166 réponses à ce sujet

[Lunatic LK47]

neubourn wrote...

Developers are using every trick they can to suck every penny from consumers, and unfortunately, its getting to become a bit too much.

As a consumer, when you purchase a game, you are purchasing whats on that disc. If there are other things hidden on the disc that become future DLC, then how is it fair that consumers must pay TWICE for content they already own?

Case in point: Battlefield BC2. Excellent game. But, the latest DLC "Vietnam" is already on the disc. People already owned it, but were unable to play it until they pay EA for the privilege of doing so. Oh, i know what youre saying: "but its just a different add-on and new gameplay, so theres no problem with paying for it since its new!!"

But therein lies the problem. If consumers allow this type of thing to become acceptable behavior, then what you are doing is sending the message that its ok for them to lock off certain features of their game to sell back to us at a later date. So you end up with games that become less and less as they are filled with more and more "future DLC' and you end up paying MORE and MORE for the SAME GAME.

It used to be simple: buy a game, and you had access to that game. "DLC" was classified as "extras" you had to download and pay for, and you had the choice on whether or not to do so, but it still didnt keep you from anything in the original game. But hey, if people are ok with getting less and less of a gam so they can pay more later, then the game developers and publishers will continue this practice.

I'll have to agree here. As it is, I've already been losing interest in the gaming industry because let's face it, over 95% of them are overglorified $70 rentals (seriously, we already had two four-hour games for the past two years), not to mention the games that I formerly liked are under **** management (Not buying Modern Warfare 3 after the Infinity Ward fiasco) or have already been sucked dry (Not going to buy Halo 4.). On top of this, there's also the ****storm with retail-exclusive DLCs, which may have the potential of being permanent if the developers or publishers decide to exploit this in the near future. L.A. Noire was outright shady in this department, and hell, I even am avoiding Deus Ex for adopting a similar practice here.

At this rate, you might as well charge us $50 just to buy one DVD or one movie ticket. As much *****ing I had for BioWare not living up to expectations for ME1 bridging DLC, ME2 felt like a step in the right direction, but oops, LOTSB was hinted to be part of the main game at one point, not to mention Redemption took a freaking eternity to finish its cycle and did not get released until months after ME2 got released. 


As it stands, I'm already done with the current state of gaming right after I get my copy of ME3, and leave it at that. Nothing else worth buying in my eyes, other than Arkham City.

[Il Divo]

AlanC9 wrote...

All you've really got here is an intuition about how the transaction should be structured.

Intuition, nothing. It's simply an analysis on how a purchase typically works. I really don't care if a company wants to sell dlc. If they want to create dlc under a separate budget, good for them. If they want to rip dlc from the main game's budget, I may not like it, but still good for them. But how often, in a purchase are you, the buyer, expected to pay twice for the same content?

In this case, they included content within my object of purchase (the game disc). And they are telling me a separate fee is required to actually use that content? That essentially means that I paid once for that content, then a second time simply to access that content.

As for your car analogy, you paid for the engine because..... the transaction just has to work that way? That's not exactly an argument. There's no good reason to not sell the engine with the car, but if a company found one, you're saying they should not be allowed to do it. Because it conflicts with your intuitions?

I read this...and I'm not sure what you think I might be saying.

If a company sells a car without the engine, that's their right. They're unlikely to have many repeat customers, but that's on them. If a company sells me a car, with the engine, yet I then find out that the engine won't run unless I pay a separate fee, it raises the question: what was I initially paying for?

If EA does want to go down that road, perhaps they should place disclaimers explaining how not all disc content has been licensed to the player.

Modifié par Il Divo, 22 juin 2011 - 10:29 .

[hwf]

Content on a disc sold to a customer that has to be unlocked by paying yet another chunck of cash feels like swindling to me.
It's like buying a car only to get told that in order to access your trunk you'll need to buy the trunk key for an additional two grand.

This post's mostly feedback to Bioware.

I feel that DLCs as they are being handled right now in the entire industry are pushing customers into the "long tail" - mostly because some digital downloadable content is excluded from discounts or gradual price drops over time.
Preorder bonus content is a slipperly slope in my opinion, to the point where it actually trains people to do piracy.
Whereas physical Collector Edition stuff seems to be an excellent concept (even though I never bought into it).

Really DLCs like Zaeed (day one DLC) or Kasumi don't bother me at all, in fact they're quite good products in terms of content. However the price associated with Kasumi which makes it an unattractive product - for me.
Some DLCs like LotSB and Arrival are very close to being an integral part of the story and are at the very tipping point of the optional-mandatory division; not sure if I'm happy with this development considering their pricepoint.

DLCs that break the fourth wall (Shepard's Blood Dragon armor) or hooks to DLCs in the game (help this man by buying the DLC *click here*) that do the same really grind my gears. I didn't like fourth wall breaking in all of Hideo Kojima's work and I certainly despise it when it comes to DLCs.

I understand why it's happening. Why for example Activision sells refurbished mappacks for fifteen dollars whole.
Concept of money left on the table. Sucker born every minute. If there's money there for the taking and you don't take it then you are an idiot - a thief of your own wallet.
However, if you cut traditional stores out of the loop with digital distribution yet keep all that logistics money for yourself by keeping the pricepoint identical, I as a customer feel swindled.
Dito with removing Steam's 30% cut and delivering your content through Origin and keeping that 30% for yourself - it's all oldskool thought. Content delivery services provide their data at 5 cents per gigabyte these days and even that price is dropping fast.

If developers want to develop horse armor and try to sell that for ten dollars, by all means go ahead - it's a free market.
Just be ready for it to not sell so well and your customers to take the ****** out of you publicly for a very long time.
And don't blame lack of sales on piracy, please - you'll sound like some pretentious subsidized Dutch "artist" that thinks a floor made out of peanutbutter is art.

[Whatever42]

neubourn wrote...

Developers are using every trick they can to suck every penny from consumers, and unfortunately, its getting to become a bit too much.

....

I'll spell this out again. I am a shareholder in EA. These shares are important to me because one day I plan to retire. Instead of buying EA shares, I could buy more Intel or TD Bank or Nexen stock. I buy these EA shares because I expect them to deliver dividends or growth equal to or exceeding these other companies; if not today then tomorrow.

If EA does not deliver me my money and looks like it will not deliver me my money then I will sell my shares as will many others. This will cause the share price to go down. This upsets the big shareholders and the board of directors. If it continues then the board might start firing people. If the share price falls too low then EA will have problems getting loans. If the share prices falls lower then it might become a takeover target.

So EA needs to make money. Bioware needs to make money. Making money is their job. They hope to make money through their passion for games but sucking money from us is job #1. This is true of every single public company (or company that hopes to become public) on the planet. 

So if it costs Bioware $10 million to make, market and distribute a game and their sales only make them $10.1 million in revenue then I could get a better return elsewhere and will sell my shares. So Bioware has to either lower their costs (fire people and make a worse game), raise their price, or look at alternatives. In this case, the gaming industry has taken a pricing model from the airline industry. Instead of raising prices, they offer their products a la carte.

This is like you paying extra on a flight for a meal while the person sitting next to you does not. They might be annoyed but then other flyers might not even be able to afford to fly if they forced everyone to get meal and pay for it. There is a lot of DLC that people wouldn't even pay $2 for but if Bioware included it and forced everyone to pay $2 and did this for every piece of DLC then prices go up and they sell less games.

Now if you think prices are too high and you are right then some other company will produce better games for less and competition will drive down the prices. 

What we really should do, of course, is fire all the developers and out-source all the jobs to China. That will make it cheap for you. Of course, you won't have a job anymore when we do that with our entire economy but nothing is free, right?

[CannonO]

In Exile wrote...

CannonLars wrote...

If they think the content is good enough for us to play or buy, then it belongs in the game if time permits.

What if time doesn't permit? What if, for example, making Kasumi part of the main game means delaying release 3 weeks?

I addressed this. The whole game doesn't need to be delayed for DLC. I am speaking about DLC completed and planned for completion long before the game is finalized. There is nothing wrong with DLC in general and releasing it at release or later, like kasumi.

The game should not be delayed for the content like Kasumi stolen memory. If the content needs three weeks after the scheduled release, then sell it as DLC three weeks after release.

I am saying that if it was done many weeks before deadline, then I don't agree with them saying it will be DLC for launch and such. Then they are holding on to content for DLC sales later instead of weaving it into the game as they should with content made in reasonable time in the development. 

If they don't have time for the content to make it into the game, then it is a perfect example of what should be DLC.

AlanC9 wrote...

CannonLars wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

This is awfully confused. The game makers nowadays are making the game "as intended;" that hasn't changed. The difference is that they're also making content that isn't intended to be in the game at the same time. 

You think all those weapons they design and record months before they are done with the game and announced as DLC, are done without profit motive?

Huh? The whole game is made with profit motive. Why would the DLC be any different?

They are absolutely making content that they could be putting in the game with the time they have and they do want you to get it in your game because it is good for their wallets, they just don't put it in always anymore.

Of course they could put the DLC content in the game. They could also release the game for free. What a developer "could" do is not a useful metric.

The DLC that is made ahead of time is made to be DLC. Developers even say that themselves. When players ask why they are cutting things out of the game to sell to them, the developer says it wasn't taken from the full game, it was made as an add-on for the purpose that it is now serving. They don't say it is a scrap that isn't intended for the game.

If they think the content is good enough for us to play or buy, then it belongs in the game if time permits.

Why? I get that you really, really believe this, but what's the reason?

I don't understand why you would ask about profit motive like that. Of course the game is made with profit motive. But DLC that is partitioned off for separate sale is made for the purpose of having us pay a price on top of the game's profits. DLC that is able to be part of the disc based game and is made in the normal development, but is kept off the disc for separate sale later is an attempt at extra profit that has been a recent trend. DLC=Good. Content being kept out of the game to add to the $60 price=not so good.

"Of course they could put the DLC content in the game. They could also release the game for free. What a developer "could" do is not a useful metric."
/\\ I am not understanding why you said this either. Your point isn't clear to me. I could jump out of a plane? Does that make sense? I was clearly not talking about what could be done in general. The useful side of considering what they could do is knowing as a consumer if they have blocked you from accessing content or stopped the content (which at one time would have just gone into the game - no question, if it had been developed fully during the development cycle) and decided long before you buy the product that a major experience will be sold as a fee on top of the $60 price that we pay for the content the game is getting. The price of a game was once a pact that you are getting all the content of value that was intended to be played with the game. DLC is intended to be played with the game, but the method of release on some DLC is an issue because it breaks the idea that you get the whole experience in some degree. As I said earlier, not so long ago if a company made some weapons or costumes for the game during development, it was absolutely going on the disc for consumers. Now they split it up and sell it like it is totally extra.

[AlanC9]

Gatt9 wrote...

Mmmm...This is really pushing boundaries here.  We're in "Not everything pictured on the box may be available in the box" boundaries.  It's not very different from selling a box of Mac'N'Cheese,  but then putting the cheese in a package that can only be opened if Kraft's paid an extra dollar.  

Really? Was Kasumi pictured on the ME2 box? Assuming arguendo that she's actually on the ME2 disc, though my understanding is she's not completely there.

You can't offer a service or product,  but intentionally withold part of the product and force the consumer to pay to get the rest of what they already paid for.  Not without making a clear disclaimer that the consumer may read prior to purchase.

As usual, you're simply assuming that "the product" means everything on the disc. But ME2 is perfectly playable without Kasumi, or Zaeed, or the Cerberus Network.

[AlanC9]

CannonLars wrote...

I don't understand why you would ask about profit motive like that. Of course the game is made with profit motive.

I only talked about profit motive like that because you brought it up.

But DLC that is partitioned off for separate sale is made for the purpose of having us pay a price on top of the game's profits. DLC that is able to be part of the disc based game and is made in the normal development, but is kept off the disc for separate sale later is an attempt at extra profit that has been a recent trend. DLC=Good. Content being kept out of the game to add to the $60 price=not so good.

Yep. It's an attempt at making extra profit by releasing more products. How terribly evil.

"Of course they could put the DLC content in the game. They could also release the game for free. What a developer "could" do is not a useful metric."
/ I am not understanding why you said this either. Your point isn't clear to me. I could jump out of a plane? Does that make sense? I was clearly not talking about what could be done in general. The useful side of considering what they could do is knowing as a consumer if they have blocked you from accessing content or stopped the content (which at one time would have just gone into the game - no question, if it had been developed fully during the development cycle) and decided long before you buy the product that a major experience will be sold as a fee on top of the $60 price that we pay for the content the game is getting.

I brought it up because your whole "argument" is that developers should put everything they have ready before release onto the disc because they can. That's all you've got.

The price of a game was once a pact that you are getting all the content of value that was intended to be played with the game. DLC is intended to be played with the game, but the method of release on some DLC is an issue because it breaks the idea that you get the whole experience in some degree. As I said earlier, not so long ago if a company made some weapons or costumes for the game during development, it was absolutely going on the disc for consumers. Now they split it up and sell it like it is totally extra.

That was the pact? Not for me. I've always just bought the game as advertised and reviewed.

[In Exile]

Lunatic LK47 wrote...
Uh, wouldn't the same be said if the target audience did not have any interest in the peripheral material? No sales data was ever given on how well those items sold. As it is, they're little more than gimmicks on the same caliber as Kinect, and 3D movies.

Sure. But the answer then would be not to make it, not to switch those funds to ME2 if the ROI is zero there too.

[In Exile]

neubourn wrote...
But therein lies the problem. If consumers allow this type of thing to become acceptable behavior, then what you are doing is sending the message that its ok for them to lock off certain features of their game to sell back to us at a later date. So you end up with games that become less and less as they are filled with more and more "future DLC' and you end up paying MORE and MORE for the SAME GAME.

Well... I think we should pay more and more for the same game over time. Game development costs increase significantly above inflation, but game prices don't increase at all. Anything that counters the desperation to get bigger and bigger audiences with AAA games, IMO, is a positive.

I get the slippery slope - but gamers so far have had a very easy time of it cost-wise with how cheap games have gotten for them.

It used to be simple: buy a game, and you had access to that game. "DLC" was classified as "extras" you had to download and pay for, and you had the choice on whether or not to do so, but it still didnt keep you from anything in the original game. But hey, if people are ok with getting less and less of a gam so they can pay more later, then the game developers and publishers will continue this practice.

I don't understand - if the developers didn't put it on the disk and made you download it, but still cut it from the main game (by your logic) that would be better?

[In Exile]

Il Divo wrote...
Intuition, nothing. It's simply an analysis on how a purchase typically works. I really don't care if a company wants to sell dlc. If they want to create dlc under a separate budget, good for them. If they want to rip dlc from the main game's budget, I may not like it, but still good for them. But how often, in a purchase are you, the buyer, expected to pay twice for the same content?

In this case, they included content within my object of purchase (the game disc). And they are telling me a separate fee is required to actually use that content? That essentially means that I paid once for that content, then a second time simply to access that content.

Let me give you the IP law perspective.

In the car example, you are buying the physical thing: the car. In the game example, you aren't buying the physical thing. If EA sold you an empty CD with the mass effect art, you'd riot. If they sold you the physical mass effect 3 CD with ME1 on it, you'd riot.

What you are purchasing when you purchase a game (or any kind of software) is the information. You're buying the non-physical information. It's not real property (this is a legal concept).

Trying to create a boundary on the information doesn't work. And here's the issue: reselling.

You buy a car. You want to resell the car. Awesome. You get $$ for the car, but you give up the car. Physical property has a real production cost associated with every unit.

But let's say you want to buy a game and sell the game. You can copy the game and then return the game for $$. But you keep the information. You can then start selling that game again, from your copy of it. Information does not have a physical cost per unit. The full cost is in conceiving it.

A game is an idea. And how exacftly an idea works out to be property is a minefield of epic proportions.

[CannonO]

AlanC9 wrote...

CannonLars wrote...

I don't understand why you would ask about profit motive like that. Of course the game is made with profit motive.

I only talked about profit motive like that because you brought it up.

/snip

DLC=Good. Content being kept out of the game to add to the $60 price=not so good.

Yep. It's an attempt at making extra profit by releasing more products. How terribly evil.

"Of course they could put the DLC content in the game. They could also release the game for free. What a

/snip

the development cycle) and decided long before you buy the product that a major experience will be sold as a fee on top of the $60 price that we pay for the content the game is getting.

I brought it up because your whole "argument" is that developers should put everything they have ready before release onto the disc because they can. That's all you've got.

The price of a game was once a pact that you are getting all the content of value that was intended to be played with the game. DLC is intended to be played with the game, but the method of release on some DLC is an issue because it breaks the idea that you get the whole experience in some degree. As I said earlier, not so long ago if a company made some weapons or costumes for the game during development, it was absolutely going on the disc for consumers. Now they split it up and sell it like it is totally extra.

That was the pact? Not for me. I've always just bought the game as advertised and reviewed.

Who said DLC was evil? I think I said the opposite. More products are fine.

What the heck do you mean "That's all you've got,"? That's all there is. That's what development was until recently. The good stuff went on the disc and that was that. Now they keep some good stuff off. My point is about the change in their model. It works differently now and it is for their benefit, not necessarily the consumers. We got DLC before, but we didn't always get told DLC was being made for structured release and purchase starting on day one instead of traditional post release.

And we all buy the game as advertised and reviewed (at least the informed ones), so again I don't understand the point of that line. In a way, the "pact" I refer to is still there and is the pact for you and all of us as consumers. We buy a product and pay for it to be complete and working, and we still get that. We still get the big story and a selection of weapons, but we also find out these days that there is a character developed alongside the rest and weapons too, which have been simply kept out of the game, regardless of the fact that they are meant and developed to add to the experience we bought. 

I think someone earlier had good analogy in this thread. It is indeed feeling like we buy a car and although we can drive it, they charge extra for the keys to the trunk that add to a fuller experience. They are telling us about a part of the developing product that will be kept only accessible as an "extra" even though it was developed in plenty of time to be the good addition to the disc instead of the good addition for cash off the disc.

Modifié par CannonLars, 22 juin 2011 - 04:48 .

[Il Divo]

In Exile wrote...

But let's say you want to buy a game and sell the game. You can copy the game and then return the game for $$. But you keep the information. You can then start selling that game again, from your copy of it. Information does not have a physical cost per unit. The full cost is in conceiving it.

A game is an idea. And how exacftly an idea works out to be property is a minefield of epic proportions.

Which would explain the price for the game. So when I pay $60 for Mass Effect 3, the cost is not associated with the actual game disc, but rather the price is from the invention of the game itself?

[Mister Mida]

In Exile wrote...

Well... I think we should pay more and more for the same game over time. Game development costs increase significantly above inflation, but game prices don't increase at all. Anything that counters the desperation to get bigger and bigger audiences with AAA games, IMO, is a positive.

Making films these days is also more expensive. I don't see the prices of the cinema tickets going up. Looks like they managed.

Also the fact that games have become shorter doesn't give me that much of a reason to pay more.

And in case you don't know, many European have been paying more for games for almost ten years, because of the transition from local valuta to the euro. In my country, prices for games over ten percent higher than before the euro.

Now, I don't know much about how game development works, but maybe they should cut down on the marketing. It looks like of that is just money wasting IMO, especially when publishers are making TV promos when most gamers, in my experience, usually check games out on the internet.

Just my 0.02 here.

[MACharlie1]

Mister Mida wrote...

In Exile wrote...

Well... I think we should pay more and more for the same game over time. Game development costs increase significantly above inflation, but game prices don't increase at all. Anything that counters the desperation to get bigger and bigger audiences with AAA games, IMO, is a positive.

Making films these days is also more expensive. I don't see the prices of the cinema tickets going up. Looks like they managed.

Also the fact that games have become shorter doesn't give me that much of a reason to pay more.

And in case you don't know, many European have been paying more for games for almost ten years, because of the transition from local valuta to the euro. In my country, prices for games over ten percent higher than before the euro.

Now, I don't know much about how game development works, but maybe they should cut down on the marketing. It looks like of that is just money wasting IMO, especially when publishers are making TV promos when most gamers, in my experience, usually check games out on the internet.

Just my 0.02 here.

Maybe my sarcasm detector broke but movie ticket prices go up once a year* by a quarter or so. But thats in the USA - I'm not sure what the prices are in Europe. 

*Former theatre manager

[sp0ck 06]

I don't have a problem with DLC like Kasumi, or Overlord. It's worth it to me to spend a few bucks to get more gaming goodness. Nobody is forcing anyone to get DLC. If you don't like it, don't buy it. To me it's not different than buying the Extended Edition of Lord of the Rings.

I don't see the point in having art books or little action figures or a shiny case, so I don't buy the Uber Edition of games. Doesn't mean I have a problem with the devs devoting resources to make such things.

The one problem I have with DLC is things like Arrival which are integral plot points. IMO, this should either have been included in ME2, been a free DLC, or been an intro sequence in ME3. I don't think important story lines should be in DLC format.

Overlord was the perfect DLC because it was good content, fairly priced, and not essential to the overall storyline.

[Mister Mida]

MACharlie1 wrote...

Mister Mida wrote...

Making films these days is also more expensive. I don't see the prices of the cinema tickets going up. Looks like they managed.

Maybe my sarcasm detector broke but movie ticket prices go up once a year* by a quarter or so. But thats in the USA - I'm not sure what the prices are in Europe. 

*Former theatre manager

Hmm. Touché

[Stanley Woo]

This thread is no longer about Mass Effect 3, if it ever was to begin with.

End of line.