Topic: Im suffering from DLC fatigue help me

This is about DLC or expansion packs as they used to be known. Many years ago they were released 9 - 15 months after a FULL game had become a commercial success. They were to keep fans of a particular series or game happy. Not to fleece people. Yet tonight DLC has hit a new low. I have been unhappy with DLC as its now known, since assasins creed 2. A whole episode of the main game was relegated to DLC (episode 12 or something) which you had to purchase separately. Ive since seen great games segmented into map packs, costumes held back, characters missing, tracks left out, gametypes missing, a store screen on every game and worst of all was tonight. In Dynasty Warriors 8 empires you can pay £13.99 for the dlc of changing your characters voice. This is no joke. A part of dw6 out of the box, is now an extra £13.99 on top of the £30-£40 for dw8 empires retail release. So why has this happened?

It's happened 'cos... money. Budgets of games are increasing and publishers are clawing back as much as they can. The only thing you can do is vote with your wallet and not buy it.

I tend to find DLC massively underwhelming in general to be honest. DriveClub's the first game I've bought a Season Pass for since L.A. Noire, and that's about the only post-release content that I truly look forward to these days. There's so much bad DLC out there - I don't know who's buying it!

I don't think modern day DLC (minus a very few cases, like Mario Kart 8) and the old PC expansion packs of old (which for the most part kicked @ss) are one and the same really.

It's hard to get that angry at publishers though despite some piss poor DLC, the price of AAA games have remained unchanged since almost the early 1990's,........I would be offering you a season pass as well.

Not hard at all to get mad at publishers. Sure they have to find a way to make back some money, that's fine, but if you put out sh*t DLC I'm going to get p*ssed and won't feel bad about it for a second. The constant excuse making for these companies is part of the problem.

Why is this happening one simple answer....

Money

If consumers would say no to DLC and not buy it then it wouldn't make them money and it would cease. But since consumers are like sheep.

Money isn't a dirty word. Everyone knows games cost vast amounts to make and that the actual cost per game has not increased since the early 90's. I'm amazed it's been sustainable to this point (often it isnt, hence all the closures over the past half decade). It's likely some developers will agree certain launch window DLC when the game is still popular with paranoid publishers to get the finances to make the game in the first place, so if you don't like it I suppose you can at least appreciate it's often necessary. I suppose the same people would be upset if they started releasing games at £80-£90.

You can say I'm making excuses but I'm not a victim of some evil corporation, if i'm not interested I won't buy, if I am interested I will buy, on a case my case basis. If the company arn't making the money they need overall they need to change tactics to find something that will stick. It certainly don't feel like I'm being conned, though.

I often hear "vote with your wallet!" but if a DLC pack is selling, people must be seeing the value in it. Whats so bad about that? Are we arrogant enough to say these people are wrong?

Looking at new games they mainly cost upwards of £40, usually an rrp of £45-£50. But PS1 and PS2 games were £30 a pop. So games are more expensive. Amiga games were £15-£20 brand new, £25 in rare cases. Unless your comparing to cartridges and its common knowledge cartridges are expensive to produce. So games are more expensive.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Hist...

According to this inflation calculator £30 in 1990 is equal to £66.72 in todays money, so regardless of the exact amount I would expect an increase over the years and given that figure it still looks like we are getting a good deal, especially when you consider the now huge development costs. I definitely remember paying £39.99-£34.99 for new release PS1/PS2 games and £19.99 when in the Platinum collection.

New gen games always cost a little more too but PS4/XB1 will settle to £39.99 as standard before long and £29.99-£34.99 when on offer.

I don't mean to sound fickle I just can't really get my head around the idea that we should always expect to pay in the region of £30-£40 for games and that it's wrong for developers/publishers to explore options of monetising their products to cover their increased costs. Video games are a still a new medium with massive growth, I don't think it's necessarily wrong that in such a forward thinking industry we don't yet have all the answers, so I tend to not look past what I consider value given my personal financial situation at that particular moment.

@kyleforrester87 agree, but more companies rent or pay royalties on middleware. If I had to pay £50 for a FULL game I could live with that. Also games in the past were heavily criticised for being too expensive.

Games are always being criticised for being too expensive.. it's happening at this exact moment. But given my above reasoning, I just don't think that's the case. It's honestly very rare that I feel I am being robbed by developers/publishers. If I did I'd probably find another hobby that I felt gave me the correct value for money. You could debate the economics behind it all day I guess, but at the end of the day it's all relative to what you get out of it.

Take Ground Zeros, it was essentially pre-release DLC, most likely to help fund MGS5 that had been made on a new engine built from the ground up by one of my favourite developers. That doesn't come cheap, so I was happy to pay the asking price. I'm glad to say I got a great game out of it too. But I can appreciate why someone less invested in MGS would have considered this tactic "evil".

It really depends on the DLC/expansion for me and the game itself. Something like CoD hasn't changed that much since CoD4 in terms of on-disc content -if anything you actually get more now with its added co-op options like Zombies which didn't come in until W@W and that was a very limited on disc option - compared to something like Exo-Survival which uses all MP maps. Talking of maps, we still get the same number of maps on disc too. DLC for these games hasn't really increased in price either but the content to a degree has - maybe not a lot. It started off as just 4 maps and now we get 4maps, a co-op based map (often a lot more involved and deeper than just a MP Map) and a weapon too for the same price. Obviously it depends on whether you enjoy the MP and/or co-op mode that will determine your likelihood to purchase. I know we have seen an increase in micro-transactions for this series too - primarily cosmetic but I don't feel that they have taken out the options from on disc. You still have the range (if not more) customisation as you did in CoD4.

I tend to look at DLC/Expansion on a game by game basis and according to content too. If a game I am really enjoying adds something that enhances and/or prolongs my enjoyment then it is only a good thing. If not I won't even consider it. Looking ahead at the Witcher 3, I would consider the Season pass as I could potentially get something out of it and if I am likely to buy both then the Season Pass will save me money in the long run. I will make that decision though after experiencing what the on-disc content offers and how much enjoyment I get.

In terms of timing, I don't see an issue in some cases. Most games are basically finished months before releasing. They are often in the polishing/refinement stage - something that doesn't require the whole studios attention so I can understand that instead of sitting around idle, they start work on other projects or DLC. The Witchers story was probably finished a long time ago but they have been ensuring that everything fits in 'right' - the writers therefore could have written the DLC in that time. The voices were no doubt recorded a long time ago too so could have come back into read the new DLC scripts. The world was probably finished a long time ago too so the people that created that part could be working on DLC. The animators would have finished their part so could be working on the DLC now. If an issue with any of these crops up hey can easily be on hand to rectify it before returning to the DLC before the game even goes Gold. These Studios are not 1-2 people that do everything but lots that do parts of it. Its like making a 'cartoon' in effect, you start off with a storyboard, write script, record voices, create backgrounds, animate characters etc etc and there are separate teams for each. The Story boarding probably finishes a long time before the cartoon reaches the animators so are working on the next episode by the time it gets to that point. Game development probably has a staggered deadline system too. If a game is in the final stages before going Gold, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the majority of the development team have 'finished' their involvement and either working on the next project and/or DLC.

I bet Sledgehammer probably already have the 'story' written for their next CoD and wouldn't be surprised if part of their development team - the ones that deal with the campaign are already working on the follow up. A small part (MP/co-op team) are working on the current game - DLC and/or patches.

@everyone - I get all that and agree a bit and disagree alot. But at £13.99 for editing a voice how can that be considered okay? Its ridiculous. Buying a bigger jump for the last of in multiplayer how is that sound? As for mappacks in unreal tournament back in the day, I remember having over 60. How is 4 and a gun good value? I get what everyone is saying but you are apologists for the biggest con in gaming. My point is this - they are charging us extra for stuff we used to get out of the box and its disgusting.

Nobody forces you to buy games at launch, with most games you can wait a few months up to a year and then you can get a Game of the Year/Ultimate Edition with all content at a reasonable price...... I don't have a rush to play games so I always wait for those editions

Not every game gets a goty edition but point taken. Unfortunately and probably stupidly I support the industry by buying new, I get excited by games I want to play, and I'm impatient. But that doesn't address the mini dlc in question - costumes, voice packs this kind of crap. We used to get it included now its not, you buy it separately. Here's a final thought before my mind blows completely. Assasins creed has been a hugely successful series making Ubisoft squillions of trading tokens, oh well lets lump micro transactions in - its arrrhhhgghgg. GH ff gg def hh (mind blown)

This is a good point. That's what I usually do anyways cause I have a huge backlog anyways.

But you are picking out extreme examples. There are plenty of DLC packs that represent good value. I just don't have a problem with developers/publishers experimenting with different models when the only real alternatives are to either scale back productions or increase the price of the base game, scenarios that would upset many more people I think.

@kyleforrester87 maybe, and yes the examples are extreme. But I was browsing my games earlier and 7 out of the 9 games I own in a case on the ps4 have dlc other than Diablo 3 which is in all essence a goty edition and ffzero which has only just come out. Right above them are the wii games I own and to my knowledge none of them have dlc. Even the xbox 360 games I have kept hold of dont. I don't like it, you mention the value, which is massively important and I havnt really considered it. You are right to point it out. I liked how games worked on the ps1 through to last gen. I got massive value. Maybe I'm questioning that now.

I don't know to much about Nintendo and it's DLC to be honest. I do know there were a few Mario Kart DLC packs and that they are looking into pimping their IP out on the App Store now, so it's obviously a common theme between the big three for them to be investigating other streams of revenue.

The way I see it is that the problem isn't DLC/F2P and so on. It seems clear to me, at least, that they are just responses to the fact that games cost so much to make and the price of a game hasn't risen in line with inflation or development costs. Now whether these are GOOD responses is of course debatable and of course I'm hopeful they will work out better solutions.

With MS and Sony leading the way, selling consoles at a loss and developers still charging £34.99-£39.99 for a new game 20 years later I think a few optional DLC packs is a fair enough compromise at the moment. Without these kinds of additional streams we'd be looking at things like more expensive machines, higher price on base games, and full restrictions on preowned markets. If developers and publishers were seriously coining it they wouldn't be shutting down like they have been. It's been the ones who've looked into other ways of making money from their IP that have survived, like them or hate them. On another note piracy was a much bigger problem during the PS1 era and that was used to justify the price tag... and probably rightly so, to a point. I'm glad piracy isn't as much of a problem these days, in the console world at least, or legitimate buyers would be paying the price with god knows what!

I just think we can solve the problem while still moving forward

I do think though that is often down to the developers and their own business sense. Is it any wonder that some studios struggle when they release broken or poor games after investing a lot of time and money into these - just for starters. If you look at other businesses, the game development market is no different. When the motor vehicle trade was in its infancy, there were a lot of manufacturers but over the years a lot haven't survived. Today many are owned by a single company - the Volkswagen group own Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Porsche, Seat, Skoda and of course Volkswagen for example. Each of these at one point was an independent manufacturer of vehicles but also faced 'crisis' and 'bankruptcy' at some point - It certainly isn't cheap to design and launch a new vehicle with a lot of competition even the biggest names in motor sport like Ferrari (owned by Fiat) have gone through very tough times. Motor vehicles generally have increased in number and more people own a car (% wise) than 50years ago.
The game industry isn't that different in many respects. More people own a console or gaming device than ever before, - even in a recession the PS4 has sold more in its first year than any other console - the XB1 has sold more in its first year than its previous 2 consoles too. Destiny is the biggest selling new IP ever so games are still selling. The games development market though is becoming a bit like the car market. Companies like EA and Activision have different studios similar to Volkswagen owning different car manufacturers and they are very profitable. What this means though is that smaller studios can struggle - you wouldn't want to start up a new car factory today. If anything the games industry is actually giving smaller studios a break by supporting, promoting and publishing them via the 'indie' route.

I agree, and these big publishers have only thrived because of things like DLC/yearly sequels etc. which, like it or hate, is the systemic result of the underlying problem. Rather than get annoyed about it I actually find it quite exciting. While their are lots of crap ideas it'll only be the truly good ones that last so I'm looking forward to seeing it evolve naturally into a better and better case scenario. And if that's a resurgence of indie studios ultimately leading us to a new golden era of gaming in 10 years time after these studios become more established and capable of creating larger yet more interesting games that'd work just fine for me I don't think we actively need to "vote with our wallets!" and get the pitchforks out, rather just let things unfold as they need to and support what you perceive to be value.