Back in the day most addons or mods for games were created for users by users to extend a games life , but now it seems that the big 3 have taken the idea. Nintendo, sony and Microsoft are all making room on there plates for these DLC micro transactions for content. Usually I’d not write about these things but in the last year or so its caught on to such a point where its bugging the hell outta me. if you want to know why this bugs the hell outta me click read more to continue.
Game Developers used to release expansions where you got a huge piece of extra content and other goodies at a moderate price, Now companies are coming out with small pieces of content and selling them as downloadable content or an unlocked part of the game, which creates an atmosphere of nickeling and dimeing the users for small pieces of a whole, Which aggravating to a whole new level.
Item unlocks by real money is a BAD BAD idea. Battlefield: bad heroes is following this path. but more on a path that will open up a new level of hell for gamers.
With guitar hero and rock band having these people are paying 2$ to 6$+ for songs. I suppose to the right person that is uh.. good i guess, but why not come out with a full expansion rather than selling 3 minute pieces of a game. My problem with game companies right now is they release games with “downloadable” content right away. by doing this it feels like the company intentionally left out parts of the game in order to make extra money to purchase a finished game, Also this route of action takes up the MMO style , where you NEVER finish the game.
When bad heroes was announced, they had also announced that there would be unlocks for money content. People went ape shit, saying that that should be free and not be part of the system. After a few days of mass protest against the game/boycott, EA announced that they would be offering these items for “free”. Unfortunately at this point its going to be far from free. You have to think of the big picture here, likely EA already penned in how much revenue they were going to make off of selling weapon “unlocks”. When it comes to EA they are not for the gamer , they are for stockholders and Money.
The more people get suckered into purchasing into small parts of a whole , the more accepting people will be of this act. The biggest problem is the fact that these companies will depend on these DLC/Unlocks as a revenue source, Now if the companies start doing this and there telling the distributor there going to make X on the game than pull out of there unlocks/Content they will say they are loosing money and look for other sources to make up this revenue. Likely what will happen is EA will create new content after the shitstorm has passed over from the original diabical and most gamers will blindly pay into having extra weapons into the game.
The path ahead is a rocky one, what would the average joe do if they purchased Madden 2009 to find out there favorite teams playbook is only usable by paying for the book to be unlocked. Gamers need to unite and talk with there wallets, these companies will just keep pushing these ideas onto us till the point where you need to put in your credit card number every time you play a game.
Well I’ve ranted enough and its late.
*in order to see the rest of this article you need to purchase coffee points*
*just kidding*
*maybe*