by The_A_Drain » March 17th, 2012, 5:11 pm
I'm not going to respond to any one specific persons point here, but here is how I feel about DLC in general.
As a thing, like any thing it will be exploited by certain business-minded individuals, mostly in larger corporations. However, I feel this misrepresents the concept of the idea itself.
A lot of content for any game will invariably be left on the cutting room floor, or be unfinished due to time constraints, technical difficulties, etc. 10 years ago we called those things bugs, unfinished quests, or just weird lines of dialogue/etc.
But suddenly the developer has a chance to update those missing pieces after they've made enough money back from the release to pay their rent and suddenly that's a bad thing? I don't buy into that.
I also don't buy into the idea that day 1 DLC is necessarily bad either. As an example, it's very common to see artists moving on to other projects (or if the developer is small/doesn't have other projects, fired) but if the developer has enough content that's likely to be left on the cutting room floor that they can plan a DLC schedule, those artists can be retained to work on that content while the programmers finish up the main game. The bulky art content can then be distributed with the game (remember, for large/console titles, the time from wrap to the game hitting your disc drive can be anywhere between 3 weeks and 3 months, sometimes more it all depends on the publishers plans for that period) so that the programmers can finish it up and release the code as DLC, giving gamers additional content that would otherwise have been lost, helping to preserve or prolong jobs, and saving consumers the headache of a lengthy download all at the same time. This too has it's problems, people see a 500kb download and unaware that it could be 1000+ programming man-hours worth of work they scream "DLC ON DISC!!! UNLOCK CODE!!!"
Unfortunately, consumers don't (and can't, why should they?) see this side of things. All they see is day 1, the game and a bunch of DLC. They have no idea that the disc has been on a boat for 3 weeks, in a warehouse for another, and then spent 3 days in the mail on the way to their house, during which time the developer is working hard finishing the DLC which by that point is an entirely separate product.
Large companies also employ heavy handed planning schedules, and do indeed plan for DLC up front, but more often than not that content, again, is approved and funded separately. It's a completely separate product that you would not have seen without the ability to distribute it as DLC.
There are a small number of companies giving the rest a bad rap, combined with the general level of consumer education about how games are made, combined these two things create an incredibly sour perception of DLC.
From where I am sitting however, DLC is totally fine by me. I will judge the game itself based on what I paid for it, and then the DLC in the same manner. If I felt the DLC was cut from the main game, or that the main game felt short or crappy then I'll complain about them accordingly. But no matter how often people bitch about DLC you have to remember that a lot of this stuff simply wouldn't exist. It's all well and good saying "the game isn't complete" or "they sold me 90% of a game and made me pay for the rest! outrageous!" but if you just ignore the DLC, and judge the game for what it was on it's own what are you left with? Because that's usually what you'd be left with before DLC whether you want to admit it or not.
I mean just look back to expansion packs, how many of those were born of incomplete features in the original game? How many of them revisited incomplete quests? Etc, the only difference is that now they can deliver that stuff to you faster with proper planning.
Where I feel DLC does fall down however, is the 'bite sized chunks' method of distribution, and the pricing structure some companies employ. There's also a lot of other stuff that makes me rage about DLC and how larger publishers employ it as part of their strategy, things like access codes, delayed DLC for the sake of 'maintaining interest' over X many months, things like this. Expansion packs also have the advantage, especially for this kind of game, in providing a large amount of content. I do not feel small packets of content work at all for RPG style games.
DLC itself though, honestly, I think people are far far too cynical. And that's coming from someone who has lost friends for being too cynical.
I don't think it's really a concern here though tbh, but I also can't help but feel a bit dismayed whenever someone used the phrase "don't sell me an unfinished game". All games are unfinished, you would struggle to find a single game in history where the developer wouldn't tell you about something they wanted but were unable to finish in time or on budget. Except maybe the gameboy version of Tetris.