Bleszinski: On-Disk DLC an "Unfortunate Reality"

[DiamanteGeeza]

An interesting story going back to the good old 8-bit days of the C64 and the Speccy... Anyone remember Uridium from Hewson Consultants? The game was shipped and had a whole bunch other levels with different graphics (the same size as the game itself) that were locked and hidden. The plan was to release an Easter Egg code at some point to delight the players...

Hewson had a change of heart after the game sold so well, and released Uridium+ a few months later as a whole new game, and at full price. Guess what the content was? Yep, you've guessed it - the locked levels from the first Uridium that every player already owned anyway.

Shameless? Something like that. LOL.

 

[Ziggy]

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.

When a game is to be released on consoles it is sent a MS or sony and they inspect the game this can take a long while depending if its multi-platform exclusive.
if its not ready it can be delayed for a few months for the devs to fix it.
When it is sent to microsoft or sony, It's done,finite,over,feature complete they may not add anything else not even remove stuff.
In that time its either,Sequel time Or dlc time.
And a skin pack can be done in a few days by the art team who havent got anything to work on.

So it's the consoles fault that there are day-1 DLC?

LOL. Rolfwesselius' naive description of the submission process was very idealistic. We address all sorts of issues with a day-1 title update (it's not usually new content, it's generally a new executable and replacement data to fix map holes, and so on), and the first parties agree to waive certain issues with the build that will go to be pressed, on the condition that there will be a TU on day 1 that fixes all of the bugs that will be on the disk.

And no, I'm not condoning this behavior, merely reporting what happens. I've been in this industry for 3 decades, and I dislike immensely the fact that nowadays it's deemed acceptable to keep cramming content into the games well beyond when it could feasibly be tested and, therefore, forcing us into submitting games to first parties that is unfinished and usually broken in a few places. To then have the first parties agree to turn a blind eye and force the user to download a couple of hundred megs of data before they can even play the game once they've bought it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but that is the way the industry has moved (mainly due to crap scheduling, over-ambitious and badly planned projects, inadequate time alloted for said over-ambitious projects, and massive pressure from publishers).

It used to be the case that there was a mad scramble to get the game shippable for the RC date and THEN it was submitted to first parties. The team could relax a little and wait until the build either got approved, or they have a few fixes before having to resubmit. Now, though, a half-assed game is booted over to the first parties, and the team are then forced to crank like mad (on top of the lack of sleep they've already had) for another 2 months straight to fix everything that's broken before the disk hits the shelves.

My prediction (hope) is that at some point soon, a huge-title day-1 TU will fail to make it in time, and a disk will hit the shelves that is in bad shape. Once this happens, the first parties will be forced to tighten up their submission requirements back to how they used to be, and agree to waive far less problems with the actual submission build.

Huh, the more you know.
Nice to know that there are people with a lot of experience on this side.

 

[Mayhemski]

@DiamanteGeeza Bad project management is nothing new in the gaming industry sadly though. Same with dodgy Q&A practices.

And to be fair pc's have there problems with day 1 patches as well that seem to be coming part and parcel of a release nowadays.

Also digital distribution is an idea many industry's have been thinking about for a long time. Just that now they are actually able to do it due to the spread of broadband connections.

Read a post somewhere where someone talked about how games tend to be a one hit wonder in terms of profits (think it was in the debate about used game sales). And if DLC allows more revenue devs will go for it. The problem with DLC day 1 is that it sells best on release not a few weeks later. As such on disk dlc content probably isn't going anywhere soon, if a full digital download is 1gig and you can't play while updates are going on, it makes a certain amount of sense to limit the size of the download in order to activate the content as quickly as possible.

 

[theultimateend]

I'm only annoyed that game prices haven't gone down while actual playable content has.

That's really my major complaint.

Basically I used to get a cheeseburger for the cheeseburger price, now I'm getting a hamburger but it is still priced and labeled like the cheeseburger.

I can also buy cheese to get back to where I was for a mere markup of 2-4 hundred % the cost of a slice of cheese.

If games got cheaper and the monetized out all the little extras I'd care a little less. I'd still play games about as much as I do now (almost none) but at least I'd pay less since I wouldn't be paying a high up front cost for a DLC delivery vehicle.

How does a waiting period make the DLC inferior?

They were trolling for pitty quotes on their post. Which is why I removed it from quoting you so that they don't get the satisfaction twice.

Basically if someone has nothing to say, they troll so that they can feel important. Sadly they usually get the most replies (usually).

 

[viranimus]

Actually this does happen, just not quite to this degree. Options in car manufacturing are sometimes turned on and off at the internal computer level. But they would never admit to it.

As an aside, They seemed to have stopped worrying about piracy anymore. Now the DLC is available (especially for Capcom) for all the pirates to take. Since the content is there, there will be less incentive to get the legitimate game for the pirates.

Also, I have a limited amount of space available on my Xbox hard drive thanks to MS nonsensical control over hard drive size. Now the publisher tells me I have to waste my hard drive space for content I can't use during the install. How the fuck is that fair? Its my hard drive, and I want to only install what I have access to. Why should an extra gig or two be dedicated to storage of your content? If thats the case, I think I should be charging a fee for this service...

Im pretty confused why you quoted me because your counter point has nothing to do with the car reference I brought up. I said nothing about features in a car, My car reference was buying from a shitty car dealer who is determined to rail road you into a nice vehicle, but not one you want or need.

If I missed the connection, I apologize, but I simply am not seeing it.

 

[Formica Archonis]

A car analogy joke in the article and no one mentions Slashdot.

Geekdom, I am disappoint.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

@DiamanteGeeza Bad project management is nothing new in the gaming industry sadly though. Same with dodgy Q&A practices.

And to be fair pc's have there problems with day 1 patches as well that seem to be coming part and parcel of a release nowadays.

Also digital distribution is an idea many industry's have been thinking about for a long time. Just that now they are actually able to do it due to the spread of broadband connections.

Read a post somewhere where someone talked about how games tend to be a one hit wonder in terms of profits (think it was in the debate about used game sales). And if DLC allows more revenue devs will go for it. The problem with DLC day 1 is that it sells best on release not a few weeks later. As such on disk dlc content probably isn't going anywhere soon, if a full digital download is 1gig and you can't play while updates are going on, it makes a certain amount of sense to limit the size of the download in order to activate the content as quickly as possible.

I was having a rant about day-1 Title Updates (not DLC), which I guess is a little off-topic. LOL.

But it certainly is the case that most games make most of their money shortly after release (and most of the time barely recoup the cost of the actual development and marketing), which is why the used-games business is a bitter pill to swallow for the publishers. Having people pay for DLC extends the revenue stream of the game and sometimes actually allows the publishers to turn a profit (and before anybody starts ranting about evil publishers and capitalism, publishers making a profit is a good thing... if they didn't, you wouldn't have any games to play).

It's also worth noting that the used-car/used-book/used-whatever comparison isn't strictly accurate because the vast majority of games these days have a huge back-end infrastructure to maintain. Publishers and first parties spend hundreds of millions of dollars maintaining back-end services that allows for online play, stat tracking, online communities, and so on - car companies and book publishers don't provide you with anything once you've purchased their product, whereas most game publishers now do (if car companies offered free parts and servicing for life, then the comparison would be more accurate). Not getting revenue from used game sales hurts the publishers because they don't contribute anything to these massive, expensive, and extremely complex back-end services.

Think of WoW - if that wasn't operated on a subscription model, there's no way it would still be in business. Their server farms, located all round the world, cost an absolute fortune to maintain, upgrade, and run. If the 12m subscribers had just paid a one-off fee for the game, Blizzard would have been bankrupt long ago.

I think I've gone wildly off-topic again.... ;-)

 

[Awexsome]

Stuff like the "From Ashes" DLC there shouldn't be any problem with. Some content that was actually finished for it could make it into the game disk but not at a level of polish that fans expect so they put what they could on the disk and leave the rest to finish and polish up after content complete and release it as the day 1 DLC. People buy it and compensate the devs for work that the different teams put into it after the game's main content was finished.

The distinction I always want to be clear on is that between downloadable content and disk-locked content.

I can see why the devs and pubs are reluctant to be forward about it though because most gamers are entirely ignorant to the development process and just have hard-wired themselves to think "Day 1 DLC ALWAYS equals company trying to rip me off with content purposefully cut. No exceptions. Post inflammatory comments on forum."

 

[Antari]

And game companies that take on this practice will be facing the unfortunate reality of filing for bankruptcy. People can only take this level of exploitation so long.

 

[PunkRex]

Isn't this basically what Extra Credits talked about recently? Im fine with them making more game in their down time but why do they seem so big a part sometimes, a command pack I can understand but an entire character who takes part in key story events... I dunno...

 

[Phlakes]

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?

I think you're forgetting that lots of people put time, effort, and money into that extra content, after they finished the base game. They work overtime so you can have more content. Asking for it for free is selfish.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

People are willing to pay for it, so who's the real suckers. At the end of the day its still a Business, a business that still has to earn money and generally will look for ways to earn more. Every Business in the world does shady shit, so colour me unphased.

If you've got an issue with it respond with your power as a consumer and don't purchase it, or/and send the an email with lots of swearing in it.

 

[Simonoly]

I'm slightly confused about some of the information in this article. So apparently there's three or four months where the game is basically done and they work on dlc content. Hasn't the game been sent to Microsoft/Sony during this period for testing etc? Surely that means that all work on the vanilla product has finished? I was under the impression that when Microsoft or Sony give the game the okay it can no longer be modified. 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.

The explanation given in this article seems only applicable to dlc distributed via digital download and not anything locked-away on disc. Although I suppose it is also applicable to dlc which is partially on-disc like the 'From Ashes' dlc in ME3. But still, either I've not had enough sleep or something doesn't add up here.

Basically the DLC is being developed alongside the main game but the developers know they can't finish it by the time the game has to go off to microsoft and sony so they just shove whatever is already done onto the disk and the put the rest up for download on release it keeps the download time down.

I can see how this process works for incomplete dlc like the 'From Ashes' dlc of Mass Effect 3. But things start to get a bit iffy when complete game content for dlc is locked away on disc. Street Fighter X Tekken comes to mind in particular. I'm not saying that any of this is particularly right or wrong, but it's starting to get a little uncomfortably murky.

 

[darksakul]

Since Cliff Bleszinski put his views the way he did, I agree with the developers and Day 1 DLC.
Game making like ant other production is a business not a hobby.

Side projects are not allowed unless there profit to be made. And most Day 1 DLC are not integral in the main story plot or game play.

Even online passes have there reasons, Ensure that people buy there product even if someone buys a used copy of the game, "Oh you want online multi-player, $10 please".

Some On Disk content has to be disabled on disk, maybe that one extra character still is buggy, whole stages that are cut out of the game and instead of deleting the stage it is fair easier to disable it. Programers will know what I mean it is called "Commenting out" sections of code.

Mainly its to do what Major corporations number 1 legal obligation is, pay their investors. Paying Investors means you have to make profit.

If I take a car for a test drive and decide to buy it right there, is the dealer going to charge me for the gas in my tank?!!
Well?

You technically you already pay extra for that. Take a look at the price of the car, then sales tax. This will include Tax and Title(tax on the car it self not the sale of), any last minute maintenance cost like installing extras. If you look real carefully I am sure there many car dealerships that charge you for that Tank of Gas, at premium rates. So many people fail to read all the fine print.

Before the time of digital distribution and Digital DLC there where the expansion packs, where you have to pay for the additional content later on. And it is not uncommon that some of that content is already locked up on the original disk.

Other businesses are doing similar practices that game publishers do with day 1 DLCs now for decades, the practice is actually centuries old.

Here is you "insert product here" oh the "insert accessory here" is sold separately.
This will include vacuum bags, USB cords, power adapters, memory cards, printer ink.
All items you think that should be included in the product.

 

[Darkness665]

Why did you even bother to write this? Do you get troll points for bits like this?

On disk DLC has been clearly explained with THREE MONTH verification cycles from MS and Sony. It was bad at MS back on Windows (and probably still is) but it is worse on the consoles. Putting the art resources on the disk means you don't have to download nor do you have to put it on the console local storage. A large number of consoles have limited memory and the owners run off the game disk not the hard drive. If you force the entire DLC to be downloaded now you two additional problems; first is MS charges money for the download (not sure about Sony), second MS charges $$$$ for each change to said download, third it means the DLC must fit in the download size restrictions by MS and Sony (which is higher then it used to be but is still a limitation).

You are never going to convince the haters and the anti-fan-boiz. Ever! So just do a bit with a couple of developers about the past and current release and DLC release mechanism and quit the freaking trolling!

 

[Darkness665]

Twenty years ago I bought a new car and the tank was half full. I wasn't charged for it. Today with gas at $4+ a gallon I would be surprised if I wasn't. Games used to cost a couple of million to make. Now they cost tens of millions. Yes, they are going to charge for it.

 

[darksakul]

Why did you even bother to write this? Do you get troll points for bits like this?

On disk DLC has been clearly explained with THREE MONTH verification cycles from MS and Sony. It was bad at MS back on Windows (and probably still is) but it is worse on the consoles. Putting the art resources on the disk means you don't have to download nor do you have to put it on the console local storage. A large number of consoles have limited memory and the owners run off the game disk not the hard drive. If you force the entire DLC to be downloaded now you two additional problems; first is MS charges money for the download (not sure about Sony), second MS charges $$$$ for each change to said download, third it means the DLC must fit in the download size restrictions by MS and Sony (which is higher then it used to be but is still a limitation).

You are never going to convince the haters and the anti-fan-boiz. Ever! So just do a bit with a couple of developers about the past and current release and DLC release mechanism and quit the freaking trolling!

It also means that the game studio, Sony and Microsoft does not have as much storage used on servers to hold the information necessary for DLCs. Huge downloads do not just waste the local console's resources it also waste the resources on the distributor. That $10 for the 142 KB of code to unlock on disk DLC will got to $35 if you have to download the whole DLC.

When you increase the cost on the supplier, the customers is going to feel it when they get there bill. This is a vital part of how businesses work.

 

[Simonoly]

I'm slightly confused about some of the information in this article. So apparently there's three or four months where the game is basically done and they work on dlc content. Hasn't the game been sent to Microsoft/Sony during this period for testing etc? Surely that means that all work on the vanilla product has finished? I was under the impression that when Microsoft or Sony give the game the okay it can no longer be modified. 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.

The explanation given in this article seems only applicable to dlc distributed via digital download and not anything locked-away on disc. Although I suppose it is also applicable to dlc which is partially on-disc like the 'From Ashes' dlc in ME3. But still, either I've not had enough sleep or something doesn't add up here.

No, you're absolutely right. You "hit the nail on the head" so-to-speak.

What really gets me about all of this? The people who come in to these discussions defending this bullshit. Siding with the douche-bags at companies like EPIC, Bioware, EA, and others. It's especially cute when they condescendingly try to defend their stance by pulling out that little "game development cycle" chart. (coincidentally, as most people seem to forget, a chart that was released by EA/Bioware to cover their own asses when gamers discovered the on-disc Day 1 DLC in Mass Effect 3. Or did we all forget that?)

Still, you're right. For any content that's printed on-disc it has to go through testing by both the developer and the owners of the platform. (i.e. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, etc) If they started work on DLC after the vanilla product was finished and sent for testing, then they wouldn't be able to print it on disc unless it too was finished and sent in for testing.

Ergo, this whole bullshit story of "Well we had a little spare time before release so we whipped up this little extra bit of stuff for people and put it on the disc; though you have to pay extra for it because it's not part of the vanilla game." is exactly that; bullshit. And anyone who actually believes what these developers and publishers are saying, and anyone who actively tries defending it, is a gullible fool.

The problem I have is buying a disk and then being told that my money only counts for a certain amount of whats actually on it. It just feels completely ridiculous to me.

Also this.

Oh good. I'm glad I'm not the only one that saw the massive gaping error in Bleszinski's statement.

I find this whole on-disc dlc situation so difficult to judge at times. What with the dlc market being so huge these days, I can totally see why material allocated to dlc is developed alongside the vanilla game. But the problem is, as a customer, it's so difficult to objectively say at which point a piece of dlc is an addition to the product we have bought and not simply something detached from the main game and repackaged as 'additional'. How can we say that something should have been included in the main game when we know so little about how the game was individually constructed? And that game development cycle chart that keep cropping up everywhere is purely representative of the general time frames of game development and becomes very unhelpful when we consider many games on a case by case basis. It puts some things into perspective but that graph raises just as many questions as it tries to answer.

Maybe games developers need to start being more transparent and communicative of their development aims and stop issuing weak statements like Bleszinski's.

 

[Bostur]

I think part of the outrage with the DLCs is the way it is presented to makes us focus on what is missing.

We get an almost full glass, but our attention is being diverted towards the tiny part of the glass with nothing in it. All we notice is that the glass is half empty.

I'm baffled as to why marketing would want the product to look bad in this way, but I suppose if they believe everyone is doing it the same way, they may think we will get used to it.

Well, the prevailing thought these days seems to be "When in doubt, always assume someone's trying to screw you."

Probably because consumers have a lot of experience getting screwed.

 

[orangeapples]

I think the major bulk of the team should be working on a whole new game. You shouldn't be having a full development team working on after fact DLC. Once the game has gone out for approval or whatever, the team should have another project planned to work on. So if there is a development team of say 40 people, and they finish a game. 30 of these people should move on to another game project while 10 stay and work on DLC. Then once they are finished with the DLC they can think of they can go back and join the rest of the team working on the new game, or have people rotate between DLC and new game. To say this team has nothing to do means you are not planning effectively.