Bethesda defends day-one DLC

Yes, this is the new, evolved future of game development.

Either way, I don't give a shit. I will never buy games with day 1 DLC. Too bad that there are thousands of idiots that will.

 

They've actually released a many huge bux-fixing patches for the PC.

 

Haven't played the game on the ps3 in a long while, but at launch it was nigh unplayable once you explored more of the map.

 

Keep bowing your head to your superiors. That's what sheeples do best at the end of the day.

Before we proceed with your education, do you have the slightest idea of what a software development cycle looks like ?

And what game are we talking about here ? Complete on release ? In the sense of relatively bug-free, and with relatively interesting and original content ? Surely not a Bethesda game, pray tell ?

You sound so naive that I almost feel bad at pointing out your inconsistencies.

1/ You say yourself the game is shit, yet you've payed for it, and I suspect you will keep paying in the future, well knowing what to expect beforehand. Then you come here, on a public forum, to defend the very business practices that practically stole your money out of your wallet, and ask to be given any credit for your failures. You're such a joker.

2/ Bethesda's games have indeed a real problem content-wise. What you didn't grasp however is that I was talking qualitatively, not quantitatively : a game isn't better just because it has 2 more GO in size, or some more features to its name, no. Still, even that wasn't my point. My point is that Bethesda can't come up with any decent original content for their games anymore. So what they do is taking the old "content", rehash it, partition it, sell the first part on day 1, and the rest with DLCs. At the end, the "content" available to the player is the same, but their profit is not. Do you get it now, or do you want me to draw you a picture too ?

As was said numerous times before on these boards, and in this very thread, you ARE among the crowd that allows some gaming companies to continue prospering on such insidious premises, leading to ever expensive yet buggy games, because you support them with your money. You ARE part of the problem.

I won't be more pretentious than I already could be, and expose project management concepts to you that probably will fly miles over your head, but "creative people" as you call them, game designers or writers to me, have a role to play from the inception of the game till the very moment it goes gold. They don't suddenly start twiddling their thumbs after some time, sat on their chair. It's just not how it works, and that for any company. Go out, get a job, and see for yourself.

If you keep believing Hines little marketing motivational speeches, it's because you do want to believe them, and in that, yes, you seem pretty stupid to me.

 

Oh god, where to start...

Given the rest of this post "do YOU?" would be my obvious reply here.

Not liking the content of the game does not mean it's not content complete. Bugs have nothing to do with artists or writers. Skyrim has actually seen a large amount of post-release bug fixing, more than a Codex darling like Morrowind or Gothic ever saw.

Where did I say Skyrim was shit? I enjoyed the game and don't regret paying for it.

You don't like the game or what it focuses on achieving. That's fine. Unfortunately that has fuck all to do with whether the original release was content complete, whether the DLC feels like cut content, or whether their artists, writers and level designers starting work on expansion content during the polishing phase is some sort of betrayal of their consumers.

I support games I like. I liked Skyrim. If that makes me some kind of pariah on these forums to certain ranting and raving folks like yourself that's fine. Again however, the subjective quality of the game is NOT THE ISSUE. The issue is the sales model, which was: massive game at release, two expansions well after release, the first a little smaller than it should have been but the second pretty damn large. I don't see anything wrong with that, no. Sounds just like the Morrowind model to me, actually.

You display your ignorance like a flag, which I find amusing. If you think quest writers, concept artists and level designers are doing anything on the main product past passive and part-time consulting with the closing team then you're way off base. They're moving on to new content, their work on the main game is done.

I'm all for ranting about modern decline but only as long as it's factual. There's enough decline without having to invent some.

 

Jun 3, 2010

vs

Oct 5, 2010


Which is better and why?

 

I'm better because his avatar is from Japan.

 

I can understand where he is coming from when he defends day 1 dlc.Lately AAA developers are trying to increase the price for games but they can't do that out of fear of scaring customers away.
So they make dlc's like these to make customer think their games are still at the normal price(60$) while selling dlc's to make it to their targe price(80$).
It's actually very clever trick if you think about it and frankly i rather have it this way rather than paying their target price directly.
Unless they make main content of games into dlc pack's i don't have a problem with it.Not yet anyway.

I don't think you have right criticise that when your avatar is from fallout 3.

 

I'm not defending day 1 DLC by the way, merely saying he isn't wrong about how teams work and that it's not cut content.

I do think it's just tacky to sell shit on day one, and turns consumers off.

 

WHy do people even listen to a guy that smiles like a retard burn victim?
v



Come on fuck faces. This guy?

 

It's so cute when they try to pretend that their day-one, on-disc DLC—which they planned months in advance or even in pre-production, as is almost universally the case nowadays according to industry sources—couldn't possibly have been integrated into the game for free.

Poor bastards, forced to charge $4.99 and write a script that alters "DLC=0" to "DLC=1" in the game's .ini file after your credit card is charged. We as consumers just can't fathom the process.

 

Obviously because the DLC has no polish whatsoever, will be unsupported and full of bugs which break the existing game.

Hey wait, that's every Skyrim DLC. Hmm...

 

As you should for believing the bullshit they are trying to sell you. They almost always invoke the same shit, either the mythical "console certification period", "compatibility issues" or that they want to "save people from downloading" to justify it.
The DLC practice, as most publishers are employing it is just a scale of different levels of deceit and fucking people over for more money (because they can now with Digital Distribution) and doesn't have much to do with "how development works".

The sad thing is, despite increasing cases where they even lack the common courtesy and decency to not only lie to consumers, but then spit them point blank in the face for buying their product there's still people out there buying into their retarded excuses, just a few examples:

- In Assassin’s Creed 2, two entire Chapter sequences were cut from the story and sold extra: Battle of Forli and Bonfire of Vanities.
- In L.A. Noire, there were entire parts of the story missing and held hostage behind “Exclusivity deals” and Paywalls, four entire cases, which make up probably 1/5th of the game were sold this way.
- Capcom has been especially oblivious in the way they fuck over consumers, even arguing that there is no difference between On-Disc DLC locked away and the other kind, with which I actually agree because there isn't that much, just how overtly or covertly you want to fuck over the people that buy your stuff. They've done this on various games, where the content (usually unlockable characters, moves and outfits) was already on the discs and only required a simple Unlocking procedure, for instance Street Fighter IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or Street Fighter X Tekken.
- They even went as far as to actually sell the ending for a game with Asura's Wrath.
- EPIC Games said similar things when they were trying to justify On-Disc DLC for Gears of War 3.

- In Mafia II they've had entire game features like “Free Roam” and Mini-quests missing from the game (although they have been shown throughout game development) just to be delivered as DLC a little later.

- A later example was the Mass Effect 3 DLC "From Ashes", which they announced like a year earlier, included in the "Collector's Edition" (or rather "Complete Edition") of the game and people found out that in large parts it was already on the disk and could be unlocked without buying.
- Another one is Risen 2, where you could actually "unlock" the DLC via simple in-game console commands they forgot to remove.
This is especially egregious, because they used the same retarded excuse about "development" that the others still do, the download was only a few missing sound files though and it was a PC only release at that time. There is no "certification period" for PC releases.

They've even gotten as fucking brazen as to tout off the "upcoming DLC" up to a year before the actual game is even released at events like E3: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Xb...-Raider-Black-Ops-2-South-Park-RPG-43197.html

Just fyi, most of this stuff is either obvious as it was already on the game medium when it released, or it was so much content at point of release or 1-2 weeks after that there would have been no chance in hell they could have "developed" anything like that in a short amount of a few weeks. In the case of L.A. Noire and Assassin's Creed 2 for instance, they had hours worth of voice acting and motion capture, as well as months worth of level design and story writing behind it.

It's even a two-pronged fuckery, since not only publishers and some developers are pushing for it (and profitting from it), but platform owners (since Microsoft, SONY and even Steam make money themselves with every piece of "DLC" sold over their service), I've written about this before but it bears repeating. Microsoft is forcing developers to price any kind of "additional content", even if they would want to offer it for free to thank people for buying their game:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/60365/microsoft-forces-valve-to-price
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147804


Anyway, even if you don't find anything wrong with DLC in general and even "Day-1 DLC", don't be a gullible asshat and buy into their retarded "explanations" for doing it out of any other motivation than greed.

Personally, if a game has Day-1 DLC or generally reeks of exploitation with that "Season Pass" crap etc. I generally don't buy it. If they can't even manage the modicum of respect needed for me to buy their product without trying to rip me off for even more money and being dishonest about it from the very start, I don't have to give them any at all.

 

Did Pete Hines ever get surgery to fix that psychopathic smile?

 

In Capcoms defense fighting games are first and foremost multiplayer games people spend hundreds if not thousands of hours on. Spending 4.99 to get 3 different alternate costumes for your favorite character is hardly a rip-off in this kind of games, even if they already on the disc (in Street Fighter 4s case they werent). I think its pretty unfair to bunch them up with single player games that last for 9-20 hours and then sell another 2 hours of content for 9 dollars.

Capcom has done a lot of shit but I can't really hold their fighting game DLC model against them since its kind of a dying niche genre anyway.

 

Uuuh what? It's ok for Capcom to fuck you over because it's a dying genre? Seriously?

 

How is selling cosmetic DLC in a multiplayer game 'fucking me over'?

 

I didn't defend every god damn DLC ever made, nor did I say I liked day one DLC. I actually said I DISliked it.

What I said was two things:

1) He's not wrong that early development people move on to other work before the game releases.

2) Skyrim's DLC setup was fine, which it was.

Calm the fuck down.

 

You used to be a bro, what happened? Now all of your posts either contain you defending Bioshock, or these day 1 dlc's passive aggressively. I'm reading what you're writing and you're defending day 1 dlc, either maliciously in a vague way, or you're just a knucklehead.

 

In SFxT they had entire characters on disk that you had to pay to unlock.

This Is Not OK™

 

Why would you try to fix something perfect?

 

I call shit like I see it. Usually that follows the Codex general consensus, sometimes it doesn't. I'm not an automaton.

 

I want Bethesda to do a Heart of the Alien reboot next!