Article slams MW 2 'Stimulus Package'

[GreasyDogMeat]

An opinion piece that I pretty much agree with whole-heartedly.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/108/1081389p1.html

The article focuses on the ridiculous price of the map pack and 'unlockable' dlc that basically came on a game's disc but you pay to activate. You know, for instance, if you purchase a new bit of DLC and the file size is tiny for what is being offered, you basically just purchased the right to use something that was already on the disc.

[Nightshape]

There's alot of misinformation in that article. Or should I say half-truths.

 

That said... I'm dead set against this crazy price for a few maps.

Edited April 2, 2010 by Nightshape

[GreasyDogMeat]

There's alot of misinformation in that article. Or should I say half-truths.

Such as?

[Gorgon]

Yeah the chiselling phenomenon is getting worse and worse as DLCs become an integrated part of the development cycle. Some times the Vanilla game hardly looks like a finished product. In Napoleon total war you pay 20% more for 10 extra units. I hope negative word of mouth can work against the strong tendency to be too greedy.

Edited April 2, 2010 by Gorgon

[Slowtrain]

That's the nature of dlc and its why devs and publishers love it so.

 

It's cheap and easy to make and they can charge a huge amount of money per content vs a regular game.

 

As I said in a previous thread, if FO3 was priced for content at the same ratio as its DLC, the vanilla game would cost somewhere between 500-1000 USD.

 

The amount that is charged for DLC is outrageous, but because its in such small increments, people don't realize how much they are getting ****ed. It

[Kaftan Barlast]

I would call a lot of the DLC strategies used today, unethical. Charging extra for something that should have been included in the main product, or even actually including it and then charging for unlocking it is just plain wrong. I would even go as far as to say that this type of bussiness practise should be criminalized, because we cant allow companies to do whatever the hell they want in search of profit. Thats not democracy, thats idiocy.

[Enoch]

I would call a lot of the DLC strategies used today, unethical. Charging extra for something that should have been included in the main product, or even actually including it and then charging for unlocking it is just plain wrong. I would even go as far as to say that this type of bussiness practise should be criminalized, because we cant allow companies to do whatever the hell they want in search of profit. Thats not democracy, thats idiocy.

"Should have been included" according to whom?

 

So long as what is playable at release and what each DLC includes or unlocks is well-publicized so that the buyer knows what he/she is getting, I don't have any problem with this. This author thinks that it's a poor deal and won't purchase it, based on the well-publicized information about its size and contents. That's an informed market decision by a consumer. Other consumers may have other preferences, and if the general reaction is sales falling enough to outweigh the higher price point, the company will adjust its practices.

Edited April 2, 2010 by Enoch

[Kaftan Barlast]

"Should have been included" according to whom?

 

 

Common sense and decency?

[Morgoth]

Simple rule: Don't like it? Don't buy it!

[Meshugger]

I simply refuse to touch any DLC to begin with. Except "free stuff", such as Shale for DA. I encourage others to do the same.

[Gorgon]

Unfortunately being a greedy petty bastard is not illegal, last I checked. anyway do like the Russian soldiers of ww1 and vote with your feet.

[Amentep]

Given that I don't have a computer or game system that's connected to...well anything, DLC is a moot point for me.

[Calax]

Given that I don't have a computer or game system that's connected to...well anything, DLC is a moot point for me.

I think the companies forgot that people like you (and me for my 360) exist in that we're not hooked to the web for DLC.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Simple rule: Don't like it? Don't buy it!

I simply refuse to touch any DLC to begin with. Except "free stuff", such as Shale for DA. I encourage others to do the same.

 

 

First of all, consumer power never ever works in reality. Second, Im going with the "play, but dont pay" alternative. They think they can rip me off? Ill rip THEM off. Dont like it? Stop publishing games then, its a free world.

Edited April 2, 2010 by Kaftan Barlast

[Slowtrain]

The best thing I think is to wait for a GOTY-type edition, that bundles all the dlc with the original game plus patches.

 

Then you get everything for often less than the cost of the original edition of the vanilla game.

 

You get what you want and the publishers and developers don't get nearly as much as they could have.

 

Part of the problem of course is that publishers know most gamers charge out like lemmings the day a game is released so the developers know that they can pretty much get away with almost anything for the first few weeks.

 

A little patience on the part of the gamers everywhere would be highly empowering to the community.

[Amentep]

GOTY type editions are the only way I play DLC (which is why I'm playing FO3 now).

[BicycleOfDeath]

It's CoD: MW2... I'm not going to purchase it anyway. Besides, the DLC I do buy, I don't. I wait for Game of the Year versions of stuff. You play the game a lot later, but it saves you money. Fallout 3 new: $59.99 on the PS3. All of the expansions cost about the same together so that's $120. Wait for the game of the year: $59.99 ... even better if you can get a used copy that's in excellent condition.

[Slowtrain]

GOTY type editions are the only way I play DLC (which is why I'm playing FO3 now).

 

 

It's the way to go, I think.

[Slowtrain]

Fallout 3 new: $59.99 on the PS3. All of the expansions cost about the same together so that's $120.

 

 

When the numbers are put there just like this, it's insane to see how little value DLC provides for the cost.

[GreasyDogMeat]

Fallout 3 new: $59.99 on the PS3. All of the expansions cost about the same together so that's $120.

 

When the numbers are put there just like this, it's insane to see how little value DLC provides for the cost.

It would actually be $110 as there were 5 DLC add ons priced at $10 a piece. I didn't have a problem with the F3 DLC as it came out quite a while after the main game and was spaced out. It will cost you less to get the game later in a GOTY pack but thats true of any game, DLC or not. By the time the GoTY edition came out vanilla F3 was $20-30. You would still be saving money getting that edition, but not much.

 

IMHO, Bethesda is a prime example of the best DLC has to offer and the worst. Horse Armor is synonymous with crap rip-off DLC while Point Lookout was one a large add-on with a great new area and some of the best quests in F3, well worth the asking price.

 

The absolute pinnacle of DLC is, IMHO, GTA IV DLC The Lost & Damned & Ballad of Gay Tony. These feel less like DLC and more like the classic expansion pack as far as content goes. I'd like to see DLC move in this direction. Basically, everything old is new again start releasing 'expansion packs' that might cost $20-30 a pop but are actually worth every penny of it instead of milking players for map/skin packs.

[Slowtrain]

The problem is that the bigger the DLC gets, the more they become like full games and the less value the publisher gets out of it.

 

It's in a publishers best interest to keep DLC as small and piecemeal as possible and sell a lot of them.

 

From a publisher's POV Horse Armor is a great DLC. They'd wet themselves in excitement if they could sell a whole game in little .99 pieces like that.

 

Can you imagine how many .99 DLC pieces it would take to build Oblivon's gameworld? The game would cost more than a small real world country.

[Humanoid]

Games like most other media types have their consumers trained to value the product as its medium instead of it's content and therefore don't see any problem at all with every single release having almost the same release price. It'd be more favourable interaction with the DLC paradigm if costs and content would actually factor into the final price, more like how Lindt chocolate costs twice as much as any other supermarket-stocked brand, yet I don't think twice about paying for it. You'd then either get sort of complete full package games for a higher price upfront or the more skeletal games with lots of planned DLC for a smaller initial price.

 

The culmination of such a system would be where the engine/game system is released for free but all the content released essentially as expansions.

 

And no, it'll never happen - movies still get released with the same SRP on release whether it's Avatar or Norbit.

[Tigranes]

This is not intended to be a 'told-you-so' comment - but I remember when we had these discussions even 6 months ago or so, and there wasn't as much animosity against DLCs. In particular, when people worried that 'first day DLCs' would become standard and companies would deliberately hold things back or set things aside to make extra money, there were a lot of voices saying that's a bit paranoid. Unfortunately, I think we can all see that that's exactly what's happening. Maybe it was right to give DLCs a break back then, but I think it's definitely going in the wrong direction and needs a lot of criticism.

 

By the way, the reason this will work? The more fragmented your product line becomes, the more effective you become at saturating the market, in other words covering every permutation of audience need and desire. It's a very common sense capitalistic trend that has occured in many other industries in the last 50 years. It's just that in the physical world, this is balanced out by the costs of localisation, distribution, etc; for digital DLC files, this cost offset is nowhere as large (though still present, including things such as an exponential potential for bugs that we are seeing with, say, Dragon Age), so the customer gets boned a lot more.

 

Think about it. For anybody here that's bought a DLC, they've probably laughed at some other DLC for being overcharged and frivolous, but have found a few *they* think are good value. Criss-cross that with players that are so keen on FO3 they'll pay exorbitant fees to get everything; history nuts that will pay the money to get the right range of NTW units; immersion/fanfiction lovers that will gladly pay for dress-up or april fools DLC. I imagine it's quite profitable already, and companies are working hard to establish this as the norm.

[Gorth]

Think about it. For anybody here that's bought a DLC, they've probably laughed at some other DLC for being overcharged and frivolous, but have found a few *they* think are good value. Criss-cross that with players that are so keen on FO3 they'll pay exorbitant fees to get everything; history nuts that will pay the money to get the right range of NTW units; immersion/fanfiction lovers that will gladly pay for dress-up or april fools DLC. I imagine it's quite profitable already, and companies are working hard to establish this as the norm.

Gorth - Proudly boycotting DLC's since 2009

 

Ok, so I've downloaded the free ones, but do they count?

[Tigranes]

Dunno, but my experience with "Free Shale" is that it's not actually 'free'. I'd rather pay 5 bucks than spend hours trying to get it to work and have it ruin my 20 hour savegame.