JonnWood said:
Therumancer said:
It's fine to respecfully disagree with people, but to mock, misrepresent, and call them idiots? I'm sorry I can't really get behind that. What's more, think about how this is going to make you look if you at some point decide "okay, well DLC is going to far here" and people can point a finger at your passionate defense of Valve and ask "well, what makes it less ridiculous for Valve to do, as opposed to this other company?".
That question has been raised, and is being discussed.
The people he's mocking aren't the ones who think DLC is out of control, it's the people who say that it's worthless, yet simultaneously claim it costs too much. Those are mutually opposing viewpoints, and a sign of an entitlist philosophy.
To be honest, I think DLC and microtransactions are out of control, I have for a very long time.
I don't think this is a very good example. If the game is considered a complete, fulfilling experience, why does the value go down in people's eyes if they find out it's more to it they can't have, no matter how optional(as all DLC is)? It's a rhetorical question: they think they deserve the content for free. They don't.
I have no idea on how one would go about articulating a law to regulate it, but even as someone who doesn't want the goverment involved in business any more than absolutly nessicary, I really think digital transactions need to have more standards applied to them, especially when connected to other products.
I disagree. It'd be like regulating those Deluxe Special Ultra Platinum Backflipping Ninja Edition DVDs. Games are an entertainment product, not something to waste a small fortune in taxpayer money legislating. If you think DLC isn't worth it,
don't buy it. Write letters. Don't just complain on some forum.
10-15 years ago when digital downloads were just a whisper on the wind, people would have thought what we are seeing now is the height of ridiculous, paranoid technophobia, after all the gaming industry would "never be that greedy". Leave the door open too long, and I can almost guarantee eventually we'll see people angling to not only put games online and supported by microtransactions, but have people pay by the minute or hour like the days of things like Q-Link. It will be worked in gradually if it goes there (or I should say returns there) but guaranteed, unless someone slams on the brakes things are just going to get worse. What seems insane today, is oftentimes the sad reality of tomorrow when it comes to money making schemes.
This is called a "Slippery Slope" fallacy. "Allowing X will eventually lead to Y, and Y is bad, so X should be outlawed."
Heck, people will say "pay by the hour" is dead, but at the same time they thought the same thing about interactive movies, and look at Heavy Rain, their return is heralded as some kind of new and revolutionary thing.
Heavy Rain was
incredibly polarizing. Critics liked it, and players either liked it or declared it a glorified Quick-Time Event. There was a lot of discussion on the matter. I'm not sure how you missed it.
As far as "Heavy Rain" goes, I didn't miss it. It's one of those cases where I think the critics were largely being PAID to like it, and those that weren't being paid or stuck by negative opinions were largely being held back until the major sales rush was over and their influance on sales or professional ratings was minimal.
It's sort of like the whole Gerstmann "Kane and Lynch" scandal, like it or not, professional reviews and critics are bought and sold as part of the advertising budget. "Heavy Rain" is the kind of game that the industry wants to make in some quarters, so they are attempting to create the market for it through hype, rather than trying to have it accepted by the market that is already there. If they can present this as the future of gaming, and what everyone is playing, they have a chance of turning that into reality. It's a well known marketing technique.
This has a little to do with the current dicussion about Valve and Portal 2, at least directly, but I do think that right now one of the reasons why we're hearing all this "QQ" about metabombing is that user reviews are becoming notably out of sync with what are purchused reviews/advertising, which looks bad. "Portal 2" being a minor example compared to "Dragon Age 2" but still noteworthy because the point differances were noticed, and it's not something that can be excused by trolling.
As far as the DLC goes, understand something, I am a capitalist, but I believe that it needs to be reasonably balanced. Totally unfettered capitalism leads to a few greedy jerks ruining everything for everyone. That's why there are protections against monopolies, price setting, cartel behavior, and similar things. As time goes on, new angles need to be addressed.
Right now the reason why I say that I think the goverment might want to consider stepping in here is because of the sheer potential gaming possesses. Too many guys who want to make their huge fortunes even bigger can very easily wind up wrecking the industry long before it ever reaches it's potential. To a lot of people involved in the gaming industry, it doesn't matter if the whole thing collapses and a whole area of development is lost, as long as they walk away with a fortune in their pockets when it eventually does. As a result they are going to push, and push, and push, and make every arguement possible to find every single way to wring every penny out of the customer base until these greedy jerks doing it wind up ruining it for everyone.
Understand, I don't like the goverment being involved in business, but I think things like DLC, especially combined with arguements about the nature of intellecual properties and what rights companies have when it comes to digital distribution and the like, represent a huge area for abuse, and if the goverment waits too long to get involved, they will wind up being in a position where they can't do anything against a system that is already so heavily entrenched.
There is more to it than just virtual hats, it's the whole connected sector of business and development, things like this kind of DLC just being one of the more annoying aspects.
See, I guess what it comes down to is that I think you can be a successful businessman without gouging your customers, and looking to wring every dime out of everyone. It's fine to seek a profit, it's fine to want to get rich, but when your already sitting on top of a mountain of money and your sitting there simply trying to see how big you can make that mountain of money when you already have more of it than you can ever spend... well yeah, I have some issues with that. It's a differant type of situation, but I think it's that kind of thing that ruins functioning capitalist systems just like monopolies and cartels.
Like it or not, the bottom line is that if the digital distribution system didn't exist like it does now, content like this that was developed alongside the game, would be part of the game itself, rather than an additional paid download.
I don't think the issue is a case of people REALLY wanting those hats to a crazy degree like in Shamus' cartoon, but more a situation with people being upset about the situation entirely. See, I think people would rather there be no content, as opposed to this kind of additional trivial content. That's what I think "the other side" is missing in this arguement. It's the principle of the entire thing, more than a feeling of entitlement, or a mad lust for something they don't want to pay for.
