George’s Soapbox – DLC: A Way to Keep a Game Interesting? Or the End of Games as We Know It?

A major push from the video game industry in recent years is to get you to pay for downloadable content (DLC for those people who haven’t played a game since consoles started connecting to the Internet). At first, this was embraced by the gaming community, as it was a way to make a game that were once stale brand new again by adding maps and other goodies. We shrugged off that we were paying 5 dollars for one good map and a series of shitty ones because at least we could have new places where we could bitch about people camping and the server being laggy.

However now, we’re starting to see the signs of greed rear its ugly head. There have been grumblings for a long time about conspiracies that games are pushed out incomplete, or having things taken out of them, so that we can later pay $2.99 for them. I tried not listen, which was easy at the time because the guy yelling this at me had aluminum foil on his head and hadn’t showered in days. That won’t happen to games I said, I mean how could video games do that to us? I know they need to pay the rent but push a game out that’s incomplete just to make a buck? That’s preposterous. I’ve never heard of a developer (Bungie) pushing out a game (Halo 2) without it feeling complete. Yes I’m still bitter.

It's time to finish this fight...in the next game. (Image Source: GameSpot)

Even though I saw it coming with FPS games and RPGs, I never thought the day would come when DLC would ruin sports games the way it has. You see, sports games are how I spend a good part of my gaming time. I play other games from time to time (such as Uncharted 2 soon and NFS: Shift) but for the most part I’d say I’ve spent my time playing the Madden, NBA 2k and NCAA Football series. When DLC came to Madden this year, I was disappointed. The DLC didn’t really affect the game that much. They were just there if you were incredibly lazy and didn’t feel like doing all the work of trading and making your players better. It annoyed me, but it didn’t really affect me that much. NCAA was worse. A heavy part of the game is recruiting, and to really becoming a big recruiting power in the game, they made you pay to add things like more pipeline states. You see, when I play sports games, I don’t actually play the game at all. I spend most of my time in Franchise mode, making my team better by making trades, working on recruiting or whatever and then play in the playoffs/championship games. So when they started screwing with my ability to recruit I made the same face Hillary Clinton had for the entire Bill presidency after the Lewinsky scandal. Again though, you were still able to recruit without having to buy the add-ons, so the game wasn’t entirely ruined. In this case it was that they were dangling this ability to make your life easier for a nominal fee, and I commend them for the genius of it.

I also have an oversized American Flag in my living room.

Now I expect this from EA Sports, but the makers of 2K have been my friends for years. I mean they put out a football game for 20 dollars at one point. 20 dollars!! I have played their NBA games for so long that I remember trading for Kobe Bryant because of his “upside”.  Surely they wouldn’t get into this DLC fad right? Well I obviously wouldn’t have wasted your time with how much I love 2K if it hadn’t. I was preparing to write a post for this blog and I decided to write it about how much better 2K was than the NBA Live series, which has always been like playing an arcade game. I decided to download both of the demos for the game and was intrigued when I saw that 2K’s demo was about rookie camp. I played NBA Live first, and although it was better, the game still sucks. Feeling vindicated I went on to play the 2K demo thinking that all it had to do was be a repeat of last year for me to shower it in praises. I started to play the Rookie Mode, which was kind of stupid, but I went through it thinking at least they were trying to give me a new gaming experience. Surely I’d be able to save my character and use him when I purchased 2k10. Nope. You had to pay 5 dollars to unlock the ability to save a player that you could just create the instant you bought the actual game. It might seem minor now, but ladies and gents, that’s a sign of what’s to come.

If people are ok with paying 5 dollars to save a friggin’ character, soon they’ll be fine with paying so that they can go beyond a certain number of years in franchise. And don’t think that this live roster thing is going to stay free. Heed my words, within 3 years we’re going to have to pay for all that. The gaming industry is no different from any other business, and if they can find a way to get you to pay just a little bit extra, they’ll bleed that money out of you. Well that’s all for now, I’ve got to find some aluminum foil and take over that guy’s shift for the night.