered it so I had the day 1 DLC included, but it's a dick move to not release it at no extra cost.

Also this game's DLCs were pretty short and weren't worth their price tag. What I regret is that Bioware never did actually good DLCs/Extensions like they used to - remember that Bioware was one of the first to embrace DLCs back in the day with Neverwinter Nights "Premium Modules", which were great.

No one has mentioned the chest!

[Joopsy]

Surprised no one has mentioned a possible reason why the day 1 dlc sold so well.
It included permanent storage (A chest where you could store stuff).

Bioware - masters of the RPG, on this occasion, just happened to forget to include somewhere to store your spare stuff.

Dragon age origins was a relatively early game in the DLC era, and was one of my first encounters with 'enter the code to get the inbox dlc'
(also known as 'we want to kill the second hand industry')

Both of these are examples of commercial decisions impacting on gameplay.

Game was ok, but these two things did mar the experience, quite possibly contributed to me not being arsed to get the sequel.
(I probably wouldn't buy a mass effect sequel now, but that is because of the ending, which was balls)

Delivery issues

[mwvdlee]

If only those companies had a convenient way to deliver that day-1 DLC without hogging all the server bandwidth. Some sort of means to piggyback the DLC on the physical media shipped with the original game perhaps. With some effort they might even be able to integrate the activation mechanism of the DLC with the activation mechanism of the original game.

Re:Bioware is full of shit and why DLC is bullshit

[Elbart]

I understand you are pissed off at Bioware, and I am too, but Dragon Age: Origins is not a *shit game*.

Ironically that was also a few months before EA merged Bioware with Mythic Entertainment (Warhammer Online!). Go figure.

Re:Bioware is full of shit and why DLC is bullshit

[Alarash]

True, BioWare games have gone downhill since the EA acquisition. I was just pointing out DAO is not shitty.

It's not something I'd ever do

[g051051]

I never, ever buy new games at full price. I've commented on this many times in the past, but I just don't feel that modern games give appropriate gaming value for their high $60 price tags. So I always wait until the game is discounted, either in the stores, on PSN, or on Steam, before I buy. That means that all DLC will have been out for a long time, and will also be cheaper. I only recently (as in, the last month) started playing Fallout 3, because it was on sale with all the DLC on Steam. Same with Oblivion, New Vegas, etc.

Not only that, but if you wait, you can sometimes get extra items that were originally pre-order bonuses, or dealer exclusives, bundled in a "game of the year" edition. No DLC or special item is worth actually buying something from Gamestop or Best Buy, but it always irks me to see game comapnies screw over their customer base with that sort of divisive BS.

So they can put DLC out on day 1, on day 1000, and it doesn't matter to me. I'd much rather wait for it to be cheap, bug-fixed, and thoroughly reviewed before I put down some money.

The only exceptions are my favorite franchises, Half-Life and Portal. But I'm OK with paying full price for those, because they're great, and it only happens once every 3 to 5 years...

stupidity and greed

[Tom]

Nowhere does it say that players want DLC. What they want is more of the game to play. That is not the same thing. For example, one of the reasons there's so little content in the game could be that it has been set aside for DLCs.

In my eyes, most DLC is still a greedy attempt at getting paid twice for the same game. I'm fine with non-essential fluff stuff like skins or vanity items. But horse armor, weapons or quests? That's fleecing your customers, period.

Put it on the disc...

[residieu]

If you have players complaining that they finished the game too quickly, maybe you should have included more content on the disc...

I don't mind.

[darkwing_bmf]

The game companies can make more money (or not, in some cases) because of Day-1 DLC. I know we get emotional about games but it's no different than a restaurant offering sides with the main dish. If you want everything cheaply, wait for the game of the year edition. If you want everything but aren't willing to wait, pay the piper. If you don't care about the DLC just buy the main game. I don't see how throwing a conniption fit is going to solve any problems, especially when we're just talking about games.

Re:DLC? really?

[Voyager529]

In the case of ME3, I will give them certain levels of fairness in this regard for 4 reasons:

1.) The "day 1 DLC" came for free with Collector's Edition copies, and the cost of a standard copy + DLC didn't exceed the cost of the collector's edition.
2.) Nearly all of the DLC after that was free.
3.) The revamped ending (which I'll admit still could have been better, but wasn't as craptastic as the first go-around) was also provided for free.
4.) Multiplayer weapon DLC is frequently provided for free.

So while I'm not saying that EA was right in the whole ordeal with ME3, I will at least credit them by giving away a lot more of it than they've charged for.

Re:DLC? really?

[Dr_Barnowl]

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

I'm willing to be that he's including in his numbers all the people who bought editions of the game that came with the DLC included.

For DAO, these included a home base with a storage chest. I mean, FFS, a home base with a storage facility has been part of the RPG milieu for as long as I can remember (in games where you have a limited inventory capacity). You have sufficient camp followers with wagons in DAO to justify a chest being part of your camp, so it's not done for narrative reasons - it's done to exploit the well-known hoarding tendencies of RPG players.

No, just a longer game

[HalAtWork]

No, these players don't want to pay for and download additional content. They just want games to be longer in general, i.e. for the content to be included in the original release. I guess that means a significant group of people consider recent games to be incomplete or lacking in certain areas. But I guess they wouldn't want to spin it that way.

Players want more content?

[king*six]

So what they're basically saying is that Players are happy when they can enjoy more content from a product they like. To me this is akin to a group of highly paid scientist holding a press conference to inform the general public that water is wet, or that clean air is good for you. It's beyond obvious that people enjoy the CONTENTS of Day-1 DLC; what they do not enjoy is the new ideology that publishers can make people pay for the same fish twice.

Re:Uhg, not obvious astroturfing/apologism.

[im_thatoneguy]

This! Additionally, once the decision is made to turn the "side" content into DLC, some of the experienced folk who make awesome stuff more awesome are instead assigned to head / work on the DLC team.

No that's not how it works. You're woefully ignorant to the reality of production. Here's what used to happen before DLC:

Hire 100 people. Work your ass off. Then a few months before shipping... there is a freeze on assets so that the game can actually get finished and most of the art department gets laid off and you hope you're part of the select group that continues on to the pre-production for the next project, you get moved to another game at the same studio that's already in full production or you already have another project lined up to move on to.

Studios ramp up and down their staff based on where they are in production. This is true of games and this is true of movies too. The number of employees swings wildly--it's part of a production artist's normal experience to move from project to project as needed like a seasonal farm worker.

Now what happens is instead of hiring 100 people they think they can get $XX extra out of every customer and a lot of the awesome ideas they had that were going to end up getting cut can be worked on by a smaller 10 person team. So more developers and artists are employed. And then at that point where normally you get laid off you now have something to do and a reason for them to keep you on staff longer. Furthermore once you've gotten the swing of things for one game it becomes easier and easier to crank out more of the same. Levels and quests that would have taken weeks now can be done in days. You also now can hire a separate QA team to debug the DLC. None of that would be possible in the original budget. It's easy to say "Well just put it in the game." but a game will have a very clear budget. They have expectations on what they will make, how large their audience is etc and the price for games doesn't scale based on the time put into it. If you create something like Fallout 3 with 100s of hours of gameplay you don't get 10x as much money as a shooter with 10 hours of content. So at some point you have to say "Ok, that's as much as we can afford to do." But if that judgement shifts and you think "We can probably charge $80 instead of $70, we can hire 2 more level designers and 1 more programmer + QA for the additional content." That's how the real world works. I would rather start work immediately on DLC than to get laid off near the end of the project--go on unemployment for 8 weeks and then come back and start work again just so that self entitled whiners doesn't want the game studio to work as efficiently as possible.

People mention Notch and Valve... first of all, Valve is the largest DLC whore in the industry now. Did people not notice that they now charge $1 to play on their hosted servers? And Notch? Minecraft is about 10 people working on it. But they still charge what $30? Of course they can give away free content! They're making money hand over fist! Compare that to Dragon age which probably had well over 400 people working on it (I got tired of counting while going through the credits after 300). And they're only charging twice as much! Minecraft is not selling poorly. If you want a game like Dragon Age--it's going to cost a lot of money to produce. You have to make a budget and schedule in order to successfully release a product. If people were willing to spend more for a huge expansive game like Dragon Age then yeah, they could give you DLC for "Free". But some how or another every company is going to cover their expenses. It might not be as clear as DLC but they'll find a way.

Mann vs Machine ticket anyone?

And most players want...

[crossmr]

Bioware to stop being a joke of a company and return to their former quality.

DLC scheme

[xdcx]

this is starting to get ridiculous. DLC makes no sense on the computer, where you can make your own custom map, and mods. They had to remove this freedom from PC players for this to make any sense, why download 2 maps for that were from single player ported to multiplayer, when you can make your own for free? What is DLC on day one? This is simply content taken out of the game, made to DLC so the company can make more $$$

Which is fine

[phorm]

When the content comes out a little after the game. However, what I've seen a good many people complain about is when 90%+ of the content is *already on the game DVD* and what you actually get for your money is actually an unlock code which turns it on. Sometimes also download a bit more content etc as well

This is in contrast to "expansions" in which you got a whole new disc of content. Think "Brood Wars" for Starcraft.

If it exists on the existing media, then it's not "new content", it's content left out of the game.

Day 1 DLCs are fine

[Lord Chaos EOG]

I am one of the people who don't mind day 1 DLC. Games are dirt cheap, so paying like a 500th part of my monthly salery for a DLC is no big deal. I blow more money than that on way more frivolous stuff.

Re:Bioware is full of shit and why DLC is bullshit

[Lord Chaos EOG]

1. So what, I don't mind paying more for games or paying for more additional content. Everything in the world is more expensive, except games, which are around the same cost as they were in the 90's, 20 years ago. 2. I don't want to sell it, I don't want to trade it, If a friend wants it, they can buy it. I think Steam and Origin will be around in 10 years time. Physical copies were way worse, they broke, got scratches, stopped working, CD keys ewnt missing, etc. I don't buy physical copies anymore of any game or program. 3. What is a "full game"? You're right this might be a bit of trickery. But like collectors editions, I like that the option is there to pay for more content, even if it goes beyond the original game. 4. That I actually agree with you is annoying as hell. Stores and download services shouldn't have unique content you can't get anywhere else.