The Division Will Have Three Paid Expansions, Included With Season Pass

[chikusho]

But do you see bullshit like--- All three expansions are included as part of The Division's Season Pass, along with an exclusive sawed-off shotgun, a full set of outfits and weapon skins, and "special monthly benefits including exclusive content drops and special events" ---as a positive? It's that culture of gaming which major publishers have fostered/poisoned, and frankly they can all go fuck themselves. Supporting an IP [for everyone] post-launch is one thing, basically telling the customer they'll need to spend a colossal amount of money to actually get a 'complete' product whilst partitioning a userbase into tiers is quite another.

I make a point of not judging things like this, especially before knowing what the game actually contains. What makes you think that the product at launch will not be a complete product? Also, what makes you think that product is somehow less of a product than games released without more content added later? Also, how do you consider products created with a much higher production value, technical opportunities, scale and scope then has ever been possible before in relation to products created without those circumstances?

There's just no point in raging about what may or may not be before we even know what's in the game.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I make a point of not judging things like this, especially before knowing what the game actually contains. What makes you think that the product at launch will not be a complete product? Also, what makes you think that product is somehow less of a product than games released without more content added later? Also, how do you consider products created with a much higher production value, technical opportunities, scale and scope then has ever been possible before in relation to products created without those circumstances?

There's just no point in raging about what may or may not be before we even know what's in the game.

I concede my reaction is little more than patterned 'rage', but it's very much learnt and therefore hard to shake or resist. And so regarding the underlined: do you think the triple-A publishers deserve the benefit of the doubt? Are you fine with a culture of pre-orders (and their bonuses/community partitions), blithering about expansions and DLC before the game's even out, and season passes?

 

[chikusho]

I concede my reaction is little more than patterned 'rage', but it's very much learnt and therefore hard to shake or resist. And so regarding the underlined: do you think the triple-A publishers deserve the benefit of the doubt? Are you fine with a culture of pre-orders (and their bonuses/community partitions), blithering about expansions and DLC before the game's even out, and season passes?

I think games today are better looking, better playing and more complicated and competent regarding both technical and design aspects than they have ever been. I also think that most game developers, designers, artists and coders are pouring their heart and soul into these projects to make them as good as they can possibly be. I also think that the cost of development for AAA games together with the highly competetive gaming market requires revenue-generating business models for them to be viable investments for publishers and developers alike.

With that in mind, the DLC model allows the developer and publisher to utilize the framework of a game to produce more content at a cheaper price. This helps validate the development of the initial product. It's one of the better solutions in my opinion. Sometimes that extra content is really great, and that's fantastic. Sometimes that content is bad, and that's awful. The awful content should of course be called out as the crap that it is, but that doesn't invalidate the concept of DLC as a whole.
Especially in cases of online experiences, knowing that the game will be supported and expanded upon is great information. To use myself as an example, I have a group of friends living far away that I can basically only interact with through gaming. We usually try to pick an online game we're all interested in and organize sessions fairly regularly to stay in touch. If we know that a game we pick will have some sort of longevity to it, that makes it easier to get everyone on board. In my opinion, more information is always better.

Finally, I don't like pre-orders and I never pre-order anything. I especially never pre-order DLC, because then you extra don't know what you're going to get. But I understand why pre-orders exist, and the only reason this pre-order bonus shenanigans is allowed to exist is because gamers are allowing it. So I can't really fault publishers from going with strategies that apparently work (except for that Deus Ex debacle, that was really horrifying).

I get that it might be frustrating if you always view the existence of extra content as something lacking from the original content. But to me, that just sounds exhausting. There are always positive and neutral ways of considering things, there are always reasonable circumstances for why things end up the way they do, and therefore I choose not to get worked up about announcements like these. I only care about whether it's good or not, and I don't see the point of judging things until they either prove themselves or crash and burn.