DLC's never bothered me, especially since so many releases are sequels to begin with. It's too subjective. There are poor practices sure, but sometimes DLC serves as a non-essential bridge from one game to another, or just a side story. It seems like some studios are starting to simply make large DLC into standalone releases though, like Ground Zeros, or Gat Out of Hell.
In the end, like with a paid mod, if you don't want it, just don't buy it. No drama.
People keep bringing up the ballooning cost of development as an excuse to raise prices for games.
This is a terrible argument - firstly, it isn't the fault of the customer that companies are competing to throw out better products than one another and are thus spending much more than they otherwise could to develop a product. Secondly (and most importantly), people favouring this argument ALWAYS ignore the idea of an economy of scale. Development costs have risen, but the number of people buying an individual title have risen far more. It doesn't matter that a title costs twice as much to develop if you're selling it to ten times as many people as you would have done ten years ago.
In 2003, Madden NFL 2004 was the highest grossing title with 4.5 million sold. Five years later GTA 4 managed more than double that with 9.5 million (Madden NFL managed 7.7 million in it's recent outing that year). In 2013 Grand Theft Auto 5 managed to top 11 million sales within 24 hours of release, despite competing with Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, Assassin's Creed 4, Batman: Arkham Origins and other blockbuster games. 45 million copies were sold by the end of 2014 - an entire order of magnitude more than games were selling ten years before that, despite there being more big-budget 'AAA' games released each year into an ever more crowded market.
So what if a game cost $30-50 million to develop ten years ago, and games cost $70-140 million now? (2.5 times more expensive) - you're selling it to ten times as many people. If anything, the cost of games should be going down as a result.
Just like how comparing pirated games with stolen cars doesn't really achieve anything, I honestly think that the movie/director's cut/DVD extras analogy doesn't work too well either.
The DVD analogy works just fine for me. After purchasing a DVD and watching it, I don't expect to have an advert pop up at the end telling me that for a few more bucks I can get the deleted scenes inserted into the film. People would complain about this.
Frankly, that's because people don't understand how game development works. The game can be finished months before it actually hits shelves. That's plenty of time to produce an MP map pack or whatever. Day 1 DLC isn't necessarily evil.
How would anyone understand how game development works? It's all secrets with the big name companies. You can't expect people to understand how it works when you don't tell them jack shit.
There is a ton of information out there how many studios work. If people were more interested in being a bit educated on a subject they are supposedly so passionate about and maybe some basic education in economics, I doubt there would be near as much of the poorly informed complaints.
There is a ton of information out there how many studios work. If people were more interested in being a bit educated on a subject they are supposedly so passionate about and maybe some basic education in economics, I doubt there would be near as much of the poorly informed complaints.
There is a big difference between information developers can easily understand and what players can understand. People never want to educate them self, you're gonna have to educate them.
WoW has done well with it's free Addon system, where most creators instead opt for a donation button. Some addon that wanted money for their service hit big hurdles and are nowhere near as popular as the free ones.
I honestly think this entire thing wasn't so much an issue with gamers refusing change as it was a very bad choice of game to offer this for.
Bethesda Open world games have historically been works in progress post release for a slew of fixes, updates and addons, all of them done for free. The platform was simply a bad choice for paid mods, most single player games are as their mods are often quality of life fixes or cosmetic/slightly game altering.
If Bethesda wan'ts a paid mod system to be supported they need to integrate it into the game from day one and have it be non obtrusive to free mods. How they do this is up to them. I wan't modders to get paid for the work they do, but for now I honestly think a big "donate" button would be the best course of action.
There is a big difference between information developers can easily understand and what players can understand. People never want to educate them self, you're gonna have to educate them.
An adult will choose to educate themselves if the info isn't already available. This may be another reason so many of the more "whingy" gamers keep getting called out for being entitled. In the face of their own ignorance they choose to complain in the vilest of ways.
I'm glad most of them were ignored and the focus was kept more on those with more thoughtful critiques. Paid mods are going to happen. In typical Valve fashion they will keep plugging away until they figure out a way to keep most everyone on both sides happy.
Replies
In the end, like with a paid mod, if you don't want it, just don't buy it. No drama.
This is a terrible argument - firstly, it isn't the fault of the customer that companies are competing to throw out better products than one another and are thus spending much more than they otherwise could to develop a product. Secondly (and most importantly), people favouring this argument ALWAYS ignore the idea of an economy of scale. Development costs have risen, but the number of people buying an individual title have risen far more. It doesn't matter that a title costs twice as much to develop if you're selling it to ten times as many people as you would have done ten years ago.
In 2003, Madden NFL 2004 was the highest grossing title with 4.5 million sold. Five years later GTA 4 managed more than double that with 9.5 million (Madden NFL managed 7.7 million in it's recent outing that year). In 2013 Grand Theft Auto 5 managed to top 11 million sales within 24 hours of release, despite competing with Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, Assassin's Creed 4, Batman: Arkham Origins and other blockbuster games. 45 million copies were sold by the end of 2014 - an entire order of magnitude more than games were selling ten years before that, despite there being more big-budget 'AAA' games released each year into an ever more crowded market.
So what if a game cost $30-50 million to develop ten years ago, and games cost $70-140 million now? (2.5 times more expensive) - you're selling it to ten times as many people. If anything, the cost of games should be going down as a result.
The DVD analogy works just fine for me. After purchasing a DVD and watching it, I don't expect to have an advert pop up at the end telling me that for a few more bucks I can get the deleted scenes inserted into the film. People would complain about this.
there is really no good argument versus DLC made after release however, but some people just hate anything they have to buy
Never said it didn't.
There is a big difference between information developers can easily understand and what players can understand. People never want to educate them self, you're gonna have to educate them.
I honestly think this entire thing wasn't so much an issue with gamers refusing change as it was a very bad choice of game to offer this for.
Bethesda Open world games have historically been works in progress post release for a slew of fixes, updates and addons, all of them done for free. The platform was simply a bad choice for paid mods, most single player games are as their mods are often quality of life fixes or cosmetic/slightly game altering.
If Bethesda wan'ts a paid mod system to be supported they need to integrate it into the game from day one and have it be non obtrusive to free mods. How they do this is up to them. I wan't modders to get paid for the work they do, but for now I honestly think a big "donate" button would be the best course of action.
An adult will choose to educate themselves if the info isn't already available. This may be another reason so many of the more "whingy" gamers keep getting called out for being entitled. In the face of their own ignorance they choose to complain in the vilest of ways.
I'm glad most of them were ignored and the focus was kept more on those with more thoughtful critiques. Paid mods are going to happen. In typical Valve fashion they will keep plugging away until they figure out a way to keep most everyone on both sides happy.