When I go to Chipotle and get a burrito I get excited. My mouth starts watering while I’m driving to the restaurant thinking about all the stuff I can pack in that tortilla, that poor tortilla tasked with holding in twice the amount of fillings it was ever meant to hold. You might be wondering why I’m talking about food here on a geek/games site.
Chipotle is a good metaphor for how I want content to feel in games but right now it’s more like McDonalds. Sorry now I’m hungry and need to go eat some Chipotle.
Okay. I’m back. Every time a game I am anticipating comes out I talk myself into buying the season pass, thinking to myself that surely the developers and publishers have learned that people want content for their money. Almost every time I do that I am disappointed. You can have a great single player experience (Batman I’m looking at you) and then turn around and every piece of downloadable content or DLC that comes out is uninspired and or plain bad. I want to discuss the things that I think are wrong with DLC and how I think they can fix it and the things I love and how they can build on it. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments, I know this is a subject almost all gamers have an opinion on.
I remember the first time DLC started happening. On the original Xbox a new game came out in the Tom Clancy universe. Splinter Cell. It was very well received and they announced they would be releasing a single map as DLC for free. It was a well done map but no story. I thought it was pretty cool. Soon after they started doing DLC for games on a regular schedule. The biggest on Xbox was Halo 2. They added a ton of MP maps and that was about it. Almost always DLC is MP focused. Its easier I assume to make static environments compared to dynamic content with story and cinematics. DLC has now become a common occurrence on almost every game. Season Passes have become a pre-purchase money making machine for publishers to fund the DLC before its even released. Games can sometimes claim to double what they have to offer on paper, but barely skim the surface of what we pay for.
What’s wrong with DLC?
When I play a game for tens to hundreds of hours working on building a character and/or world I become attached to that world or character. I don’t want to lose that progress or that person or abilities I have worked so long to get. One of the worst things DLC can do is wipe your progress by either making you play a brand new character or resetting your current character for the story the DLC is trying to tell. I was one of the few people that enjoyed Watchdogs. It had its problems and the main character was not that memorable but I did spend 40 plus hours unlocking his skills and gear only to have the season pass take him away completely along with all the skills I unlocked. I never finished it. Almost always when content comes out and takes away my progress I lose interest in it immediately. I spent too many hours working on my game to have it be reset because they didn’t know how to tell a continuation of the story with a powered up character. I recognize there are aspects of game design I don’t know or understand but c’mon you gotta respect the person playing the game and what they have accomplished, otherwise what’s the point of continuing the story anyway?
The other thing that really grinds my gears is when a game releases content that uses areas from the original game but puts a new boss or characters in the existing areas. To me that’s just lazy. If I pay 40 dollars for a season pass and all you give me is AI placement in a map that is already in the game…..well you can put that where the sun don’t shine. DESTINY! I also don’t like when we get DLC and all of it is a horde mode. I like horde modes and I like tower defense modes but honestly they should be free additions just as all multiplayer, or mp, maps should be as well. I know that they have to pay the people for the work they provide that is how the world goes round but there is some content that should be considered the cost of doing business and I feel like mp map packs is one of those things.
One thing is they are just maps that sit there. No AI issues. No exploration issues. Just a chunk of code that sits there. The other thing is when a map pack comes out there can be a huge divide in the community that plays the game and can impact the gameplay drastically. You can have a game, lets use Call Of Duty as an example here, that destroys itself with DLC.
So say COD comes out with 20 maps. Everyone has access to those maps and having a good ole time. 3 months after release they release the “Divide the community map pack 1.” Lets say 30 percent of people purchase that pack. So now you have 70 percent still playing the base game but only 30 percent playing the DLC. So what you have done is make the people who are most loyal divide their own player base by 70 percent! Now usually after that happens a couple weeks goes by and everyone migrates back to the vanilla game. Now 6 months after release another chunk, even smaller than the first, buys the “Divide the community map pack 2”. Now you have a smaller section of the community playing on map pack 2 making the community playing on map pack 1 even smaller still and still taking people away from the vanilla game.
You see where this is going. I am purely going from experience here but the loyal of the most loyal fans are the ones that get hurt from mp DLC. It should stop. I’ll talk about a trend that is turning this around in my “how to get better” part of this article, or rant however you view this, and its looking like companies are seeing the same issue. The longer you get people to play your mp the more money you will make, the more loyal your player base will become.
‘Tis the season to be ripped off.
One of the benefits of going to eat at Chipotle is that I get to watch that puppy get built. I get to choose everything that goes into it and how much. McDonalds just gives it to me and sometimes not even what I ask for. Season passes tend to be the same toss up. I know games don’t have the same ability as Chipotle but I shouldn’t feel like I’m getting nothing when I pay for something. These are some of the issues I have with season passes.
I would never buy a car sight unseen. I would never marry someone I have never met. Yet we’re expected to buy content not revealed sometimes from unproven studios. Even with a plan in place season pass content doesn’t always deliver on the promise when announced. I am one of the bad guys here. I buy season passes again and again hoping for a different result. Very few actually deliver that worth. I think studios, proven and unproven, should start laying out a detailed plan for release and content so consumers can be informed either way. To their credit they are getting better and better at revealing their plans.
The other problem a few games have had is they don’t even deliver what they do promise. Destiny before release promised two expansions, with a emphasis on expansion they said. What we got was two very small content packs that barely even added more than new weapons and color packs. They reused areas already in the game and added a new room for a final boss fight connected to no story and horde mode encounter after horde mode encounter. I think Bungie needed to look up the word expansion in the dictionary. Then they turn around after the 40 dollar season pass ended to release another 40 dollar expansion that added a new adventure zone and a 3rd subclass with new loot and new expanded story that from what I have read actually has substance. I refuse to purchase this one because they screwed over their most loyal fans in the first place with the mediocre 40 dollar season pass that should have been as substantial as The Taken King 40 dollar content. That is an example of how not to do season passes. Then you have issues where most recently Assassins Creed Unity cancelled their season pass all together. The people who purchased the pass didn’t get refunded unless you wanted to get a free game from a list they provided, which most games were either not that great or popular enough most people already had them, and they shared the same content we already paid for with everyone else since they gave it away for free. Good and bad there. They tried to rectify their problems but it shows how risky a season pass can be for consumers. It’s a model that needs to change but they are learning as they go we just get to be the guinea pigs along the way.
Made to order.
Now for the good side of DLC. When I love a game it takes over my game time. Some games I’ll play for 10-20 hrs and be done with. I have had my fill. Sometimes I do crave a McDonald’s hamburger to my surprise when it happens. Others I love so much about the game it can be hundreds of hours before I have had my fill. I have not once ever been tired of Chipotle, one day I had to deny eating there though because I was still full from eating there at lunch. It was painful to hear those words coming out of my mouth and I hope to never have that happen again. Yes I’m a bean pole of a human being….Not.
Okay back to why we are here. Different people find different reasons to play their games. Games I find engaging and spend hundreds of hours playing, a friend of mine may find boring after one night of playing. It happens. So this is purely my thoughts on my playstyle and what I look for in a game to add longevity and what makes it so great. You may be one of those people that are perfectly happy with map pack content for your games and that’s fine.
Fallout 3 and Skyrim could be some of the best sandbox rpg’s from last generation. They also happen to have some of the best DLC in the business. I spent 300-400 hours on each of their vanilla content before they released any content for DLC. I probably added a couple hundred more hours after release between both. Here is what they did right and when I love DLC.
First they let you continue playing with your character from the vanilla game you already spent so much time building. Second they added new areas, sometimes as large as the main game zones. They gave you a new playground to experience your new found abilities and weapons etc. More so with Fallout 3 than Skyrim. Third they added new mechanics to a game that added more depth than the main game already had. Perfect example of this would be the Hearthstone DLC for Skyrim.
They added the ability to build your own homes from scratch with your custom layout from predesigned sections you could put together how you wanted if you had the material. I decided to build a home to show off my accomplishments in the game with trophy rooms and displays to show off rare armor sets and weapons. My second home I made for my wife and kids and had a functional value with a garden and crafting stations etc. It was pretty amazing. It made the game have something new enough that I added a hundred hours doing that alone before the last 2 DLC’s even came out which added a great vampire story line and new abilities. They also added new crafting options and factions. Skyrim is a game that is worth every penny. Especially on PC if you have the option. Fallout 3 did more of the land mass expansion. Almost every pack for them added new play space with new weapons and story. It was also very worth the money.
I also love when a game adds content that I can play with my friends and doesn’t divide us. GTA V has done a wonderful job of showing how to do that right. First of all they created a great coop experience with their free mode. You can do pretty much anything you want with your friends from doing intricate planned heists to skydiving or even going on a mountain bike ride to the top of the nearest mountain. What they have done is give everything and I mean EVERYTHING away for free. They release a consistent schedule of cars or weapons and clothes for free to everyone. “Well how do they make money then good sir?” is what you’re probably asking yourself. Let me tell you. You can buy houses, cars, clothes and weapons. After you buy those things you can then customize them. You can even customize your in game avatar. The catch is it all costs money. You can choose to earn every cent from playing missions and doing activities with your friends or you can take the easy way out and buy “Shark cards” with real world money to buy the in game items. It’s a great way for them to keep the community together and still make the money they need.
The last thing I want to bring up about DLC is kind of not about DLC but small arcade type releases within the universes we already love. A couple of years ago Ubisoft released Far Cry Blood Dragon. It was a small risky break off of the core Far Cry experience, survival on stranded islands or warzones. It was about a part cyborg super soldier avenging his dead friend, very much a nod to 80’s action movies and very very ridiculous but in a very good way, you had a mission riding a dragon with lasers strapped to his head. They said had it not been for the digital delivery and smaller bite of the established universe they would have never been able to release it. Same with this year when Ubisoft again released a game in the Assassins Creed universe but as a side scroller. The digital and DLC model does do good for games and creativity and give us experiences we would never have gotten otherwise.
All the fixings.
So we have talked about what I hate and what I love about DLC and season passes. So what are the things publishers and developers can do to make it a less painful process? How can they can keep people playing without feeling like they opened a tin foil burrito to only find a hamburger inside?
We have seen a few announcements with a trend in MP games of releasing their map packs for free, both Halo 5 and Rainbow 6 Siege have announced such programs, with a great reaction from the community. We are, as I pointed out earlier, the only ones hurt when they divide the community. It’s good to see them notice and make those changes. Now all MP games just have to do it. If they need to support the game with money, which who are we kidding if we don’t believe its expensive to
build DLC even the easy small ones, release content that is based around vanity items that cost real world money if you want to unlock it faster. You don’t hurt anyone by running around with a pink bunny mask on, except your fathers pride. He weeps at night.
Another problem we talked about is the season pass. I would say that there are people that really do want to help support the development of the games they love. Season passes do that in a smaller scale than say Kickstarter or Early Access on Steam. I would recommend that instead of season passes make them lifetime passes. How long do most games last in someones tray? I know a lot of people have digital libraries now but you get my meaning. I would say most games for me have about a 3 month lifespan. The really good ones or coop/MMO games tend to have a longer life. GTA for example I have been playing for 2 years now. ESO over a year. But that doesn’t happen too often for me. You may be different. But my point is that why have a season pass when we should get all DLC for that title if we pay for a season pass. I mean what is a season anyway? 3 months, 6 months? 3 content packs? I don’t know. They have never said what a season is and they differ for each title. So drop the season part of it and help our confidence in the purchase grow.
Lastly, they need to have a detailed account for exactly what we are buying for the lifetime/season passes when they do release them. Batman is the worst at this for a few reasons. Batman, every single release since Arkham Asylum, has had no planned schedule for their season passes or DLC. They will say that they have content planned and maybe show the first one but otherwise no description. Then when they release content its with the easiest modes to make for the game, challenge rooms. The story content they do release is so small and lacking in story that its not even worth the time to play, I usually complete almost all their story content in an hour or so. Don’t buy season passes for Batman games. Trust me on this. I’m disappointed every single time. But that’s on me for always buying them.
I understand that making games isn’t easy, and it isn’t cheap. Developers need to make money, and that’s fair. But very few things can lose the trust of gamers, their loyal customers, like the DLC bait-and-switch. If you’re a triple-A developer, you should be in a position where you don’t force your customers to gamble on what you might or might not release. More than any other medium immersion and character mean something to us. We interact with the worlds and people we meet through the characters we play/create. That needs to be respected and built upon more when DLC is created. We’re happy to pay as long as we can trust you to give us substantial content, to continue with the characters we have come to love after hard work, and allow us to continue playing with our friends. And that really doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Now, if only Chipotle would deliver…
