Lets talk about that price increase

[MojoJojo]

You don't think paid DLC being included on the game disc on release day but is locked until you pay more for it is a bit rum?

No? I mean, I can sort of understand the slight frustration of knowing the content is somehow "in there" but inaccessible, but it's not as if it actually changes the mechanism of paying extra for extra content.

Remember, what you pay for is a license to use* content, not the actual arrangement of pits on the surface of the DVD.

(*ok, I think the strict legal idea is you get a license to copy the data for the sole purpose of using the software)

[Kelvin]

Not universally, or if it is they do a good job of reworking the packs into seemingly independent chunks. The story in the Horizon: Zero Dawn DLC doesn't intersect with that of the game proper so you don't miss anything by not playing it. The DLC for The Evil Within is a couple of separate stories (one of which shows another angle on the main story, but isnt absolutely essential), same with Batman: Arkham City. Prey's DLC is basically a new game built on the engine and assets of the original. The Spider-Man DLC is a new story set after the game is done.

Spider-Man and Horizon are Sony games, though. Sony are investing in these games for prestige, really - quality single player experiences uncluttered by the things people hate about modern gaming. They need them to sell consoles and be seen as the  best place to go for games. That's  a different strategy than most publishers.

Also; Arkham City did have tons of additional stuff. It had purchasable skins, extra characters, extra stealth and combat missions, DLC, and multiple GOTY editions. No doubt it had special editions at launch too.

[BeardFaceMan]

No? I mean, I can sort of understand the slight frustration of knowing the content is somehow "in there" but inaccessible, but it's not as if it actually changes the mechanism of paying extra for extra content.

Remember, what you pay for is a license to use* content, not the actual arrangement of pits on the surface of the DVD.

(*ok, I think the strict legal idea is you get a license to copy the data for the sole purpose of using the software)

It kind of puts paid to the notion that they have to charge extra for this extra content because of the extra work that went into it, when in reality it was ready to go in the main game and they took it out in order to charge you extra at a later date. It's a shitty practice that does nothing to enhance the game or make things better for gamers, it's just there to rinse as much money out of people as possible.

[bgmnts]

Imagine a 120 minute feature film that's made but you can only watch 90 minutes of it in the cinema with a regular ticket. The rest you have to pay a shitload extra for.

Why anyone defends this currently default practice I do not know. Maybe because video games are quite a mainstream activity now? Not sure.

Mental, regardless.

[Kelvin]

Imagine a 120 minute feature film that's made but you can only watch 90 minutes of it in the cinema with a regular ticket. The rest you have to pay a shitload extra for.

What about a DVD extra? Additional content made at the time of the film, but released and charged for separately.

I don't agree with the rest of what Mojo Jojo wrote, but I do think the stuff about day 1 DLC is overblown. It was allocated a separate budget factoring in additional costs/purchases. It would, in principle, not exist if it wasn't going to bring in additional money. The point at which it is released is much less relevant than whether the content should reasonably have been included in the main game imo.

[BeardFaceMan]

Imagine a 120 minute feature film that's made but you can only watch 90 minutes of it in the cinema with a regular ticket. The rest you have to pay a shitload extra for.

Why anyone defends this currently default practice I do not know. Maybe because video games are quite a mainstream activity now? Not sure.

Mental, regardless.

I think that's the main reason this type of thing started creeping in and then became the norm, they saw the amount of money that could be made when gaming became big business. So then you had more and more people involved in the games industry who were not there because they loved playing and making games, they were in the industry to make money, even if it was at the expense of the games.

I don't agree with the rest of what Mojo Jojo wrote, but I do think the stuff about day 1 DLC is overblown. It was allocated a separate budget factoring in additional costs/purchases. It would, in principle, not exist if it wasn't going to bring in additional money. The point at which it is released is much less relevant than whether the content should reasonably have been included in the main game imo.

That may be the case now but I would be very suprised if that's how DLC started off getting made.

[Kelvin]

That's my point, though. It's not about whether DLC content is released on day 1, it's about whether DLC content, released at any point, has been carved off a main game, just to sell back to us.

[BeardFaceMan]

If that content is included on the disc on the day of release, I'd say there's a better chance it was carved off the main game than been given a separate budget and inflated the price of development. Again, not something that would happens so much now, I'm talking back in the days of Gears of War2/3 and Mass Effect 3, when paid DLC really started to become a thing.

[Zetetic]

Perhaps the more pressing question is why isn't more stuff carved off from AAA games at an earlier stage with the aim of producing meaningful works that are respectful of users/players time, more tolerable in terms of development costs and pressure on creators, and are cheaper - so that both creators and consumers can take more risks with the games they produce and play?

(The answer probably involves 'scum'.)

[MojoJojo]

It kind of puts paid to the notion that they have to charge extra for this extra content because of the extra work that went into it, when in reality it was ready to go in the main game and they took it out in order to charge you extra at a later date.

No, it really doesn't. By that logic they shouldn't charge anything for the game, because they've shown they could make the game without taking your money.

They spent extra money to make that extra content, and the only reason they spent that money was so they could charge extra money for it.

It's a shitty practice that does nothing to enhance the game or make things better for gamers, it's just there to rinse as much money out of people as possible.

I mean yes, it's there to make money, but it does mean players get access to additional content that otherwise wouldn't be made.

Imagine a 120 minute feature film that's made but you can only watch 90 minutes of it in the cinema with a regular ticket. The rest you have to pay a shitload extra for.

I am imagining it and there is outrage, the film gets panned by critics and is a box office failure.

It's a stupid comparison, because most* AAA games are very careful to make sure you still get a satisfying game without the DLC. They know they'd be panned if they didn't and that would lose them money.

And if there is a £70 game where they've locked off the last quarter unless you pay more? Don't buy it. There's loads of of games which don't do that.


(*all? I'd be interested to hear of counter examples. Some of the Civ games were massively improved by their expansions - but I'm not even sure )

[Zetetic]

Civ and Paradox games are arguably not AAA, but interesting in terms of major changes in mechanics over updates and expansions. (Also stuff like Slitherine? Niche high-cost games are a rather different kettle of fish to AAA and even Civ is sort of in that category, maybe?)

[Famous Mortimer]

Watch that Jim Sterling video or read my bullet points. The product price has increased, just via additional charges.

But raising the price of the game will not stop paid-for DLCs or microtransactions, though. It'll just make more profit for the publishers.

[Famous Mortimer]

Industry defence

Do you work in the games industry?

Option 1. They're making extra stuff, so they can make more money.

Option 2. They're taking sections off the original stuff, so they can make more money.

(it's option 2)

Does anyone think the day 1 versions of games are as satisfying an experience as they were before DLC became near-universal?

[bgmnts]

For the record, I'm not against downloadable content as a general rule. If a developer had some ideas that didn't quite make it or whatever and they then develop that and want to add that to the game afterwards, then fair enough, no issue.

That's not what happens though.

[Zetetic]

I suppose it's mostly whether stuff feels unfinished or not, in terms of narrative or mechanics, that generates serious considered ill-feeling towards day zero-ish DLC. (And for bloated AAA games this will often be hidden hours if not tens of hours beyond what an early reviewer can expected to discover.)

How common actually is this? Should we care if it only upsets the sort of people who fund this sort of thing?

[MojoJojo]

Do you work in the games industry?

Option 1. They're making extra stuff, so they can make more money.

Option 2. They're taking sections off the original stuff, so they can make more money.

(it's option 2)

No, I don't work for the game industry.

Do you have any evidence that's its 2? AAA development costs are always going up. Does it actually make sense that publishers would actively make the base game worse, and thus lose sales, rather than just developing extra content? Once a decent base game is developed, the incremental cost/risk of adding DLC isn't that much. When I look at "The City that Never Sleeps", it doesn't look like something that was cut from the main game.

Does anyone think the day 1 versions of games are as satisfying an experience as they were before DLC became near-universal?

Yes? Maybe I just haven't seen the bad examples, but I can't think of any games I've played where the main game felt incomplete without the DLC. A few games the DLC has been a way to spend a bit more time with the game afterwards, but I've never felt like the base game was incomplete without the DLC.

In fact with Spiderman, I got the GOTY version but haven't played since I got bored of the main game before I got to it (it's a good game and I got plenty out of it but the fights degenerated into dodge-spam by the end).

I dunno, maybe I've just missed the bad examples. The worst DLC content I've played was Mass Effect 2. Where are the bad examples of games ruined without the DLC being included? And why did you buy them?

[Kelvin]

But raising the price of the game will not stop paid-for DLCs or microtransactions, though. It'll just make more profit for the publishers.

I know, why do you keep saying that? My point is that they don't need to raise the base cost of games to match inflation (the industry argument), and it is even more transparent because they will continue to charge for the extras.   

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Maybe I just haven't seen the bad examples, but I can't think of any games I've played where the main game felt incomplete without the DLC.

The closest example I've played would be Fallout 3, with the notoriously crap original ending that was redeemed somewhat by one of the expansions. Even then, I didn't feel like the game was incomplete, just a bit twatty.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is something like Dishonored, for which the DLC campaign was pretty much a whole extra game. I'm sure day one buyers would have loved to get all of it for the price of one game, but that would hardly be a reasonable expectation (I bought the remastered edition for PS4, so I actually did get the whole bundle for about 30 quid).

Wishful thinking perhaps, but I'd hope more developers would follow he example of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Low price, sky high production values and exactly the length it needed to be.

[Timothy]

Do you work in the games industry?

Option 1. They're making extra stuff, so they can make more money.

Option 2. They're taking sections off the original stuff, so they can make more money.

(it's option 2)

Does anyone think the day 1 versions of games are as satisfying an experience as they were before DLC became near-universal?

Do you have any examples of recent games where they clearly took sections off the original game to sell those sections as DLC? Because I really can't think of any story driven games I've played the last few years that felt incomplete at release.

[Mister Six]

Also; Arkham City did have tons of additional stuff. It had purchasable skins, extra characters, extra stealth and combat missions, DLC, and multiple GOTY editions. No doubt it had special editions at launch too.

But none of that was sheared off the main game to be sold separately. The Catwoman stuff was obviously developed in tandem with the main game, but the way it's implemented fucks with the flow of the story, so clearly wasn't part of the original design.

[Mister Six]

It kind of puts paid to the notion that they have to charge extra for this extra content because of the extra work that went into it, when in reality it was ready to go in the main game and they took it out in order to charge you extra at a later date. It's a shitty practice that does nothing to enhance the game or make things better for gamers, it's just there to rinse as much money out of people as possible.

Not necessarily. The extra content still takes resources and man-hours to produce, and if it was planned to be DLC from conception, that would have been factored into the budget (ie. they spend more on the initial dev time than they would have ordinarily in order to have a more sustained income after initial release; without the plan to make the DLC that DLC wouldn't have been created).

Not saying publishers aren't cunts and that carving out stuff to be sold separately isn't a thing, but DLC being made ahead of release isn't an automatic indicator of that.

[Chedney Honks]

Make fewer games, make them all better with no crunch and make every one a hundred quid.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The closest example I've played would be Fallout 3

Tell a lie. I got the 2015 Star Wars Battlefront and that was pisstakingly spartan on release.

[ImmaculateClump]

Just checked and all the crappy games I buy are still 5-20 quid. Phew!

[jamiefairlie]

The market will decide, games are commodities so they'll charge as much as they can get away with to maximise profits. If they charge too much then profits will drop at some point so it's up to the consumers to respond in a way that drives industry behaviours.

And this idea that devs are penniless overworked urchins is a nonsense, we are very well paid in comparison to our peers and are relatively affluent as a result. Sometimes the work is hard but it's definitely up there in terms of rewards.

[Ham Bap]

I would only consider a £70 game if I thought i was going to get well over 100 hours of entertainment on it. On PS4 I played Division 2 for a couple of 100 hours. If a sequel came out for £70 i would definitely buy it. And even then I would want future expansions for free.

Any other game at £70, a story driven game I doubt I would buy it at that price. Would just wait for that discount.

[Phil_A]

The market will decide, games are commodities so they'll charge as much as they can get away with to maximise profits. If they charge too much then profits will drop at some point so it's up to the consumers to respond in a way that drives industry behaviours.

And this idea that devs are penniless overworked urchins is a nonsense, we are very well paid in comparison to our peers and are relatively affluent as a result. Sometimes the work is hard but it's definitely up there in terms of rewards.

Hmm, this smacks a bit of "I'm alright, Jack." You might be doing fine but evidence suggests this is not reflected across the industry as a whole, particularly in the US where employee rights are basically non-existent. If people were being forced to do 100 hour work weeks in any other industry, I have a feeling more questions might have to be asked.

https://time.com/5603329/e3-video-game-creators-union/

https://kotaku.com/crunch-time-why-game-developers-work-such-insane-hours-1704744577

And that isn't even getting into other issues like widespread sexual harassment and bullying.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-07-09/game-industry-reckoning-sexual-harassment-ubisoft-chris-avellone
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/jul/22/is-the-video-games-industry-finally-reckoning-with-sexism

[Chedney Honks]

Who cares

Just give me Chip's Challenge in 4K!

[MojoJojo]

Yeah, my experience of game development (having fags outside one of the Frontier offices about 10 years ago) is that they have an endless supply of young graduates who think it will be cool to work in the games industry, and they work them to the bone. Partly to make up for the lack of experience, partly because they are easy to replace.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Street Fighter 2 was 60 quid new on the SNES in 1992.