Bleszinski: On-Disk DLC an "Unfortunate Reality"

[Dys]

Why would it go to waste? If it's finished in time for the release then they should just include it in the original game instead of charging extra? As 4 "The Chart" They somehow found a way to finance post release DLC BEFORE On-disk DLC. Have they just gotten worse at managing their finances? Not exactly winning any points with that argument.

Actu... know what? Fuck it. I let someone else with less sleep deprivation answer this. Il just say that you seem to be missing a key fact. The game isnt released when the developers finish it. Its released some time after. I believe its in that chart you mentioned. That "Day 1" DLC is partially on the disk, but they couldnt finish it in time to send the game in for review or what the fuck ever happens between the time the game is finish and the actual release of the game to the public.

Really, I think that chart you mentioned should have actually answered your question better than I could.

Spoiler: In fact, here it is.

*Edit*

Looks like someone already did...

Your point manages to completely miss the complaint with DLC. When consumers pay full price for a game, they expect the best damn game that can be done under budget[footnote]If it can be bankrolled before any extra $$ come in from sales it doesn't really have any right to be sold as DLC![/footnote]. What department does what, when is irrelevant. If there's something cool that can be budgeted and realistically included in the game, it should be. It's not unreasonable to expect something you buy to be the best it can be, in fact it's unreasonable to expect people to buy something that is implied as being the best that could be made at the time and then immediately slap them with a fee for a slightly better experience that could have been included.

Yes game developers sometimes struggle with AAA games etc etc. But when the current trend is to be spending hugely significant amounts of money on marketing, this kind of atrocious marketing is simply unacceptable.

Im not going to bother trying to responde to this, as it seems like an exercise in futility. Suffice to say, you and I are not game developers and as such, we do not have any firsthand knowledge on this subject. We only have an outside view on the whole ordeal, and I doubt that puts us in a position to dictate to a developer how to do their job.

We are the consumer, not only are we in a position to dictate how a publisher[footnote]the developer ultimately has little say in what is DLC and what is included in the core game.[/footnote] releases a product, we are in a position where we should demand the best! In no other industry is it so consistently defended to deliberately under-design a product so that extras can be sold seperately, and until very recently videogames were no exception. The current trend of over budgeting marketing and mistreating the end consumer is not ok, and it is something that we should be bitterly condemning, not defending. A game, much like any other product, should be designed to be the best it possibly can be with the resources available, it is managements job to maximise how these resources are used, doing so doesn't entitle them to charging the consumer twice!

Right now the default assumption is that it's a vile corporate money-grab - regardless of actual intent.

This right here. It's not Cliffy's fault his consumer base is ignorant of software development. I'm pretty sure most of the people who complain about DLC have no idea what the alternatives are.

I'm pretty sure most people that defend on disc, day one DLC have no idea that it's the publisher, not the developer, who dictates what is included in the core game and what is to be sold as an extra.

 

[Pyrian]

So how does the disc-locked dlc being developed during this period of testing appear on the disc? Surely they'd have to send it back to Microsoft/Sony because the content of the product had changed after initial testing.

Exactly. We're being fed a line of total B.S., here, and they're not even hiding it plausibly. I don't have a problem with Day 1 DLC developed after the game was sent to QA, but that's not what we're talking about in this case: this is on-disc "unlockables" that were on the disc when it went to QA all along.

Maybe I'll go file a complaint about False and Misleading Advertising to the FTC. Because, you know what? Lying to your customers about what you're selling them is illegal, and that's a GOOD thing.

Right now the default assumption is that it's a vile corporate money-grab - regardless of actual intent.

It most certainly is a money-grab, but there's nothing inherently vile about corporations trying to make money. That's kind of what they do. What makes it an issue is that they're blatantly lying about it. And when they're caught lying, they make up new lies.

They're trying to get more money by locking away part of the original game for a fee. Which is fine in itself. Except that they're bending over themselves to repeatedly lie about it to increase sales. And I'm sorry, but lying about what you're selling, and specifically lying about what you're selling in order to increase sales to people who might not buy it except for the fact that you lied to them, is illegal. And should be illegal.

"It's downloadable content!" No, aside from a small unlock file, it's on the disc.

"It's just included for compatibility, we developed it after the rest of the game was sent to QA!" So you claim you integrated content onto the disc AFTER the disc was QA'd? Do you expect us to believe that the console QA folks were okay with that? With releasing a modified disc that they'd never QA'd? I don't believe that happened.

 

[Sirron Kcuch]

Don't buy that DLC. It's that simple.
Captcha: eat your vitamins

 

[Lunar Templar]

he's being a bit optimistic isn't he .....

i doubt going 'all digital' will make the problem go away

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Or until consumers collectively refuse to pay for it, but what are the odds of that happening?

My biggest issue with on-disk DLC is that you're effectively paying extra for something you already have.

 

[tautologico]

Additionally, how is some of the content being on-disc a necessity? They were doing DLC before on-disc DLC. What's made it impossible?

It may be highly desirable due to constraints imposed by the game program. It's much easier to do DLC if there is structure or placeholders for it already in the code. If there's not, of course it's possible to patch the code with updates, but this is far more complex and increases the cost of producing such DLC. So it's not impossible, but it could render the DLC production unfeasible.

The issue is also about transparency and cost. Cliffy and company tried to hide that on-disc DLC. Companies are still trying to hide it. I wouldn't be surprised if Blezinski's next game tried to hide it. If it's such a necessity (which I do not believe it to be), why all the lying and hiding and game playing?

This is a good point, but I don't know if gamers would react any better if they were more upfront with the DLC situation and parts (or all) of it being on disk. I think they tried to "hide" such stuff for fear of the reaction. Of course, some people find out about it and all, but not everyone who plays games go to gaming news sites and forums on a daily basis (actually the people who do that are probably a minority).

Also, if we go to fully downloadable games, the horror game will still be 50-60 bucks with additional content. It's bullshit to think we're going to see a cost decrease, especially in this context.

Oh, I heard this point many times, but it does not hold at all. The economics of selling products is about supply and demand. If publishers went all digital and there were no more used copies to compete with, they would probably see that lowering their prices would increase total revenue. In this case, of course they would drop their prices. If a company can get more money by selling its product cheaper (thus selling to more people) it WILL do so, after all they want more profit.

The problems for supply and demand with games are related to alternatives which impose a shared cost to everyone, namely piracy and used copies. I'm not saying any of these two things are "wrong", but both of them lower the revenue for the publisher, for the same amount of people acquiring their products. Thus, the cost of the losses is distributed to people who do buy the product. It's unfortunate, but this happens everywhere, not only in gaming. Like department stores that have previous data on what percentage of their products is stolen every month, and then they raise the prices on all products by that percentage to compensate.

So if piracy and/or used copies were somehow (at least mostly) eliminated, it's reasonable to expect that the ideal point in the supply/demand curve for publishers would change and it would be in their best interest to lower prices.

 

[poiuppx]

There's a lot being unsaid here that probably SHOULD be said. A game being 'finished' means not that it's finished in the eyes of the company... final builds need to go to EVERYONE in advance. That includes your country's ratings board, the companies on whose console the game will be released, etc, etc. At that point, what's going to be on offer from disc alone IS locked. Because turning around and saying 'We're adding this to the disc for free' is a good way to burn any trust with said entities. Now, saying 'We'll be adding DLC in the future', and immediately working on it, that's a different story. And certain companies who shall remain Micro-nameless aren't exactly fans of free DLC, so the option doesn't even exist there. And if it's not free on ONE console, and it's a multi-console release, then the hands, they be tied; it's either a paid exclusive DLC for the one, it doesn't exist, or it's a paid DLC for all parties.

On-disc DLC does suck. It does feel like getting shafted. And undoubtedly, some companies have used it as an excuse to carve bits out and slap them down for extra. But the situation is a bit more complex than most detractors have made it out to be.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Dude! Car analogies for Piracy and Used Games sales. Dur!

 

[Treblaine]

I believe its a simple matter of if its on the disc it should be part of the original game and forcing you to buy to unlock this content is morally bankrupt. If however the content is not on the dvd then it would in fact be a dlc package that you would spend extra for. However that raises the issue of day 1 dlc, whether it should actually be on the disc in the 1st place or not.

I also find it frankly horrifying that so many developer are trying to force people into digital distribution only. The thing is I like have a physical copy of what I've bought, it means I have a collection and if something horrible happens to my hard drive it is a lot easier to reinstall rather than having to redownload a game you've purchased. Also for all their bleating of digital distribution I have noticed that the software does not cost any less than if I picked up the physical disc instead.

Consider this:

What if the developers have all the assets, textures and code for a particular level but when they actually try to run the level they find it is broken. Either unbalanced or technically unstable full of bugs and game crashes... it. is. not. ready. It needs another 3 months work.

Now the extra work has nothing to do with creating the textures, the body of the Data, that is done. The extra work is in testing both for balance and stability. The extra work is only a few megabytes, basically a patch.

See that "patch" IS NOT on the disc (or the initial download). This couple megabytes file may be small, but is may have taken more work to develop than all the creation of th

See, games are coded increasingly on the lowest level, BYTE BY BYTE! Think about that with a 2 megabyte patch, that is TWO MILLION BYTES! Two million variables you have to code, test and balance for. That 1.5 meg download is valuable beyond what its size would suggest.

A simple unlock code would not be 2 million bytes long, it wouldn't even be 1 kilobyte.

As to digital download only I think it should definitely be an option and it benefits everyone who matters to this industry.

Digital download cuts out the middle-man, it is more direct capitalism, directly connecting the creators of wealth (game makers, who turn worthless computer bytes into great games) to those who pay and actually use the wealth. Middle men in retail do nothing but hike the price and disrupt the market with exploitative used market.

You fret if something happens to your hard-drive, what if something happens to your Xbox 360 disc? There is NO BACK UP! Nothing, once it is scratched or cracked there is NO RECOVERY! No re-download. And you can back up your digital-downloads to - you guessed it - back them up to now cheap RW-DVDs. Once you have bought a game on Steam, it is almost impossible to lose it.

Digital distribution is FAR cheaper in sales. I have never found as good deal on Steam, and on digital-only eco-systems like iOS has such low pricing and so often free. By god, the collections especially. And on PC digital only Free-to-play. I don't know ANYWHERE in retail that free-to-start has worked. Even demo disc you have to pay for buying a magazine that it comes with.

 

[Bostur]

They could start working on an expansion pack to be released a few months after the first release.

But that would be too substantial. Why sell an expansion pack when people will pay the same for some outtakes taken out of the trash can.

 

[Moriarty70]

I've got it! Let's go back to the old school. From now on, no DLC, no post release support except for a brief period of bug patches. You can have the disc and anything on it. If it's unfinished and locked down, too bad, never get to see it unless hackers and modders fix it years later.

I would have loved DLC that finished the on disc, unpolished, unfinished Boo kidnapping in Baldur's Gate 2.

 

[Podunk]

You guys want more game for your 60$, as opposed to them devoting resources for the project into making add-ons you have to pay extra for? GHOD STOP BEING SO ENTITLED GROW UP SRYUSLY U GUYZ.

Edit: ALSO HOW DARE U, ITS ART. NOT CHARGING AN EXTRA 10$ WOULD RUIN THEIR ARTISTIC VISION. OBVIOUSLY.

 

[Weaver]

It's not my fault that the SDLC, team planning and budgeting at Epic games is all fucked up. There are companies that can complete and ship a whole game without on disc DLC or day 1 DLC and they're doing fine.

 

[AnotherAvatar]

"And often for compatibility issues, [on] day one, some of that content does need to be on-disc."

Lulwhat?

This is total bullshit.

 

[Johnson McGee]

Ten bucks for such a tiny extra? A few maps and skins? Geeze, that'd be price gouging even if it weren't on the disc! Fallout 3/NV's DLCs were also ten bucks each.

DLC has a habit of being disproportionately priced. For 10$, you should theoretically get something that has about 1/6th of the content in the original game. It never works out like that.

I would go further and say that DLC should have more than 1/6 of the content for 1/6 of the price since much of the core development like textures, game engine, etc. included in the price of the main game can be re-used for the DLC.

 

[subtlefuge]

I will give the Gears team some credit. The free map pack they released for Gears 3 balances out the on-disk DLC, but they should still try harder.

 

[Weaver]

Ten bucks for such a tiny extra? A few maps and skins? Geeze, that'd be price gouging even if it weren't on the disc! Fallout 3/NV's DLCs were also ten bucks each.

DLC has a habit of being disproportionately priced. For 10$, you should theoretically get something that has about 1/6th of the content in the original game. It never works out like that.

I would go further and say that DLC should have more than 1/6 of the content for 1/6 of the price since much of the core development like textures, game engine, etc. included in the price of the main game can be re-used for the DLC.

I agree. Personally, I'm still in tune with the old expansion pack model. Remember how much content we got for $30 in Diablo 2: Lord of Destruciton, or Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal? Hell, even Oblivion's the shivering isles expansion was absolutely huge at around 35 hours for about $30 bucks. And now dev's have the audacity to charge people $10 whole dollars for a 30 minute mission and a shitty squadmate?

 

[hermes]

The way I see it, not all DLC needs to have an on disk content. Dlc that intergrates into the core game, eg characters in ME2/3, need to have on disk content so that they 'work' within the game, that would be the compatibility that Bleszinski mentioned above.

You only have those compatibility issues if you design the engine so that it will have those compatibility issues... which just happens to be cheaper and easier. If companies are going to keep asking us for 1/5th of the money for 1/60th of the content, maybe they should pony up some of that extra cash and build a more modular game next time.

Then again, people are not fans of 1GB patch updates, which would be the solution for this situation.

I think people here are confusing two different situations: day 1 DLC and on disk DLC. Bleszinski's answer seems to address day 1 DLC more... Yes, there are DLC that is developed by the team during the certification process, the "going gold" time or even during the last push (not all the team is under the milestone pressure at the same time). Some DLC is finished in those weeks and by releasing it as early as possible they make sure more people will buy it (same principle most movie merchandise is released around the time the movie premieres)

On Disk DLC exists mostly for compatibility issues. Gamers that doesn't have the DLC need to be able to interact online with players that do. In the case of maps, interaction is minimal, but in the example of fighting games people will want to use the new characters regardless of whether the opponent has them. In the case of coop games, the situation is similar (I wonder how gearbox will handle the Mechromancer DLC in Borderlands). The alternative (a more "modular" game) requires people to download "compatibility packs" or game updates that can be close to 1 or 2 GBs. Those that experience the Mortal Kombat debacle know how wrong that can go. Under that light, on disk dlc presents some compelling arguments. The reason people are upset is because of the Capcom answer regarding SFxT, which is not only false (on disk dlc is not the same as downloadable) but unfortunate since the characters are fully functional and have been seen in online matches... This could have been easily solved by Capcom if they included all models and textures on the disk, but leave some vital data (like animations, inputs and stats) out of the disk and release it in time with the DLC as a patch, which could amount for only a few MB. At this point, Capcom is pushing it (downloadable GEMS are also found on disk, which is rather ridiculous).

 

[hermes]

Ten bucks for such a tiny extra? A few maps and skins? Geeze, that'd be price gouging even if it weren't on the disc! Fallout 3/NV's DLCs were also ten bucks each.

DLC has a habit of being disproportionately priced. For 10$, you should theoretically get something that has about 1/6th of the content in the original game. It never works out like that.

I would go further and say that DLC should have more than 1/6 of the content for 1/6 of the price since much of the core development like textures, game engine, etc. included in the price of the main game can be re-used for the DLC.

I agree. Personally, I'm still in tune with the old expansion pack model. Remember how much content we got for $30 in Diablo 2: Lord of Destruciton, or Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal? Hell, even Oblivion's the shivering isles expansion was absolutely huge at around 35 hours for about $30 bucks. And now dev's have the audacity to charge people $10 whole dollars for a 30 minute mission and a shitty squadmate?

That depends on the developer and the public. Few people would argue with the quantity and quality of content like Shadow Broker, Minerva's Den, Claptrap's Robot Revolution, Awakening or Undead Nightmare, or their price/content ratio... But some release 4 online maps for 15$ and people consume them happily, so I guess its not a big detriment for them to stop doing it.

 

[hermes]

"And often for compatibility issues, [on] day one, some of that content does need to be on-disc."

Lulwhat?

This is total bullshit.

Remember Mortal Kombat... in many case, its a necessity.