The DLC Debacle

I’ve been playing video games since I was 4 years old when laying in a hospital bed my grandmother bought me one the first GameBoy handheld systems. Since then I have only gotten more skilled and able to predict and strategist better. That being said I have watched a great many trends in the video game world; VR, crazy peripherals and the whole switch over from memory cards to hard drives. Not the mention the change over from wired to wireless controllers. That is why this DLC semi-scam has to go!

I would have to say the latest trend that is happening is DLC and the release of utterly unfinished games. Now I have heard that some bugs in a game cost to much to fix. Not that they are so complex but that they are so small and so infrequent that the cost of manpower to have someone fix it was too high so they leave it. That is not what I’m talking about. Glitches in game that don’t effect over all game play are kind of like a small version of branding in a game. They’re cute.

What I’m talking about is developers creating games that are only half a story then selling it for the full $60 to only ask you to pay $10, $15 or even $30 for the “next chapter.” This next chapter having already been in production so they just cut it off, release the game and charge you later… Usually due to tightening belts for profit margins and therefore cutting the production time.

The image below sums it up best! This a two part image. The “NOW” being last-gen in the second photo.

 

Found these online and they perfectly sum up the point i’m making. And the two best examples of these are polar opposites of each other.

Tom Clancy’s The Division VS Titanfall 2

Tom Clancy’s The Division was a spectacularly beautiful game; Graphics look great but beyond that the game play mechanics where intuitive and just fun to use! The down fall was in the story… Not the subject matter but the story which fell flat by the time you got to the end of the game. You are left saying, “is that it” and “I expected some super dramatic epochs of self scarific (I am legend style) or some heroic moment. You get NONE of this. You learn about who did it but then you learn you have to track him down only to find out that… no more DLC has been release furthering the story. Which seems like a huge oversight cause you could literally just keep sending people on different (but similar) missions until you figure it out and have the climatic ending. The game play mechanics are so entertaining that it would not get boring. Unfortunately, it seems they relied to heavily on that entertaining quality.

So what they do is exactly what the pictures shows. They release expensive DLC that unlocks parts of the world. But wait that’s good more story… It’s only for multiplayer. And it’s stuff they already designed. They have stiffed you of your money only to find out it’s stuff that should have been released WITH THE GAME! Which only makes sense cause they are trying to get out of you as much money as possible before the half-life of the game.

As you can tell I was incredibly disappointed with that game and this almost turned into a review for that game alone but I didn’t want The Division to get that much attention.

That leads me to Titanfall 2. That game had an AMAZING story with a wonderful ending. Decent length and the cream on this awesome cake! ALL DLC was free. Now there DLC was mostly just maps from the previous game re-released for this version of the game. But they did have some notable content; new game modes a new titan and assassination stuff. They did have items for sale like skins and gun wraps. Which made sense since everything else released was free. I really didn’t mind paying about $12 for prime titan skins.

In my humble option this should be the standard operating procedure. BUT WAIT it was was back in the day. If there was DLC it was like almost half as much as the original game. Yeah you will pay 30$ of it. Your getting a half campaign worth of new material.  Titanfall’s team specifically said they are doing this to counter games like The Division and Call of duty (and battlefield now, which makes be really said as I was a BF fan boy until their recent release. I was done with this 60$, 100$ premium member BS).

Lastly, if you want to save your wallet and have more time. Choose a game that has lasting power FOR YOU! Sorry COD fans… a game a year of the same content is not lasting power. Most people will play a game only for about – at most – 6 months. But the life span is about a year for anything. Shoot Destiny has been 3 years before Destiny 2. And even though I think that game screwed us on DLC the game it’s self has lasting power. In this day and age looking at the content of their future DLC is noteworthy task. Don’t be fool again, you have been warned.