Bethesda VP Defends Day-One DLC

[piinyouri]

Pete Hines has some of the worst PR abilities I've seen in the game industry.
The guy just does not know how to talk to the customers in a friendly and respectable manner.

 

[JPH330]

I like to use the cake analogy for game dev and DLC. You have a bunch of bakers for a bakery making cakes (games).
You've got some making the filling, another that decorates it, someone handling the orders, etc. Obviously, different departments work at different schedules of the game/cake making, and then at some point they start putting it together.

During the game content lockdown / cake decorating phase, it becomes harder to add new stuff, since it ruins the icing on the cake. And the console makers don't like that, as during the certification process, they don't want you to constantly add more stuff to the eventual disc image (otherwise it implies you weren't finish and were hoping to insert and extend the dev time).

During that, however, you'll always end up with extra ingredients / cut content to make your deadline. So you make a muffin to offer as extra.

It's not like they were deliberately cutting the cake in half to sell you, which is the often incorrect belief of DLC that people hold.

If the cake is good and the muffins are good no one will complain about the process, customers probably wont even be aware of it.

If one or both are lacking in some way customers may start to get suspicious about the process, especially if the cakes used to be better.

Developers keep talking about how the cake is made, why it's necessary to do DLC the way it's done. But that is not the consumer angle. The consumers are wondering why the quality is dropping, and why games used to be better.

As someone who's been gaming for the past two decades, no, games did not used to be better.

 

[fozzy360]

They're in business to make money, not to make you smile

They're in the business to make a product that is supposed to make me smile, which is how they make their money. If I'm not smiling, then they've failed at their business because I won't buy any products from them.

Did you not think about this statement when you wrote it?

Welcome to the Escapist, I guess.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

Remember: The people who make videogames have no idea who you are and largely don't care how you feel. They're in business to make money, not to make you smile, and every decision these companies make is aimed toward pulling in as much cash as possible, regardless of how a noisy online minority might feel about it.

*slow applause for genuine praise of statement*

And thus I no longer purchase anything produced by CAPCOM or EA games, barring it being on the 'bargain sale' rack or a used shoppe. Yes, I know the majority don't care and will continue to fund these companies who couldn't care less about them if they were made of dog ends, but this is where integrity meets the road and my dollar is worth a bit more than they've proven willing to offer.

 

[MHR]

There are 2 obvious solutions to this from the developer perspective.

Ship the new DLC on launch as a "free bonus!" for people purchasing on release. Creates goodwill.

Delay the DLC, perhaps packaging it with other DLC to avoid "day 1 DLC" stigma. First option is probably better.

Though if it's a quality DLC that isnt a rip, I would consider buying day 1 DLC, not that I've ever bought any.

 

[WeAreJimbo]

Reading between the lines, what Hines is saying here is: I do not believe games are priced high enough. $60 is not enough for our full game, $75 is a more realistic price.

To get away with that publishers break the game into two parts and charge the full game price for 80% of the game. Then charge us for the other 20% of the game as DLC.

The end of development cycle argument is really not a good one as many of us (myself included) are employed in the software development industry (commercial software in my case not game software). Once the software has been fully tested and accepted and released to manufacturing there is only a two week period before the software is on the shelves and available to customers. Testing continues in this period and any bugs found then are shipped in a downloadable update soon after or in tandem with the release.

To create Day 1 DLC as Hines describes it you would have to have your base software finished some months before release then artificially delay that release in order for the Day 1 DLC to be ready on Day 1.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

Poor Bethesda, they will be haunted by horse armor for years and years to come.

I really don't think horse armour was that bad, not compared to half the shit we've been faced with since. Anyone remember Fable 3 charging you money to dye your clothes black?

Even though I always found this to be a weak argument, since there's NO way to prove you worked on the day-1 DLC after everything was all finished and done, you could still make it free dlc. It doesn't really matter if it's not directly tied to the main story, it was content created with the original budget.

At least do what other developers have learnt and wait for a convenient 1 month later to start with the major penny-pinching.

 

[Lightknight]

I'd say, one possible way to overcome this would be to publically document DLC as it's being made. But, you can only do so much and reach so many people that way.

That actually would be an idea, be a bit more open about the dev process. There's a huge gap in what goes on to what people think goes on (Nerf wars don't break out THAT often), but like you said, not that many will read it or care, they just want their game and have it feel complete.

And the potential PR image and backlash could be horrendous:

"Oh no, they're cutting content that should be in the game!"
"Hey, I like that content, why not cut that other content out!?"
"What? I like that other content, this content is fine!"
"Why not take longer to finish the game?"

It's a tough line to stride though, because then people will be so judgmental on your process, being backseat, armchair developers.

As if they weren't already.

Right, that idea would only be beneficial in certain situations. Such as when the team is working on DLC after code cut-off (so it can be clearly documented that the coding was done by developers who were no longer working on their project). But documenting DLC that was coded for during development of the main game would be a bad idea for the reasons you mentioned.

That being said, do you think live-customer feedback on your work would be a bad thing? It could serve as a potential market research and gain your team a valuable resource for ideas and potentially missed desires. Additionally, you're talking about another source of advertisment for the game, particularly if the DLC is highly desireable. It could be the kind of thing that other companies have to pay marketing firms to achieve. Just because some people don't like what you're doing doesn't mean you have to do something differently. But if someone gives you a genuinely great idea that you can run with, wouldn't that be worth it? Perhaps not, maybe it's too much noise to wade through for the gems.

You and I both know that reality in a software dev cycle is a lot more complex than it appears. We know that developers toss in quick fixes and new code well after code cut-off and into the final QA cycle. Code cut-off should practically be said with quotation gestures each time a project lead says it. We also know that some developers finish their work before others because not all developers do the same thing (far from it), so one developer may be completely free and capable of starting work on DLC well before code cut-off is even mentioned. If documented in this way with a clear explanation of why this developer isn't still working on the main game it may serve as a way to educate the masses via people like me who would actually follow such things and become an advocate for the company when people say bad things about it.

But DLC that is being produced by developers alongside the game, which happens all the time, will not be appreciated by the consumers. They will (correctly) see it as developers splitting time between products and reducing the quality of the main game for the sake of DLC that may have been included anyways.

Good luck to whatever companies try with regards to this. It's a serious PR landmine.

 

[DjinnFor]

Remember: The people who make videogames have no idea who you are and largely don't care how you feel. They're in business to make money, not to make you smile, and every decision these companies make is aimed toward pulling in as much cash as possible, regardless of how a noisy online minority might feel about it.

That's pretty funny considering how we're talking about the entertainment industry here.
But sure, keep telling yourself that. We'll see where that leads in the not-so-distant future.

You can replace "company" with "politicians", and "money" with "votes", and get something that's just as true, bud. Sorry to burst your bubble, but when an angry but tiny minority whines, neither politicians nor companies give two shits. You have to get enough people to give a shit before... well... anyone gives a shit.

And no, unfortunately, neither companies nor politicians nor unions nor any other large organization knows you by name or face, or give a shit about your feelings about them. What they care about, rather, is the aggregate: what most people think of them.

 

[tangoprime]

Bethesda's explanation of Day 1 DLC being available. Acceptable.

Day 1 DLC (or any dlc for that matter) that's already on the disc but locked behind a pay wall, UNACCEPTABLE. Also, I HATE the practice pioneered by EA of making you pay for cheats/unlocks. First I saw of this was in Need for Speed (Undercover I believe, last one I ever bought), things that had previously been a cheat code now seemed to be purchasable for a few dollars a piece. Saw this, sold it at gamestop, never bought an EA product since.

Features advertised prior to release, that are not present in the final product, but are available as DLC, also horribly unacceptable.

Seriously, having online consoles was the worst thing that could've happened to the game industry. As short a time ago as the PS2/Xbox generation, you actually had to test game before releasing them, no day one patches, no patches period, that shit had to sparkle before seeing the world. Now? "Fuck it, take it gold, we'll patch it later." Lazy, cheap, greedy fuckheads.

*venting completed, system restarting*

Huh? Were we talking about horse armor? I liked the elven one on my Anvil horse for my Dunmer. ...and where did all this broken glass come from?

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

What about DLC that's obviously content that's been stripped from the main game purely to be sold as DLC? Like From Ashes?

Also voting with your wallet never works, whereas screaming like children does.

Screaming got the ending of Mass Effect 3 changed (even if it is still shit), which is more than 'voting with your wallet' ever did.

That and voting with your wallet gives the devs and execs of the game no idea what you disliked about their game at all and it would pretty much rol like this every time it ever happened:

Exec 1: "Hey guys not many people are buying into our game do you have any idea why?"

Exec 2: "I just don't know because of the lack of money we're recieving I can't tell what they don't like"

Dev 1: "Could it be that they don't like the fact that we stripped content that could have been included for free with the game?"

Exec 1 & 2: "nah that's crazy talk of course the fans of our game love buying tons of day one DLC and DLC that could have been shipped".

Voting with your wallet will never ever send a clear message let alone let the devs or company know what went wrong with their game and it will usually lead to them scrapping the game because:

Bethesda VP Defends Day-One DLC


Remember: The people who make videogames have no idea who you are and largely don't care how you feel. They're in business to make money, not to make you smile, and every decision these companies make is aimed toward pulling in as much cash as possible, regardless of how a noisy online minority might feel about it.

And that's all they seem to care about so really they don't even understand how their games fail in the first place if all they really care about is money then they are a lost cause wanting a reason to exist.

When you open a business yes you expect to make money but in turn you expect to make your customers happy and excited to buy your products to the point where they trust you and want to come back for more and from all that you have created a stable business granted you have a decent model to go with then you'll be rolling in the money but if you don't give two shits about your customer then quite frankly you suck at running a business and will in time go the way of the dodo.

I learned business decisions and tactis from my college E-business class for two years and this guy has been in the gaming business longer than I ever will have and yet he's got the wrong idea of how this all works out.

Sure people are buying into day 1 DLC and it's not going away anytime soon but wouldn't you want that extra bit of money along with decent reputation and credability to keep you going strong?.

 

[weirdee]

of course, if the DLC was already pressed onto the disk, then how does that factor in?

if this approval process was rigorous, then the dlc was already in production before the game was "done", if we define done as entering the approval process and being included on the disc. (we're referring to whole components here, not markers to add new files to the game.) if it's not as rigorous as to consider dlc part of the approval process, then they don't even have to bother with the process if they just make most of it dlc and just get it "approved" while taking as long as they want to with the "optional" portion of the game and there wouldn't be any actual downtime in terms of what they do with the staff

better yet, they could still allow the development but not charge us for it like as if their approval model means that they have to convert part of their game into an add-on and make us buy it separately because somehow that time costs more than it did before in the same time spans they've been developing in for years

about the argument that if they didn't make the dlc, then it wouldn't exist: okay, so say if they removed certain portions of the actual game that weren't "essential" to the overall game, can we consider those parts to not be the main game either? how much of a game can we pare down until it can still be called a complete game by a technical definition and yet not have those components? who gets to decide what's part of a game?

the companies do, and unless we actually say anything about it, they'll continue to do so as long as they can essentially add more to the price of the same game we've been getting before while still claiming that the "basic" game is still worth 60 dollars, and people buy that

 

[Hyper-space]

snip

Easily dismissed by the fact that NOT EVERY PIECE OF DAY 1 DLC IS LOCKED AWAY ON THE DISK. THE POINT IS STILL VALID FOR MOST INSTANCES OF DAY 1 DLC.

But no, of course there can be no demarcation in the land of fucking hyperbole and fucktardiness, for this is an internet forum and as such serves as a graveyard for reading comprehension and reserved judgement.

 

[sXeth]

While on one hand, sure, you may as well fire off whatever hijinx your staff has completed/come up with during the Gold Press-Release gap as DLC, thats not really where the main ire against Day 1 DLC comes from.

Its more Capcom style, where you can find and (with hacking) unlock DLC characters on the pressed disc without ever touching the thing to an online connection or patch. Or AC2 which had the chapters they couldn't be bothered extending the deadline to finish or they specifically cut out to sell later. Which completely eviscerated the story flow and was an obvious flaw in the game that Ubisoft then demanded to be paid to put in.

As someone up there said, findng unused code in games, or extra content bits isn't unknown, its when the code is such a glaring omission that its obviously either been removed in order to jack a few more dollars, or they've scalped the game to meet a deadline, which relatively few people outside parents dumb enough to promise their children as yet non-existent products for xmas/birthdays really give a rats behind about.

 

[Jeffrey Beyerl]

Its one thing so say talk with your money but another thing to say I don't care about how you feel go suck it up; we are in this to make money, doesn't really make me want to buy your games...

 

[AsurasEyes]

So, why not spend that time before release making the game playable? Bethesda games are unplayable the first few days before they unload massive glitch fixes.