EA: Retail is Great and Day-One DLC is Awesome

[Somebloke]

Yyyyeeah...

Because of my disgust with the ugly Mass Effect 3 day one DLC thing, I held back on buying the game until it had sunk considerably in price, resulting in paying them a good bit LESS than $60 for the game and "From Ashes".

Nice going, sir...

 

[Something Amyss]

Right, when corporations get too greedy people shouldn't say "it's ok, that what they are supposed to do". People should condemn them for their unethical actions.

Saying that Day One DLC is designed to raise the price of new games to $80 is honest but it should be condemned. People should see that corporations are using day one DLC to trick them into paying more for new games. It's no accident.

Maybe this is just semantics, and I admit that, but I don't see our station as "you can't do that" so much as "we won't buy it."

The problem here is, much as I hate to admit it,the "games are a privelege" people have a point. I hate the overall argument. BUT, you get people who complain and then buy the game/D:C/whatever anyway, and that's the big reason this keeps happening. People protest loudly, then buy the stuff anyway.

Corporations should look out for their own interests. As consumers, we should make sure that it's not in their best interest to increase the price of games to 80 bucks in any sense, up front or DLC-wise.

Honestly, this interview makes me think EA needs another FTC claim filed against them.

 

[Epona]

Right, when corporations get too greedy people shouldn't say "it's ok, that what they are supposed to do". People should condemn them for their unethical actions.

Saying that Day One DLC is designed to raise the price of new games to $80 is honest but it should be condemned. People should see that corporations are using day one DLC to trick them into paying more for new games. It's no accident.

Maybe this is just semantics, and I admit that, but I don't see our station as "you can't do that" so much as "we won't buy it."

The problem here is, much as I hate to admit it,the "games are a privelege" people have a point. I hate the overall argument. BUT, you get people who complain and then buy the game/D:C/whatever anyway, and that's the big reason this keeps happening. People protest loudly, then buy the stuff anyway.

Corporations should look out for their own interests. As consumers, we should make sure that it's not in their best interest to increase the price of games to 80 bucks in any sense, up front or DLC-wise.

Honestly, this interview makes me think EA needs another FTC claim filed against them.

This is the argument I hate "It's no use protesting if people are still buying". Maybe the people buying and the people protesting are not the same. I am protesting and also not buying but I am not counted because people just assume that I am protesting and still buying. I

I have never bought a game from EA at launch and then bought Day One DLC. In fact, I am patiently waiting for Kingdom of Amalur to come down in price and if they keep stacking on DLC to a point where the price is doubled, I won't buy it all. Right now, there is $25 worth of DLC so another $5 and it will be double the $30 price I am willing to pay for the damn game.

It doesn't matter that games are not a necessity. Nothing aside from food, water, electricity, etc.. are necessities but that doesn't make it ok for Sony to rip you off on your next TV purchase by charging you extra for the damn remote control.

I lived in a town that would not allow a Wal Mart Supercenter because they wanted to encourage smaller business' to compete because it was believed that smaller business' would benefit the community more. This is the way corporations should be treated by governments, they shouldn't just be in it for themselves but for the good of the customers they serve. If they aren't doing right by their customers, they should lose their business license.

 

[Something Amyss]

And by "demonstrably", you mean "screeched in a paranoid idiotic wave of misdirected, unconstrained and insane entitled whining"

Yes, unless you don't redefine words for the sake of convenience.

 

[Murmillos]

Guess what EA, DAY1-DLC does get you too far when people don't buy your games.

Huh.. didn't think of that now did you?

 

[Murmillos]

Guess what EA, DAY1-DLC does get you too far when people don't buy your games.

Huh.. didn't think of that now did you?

Yeah, those people who stop buying games because they get offered more content.....wait.....

I should have been more clear; $DAY$1$-$D$L$C$ - not the pre-order new game bonus.. "but hey, you already dropped $60 on a game, how about you give us another $10-$15 before you've even have the game installed..." DLC.

 

[Something Amyss]

This is the argument I hate "It's no use protesting if people are still buying".

*sigh* Well, this looks like a strawman version of what I said.

Maybe the people buying and the people protesting are not the same.

Except a lot of the time, they demonstrably (in the sense you can demonstrate it, not the retcon version some people seem to be claiming) are. That's the funny thing about the modern age of gaming: With XBL, PSN and Steam, you can actually see these mewling protestors play the game on launch day, play the premium DLC they say they'll boycott, etc. Not everyone does, but I never said that. Of course, I also never said it was no use protesting if people are still buying, so maybe that's irrelevant. The point isn't so much it's no use protesting if people are still buying as it is that people are protesting and then buying, and that--that specific act of whining AND purchasing, just so we're clear--is no good.

I have never bought a game from EA at launch and then bought Day One DLC. In fact, I am patiently waiting for Kingdom of Amalur to come down in price and if they keep stacking on DLC to a point where the price is doubled, I won't buy it all. Right now, there is $25 worth of DLC so another $5 and it will be double the $30 price I am willing to pay for the damn game.

Good for you, though you realise your discounted game still counted as a full price sale to EA, right? They usually reduce prices to get rid of stock already paid for. So it's NICE and all...

Kingdoms of Amalur is an awesome game though, and one of the DLCs is actually quite worth it from what I hear. Teeth of Naros is supposed to not be worth the price. I'm actually cool with being an early adopter here, and there was no major day 1 DLC, so it didn't bother me. But hey, that's just me. I wanted to support what looked like an awesome new franchise, and I'm okay with it. I'll probably buy the DLC too, since it's for a well-crafted game I've got like 250 hours out of already.

It doesn't matter that games are not a necessity. Nothing aside from food, water, electricity, etc.. are necessities but that doesn't make it ok for Sony to rip you off on your next TV purchase by charging you extra for the damn remote control.

Which is great: You agree with me. The point I was making still revolves around people treating them like necessity and buying them even though they as consumers have issues. See, a good way to avoid Sony selling you a TV and then whacking you for a remote is to not buy it. A bad way is to whine and then buy it. That's what a lot of people are doing.

And you know what? There's kind of a real world precedent with gaming. People whined about the remote accessories for various consoles, but the sales have been generally good anyway. We as gamers tend to whine and buy anyway. Sometimes peripherals don't sell, and we tend to see either better iterations (HDDs) or complete failure of the concept (Can't think of a modern example. Keep going back to ROB). But for the most part, Gamers are TERRIBLE consumers.

I lived in a town that would not allow a Wal Mart Supercenter because they wanted to encourage smaller business' to compete because it was believed that smaller business' would benefit the community more. This is the way corporations should be treated by governments, they shouldn't just be in it for themselves but for the good of the customers they serve. If they aren't doing right by their customers, they should lose their business license.

Awesome. Once again, we are agreed that something should be done (You may note I suggested FTC filings. However, I will point out that Wal-Mart likely still has an impact on you on the local level, because all you did was prevent the store from being there. Wal-Mart has a huge economic influence, so much so that it can impact things. There's the Wal-Mart effect, which shapes what the nation as a whole buys, how it's produced, etc.

We need something bigger. The FTC works for some of this. Wal-Mart needs to be handled on a larger level than your hometown. EA needs to be handled on a bigger level than you not buying its games new. Your heart may be in the right place, but you're still taking actions which are fairly impotent.

And you know what's even better? If you do act, you will be chastised by the gaming community at large.

 

[Something Amyss]

Fact remains that each and every word about taking out content to sell as DLC has as much basis in reality as Birther crap. It requires such an absolute misunderstanding of the creative process that it's just the refuge of the ignorant and the indignant.

I see we're misusing the word "fact" now as well.

The on-disc content of the games I have previously listed and even the new tack Capcom has taken demonstrate that the "creative process" flowchart you guys cleave to when making these statements is bull. Maybe not for every game, but for many of them. To say it's not demonstrable is kinda...You know...False. To claim "creative process" is nice, but we're not talking stuff that couldn't be put on in time for the discs to go gold when we're talking on disc content.

Sorry.

 

[Epona]

This is the argument I hate "It's no use protesting if people are still buying".

*sigh* Well, this looks like a strawman version of what I said.

Maybe the people buying and the people protesting are not the same.

Except a lot of the time, they demonstrably (in the sense you can demonstrate it, not the retcon version some people seem to be claiming) are. That's the funny thing about the modern age of gaming: With XBL, PSN and Steam, you can actually see these mewling protestors play the game on launch day, play the premium DLC they say they'll boycott, etc. Not everyone does, but I never said that. Of course, I also never said it was no use protesting if people are still buying, so maybe that's irrelevant. The point isn't so much it's no use protesting if people are still buying as it is that people are protesting and then buying, and that--that specific act of whining AND purchasing, just so we're clear--is no good.

I have never bought a game from EA at launch and then bought Day One DLC. In fact, I am patiently waiting for Kingdom of Amalur to come down in price and if they keep stacking on DLC to a point where the price is doubled, I won't buy it all. Right now, there is $25 worth of DLC so another $5 and it will be double the $30 price I am willing to pay for the damn game.

Good for you, though you realise your discounted game still counted as a full price sale to EA, right? They usually reduce prices to get rid of stock already paid for. So it's NICE and all...

Kingdoms of Amalur is an awesome game though, and one of the DLCs is actually quite worth it from what I hear. Teeth of Naros is supposed to not be worth the price. I'm actually cool with being an early adopter here, and there was no major day 1 DLC, so it didn't bother me. But hey, that's just me. I wanted to support what looked like an awesome new franchise, and I'm okay with it. I'll probably buy the DLC too, since it's for a well-crafted game I've got like 250 hours out of already.

It doesn't matter that games are not a necessity. Nothing aside from food, water, electricity, etc.. are necessities but that doesn't make it ok for Sony to rip you off on your next TV purchase by charging you extra for the damn remote control.

Which is great: You agree with me. The point I was making still revolves around people treating them like necessity and buying them even though they as consumers have issues. See, a good way to avoid Sony selling you a TV and then whacking you for a remote is to not buy it. A bad way is to whine and then buy it. That's what a lot of people are doing.

And you know what? There's kind of a real world precedent with gaming. People whined about the remote accessories for various consoles, but the sales have been generally good anyway. We as gamers tend to whine and buy anyway. Sometimes peripherals don't sell, and we tend to see either better iterations (HDDs) or complete failure of the concept (Can't think of a modern example. Keep going back to ROB). But for the most part, Gamers are TERRIBLE consumers.

I lived in a town that would not allow a Wal Mart Supercenter because they wanted to encourage smaller business' to compete because it was believed that smaller business' would benefit the community more. This is the way corporations should be treated by governments, they shouldn't just be in it for themselves but for the good of the customers they serve. If they aren't doing right by their customers, they should lose their business license.

Awesome. Once again, we are agreed that something should be done (You may note I suggested FTC filings. However, I will point out that Wal-Mart likely still has an impact on you on the local level, because all you did was prevent the store from being there. Wal-Mart has a huge economic influence, so much so that it can impact things. There's the Wal-Mart effect, which shapes what the nation as a whole buys, how it's produced, etc.

We need something bigger. The FTC works for some of this. Wal-Mart needs to be handled on a larger level than your hometown. EA needs to be handled on a bigger level than you not buying its games new. Your heart may be in the right place, but you're still taking actions which are fairly impotent.

And you know what's even better? If you do act, you will be chastised by the gaming community at large.

I wasn't saying that YOU made that exact argument. I was just talking about the standard use of that argument which comes up alot. In other words, I wasn't pointing my finger at you. I should have been clearer about that.

It seems we agree about most other things.

 

[weirdee]

I think my main issue is that we tend to get less game in order to pump up certain superficial areas to the gameplay (graphics fidelity and voice acting being key culprits in lowering story/character content), and then they charge us for it because they use that stuff in order to make the game more marketable even though they don't really add anything of worth, and the overhead is getting really harsh when you don't even know if they have the actual gameplay that you wanted.

It's become less of "I deserve all this content because they used to put it in for free" and more I'd prefer if the game appeared to be whole in the first place rather than be indirectly pressured into believing that I'm missing part of the game so that I pay more for it. Having that hanging over my head as I'm playing isn't really that comfortable to the point where I'm forced to evaluate missing out on that content because I could get another game in the future with that money, or if it's really worth deliberating over it at length when I end up buying it later and having ended up postponing the issue for a month or so unnecessarily when I could have been enjoying the game in the first place without dealing with that pressure. Y'know, like playing a "free to play" game which slices off portions of the content that are IMPORTANT TO STORY OR BALANCE except that you already paid for it monetarily and mentally just to get to the point where you hit an "optional" portion of the game which has already been waiting for you the entire time from before launch day to say, "we weren't satisfied with just making you pay the full 60 bucks for a game that you've never played before, so to reward your faith in us, we need you to pay 20 more bucks for a technically more complete version of the game, which may or may not be worth it, but since you've already bought the game, we know you're already invested in this experience, so it's basically going to sit there nagging you until you give in or stop playing, but we'll be waiting in your next game anyway, because other people have accepted this business practice enough to justify flooding the market with it at every available opportunity."

(this isn't an issue when they're just selling skins or guns that are just there to have fun with, instead of characters or abilities that are fundamentally special somehow)

The other issue is that companies tend to plan in a certain way in order to make unpopular decisions more palatable by doing them slowly, but with certain things that may seem justified to them but haven't been evaluated by an impartial third party. It's difficult to say if they are actually telling the truth, because nobody can really know for sure unless they do one of those undercover investigations, which at that point it becomes silly. I would love to believe that this stuff is being tossed in as a "reasonably priced" extra that they slipped under the door after the game was done, but it's hard to tell if it wasn't originally planned that way in the first place. And yes, the slippery slope argument is tired, but the strategy has been used in many successful situations, and I don't want to ignore the issue to the point where I wake up one day and I find that everybody is paying more for less for some made up reason, rather than it being up front, and that I have to deal with it if I ever want to play a game made by an actual company ever again.

I've been told frequently "if you don't like it, don't buy it", but if I have to end up playing only indie titles from now on, there better be more good indie titles (that don't end up later getting bought anyway and tarted up for mass consumption) than there are hostages of my nostalgia, or else that would make those people the enablers of the folks who are more focused on squeezing cash out of their properties before treating their games properly. If I were able to let go that easily in the first place, then I wouldn't have an interest with games to begin with, and we should go back to treating them like pieces of shit that we make fun of others for playing and scapegoats for society's wrongs which are bought and sold as passionately as the weekly groceries.

 

[weirdee]

counterargument: while the magical elves were making that content that while unnecessary to the game seemed important enough to have on the disc for day 1 so that they could get more people to buy it without any sort of obvious planning for that outcome as if they did it on purpose, i was busy weaving 15 or 20 more dollars from my enchanted spinning wheel because i know that paying the full 60 bucks on release day is only for the basic game (which is fairly priced because the publishers wouldn't feel right charging more for a game because they know people are going to buy it anyway) which has only just been completed without padding the schedule in order to have dlc ready for release, and that it only barely covers the costs for those poor publishers who are just scraping by because they evenly share the profits with everybody involved without subjecting them to stupid qualifiers like metacritic scores because those kinds of agreements are twofaced, and we can't expect that kind of behavior from people who have no incentive to hide the truth from their customers, employees, and competitors all the time just because they believe that doing so would hurt their profits

and surely they've reflected the additional money gained from the additional work that they make the collective teams do by giving them more pay than before, because they certainly don't require them to do this in their contracts as standard practice without compensation because they wouldn't hold it against them that everybody else is also working extra unpaid overtime with the chance of bonuses that could be revoked for any number of reasons slipped into the agreement and that they would find some other team willing to do so at the drop of a hat, right? those workers certainly have the upper hand in these negotiations, so it's easy for them to resist those kinds of practices and still keep their jobs in an industry known for safe and stable job security that doesn't end in explosive, bitter, and destructive arguments which leave the workers without back pay

because if they didn't pay them appropriately for this change in development (after all, if it's extra, then it shouldn't just be standard pay), that would kind of make this entire practice a money grabbing situation that these people are feeding into, creating a negative trend that only a few people find profitable

but naturally, since this is all speculation, anything could be possible, so we should just choose to believe your situation because it's the nicer, more level headed explanation that is convenient for everybody

 

[F'Angus]

So what he saying is day one DLC is good because it makes more money for EA?

What a douche.

 

[zachusaman]

what was that EA? cant hear you over all the origin and used game hate.