Working Title 05.28.09: Working Return: DLC Rant

Posted by Jordan Williams on 05.28.2009

I'm back! It seems like in the last month DLC has really been taking off in the gaming world and it's time to weigh in on the good and bad sides of it. How can Game of the Year fit into such a bad thing?




Welcome back to the #1 Column you thought was cancelled, WORKING TITLE. It's been awhile folks but I am finally back in the land of the writing. Things in my personal and business life just got a bit too hectic and I decided that it would be best for me to just take a break from writing and allow myself to rest and actually take some time off. During my I definitely picked up on my gaming habits and started paying more attention to the gaming news and even thought of some new topics to rant about. So now that I am back there is no more fitting way to kick off the Working Return rather than the things that I do almost all the time anyway...RANTING.

There is a growing trend in gaming this generation, although it started LAST generation. This is downloadable content for console games. Even though it really kicked off the Xbox and the PS2 with small things like new maps and updated rosters, it has really kicked in the full gear this generation with adding more value to the game, more game play hours and even things that had to be cut from the original have found a home on the downloadable content front.

Many people are calling DLC the future of gaming, especially with the (not yet unveiled) PSP2 making all of its games exclusively DLC. But with any new thing in gaming there is always a seedy downside, and this downside will be delved into a bit deeper a little later. But for right now let's see what impact Downloadable Content has now on games what else could be done with it and what is being done completely WRONG with it.





Working Return: DLC Rant

Note: If this column seems pretty Xbox-centric...it's because it is. While there is some DLC for PS3 games, most of the big named DLC just happens to be on the 360 (at the time being). Sorry


Downloadable Content, Expansion Pack, DLC. No matter what you call it, it is still the same thing, its extra content for a game already released that you add on to expand the playability of the game and quite possibly address some of the bugs or problems in the games themselves.

DLC first burst onto the scene last generation on the Xbox 360 and PS2 mainly in the form of roster updates for its more famous sports games and downloadable maps for its shooter games. Due to Xbox Lives' young age and PSN's almost non-existence you didn't see much in the way of revolutionizing the art until this generation game along and managed to achieve feats in delivering downloadable content to the home console.

We had the Xbox 360 with the Xbox Live Arcade and the ability to deliver patches to the pre-existing games. We had the Wii with the ability to download complete games from old school systems onto its memory for continued play, and we have the PSN with not only the ability to download large game files, but you can even wirelessly transmit the same games onto the PSP or other content such as movies as well.

So right now the good things about DLC are already pretty damned obvious, but let's just take a deeper look into them for a second.

The Good Side of DLC

Patches

Before this generation, if a game was broken. Fuck it. It was broken. That glitch would never be fixed, that level would never be made harder, those pixels and textures would always look shitty. If you plunked down 60 bucks for a clunker of a game you were just shit out of luck.

But nowadays with the advent of patching you can fix this potentionally game breaking bugs when they arise, although one could say that so many bugs shouldn't be in a game in the first place, at least now gaming developers are able to do something about it once they do appear rather than just throw up their hands and so "Oh well" when the message boards begin to go apeshit over their mistake.

Gameplay balancing can also be tampered with as well. Popular shooter games can now be fixed to take away some of the bugs and exploits 'skilled' players LOVE to exploit in order to level the playing field.

Updates

Now this is more of a carryover from the last generation, but can still be applied to games today (although it isn't applied to nearly as many as it COULD be). Updates could differ in a ton of ways depending on the game, in a sport title it could merely be a roster change or the change of an online win-loss record. In perhaps a wrestling game an update could be used to change the affiliation of a wrestler or perhaps the look of them if they drastically change the way they look. Hell, it could be used in a metric fuckton of games to tweak this and update this.

In class based games you can even add in more stats weapons, and perks for a class to keep the game ever changing and new to the players who might have gotten bored with it over time.

Where a patch usually FIXES a problem, an update is just something that is changed to make it either more current, or make it feel a tad fresh or new. Basically it's the little brother of...

Expansions

Now these are the big league. With patches and updates you usually get those for free, but Expansions? Fuck yeah you are dropping some money for these sons of bitches. It used to be that Expansion packs were regulated strictly for the PC crowd and were rarely ever seen on consoles, and if they were they were usually of low quality or had a full game packaged in with it to justify the cost. Not anymore, with more and more games getting full blown expansions by way of DLC, you are now able to pick and choose what you want to add to a game rather than be forced to drop an insane amount of money on the game only to find that out don't like it.

Expansions in their infancy weren't really anything to write home about on the home consoles, they usually fit more under the category of updates and upgrades rather than full blown content. Sure. everyone loved a new car for their racing game or a few new guns for their shooting game of choice, but it didn't really justify plunking down the duckets for it.

But recently you have started to see things that are actually WORTH buying for the game on Xbox Live, Wii Shop Channel, and PSN. Be it new songs for Rockband or Guitar Hero or some of the more episodic things like the Fallout and Grand Theft Auto IV DLC you are just now starting to see that full games can be expanded via the DLC method. This year so far we have already seen some great things come out of the DLC in the way of the Mirror's Edge trial levels, All 3 expansions for Fallout 3 and of course The Lost and the Damned for GTAIV and one can only help to think that there will be more on the way given that these consoles still have a lot of life left in them.

But like I said earlier, with every good thing that comes from the advances of video game technology there is always a very bad side that goes with it as well. This bad side goes by many different names, shapes, and sizes. But there is one name you will see it under more commonly nowadays. When you see it you SHOULD rejoice over it, but instead it's starting to fill more and more gamers with a bit of anger and betrayal.

That name is "Game of the Year Edition".


The Bad Side of DLC - GOTY Editions, In-Game Content, and Laziness

GOTY Editions

Note: As of this time we do not know the pricing of the Fallout 3: GOTY Edition, this is just assuming that it will be priced similarly to a new game (50-60 bucks).

So. Let's do some simple math here. Let's say you bought a game for 60 bucks, they started releasing some DLC for it for let's say 5 bucks a pop (whatever that may be in the consoles native currency). You, being a fan of the game and enjoying the product, buy this DLC when it comes out and all is well with the world.

Then let's say a few months down the line they developer announces a "Game of the Year" edition of the same game that comes with the usual bonus content of posters, art books, you know. Stuff no one really uses or cares about.

But it comes with all of the DLC you had already paid for either on the disc already or as a redeem codes printed inside.

For the same 60 bucks you paid for it a half a year earlier.

THIS is where we have a problem. For those fans who bought the original version of the game and all of the DLC, they may have easily spent 85 to 90 bucks on a game that everyone else is going to get for 30 bucks cheaper. Talk about screwing over your fans. The sad thing is this isn't an example I just made up off the top of my head, this is actually happening RIGHT NOW with games like Gears of War II and Fallout 3.

With Fallout 3 they are announcing a Game of the Year bundle that already includes all of the DLC up until Broken Steel, an estimated 15 dollars of extra content on disc for the measly price of 60 bucks, and in a bigger "Fuck you" all of the super awesome Gears of War 2 content is being offered up for free to anyone who buys the new Gears of War expansion pack that is due out later this year.

So this begs the question of why even bother purchasing DLC for a game when half a year later they will just release it all for virtually free as part of a collection bundle? It really looks like the developers are just or just going "HAHA YOU SUCK FOR BUYING THIS EARLY" and running off with our money in order to repackage it and give it away to everyone else. Especially with games with such high install bases like Gears 2 and Fallout 3.

However, though. GOTY collections aren't the only bad side to the new DLC Revolution; there is also a question to ask of laziness.

In-Game Content

Time and time again we are seeing DLC for content that is actually already on disc. Things like the Gears, GTAIV, and Fallout DLC are obviously things that are downloaded to the HD and just accessed by the game in order to play. But for games like Soul Calibur, Bad Company, and other games of that time are seeing them actually charge money for on-disc content.

Remember the much touted Yoda and Darth Vader on Soul Calibur 3? Remember that suspiciously empty character slot right next to Yoda or DV (depending on your copy?) We had already seen screenshots of them fighting each other, as well as character selection screens with them on it together, yet a few months down the line Namco-Bandai actually charged players to access the non-exclusive characters.

Laziness

To call a game developer lazy is a serious insult given all of the hard work they do and shit they do. But when you start seeing so much DLC and day-of-game patching, you just start to wonder is it simply that these things are bugs and levels they just didn't want to include in the original release or are they rushing a product out of the gate to get in the release window and then just adding everything else in later. And if that is the case doesn't it seem a bit shady to make people pay for that stuff?

Of course, the industry insiders and the like will never EVER tell us if that is the case or not so all it pretty much is is speculation until we find out one way or another. So...if there are any industry insiders in there...be a pal and let us know what the deal is, please?

I'll even buy you a hooker.

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Obviously there is no Working Feedback this week since I haven't written a column in a month. Next week that feature will return, but there is still time for a...


Working Question

With E3 right around the corner (literally) who do you think is going to make the biggest splash? Arguably Microsoft did so last year with the overall better presscon and the FXIII news. But who do you think will 'steal the show' this year? Leave your answers in the comments


Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and Wolverine is the first time in a long time that I have seen the movie tie-in video game be TONS better than the actual movie.