Bethesda VP Defends Day-One DLC

[Zombie_Moogle]

While this explanation tactfully avoided the issue of on-disc DLC, it is very true that gamers need to stop buying the stuff if they want it to go away

 

[Agayek]

There's very little actually wrong with Day One DLC, depending on its content and scope.

It's not something I'm terribly fond of, but I've seen the kind of delays that come from having to make physical copies of software and everything. It makes sense that the dev team would be doing nothing for the month or two between "finishing" the game and releasing it.

That said, Day One DLC that is obviously and transparently a core component of the original game (*cough* Javik *cough*), or is of a vastly larger scope than what could be done in a month or two, or is already on the disk is complete and utter bullshit of the highest order.

Day One DLC of small, cosmetic things like new skins, bonus challenges, etc is just fine.

On-Disk DLC and Day One DLC that was blatantly made while the game was still in development is not.

 

[Squidbulb]

" the content people stop making new content a fair amount of time before it ships
Read more at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123194-Bethesda-VP-Defends-Day-One-DLC#WUbHHexjJEG4Rbzj.99"

Well that was a bit of a garden path sentence.

 

[Blade_125]

I really have a problem with Dayone DLC that is shit, but I guess that holds true for all DLC. I don't often buy anything without a lot of review and a price drop now. Someone mentioned From ashes on ME3. I was more pissed that the DLC was terrible than with it being released at launch. If you are going to carge $10 for something than it should be worth $10.

 

[Jumwa]

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

Which is just baffling, as the Horse Armor DLC is now par for the course for video games. It is in no way an odd thing and there are far more egregious forms of DLC out there (like buying power in competitive online games).

For instance: In Fable 3 they had a DLC that did nothing but add cosmetic armour. For your dog.

 

[hermes]

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

At this point, I think unfairly so... Yes, it was stupid and unjustifiable, but even when they were the first to do it, they are not the last (or the worst): see Persona 4 Arena or Blazblue color palette DLC, or FFXIII-2 bikini DLC.

 

[Johnson McGee]

The 'development schedule' excuse rings hollow for me. The post release patches released for many games (especially Bethesda ones) suggests the development cycle for a game continues well past its release even, much less weeks before.

 

[viranimus]

Yes, Bethesda, the same people who brought you horse armor, and are proactively turning RPGs into a COD business model having a VP that is proud of day 1 dlc.

Spoiler: You dont say

Spoiler: Go on, Tell me more

I would never have imagined.

 

[faefrost]

Not all day 1 DLC is the same. I personally have no issues with some types of Day 1 DLC, just so long as they in no way tale away from the fully paid for actual game.

Type 1 - Pure Cosmetic Bullplop. stuff like Horse Armor, or the types of things that are often used as pre order bonus's. I'm fine with them. I really am. If someone wants to pay a little extra for some sort of customized appearance, it in no way impacts or effects my gameplay, nor does it honestly take away from what I paid for. I neither like nor dislike it. It is completely and utterly pointless to me. Heck there are a few times where I do even kinda like it. Stuff like the assorted and ever growing costume packs in the Little Big Planet games. Especially the ones that reference other games or media. That is perfectly fine as non critical extra content that someone can voluntarily pay extra for. Honestly I don't have an issue with developers I like finding other ways to reasonably monetize their products so they can keep making the games that I like.

Type 2 - Not completely cosmetic stuff. Now we are starting to get into a grey area here. Things like new or extra characters or NPC's. While not always a bad thing, it starts to feel cheap and smarmy. It's one thing to have an extra special Adam West Batman costume available. It's another to throw in a new NPC with a whole new set of missions or that can have an impact on the overall games story. I'm looking at you Mass Effect!!!

Type 3 - Completely Heinous. I'm talking actual gameplay content. Quests, adventures, battle maps, etc sitting behind paywalls day one, when you just forked over $59 USD. There is no way a consumer is not left with the impression that this content was in fact carved out of the full retail game in order to extort more money from the fans. I wanted to beat a Gamestop employee when I went to pick up my Bioshock Infinite copy, and he was trying to hardsell me on a "Season Pass" that would unlock 30% more of the game and its content for $20. WTF!!!!!

And yet we the gamers bring this on ourselves by the lessons that we teach the game publishers and developers. All of us, consumer and producer alike know that the most DLC is purchased, the most ROI is gotten from it, within 30 days of a games release. We ***** and moan about it, BUT THAT'S WHEN WE GIVE THEM OUR MONEY!!! Evil such as EA doesn't just happen. It evolves because of learned behavior. Slowly reacting and evolving to the lessons that we the consumers teach it. The only way to start to seeimprovement is to start teaching better lessons. Stop paying for shit in a box.

 

[grigjd3]

[Hines] thinks developers and publishers should just "do what they think works best for them, and the customers have the decision to buy or not to buy as they see fit."

This is a reasonable point made by Pete Hines

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.

transformed into rage-filled, holier-than-thou spittle by Cavalli. This kind of reeks of a sad attempt at landing lots of angry posts.

Look, Hines has a very good point. This is something the market can decide. It's not like he's suggesting selling you kool-aid just to take it away after the first sip. He's just saying your voice can be felt directly in the choices you make. Cavalli, on the other hand, seems to want to show us how inferior we are.

 

[Lightknight]

Day 1 DLC is legitimate if it was honestly finished after code-cutoff of the game. There is a decent amount of time between code-cutoff (where they can't or aren't supposed to add or edit any more code) and the final released disk version. The finished version has to be thoroughly QA'd and burned on disks and shipped and everything else. That's time the dev team isn't otherwise working.

On-disk day 1 DLC is an automatic sin.

Either way, the consumer has no way of knowing for sure whether or not the developers only finished after cutoff or if that's just an evil attempt by the company. We also don't know if it was held back as something they can nickle and dime us for. As such, we will assume that it's evil.

But guess what? Us not knowing isn't our fault or even our problem. It's theirs. We're just the consumers our job isn't to know the development cycle but to know how to buy their product if we want it. From our perspective they're charging us for the ketchup in addition to the hotdog.

 

[Parakeettheprawn]

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.

Don't forget the Omega DLC, that was right there in their GDD that got leaked.

Look, I can understand things like multiplayer compatibility (I doubt anyone remembers but Bioshock 2 had some controversy about having the MP DLC on-disc), that's all within reason, although it still just makes me think they should take the Valve approach to things for some good PR, and just slide in updates after that point and -then- release DLC that has to be bought, but that's just me. When it's singleplayer content, and/or pre-order bonuses, then that's where things cross into the "you've got to be kidding me" territory.

 

[mattttherman3]

liking the content itself and not liking the fact that it's released on the same day are two different things

 

[Ukomba]

In fact on disc stuff isn't new. Unfinished programming exists on old cartage games. Resourceful players have found some interesting unfinished stuff on Ocarina of Time for example. KOTOR 2 also had a bunch of unfinished stuff on it that players were later able to patch back into the game.

I get what you're thinking, but I don't think that "Unfinished content still left in the game that is inaccessible through regular means" could easily be considered the same as "Finished content in the game (that may or may not already be on the disk) that's been placed behind a paywall or something similar".

Y'know, just saying.

That's not what I'm saying. The way the current culture is, that if those games were developed today, rather than being unfinished, they would continue developing those unfinished areas after the development deadline and that content would then be complete but require you to buy the dlc to activate. The HK-50 factory in KOTOR 2 would have been a dlc level, possibly a day 1 dlc level, but they had to cut it short and level it out because they didn't have this new distribution and monetization ability. I could have easily seen 'From Ashes' in ME3 suffering a similar fate if ME3 was released a decade ago.

Recent developments allow them to not waist those partially created sections. That additional content might even be done in time to make it onto the disc but that content is beyond their basic development costs and they would need to recoup that investment somehow.

Getting rid of the day 1 dlc wouldn't mean you get that content free, it means you'd have partially created content on the disc you'd never get to experience. It's a return to the way things use to work and that was the fate of that content before.

 

[Hyper-space]

Yeah, because nobody was ever able to ship a complete game before. Nope! There has ALWAYS been DLC.

Oh wait, this is Bethesda: the one developer who actually has never been able to ship a complete game

I swear to god, about 99% of the people in this thread did not read the goddamn fucking article.

His point was that THEY HAVE FINISHED THE GAME ITSELF BUT ARE WAITING FOR IT TO SHIP, meaning that in the meantime they can work on side-content like DLC.

Get it? THEY HAVE SPARE-TIME UNTIL THE GAME IS OUT AND CAN THEREFORE WORK ON OTHER STUFF. Super simple stuff.

 

[DoPo]

Well, that's a good point that he's making...

If we didn't have a robust online gaming market. If that's the case, why couldn't they just ship it as free DLC? I mean, if he's saying that these things are being developed while the team is still technically being paid for processing, coding, and then shipping out the finished product, well.. it seems to fall into the scope of what the team was initially paid to do.

OK, I'm talking about software development in general, but I doubt the games industry is radically different - 1. employees get salaries. Yes, they do - in the software development, people still get paid monthly. OK, most of the time - although some are paid for the work they do (usually they aren't permanent employees but hired for just a project or, say, for a couple of months on several projects). While not uncommon, more on that just after 2. the companies are paid per project. There are lengthy discussions between people, most probably in suits, who pin down and describe what the project is in details. There are big thick documents written that go at length on the matter - project specifications, functional requirements, drafts, proposals but bottom line is, a project isn't "make a game" or similar the scope of it is wa-a-a-ay better mapped. At the very least, you'd come up with a list of FR (functional requirements) after the initial meetings but usually, you'd also get a project specification talking about it in general. Once you have those, you're ready to start actually planning. And after brief planning, the developers would be able to tell how much it actually costs. It's not uncommon to pay per man hour expected (that would be an estimate, of course) or sometimes the final price may be presented after the project finishes - if there were 1000 man hours poured into it, the customer pays for those, if it amounted to 1500, then that's the final price. Maybe with some extra cost included (you could have a start sum plus whatever you choose to charge per man hour). Or there could be an alternative payment method - per feature, for example, or similar but bottom line is, the company is not expected to just add random stuff as they go along. There is a term for that - feature creep. And it's bad, it's very bad for a software project.

There is a common misconception that software development is "oh, just add this". It's not, and I don't think I can properly explain the full reasons why is that. There are books written on the matter that are tackling this from different sides.

And your analogy is very flawed. What you described there is referred to as implicit requirement - one, that's too simple to properly convey the actual complexity of the task involved, two, it's just stupid. What my old boss used was a much better analogy - imagine starting to build a house and you hire some people to do that. Now, if you suddenly decide you want an extra room, is that not extra work for the builders? If you want an extra floor, is that not extra effort and time? Heck, maybe the house is more or less finished on the outside but if you decide you want changes in it, like putting more windows or something, "while it's not complete yet", how is that not extra stuff to do? I've also worked at a building site, and I'm telling you - if somebody came and said "Oh, good work chaps, I'm liking how the thing looks. But can you just erect a wall here and change the ceiling? Oh, I won't pay you for the work and I still expect it to be finished at the time we agreed." they'd probably get a slap.

 

[lancar]

Whoa.. this is Bethesda we're talking about here. BETHESDA!

Y'know... the guys who make games that frequently lasts you 100 hours or more. If anyone should be tolerated to have day-1 DLC, it's these guys. It's hard to accuse them of holding back content when they provide such vast amounts of it right off the bat. And singleplayer, too.

These are the good guys, people. The hilariously overpriced horse armor debacle aside, I've never felt cheated by their DLC schemes.


I do agree that I'll never particulary LIKE the practice though, and the locked-on-disc-DLC thing should just burn in hell regardless of who does it, but it's the sign of the times so I'll just have to "dealwithit".

ie, not buy it on day 1.
Because I don't. ever.

 

[Lightknight]

I swear to god, about 99% of the people in this thread did not read the goddamn fucking article.

His point was that THEY HAVE FINISHED THE GAME ITSELF BUT ARE WAITING FOR IT TO SHIP, meaning that in the meantime they can work on side-content like DLC.

Get it? THEY HAVE SPARE-TIME UNTIL THE GAME IS OUT AND CAN THEREFORE WORK ON OTHER STUFF. Super simple stuff.

So I assume that you think I'm the 1% as this is what I said in my post in the first paragraph for why Day 1 DLC is not inherently evil unless it is on a disc (in which case, damn them).

Again though, the consumer does not know if the DLC was held back on purpose or even generated alongside the main code regardless of what the developer claims. They will lie to our faces (*coughEAcough*). So even if a person like me (you know, a person who actually works in software development) understands the development cycle I am still left with the suspicion that it was purposefully held back even if I like and trust the company. For no other reason than to squeeze a couple dollars out.

Likewise, for people who are not in the software developer cycle, it is not their job to know the development cycle and so even if Bethesda (a company I genuinely love) thinks the complaint is because of ignorance, that's too bad. The consumer's job is only to pay for things they want, not understand how it was put together. From their perspective they're getting charged for non-premium condiments. If the consumer feels like it's evil,then that's a legitimate PR issue regardless of whether or not it is.

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.

 

[Little Gray]

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 seem to be missing the minority part. A company that sells three million copies of a game is really not going to change their dlc practices because 10,000 people on the internet who may or may not have bought the game dont like it.

 

[ThriKreen]

Pfbt, I was making horses and horse armour for DLC [http://www.thrikreen.com/temp/nwn/nwn_horses.jpg] before Bethesda.

If we didn't have a robust online gaming market. If that's the case, why couldn't they just ship it as free DLC? I mean, if he's saying that these things are being developed while the team is still technically being paid for processing, coding, and then shipping out the finished product.

What my old boss used was a much better analogy - imagine starting to build a house and you hire some people to do that. (snip)

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.