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| Dress Up Pony! $4.99 |
Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and PC these represent the current generation of gaming. Giving advanced graphics, sound, animation, gameplay and online functions or platforms. Truly the next gen experience, offering players better experiences or does it? An ugly term reared its head with the release of these consoles “Downloadable Content” better known as “DLC”. Gone are the days of a complete package, instead ushered this generation into nickel and dime schemes, which could make professional hustlers blush.
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| What do you mean I have to preorder 6 copies? |
"Preorder our game now and receive a free exclusive skin!" The advertisements beg for your attention, promising digital goodies and exclusives for preordering at certain retailers. What if I want the complete package? You better pony up if you wish to have everything you paid for, as retailer exclusive DLC is a very scary trend. Why must retailers force this upon consumers? If the game is good, sales will come, but with cutting content, it’s easy to feel ripped off, as we are all paying the same $60, and in today’s economy, can be a lot sometimes. As a gamer from the NES era, I never remember a level being removed from my game, or not being able to select a certain color car in a racing game I just picked up. I received a branded t-shirt or other cool game branded merchandise, this was preordering done right!
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| Alright Mega Man 10! Oh... |
Nothing is absolutely worse than buying a game, and finding out that content has been removed. Asking you to purchase game modes for $2.99 or unlock additional characters for $1.99. Want to change up your looks? That will be $3.99. Nothing makes me feel more scammed than to see this, and then upon purchase, find out it’s a tiny unlock key. That’s right; it was on the DVD you bought the entire time, just locked. Recent trends of map packs for $15 which consist of usually 2 repackaged maps with 2 new maps, nothing is better than rebuying content that you already had! Simple add-ons to the game world in the form of a building or house, why does it feel like this was cut from the game, to simply just charge me an extra fiver?
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| Access Denied! But for $14.99... |
We are starting to come full circle with “game passes” in an effort to cut down on used game sales. Nothing kills a community faster than having games require passes in order to play online. It devalues the product, making gamers having to pull more money out of the pocket to purchases the publisher’s next big game. What if you wanted to rent a game first, to try it? Pop that sucker in, and heading online to do battle, you find “To play online you must purchase a pass for $14.99”, fun killed.
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| I just want to change the voices...wait!? WHAT!? |
Purchasing unlocks for cars, fighters, even just basic healing items to power ups for football players. What exactly is going on here? Unlocking fighters to me was an enjoyable experience, learning the game, finally unlocking that last character, I felt like I beat the game, with my skills being developed because of this. I can simply just download an unlock code for 99 cents or even worse, everything is already unlocked for me. What is the drive, the motivation? Why does the game make me feel dirty or pushes me to purchase these stat boosters, instead of encouraging to do better, let’s just pay to win. Especially in an online environment, stats make all the difference; this can make or break a community.
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| New areas, vehicles and items. Oh my! |
Now to be fair, some games do DLC right, these games are few in number, and I can honestly say they are worth the prices charged. DLC provides new areas, additional weapons, voice acting, new items, and venues to explore. To me, that is DLC is for extending the game substantially, a mini expansion. I don’t want to purchase a game on launch, and find “Play this new area only $5!” It only encourages the ripped off feeling, that I paid $60, and I am not getting everything, with the content more than likely being locked on the disc itself. It has to be meaningful, providing the same experiences the game itself does, but in shorter amounts, sometime after the game comes out, and we all have played the game to death, looking to experience it…just one more time.
2 comments:
I have to agree entirely here. Bonus costumes and small additions to the game are not worth $2. I see a lot more of these mini purchases on the console games then on the pc ones but both frustrate me. Why not just bundle those into a large expansion that gives me some new content to go with it. I have also noticed a trend that even the bigger "expansion" dlc's seem to be getting smaller and smaller. Honest Hearts for Fallout New Vegas comes to mind, while the area was huge there really wasn't much story or questing to go with it, if you didn't take the time to explore and focused on the quests it might last about 2 or 3 hours. They redeemed themselves with Old World Blues though, that was one of the better dlc's I've seen released in a while.
I couldn't agree with you more. DLC has gotten out of control. Collector's Editions are getting the same way. I'm so looking forward to SWOTR, but seeing that there is an entire shop I miss out on because I didn't pay a ton of cash in the first ten seconds of preorder, I'm always going to feel like I'm missing some aspect.
Didn't there used to be a time when these were called patches and you could get them for free from the games website? Back when the 20 dollar expansion packs had alot to offer. Ah, the good old days.
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