With all this talk of DLC and EA being evil, I have heard several people say, ?If you don?t want it don?t buy it.? Or, ?I don?t see what the big deal is it just guns and armor.? And even, ?They?re a business and they are trying to make money.?
Allow me to share with you a little story. A story about how EA ruined a game.
When I was twelve I really wanted to play an online shooter, the thing is I had no money. I had bought Battlefield 2142 but I was unable to play online or download the expansion I had also bought because punk-buster prevented me from doing anything. All I could do was play single player on nine maps with out load outs. Frankly, I was pissed.
So I go to their website which was no help at all, when I stumble upon something interesting. There is a new free to play game called Battlefield Heroes on the site, a game being developed by a small team from DICE and owned by EA. It is a third person shooter with RPG elements, it has customizable characters and a class based system. To add to that it was set in WW II and had a cool cartoon aesthetic. I had found my new game. Problem was, that it was in a closed beta. It took me a week to win the codes from a forum giving out keys.
I was finally able to play it.
I installed the game, made my character, chose my class and entered the Nationalist army. I booted up the game and went to customize my character and found something weird. I had to pay money to get in-game currency to buy these clothes. This currency was called battle funds.
But you know what, it was fine. They had to make money somehow and I didn?t have to buy the clothes. Besides you could unlock free clothes that weren?t as cool but you could buy them with a currency you earned while playing called valor points. However you could only keep the cloths for a month. I wasn?t upset though because the clothes were still free and I could easily earn enough points in a month to maintain several free costumes.
I had a lot of fun with the game it had solid gameplay with a variety of little tricks and tactics to try out.
I continued to play the game for several months. There were several different weapons you could buy with the valor points. Close, mid and long range. Many players built their characters around these FREE weapons, including myself. As time went on players realized these free items called widgets were indispensable to the game. You could also but these with Valor points. They consisted of heal and repair items. By c buying the worst quality widgets in bulk and equipping them to your character you could heal yourself without relying on medics to heal you. It ended up keeping the game flowing more because people didn?t have to wait for medics.
Then the closed beta ended and the open beta began. That is when things began to change for the worst.
Once more players started getting their hands on the game, the development team began to update the game store with new clothes you had to pay for. Some of them looked cool but a majority of them were rather ridiculous and didn?t go well with the aesthetic. Ninja?s, zombies, and other weird things began to show up. I didn?t like them but I didn?t have to buy them, so it was no big deal right? They still have to make money right?
Following that the development team made some weapon skins. Yet again these were optional, but they looked so bad that barely any one bought them. They were essentially the original weapons just covered in the team colors.
Then after a big update, EVERYTHING changed.
The developers went in and destroyed the valor point economy. The amount of points you earned dropped dramatically. The prices for all the free things went up: weapons, widgets and clothes. I remember, some one crunched the numbers and pointed out that it was humanly impossible to maintain even one free character with the price changes. To add insult to injury you could now only truly afford to ?rent? items for a day, three days, or a week. The only option was to flat out buy things with money. They started selling the widgets, consumables items, for MONEY. Players who couldn?t pay were at a huge disadvantage now. We were basically shut out of portions of the game we had once had access to.
But wait! It gets even better.
They started selling power! They began to release weapons that were flat out upgraded versions of the standard free weapons. They did more damage, did more critical damage; they had better range, fire rates, and more ammo. It was ridiculous. The only way to compete was to pay money for these items.
There was a huge outcry on the forum on EA. People protested against the price changes and blamed everything on EA. There were multiple attempts to reach EA: Boycotts petitions and many written letters. Nothing happened. Not a single word. What was worse was that people tried to defend this sudden change. They said, ?If you don?t want it don?t buy it.? Or, ?I don?t see what the big deal is it just guns and clothes.? And even, ?They?re a business and they are trying to make money.? It got to the point were large portions of the old community just got up and left. Including me. The sad part is many of these old members had already spent money on the clothes to support the team and the game.
I still visit the site once and a while to see how the game is doing. I always leave depressed. Since then they have added Battlefield BC costumes, dead space costumes, special weapons from Battlefield BC and 3. They have added samurais, barbarian?s wizards and road warriors. They have even created new widgets like jump pack ability and they can only be bought with money. Its now a bastardization of what the game once was.
Do you know what the worst part of this is? After a while it became clear to me that the whole move was calculated. EA didn?t give a shit about the community, they guessed that could fuck over half the game population and get away with it and they did, while making more money than they had been previously making. It was an experiment. How far can we push the community before we start losing money and significant numbers of players?
What can we learn from this? Well we can clearly see that EA doesn?t give a single fuck about its community even though they are the ones who support their games. I get a feeling this is something many of us already know. What I think is more important is that is seems that EA is trying to figure out the best way to maximize profits, even if it will destroy the community. If they see an opportunity they will sell the advantage to people who are willing to pay they will take it. So I find that accepting the compartmentalization of games rather disturbing. Sure, today it might be some weapons and armor today but the next day they might be cutting out integral parts of the game as long as people will pay. Don?t write off the concerns about this DLC as stupid, if enough people buy it up there are going to more things will get cut from the games you love.
Allow me to share with you a little story. A story about how EA ruined a game.
When I was twelve I really wanted to play an online shooter, the thing is I had no money. I had bought Battlefield 2142 but I was unable to play online or download the expansion I had also bought because punk-buster prevented me from doing anything. All I could do was play single player on nine maps with out load outs. Frankly, I was pissed.
So I go to their website which was no help at all, when I stumble upon something interesting. There is a new free to play game called Battlefield Heroes on the site, a game being developed by a small team from DICE and owned by EA. It is a third person shooter with RPG elements, it has customizable characters and a class based system. To add to that it was set in WW II and had a cool cartoon aesthetic. I had found my new game. Problem was, that it was in a closed beta. It took me a week to win the codes from a forum giving out keys.
I was finally able to play it.
I installed the game, made my character, chose my class and entered the Nationalist army. I booted up the game and went to customize my character and found something weird. I had to pay money to get in-game currency to buy these clothes. This currency was called battle funds.
But you know what, it was fine. They had to make money somehow and I didn?t have to buy the clothes. Besides you could unlock free clothes that weren?t as cool but you could buy them with a currency you earned while playing called valor points. However you could only keep the cloths for a month. I wasn?t upset though because the clothes were still free and I could easily earn enough points in a month to maintain several free costumes.
I had a lot of fun with the game it had solid gameplay with a variety of little tricks and tactics to try out.
I continued to play the game for several months. There were several different weapons you could buy with the valor points. Close, mid and long range. Many players built their characters around these FREE weapons, including myself. As time went on players realized these free items called widgets were indispensable to the game. You could also but these with Valor points. They consisted of heal and repair items. By c buying the worst quality widgets in bulk and equipping them to your character you could heal yourself without relying on medics to heal you. It ended up keeping the game flowing more because people didn?t have to wait for medics.
Then the closed beta ended and the open beta began. That is when things began to change for the worst.
Once more players started getting their hands on the game, the development team began to update the game store with new clothes you had to pay for. Some of them looked cool but a majority of them were rather ridiculous and didn?t go well with the aesthetic. Ninja?s, zombies, and other weird things began to show up. I didn?t like them but I didn?t have to buy them, so it was no big deal right? They still have to make money right?
Following that the development team made some weapon skins. Yet again these were optional, but they looked so bad that barely any one bought them. They were essentially the original weapons just covered in the team colors.
Then after a big update, EVERYTHING changed.
The developers went in and destroyed the valor point economy. The amount of points you earned dropped dramatically. The prices for all the free things went up: weapons, widgets and clothes. I remember, some one crunched the numbers and pointed out that it was humanly impossible to maintain even one free character with the price changes. To add insult to injury you could now only truly afford to ?rent? items for a day, three days, or a week. The only option was to flat out buy things with money. They started selling the widgets, consumables items, for MONEY. Players who couldn?t pay were at a huge disadvantage now. We were basically shut out of portions of the game we had once had access to.
But wait! It gets even better.
They started selling power! They began to release weapons that were flat out upgraded versions of the standard free weapons. They did more damage, did more critical damage; they had better range, fire rates, and more ammo. It was ridiculous. The only way to compete was to pay money for these items.
There was a huge outcry on the forum on EA. People protested against the price changes and blamed everything on EA. There were multiple attempts to reach EA: Boycotts petitions and many written letters. Nothing happened. Not a single word. What was worse was that people tried to defend this sudden change. They said, ?If you don?t want it don?t buy it.? Or, ?I don?t see what the big deal is it just guns and clothes.? And even, ?They?re a business and they are trying to make money.? It got to the point were large portions of the old community just got up and left. Including me. The sad part is many of these old members had already spent money on the clothes to support the team and the game.
I still visit the site once and a while to see how the game is doing. I always leave depressed. Since then they have added Battlefield BC costumes, dead space costumes, special weapons from Battlefield BC and 3. They have added samurais, barbarian?s wizards and road warriors. They have even created new widgets like jump pack ability and they can only be bought with money. Its now a bastardization of what the game once was.
Do you know what the worst part of this is? After a while it became clear to me that the whole move was calculated. EA didn?t give a shit about the community, they guessed that could fuck over half the game population and get away with it and they did, while making more money than they had been previously making. It was an experiment. How far can we push the community before we start losing money and significant numbers of players?
What can we learn from this? Well we can clearly see that EA doesn?t give a single fuck about its community even though they are the ones who support their games. I get a feeling this is something many of us already know. What I think is more important is that is seems that EA is trying to figure out the best way to maximize profits, even if it will destroy the community. If they see an opportunity they will sell the advantage to people who are willing to pay they will take it. So I find that accepting the compartmentalization of games rather disturbing. Sure, today it might be some weapons and armor today but the next day they might be cutting out integral parts of the game as long as people will pay. Don?t write off the concerns about this DLC as stupid, if enough people buy it up there are going to more things will get cut from the games you love.
