I don't mind as long as it's freaking useless stuff. So you can identify who's the gullible victim of commercialism, and who's still a free man. Like the dozen or so people worldwide who didn't rush to buy that celestial steed aka transparent cow overnight.
DLC, Again
- Thread starter Shamus Young
- Start date
Well Shamus you're right, there is no problem with the DLC in Portal 2 taken in isolation, but as you hit on in point 9. this is part of a wider trend that is having a deleterious effect on games and the experience we get for our money.
That is a problem, a huge problem IMO, and even if Portal 2 isn't committing any sins itself its still accepting and promoting the concept of DLC... a baton that other companies hardly need any more encouragement in picking up and doing perverted things with.
Finally in answer to your point 5: Yes it true I would not reject an offer from my boss to play teris for $100 an hour (in reality I would as I work in the public sector and that would be a gross misuse of tax payer money, but i'm down with the idea of being paid lots for doing not much). The difference here though is that my being paid $100 an hour by some faceless megacorp isn't going to spoil anyones entertainment... DLC just might.
I'd like to underscore that because I think you really missed the point here Shamus, DLC can reduce the enjoyment people derive from the game they bought, that is what makes it wrong, I say wrong because I don't want to get into pointless specifics like "greedy" or "unethical" which are frankly higher motivations which are completely irrelevant to my enjoyment of a game.
On the whole I agree with you Shamus, and yet I remain a conscientious objector to DLC which I believe does more harm than good and has the potential to radically alter the face of gaming for the worse from a consumers perspective.
That is a problem, a huge problem IMO, and even if Portal 2 isn't committing any sins itself its still accepting and promoting the concept of DLC... a baton that other companies hardly need any more encouragement in picking up and doing perverted things with.
Finally in answer to your point 5: Yes it true I would not reject an offer from my boss to play teris for $100 an hour (in reality I would as I work in the public sector and that would be a gross misuse of tax payer money, but i'm down with the idea of being paid lots for doing not much). The difference here though is that my being paid $100 an hour by some faceless megacorp isn't going to spoil anyones entertainment... DLC just might.
I'd like to underscore that because I think you really missed the point here Shamus, DLC can reduce the enjoyment people derive from the game they bought, that is what makes it wrong, I say wrong because I don't want to get into pointless specifics like "greedy" or "unethical" which are frankly higher motivations which are completely irrelevant to my enjoyment of a game.
On the whole I agree with you Shamus, and yet I remain a conscientious objector to DLC which I believe does more harm than good and has the potential to radically alter the face of gaming for the worse from a consumers perspective.
We need a paragon, a game company we can point to and say "they do it right", we need an example to show up the rest of the industry. Valve is probably in the best position to be that paragon so I expect thats the root cause of the backlash.Jedi Sasquatch said:
Though most of the protesters aren't articulate enough to explain their outrage.
I've actually read that article just there and while it tries to say games have come down in price it doesn't really say that. Given the costs of production of the hard physical product have gone down and the consumer base has expanded companies are also making more money. One thing the article does do which I really don't agree with is you can't just slap inflation on the price of games and expect it to boom. Yes inflation should drive the price up a little to compensate for the devs money being overall worth less but games don't really affect inflation like petrol and the general cost of living does as they are not required for it.Ephraim J. Witchwood said:
This means that games are a luxury good as a luxury good they tend to have quite an elastic demand. This means that a high price will result in a higher loss of demand. Just to take a quick look back at inflation just because inflation is at 5% doesn't mean all good's prices increase by 5%. The general price of goods does. So say if petrol again cause inflation to rise from 4%-5% someone who cycles or walks everywhere is not affected by this. So inflation is not the be all and end all of determining the price of goods.
OT: Anyway I am fairly in agreement on all the points except for the mod one. While I don't care about cosmetic mod like DLC I have no problem with that but I don't agree with DLC you have to pay for that gives weapons in a multiplayer setting. Thankfully I can't think of anyone that does this. Before anyone says TF2 you can buy them or unlock them. I mean cases where you have to buy.
1. I don't like to get bombarded with advertising for tacky merchandise. Virtual hats for $5 are tacky merchandise. If I get the game for free I'm not as fussed about it, but I tend to avoid 'free stuff' for this reason.
2. If the DLC is selling successfully it may encourage the company to take it one step further, blurring the line between optional DLCs and mandatory DLCs. They may also take the advertising one step further reducing my enjoyment of a game I purchased.
3. I like fair marketing. If a product is worth 10 bucks, I want to pay 10 bucks for it. Very often companies will charge me 8 bucks and try to make the rest of the money on associated services like DLCs. This makes the actual price hard to figure out, and in the long term this isn't beneficial to consumers even though we may get a discount at first.
When it comes down to it, if people wanna buy it, they will. It's none of anyone else's business whether they do or not. You don't get to tell people what they should buy, nor do you get to say what they should sell.
The greed point is moot, we live in a capitalist society (read: Greed Land.
The greed point is moot, we live in a capitalist society (read: Greed Land.
"If other players want to pay for this DLC and the company is willing to sell it, why do you feel the need to demand that the transaction not take place?"
Because a lot of gamers have have a powerful aversive gut reaction to all DLC based on its pervasive negative presence elsewhere? This may be a case where the DLC is used appropriately, and I agree that review bombers are just being ridiculous, but at this point a lot of people have felt burned repeatedly enough that they just don't like DLC fullstop.
Because a lot of gamers have have a powerful aversive gut reaction to all DLC based on its pervasive negative presence elsewhere? This may be a case where the DLC is used appropriately, and I agree that review bombers are just being ridiculous, but at this point a lot of people have felt burned repeatedly enough that they just don't like DLC fullstop.
So TF is balanced?Glademaster said:
The sets in the game make the game unplayable its just pathetic, im looking for a server that has those cash shop items disabled, Yes your right i can grind my face off for these items but its not an MMO and i dont play that game more then 1 hour a week, well used to now i dont, but good for them i finally understand that people are sheep willing to buy anything with a price tag, or is it that most gamers are spoiled kids who dont know the value of money?
I resent that. Some people are living comfortable lives with a fairly high paying job, and spend part of their entertainment money on games that they love. Why would anyone have a problem with that?ionveau said:
You inadvertently made a lot of arguments for the other side. You admit that gaming is hurtling towards, if not currently mired in a wasteland where the entire game is sold piecemeal. You admit that people paying for this bullshit is why it continues. We're already to the point that we're not talking about extra pizza toppings anymore, we're actually redefining the concept of "Pizza" as a whole.
Even as a late 20s male, I've watched how the equilibrium has balanced for years - There was a time when your game came with engine/mod tools for the $30-50 entry fee, and ALL the content on the disc or available at day one was available for you for the entire price. You even expected not only bug fixes but some actual FREE content in each patch, as a "Thank You for buying our game. Please think of us when our next project comes out". Bigger blocks of content were sold as complete expansion packs, for $20-40 and often DOUBLED the content of the original game. Look at the Doom 2 Expansions and Jedi Knight's Mysteries of the Sith - it was basically a whole other game as long as the original campaign, with completely new art assets, powers, etc.. Now...compared Mysteries of the Sith.. to Modern Warfare 2's Map Pack. Seriously. Is that Modern Warfare 2 Map Pack literally HALF the amount of content as Mysteries of the Sith? THAT is what we're upset about today. (Don't mention inflation or whatnot, it isn't even a third of a quarter of MotS)
The very concept of "pizza" has changed. It used to be that you may have paid for extra toppings, but today your same $10 pizza comes with no cheese, no tomatoes, no spices, and only 1/4 the bread which is spongy and low quality. Even when you do get lucky enough to find a parlor with a fairly complete basic definition of pizza, their toppings aren't $5 to outfit your pizza with high-quality pepperoni, but rather $5 per pepperoni slice! Would anyone put up with this? Sure, you could be told "Oh, well just get one green pepper and one pepperoni then if you don't want to pay, it doesn't affect the rest of the pizza", but you're be eating a bland pizza remembering the time when you paid a fair price for flavor. If every parlor does this and everyone keeps buying pizza, thinking its normal eventually you're paying $15 for stale, tasteless bread which is being championed as "pizza".
This is the problem. It only takes a very small return on investment for this kind of bullshit to be profitable. So when other people pay $5 for a hat or horse armor, it means that I have to live with incomplete, castrated game content in the future because it would take 90% of us boycotting the game entirely to make our point, and only 5-10% of buyers buying a piece of DLC to put the miniscule amount of work into it to create a profit. When all other regulations and ethics of business are stripped away, the last line of defense is the consumer. The consumer has shown they will well..consume...anything, nomatter what kind of turd sandwich it is, so business has lost any desire to try to cater to the customer, as the AAA gaming industry has figured out that a certain (smaller?) percentage of vacuous wallet-open drool monkeys is the most important part of their financial success. Why go after old codgers like me who have standards and remember quality, when there is an up and coming crop of kids who buy whatever they're told without any question?
Even as a late 20s male, I've watched how the equilibrium has balanced for years - There was a time when your game came with engine/mod tools for the $30-50 entry fee, and ALL the content on the disc or available at day one was available for you for the entire price. You even expected not only bug fixes but some actual FREE content in each patch, as a "Thank You for buying our game. Please think of us when our next project comes out". Bigger blocks of content were sold as complete expansion packs, for $20-40 and often DOUBLED the content of the original game. Look at the Doom 2 Expansions and Jedi Knight's Mysteries of the Sith - it was basically a whole other game as long as the original campaign, with completely new art assets, powers, etc.. Now...compared Mysteries of the Sith.. to Modern Warfare 2's Map Pack. Seriously. Is that Modern Warfare 2 Map Pack literally HALF the amount of content as Mysteries of the Sith? THAT is what we're upset about today. (Don't mention inflation or whatnot, it isn't even a third of a quarter of MotS)
The very concept of "pizza" has changed. It used to be that you may have paid for extra toppings, but today your same $10 pizza comes with no cheese, no tomatoes, no spices, and only 1/4 the bread which is spongy and low quality. Even when you do get lucky enough to find a parlor with a fairly complete basic definition of pizza, their toppings aren't $5 to outfit your pizza with high-quality pepperoni, but rather $5 per pepperoni slice! Would anyone put up with this? Sure, you could be told "Oh, well just get one green pepper and one pepperoni then if you don't want to pay, it doesn't affect the rest of the pizza", but you're be eating a bland pizza remembering the time when you paid a fair price for flavor. If every parlor does this and everyone keeps buying pizza, thinking its normal eventually you're paying $15 for stale, tasteless bread which is being championed as "pizza".
This is the problem. It only takes a very small return on investment for this kind of bullshit to be profitable. So when other people pay $5 for a hat or horse armor, it means that I have to live with incomplete, castrated game content in the future because it would take 90% of us boycotting the game entirely to make our point, and only 5-10% of buyers buying a piece of DLC to put the miniscule amount of work into it to create a profit. When all other regulations and ethics of business are stripped away, the last line of defense is the consumer. The consumer has shown they will well..consume...anything, nomatter what kind of turd sandwich it is, so business has lost any desire to try to cater to the customer, as the AAA gaming industry has figured out that a certain (smaller?) percentage of vacuous wallet-open drool monkeys is the most important part of their financial success. Why go after old codgers like me who have standards and remember quality, when there is an up and coming crop of kids who buy whatever they're told without any question?
I don't mind DLC at all. I think though that 5 dollars for a hat is a perfect example that these devs/publishers want as much of our money for as little content as they can get away with. Fair enough. However, I don't want to hear them ***** and moan when the reverse is done to them and people start getting as much of their content for as little money as they can get away with (read none at all). Greed works both ways.
In a perfect world everyone would stop acting like greedy pricks and people would pay fair prices for a quality product. Sadly I don't see this happening anytime soon though. I think it's far more likely that the game industry will soon collapse under the weight of it's own greed and we will have a video game crash ala 1983. In my opinion it can't happen fast enough.
In a perfect world everyone would stop acting like greedy pricks and people would pay fair prices for a quality product. Sadly I don't see this happening anytime soon though. I think it's far more likely that the game industry will soon collapse under the weight of it's own greed and we will have a video game crash ala 1983. In my opinion it can't happen fast enough.