638 réponses à ce sujet

[Digital Freak]

Welcome to the new Bioware... EA's b!tch.  No way in hell am I paying $40 for an expansion pack. 

On a side note, I picked up Mass Effect for $4.99 during the holiday sale on Steam.  MUCH better game than DAO in all aspects.  Why does a 3 year old game have much better graphics than one that was released 2 months ago?

Modifié par Digital Freak, 09 janvier 2010 - 02:36 .

[addiction21]

Hardin4188 wrote...

addiction21 wrote...

Dargor Icarus wrote...

McMaze wrote...

btw. are professional voiceactors really that costly ?

Voice actors make MAD MONEY! Trust me thats what smarty pants Mark Hamill(luke skywalker) did after Star Wars. I betcha didn't know he does the voice of the Joker for the Batman:The Animated Series ... if I'm not mistaken, but one of the Batman's regardless.

'If your thinking of the batman from the 90's then you are right he did the joker in that along with voicing him in the newest game  Arkham Asylum (same batman voice actor is in that game).

I think Hamill is best known for his role as ****Knocker in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

You know him most from a 2001 movie? Fail. Even if people didn't recognize him in Star Wars surely they would have heard of him as being the Joker or as Christopher Blair in Wing Commander.

Sorry was a joke (guess I should of put that in there) and yes I do remember wing commander 3,4,5 I think it was him. Some other big wigs in there like the actor who plays gimli I think it is in LoTR and Malcom McDowel I think it is.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000434/ Hamill has done a whole lot including voicing the chanuka zombie in futrerama.

Modifié par addiction21, 09 janvier 2010 - 02:35 .

[Gvaz]

Dargor Icarus wrote...

McMaze wrote...

btw. are professional voiceactors really that costly ?

Voice actors make MAD MONEY! Trust me thats what smarty pants Mark Hamill(luke skywalker) did after Star Wars. I betcha didn't know he does the voice of the Joker for the Batman:The Animated Series ... if I'm not mistaken, but one of the Batman's regardless.

the voice of homer simpson gets something like 400k dollars PER EPISODE. none of the vas here were exceptionally huge vas, but voice acting can be potentially costly. A new IP like DAO probably didn't have exceptionally costly voice acting.

Cpl_Facehugger wrote...

TheMadCat wrote...
A mod
team I worked on quite a few years ago looked at the idea of hiring
professional voice actors and a couple of no names charged what would
have come out to about $80 an hour if I remember right. So yes it can
get quite expensive when you add it all up.

On the other
tentacle, you don't need VAs for that much time. If you have the script
layed out, you can get a lot of voicework done in an afternoon. 

Anyway,
on the expansion being 40 bucks... I hope it's a lot of content for
that kind of price. If it was 30 bucks, that'd be a bit different, but
40? That's not much more than the retail game...

exactly my point! I got a ton of hours (here im not saying simply hours, but hours in the sense of tons of time where I was having fun) and here it is i'm being offered something with minimal amounts of content in comparison for almost the price I paid for the full game.

Also to someone saying throne of bhaal was $40, no, it was $30 actually.

[Gvaz]

DaerogTheDhampir wrote...

I don't know what the big deal is with the pricing.
If you want it and the price is okay for you, you get it.
You don't like it, you wait, price goes down, you get it or you don't.
Where's the problem? Corporations ripping off the little guy/gal? No, you don't have to buy, but if a company can get more money on initial release from fanboys/girls (like myself), why not?
So, with time and patience, the price will eventually go into someone's favor, maybe a bundle pack or something.
Although, this has been said enough.
Another note, the hours per dollar argument is really lame. Hours doesnt mean entertainment, BioWare could of added in a cutscene that has all the characters staring at each other for 5 hours, does that make it worth more? It should be the amount of content and effort put into something that determines cost, not how long it is. Length is good, but I'd rather have a short, fun game, than a long, boring one.
So, since we don't have all info on content and effort put into this expansion, the argument of $40/30 is too much is.... wait, what am I doing? This is the internet, and this is a forum! Argue mindlessly away! RAWR RAWR RAWR! GIMME FREE SHTUFF! BW IS KILLING EA!

The issue here is the opinion of "fun"

if your game is $50 for 5 hours it better have some damn good fun that makes me want to keep coming back, or the best storyline ever written.

[Le_Mieux]

DaerogTheDhampir wrote...

I don't know what the big deal is with the pricing.
If you want it and the price is okay for you, you get it.
You don't like it, you wait, price goes down, you get it or you don't.
Where's the problem? Corporations ripping off the little guy/gal? No, you don't have to buy, but if a company can get more money on initial release from fanboys/girls (like myself), why not?
So, with time and patience, the price will eventually go into someone's favor, maybe a bundle pack or something.
Although, this has been said enough.
Another note, the hours per dollar argument is really lame. Hours doesnt mean entertainment, BioWare could of added in a cutscene that has all the characters staring at each other for 5 hours, does that make it worth more? It should be the amount of content and effort put into something that determines cost, not how long it is. Length is good, but I'd rather have a short, fun game, than a long, boring one.
So, since we don't have all info on content and effort put into this expansion, the argument of $40/30 is too much is.... wait, what am I doing? This is the internet, and this is a forum! Argue mindlessly away! RAWR RAWR RAWR! GIMME FREE SHTUFF! BW IS KILLING EA!

I think that would be the most awesomely akward cut scene ever.

[Kjellan]

Abriael_CG wrote...

Suit yourself.

Luckily the market isn't dictated by silly gamers with an humongous sense of entitlement to play more for less.
Otherwise there would NOT be a gaming market.

Let me help you to understand how the gaming market -really- works these days:

First of all, mega-publishers like EA and ActiVision have swallowed up every decent independent studio that ever existed, it seems... adding them to their ever-growing kennel of devs and keeping them on a short leash.

Meanwhile, we have all been spending the past decade being systematically conditioned to expect mediocrity as the norm. In that way, all of our expectations have been gradually lowered. In my opinion, this has been by design.

So when a game that doesn't totally suck comes along, suddenly everyone is behaving like well-programmed consumers. They're leaping all over it like rabid, gushing fanboys... as if this game were the greatest thing to have ever happened in their lives.

This is precisely what the talentless suits at EA want you to do and that's why they're all reading this thread and winking at each other. And that's why they can get away with serializing a game like DA:O...  and get away with charging everyone full price for an incomplete product. They have rightly deduced that most of you will be so eager to pay extra for a game that doesn't totally suck rancid monkey nuts, that you will happily fork over a fat chunk of your salary to play a so-so game that most of you will completely forget about within six months.

Let's try to get this into perspective here. There is nothing amazing or special about Dragon Age. Let's get that fact clear, shall we..? It's a formulaic RPG, period. It has nice graphics. It has decent voice acting. But so what..? Shouldn't the goal of ANY studio be to produce games of high quality..? Why do they feel entitled to be paid an exhorbitant amount of extra money simply for DOING A GOOD JOB...?

Let's try a couple of analogies...

When you go to the movies, would you be willing to pay twice the normal ticket price to see a film, simply because it didn't suck..? Of course not... because you would have every right to expect that the eight bucks or whatever that you are paying should be more than enough price to see a decent movie.

And when you buy a new car and pay full sticker price for it, would you be outraged if the dealer then turned around and informed you that the steering wheel was not included for the premium price that you just paid..? After all.. the car still works without the steering wheel. It's just not very easy to turn corners that way. But hey... if you pay him an additional 40 bucks, then the dealer will be more than happy to install a steering wheel for you. After all... you're special.

The point I am making is this: that the game buying public has every right to feel entitled to GET WHAT THEY PAID FOR and NOT BE RIPPED OFF. Dragon Age was released in an incomplete state on purpose, so that EA and BioWare could milk it for every cent that they could squeeze out of you. We're seeing the same sort of greed and lack of ethics that ran Wall Street into the crapper last year... and yet, nobody seems to have learned any lessons.

Be a sheeple if you must. Be a programmed droid who happily pays a premium price for mediocrity, simply because the preponderance of mediocrity these days has brainwashed you into complacency. But I'm old enough to remember a time when MOST games being produced for the PC market were well-written, fairly original and COMPLETE upon release. And if the game happened to be a hit, then maybe we'd get a sequel.

But what we're seeing here is an industry which has learned how to engineer their own "hit status," by hyping the crap out of a new product before we have even determined its staying power. Or ANYTHING else about its merits, for that matter. And as usual... the sheeple are eating it up and even worse, defending the people who are overcharging them.

That's how the market is dictated, folks. By greed, hype, payola scams (//waves at GameSpot) and the dictatorship of forced consumerism. The only way to put a stop to it is for all of us to vote with our wallets. I for one will not be paying another penny to EA... no matter how un-mediocre their next release might be. They simply do not deserve it... and their abysmal track record of studio smashing and blatant greed has made that fact quite clear.

Modifié par Kjellan, 09 janvier 2010 - 03:14 .

[addiction21]

Kjellan wrote...


And when you buy a new car and pay full sticker price for it, would you be outraged if the dealer then turned around and informed you that the steering wheel was not included for the premium price that you just paid..? After all.. the car still works without the steering wheel. It's just not very easy to turn corners that way. But hey... if you pay him an additional 40 bucks, then the dealer will be more than happy to install a steering wheel for you. After all... you're special.

Would you care to point out what vital piece of gameplay/tool/item we were missing that we had to pay extra for to  have the entire game?

[ArcticZombie]

I'll definately wait to read some reviews before dropping another $40.

[Bryy_Miller]

Kjellan wrote...

Let me help you to understand how the gaming market -really- works these days:.

This is precisely what the talentless suits at EA want you to do and that's why they're all reading this thread and winking at each other. And that's why they can get away with serializing a game like DA:O...  and get away with charging everyone full price for an incomplete product. They have rightly deduced that most of you will be so eager to pay extra for a game that doesn't totally suck rancid monkey nuts, that you will happily fork over a fat chunk of your salary to play a so-so game that most of you will completely forget about within six months.

I love how you actually think that big words equal intelligence.

Let's try to get this into perspective here. There is nothing amazing or special about Dragon Age. Let's get that fact clear, shall we..? It's a formulaic RPG, period.

One in which BioWare is trying to change the entire way that games are made with the reactionary systems.

It has nice graphics. It has decent voice acting. But so what..? Shouldn't the goal of ANY studio be to produce games of high quality..? Why do they feel entitled to be paid an exhorbitant amount of extra money simply for DOING A GOOD JOB...?

... because they did a better job then other people? Quit acting like pay scales are and should be the same for everyone.

[TheMadCat]

Kjellan wrote...

Let me help you to understand how the gaming market -really- works these days:

First of all, mega-publishers like EA and ActiVision have swallowed up every decent independent studio that ever existed, it seems... adding them to their ever-growing kennel of devs and keeping them on a short leash.

Many, many more indie and small developers out there then what EA, Activision, 2K, Take Two, Ubisoft, and whoever else you want to add to the list hold in their "kennel of devs".

Meanwhile, we have all been spending the past decade being systematically conditioned to expect mediocrity as the norm. In that way, all of our expectations have been gradually lowered. In my opinion, this has been by design.

Funny, some of the greatest innovations in gaming have come in the past decade, hell if it wasn't for this era of mediocrity as you so call it developers and publishers wouldn't be able to do half the things they do in their games. For some reason you and a few others have this nostalgia about the 90's. You seem to think that ever game that came out then was a gem and the pinnacle of perfection, yet for some reason you seem to forget all of the crap and mediocrity that came out during those times as well. 

This is precisely what the talentless suits at EA want you to do and that's why they're all reading this thread and winking at each other. And that's why they can get away with serializing a game like DA:O...  and get away with charging everyone full price for an incomplete product. They have rightly deduced that most of you will be so eager to pay extra for a game that doesn't totally suck rancid monkey nuts, that you will happily fork over a fat chunk of your salary to play a so-so game that most of you will completely forget about within six months.

Incomplete game? What is incomplete about the game. As a solid begining, a lengthy plot, and closure. Average length seems to be 50-60 hours. I fail to see what is incomplete about it.

Let's try to get this into perspective here. There is nothing amazing or special about Dragon Age. Let's get that fact clear, shall we..? It's a formulaic RPG, period. It has nice graphics. It has decent voice acting. But so what..? Shouldn't the goal of ANY studio be to produce games of high quality..? Why do they feel entitled to be paid an exhorbitant amount of extra money simply for DOING A GOOD JOB...?

I find Dragon Age to be very special, no it's not revolutionary and it's not mind blowing. But it has a charm, a quality that is very unique to find in a game and I do feel it's a high quality product. You reap what you sow, Bioware has put out a special product in my eyes and I have zero problem rewarding them for it.

The point I am making is this: that the game buying public has every right to feel entitled to GET WHAT THEY PAID FOR and NOT BE RIPPED OFF. Dragon Age was released in an incomplete state on purpose, so that EA and BioWare could milk it for every cent that they could squeeze out of you. We're seeing the same sort of greed and lack of ethics that ran Wall Street into the crapper last year... and yet, nobody seems to have learned any lessons.

You go back to this incomplete state and I don't understand. I got what I paid for and them some, hell it's been awhile since I got so much for $50. You have a grudge against DLC and expansions obviously, why I don't know. It's optional, it has minimal effect on your game, has no effect on the story or outcome, it's simply there for people who want to inject fresh content in their game to extends it's life. You want them to give it for free? Would you goto work for a week for free? Would you go in on your day off out of charity? Don't expect from them what you won't do yourself.

Be a sheeple if you must. Be a programmed droid who happily pays a premium price for mediocrity, simply because the preponderance of mediocrity these days has brainwashed you into complacency. But I'm old enough to remember a time when MOST games being produced for the PC market were well-written, fairly original and COMPLETE upon release. And if the game happened to be a hit, then maybe we'd get a sequel.

Your memory must be fading because I remember a lot of poor games in the 90's. There were some jewels no doubt about it, but for every PS:T you ended up with a dozen shiny coasters.

But what we're seeing here is an industry which has learned how to engineer their own "hit status," by hyping the crap out of a new product before we have even determined its staying power. Or ANYTHING else about its merits, for that matter. And as usual... the sheeple are eating it up and even worse, defending the people who are overcharging them.

I do agree with this a bit.

That's how the market is dictated, folks. By greed, hype, payola scams (//waves at GameSpot) and the dictatorship of forced consumerism. The only way to put a stop to it is for all of us to vote with our wallets. I for one will not be paying another penny to EA... no matter how un-mediocre their next release might be. They simply do not deserve it... and their abysmal track record of studio smashing and blatant greed has made that fact quite clear.

Market is dictated by the masses and the masses obviously disagree with you strongly. Weather for better or for worse is subjective. If you don't like the game, don't like the companies, don't like their post release strategies that's all fine and dandy, as you said the best way to create change with a business is not give them the money. But coming here speaking out of total ignorance and talking as if your word is law does nothing but make yourself and your words look asinine. I've been in gaming long enough and I understand business well enough to know you're spewing BS because you don't understand times change, needs change, and situations change and instead cling onto this false nostalgia because for whatever reason you fear change. You don't like it fine, as you said the best way to speak is to speak with your wallet, posting junk like this holds the opposite effect of what you desire though.

[Johato]

Ive got a question, Will there be new races? like is there any chance we could be a qunari Warden? >.>

[TheMadCat]

Nope, you import your last character or you can make an Orlesian Warden, what races that can be though I have no clue, I'd assume the usual Human/Elf/Dwarf though.

[mahi0]

is there any link to download wardans keep & stone prisoner. Please let me know if it is.

[Bryy_Miller]

You need to purchase them with BioWare points. It says this on the page.

[Barrador]

$69.99 the pre-order in NZ is saying...ouch!! That's almost as much as new game

Also bit concerned about how it's coming out so soon after DAO , will it be decent or rusehd out for the megabucks?



Definately gonna have to wait for a good sale before picking it up that's for sure.

[squid5580]

Rolenka wrote...

Game prices haven't gone up in what, 20 years?

Forget inflation, what do you think production costs have done in that time?

What??? Games went up by 10 bucks here in my little corner of the world (Ontario). It happened last year. All of a sudden 1 game came out at 69.99 (It was SpiderMan Web of Shadows) and the next thing I knew all games were 69.99. Well except for the budget titles like Matt Hazard and ShellShock 2.

[kansadoom]

Digital Freak wrote...

Welcome to the new Bioware... EA's b!tch.  No way in hell am I paying $40 for an expansion pack. 

On a side note, I picked up Mass Effect for $4.99 during the holiday sale on Steam.  MUCH better game than DAO in all aspects.  Why does a 3 year old game have much better graphics than one that was released 2 months ago?

Mass Effect is not a better game than DAO

[Chokra Broodslayer]

Sneaky Monkey wrote...

I'm sure people have paid more to play shorter games.

Yeah, remember those Lord of the Rings movie games for Two Towers and Return of the King?

They were $50 with 5-6 hours maximum play time. People were MAD. Then again, what do you expect from a movie tie-in game? They have a very limited amount of time to build it -- releases are controlled by the movie release date.

I don't remember how long Hordes of the Underdark was or Shadows of Undrentide (both for NWN1)... but they were at least $30 or $40 and that was quite a while back when games were a little cheaper than they are now ($5-$10 average cheaper on release). Seems like they were only about 15-20 hours of game play each. A lot of people bought them for all the add-on content for the toolset and PWs, though.

[Chokra Broodslayer]

kansadoom wrote...

Digital Freak wrote...

Welcome to the new Bioware... EA's b!tch.  No way in hell am I paying $40 for an expansion pack. 

On a side note, I picked up Mass Effect for $4.99 during the holiday sale on Steam.  MUCH better game than DAO in all aspects.  Why does a 3 year old game have much better graphics than one that was released 2 months ago?

Mass Effect is not a better game than DAO

I mean... not to knock ME, it's a great game... but it's not as pretty as DAO. Maybe Digital Freak should get a Directx 11 OS and graphics card or something? *shrug* DAO is the prettiest game I own and I have a very extensive game collection (mostly RPGs and RTSes).

[Ganondorf2002]

Digital Freak wrote...



Welcome to the new Bioware... EA's b!tch. No way in hell am I paying $40 for an expansion pack.



On a side note, I picked up Mass Effect for $4.99 during the holiday sale on Steam. MUCH better game than DAO in all aspects. Why does a 3 year old game have much better graphics than one that was released 2 months ago?





DAO does lack somewhat in graphics. However for me the "heart" of the game lies in the story. Which DAO is superb in. Modders will take care of the graphics part. For those that purchased the game for a platform and not pc, then the graphics you get are the best available. I look forward to the DLC RTO and future DLC, as well as the expansion.

[Chokra Broodslayer]

mahi0 wrote...

is there any link to download wardans keep & stone prisoner. Please let me know if it is.

Stone Prisoner should be free with the Collector's Edition and certain pre-orders -- you get a code in your DVD case for the game. If you got the Blood Dragon Armor card (flip it over), the code for the Stone Prisoner is on the other side.

If you hover your mouse over "Games" up above in this forum then down to "Dragon Age Origins" then move over to "website." The "Official DLC" link hasn't worked for months. Not sure what's up with that. So you click on that "website" link instead. Then over on the lower right, there's an ad (currently) for the xbox avatar stuff for Dragon Age -- click on that and it will take you to the add-on page. You can look through that at all the add-ons like Warden's Keep, and some of the bonus items like the Blood Dragon Armor. There are also links there to purchase BioWare points.

You can also purchase the items in the game client by selecting "downloadable content" and downloading there (if you have already purchased BioWare points).

[Dragon Age1103]

Kjellan wrote...

Abriael_CG wrote...

Suit yourself.

Luckily the market isn't dictated by silly gamers with an humongous sense of entitlement to play more for less.
Otherwise there would NOT be a gaming market.

Let me help you to understand how the gaming market -really- works these days:

First of all, mega-publishers like EA and ActiVision have swallowed up every decent independent studio that ever existed, it seems... adding them to their ever-growing kennel of devs and keeping them on a short leash.

Meanwhile, we have all been spending the past decade being systematically conditioned to expect mediocrity as the norm. In that way, all of our expectations have been gradually lowered. In my opinion, this has been by design.

So when a game that doesn't totally suck comes along, suddenly everyone is behaving like well-programmed consumers. They're leaping all over it like rabid, gushing fanboys... as if this game were the greatest thing to have ever happened in their lives.

This is precisely what the talentless suits at EA want you to do and that's why they're all reading this thread and winking at each other. And that's why they can get away with serializing a game like DA:O...  and get away with charging everyone full price for an incomplete product. They have rightly deduced that most of you will be so eager to pay extra for a game that doesn't totally suck rancid monkey nuts, that you will happily fork over a fat chunk of your salary to play a so-so game that most of you will completely forget about within six months.

Let's try to get this into perspective here. There is nothing amazing or special about Dragon Age. Let's get that fact clear, shall we..? It's a formulaic RPG, period. It has nice graphics. It has decent voice acting. But so what..? Shouldn't the goal of ANY studio be to produce games of high quality..? Why do they feel entitled to be paid an exhorbitant amount of extra money simply for DOING A GOOD JOB...?

Let's try a couple of analogies...

When you go to the movies, would you be willing to pay twice the normal ticket price to see a film, simply because it didn't suck..? Of course not... because you would have every right to expect that the eight bucks or whatever that you are paying should be more than enough price to see a decent movie.

And when you buy a new car and pay full sticker price for it, would you be outraged if the dealer then turned around and informed you that the steering wheel was not included for the premium price that you just paid..? After all.. the car still works without the steering wheel. It's just not very easy to turn corners that way. But hey... if you pay him an additional 40 bucks, then the dealer will be more than happy to install a steering wheel for you. After all... you're special.

The point I am making is this: that the game buying public has every right to feel entitled to GET WHAT THEY PAID FOR and NOT BE RIPPED OFF. Dragon Age was released in an incomplete state on purpose, so that EA and BioWare could milk it for every cent that they could squeeze out of you. We're seeing the same sort of greed and lack of ethics that ran Wall Street into the crapper last year... and yet, nobody seems to have learned any lessons.

Be a sheeple if you must. Be a programmed droid who happily pays a premium price for mediocrity, simply because the preponderance of mediocrity these days has brainwashed you into complacency. But I'm old enough to remember a time when MOST games being produced for the PC market were well-written, fairly original and COMPLETE upon release. And if the game happened to be a hit, then maybe we'd get a sequel.

But what we're seeing here is an industry which has learned how to engineer their own "hit status," by hyping the crap out of a new product before we have even determined its staying power. Or ANYTHING else about its merits, for that matter. And as usual... the sheeple are eating it up and even worse, defending the people who are overcharging them.

That's how the market is dictated, folks. By greed, hype, payola scams (//waves at GameSpot) and the dictatorship of forced consumerism. The only way to put a stop to it is for all of us to vote with our wallets. I for one will not be paying another penny to EA... no matter how un-mediocre their next release might be. They simply do not deserve it... and their abysmal track record of studio smashing and blatant greed has made that fact quite clear.

   So...are you like super poor? I was upset they changed it from $30-$40 b/c it started at $30 & there is no reason in hell for something like that to slip by & be posted online.
  You seem to be trying to prove that you're clueless...are you really challenging the price to quality ratio of the expansion...by Bioware I might add. Mass Effect(in my opinion) was the only game that wasn't very high quality.
  Really? Really? That is all that comes to mind...I mean you can't afford $40? You'll miss out on 10 level or more of a ground breaking game's expansion b/c you can't save a dollar a day until 03/16/10???
  I'm so lost "by hyping the crap" ...um marketing? ...have you ever heard of a preview? It builds hype to get people to anticipate the launch of a product so more people by it within the first month, giving the company good numbers.
    I mean do you think throwing in a bunch of big worlds like...(uh Miller was it) said?
Seriously I can't even tell you how lost I am. I mean did you compare buying a car...a $100-$100,000 form of transportation needed to survive in most cultures compared to a hobby? Really?
   lol, I'm sorry anyone who punishes themselves reading this rant but really? lol

[Dragon Age1103]

Kjellan wrote...

Abriael_CG wrote...

Suit yourself.

Luckily the market isn't dictated by silly gamers with an humongous sense of entitlement to play more for less.
Otherwise there would NOT be a gaming market.

Let me help you to understand how the gaming market -really- works these days:

First of all, mega-publishers like EA and ActiVision have swallowed up every decent independent studio that ever existed, it seems... adding them to their ever-growing kennel of devs and keeping them on a short leash.

Meanwhile, we have all been spending the past decade being systematically conditioned to expect mediocrity as the norm. In that way, all of our expectations have been gradually lowered. In my opinion, this has been by design.

So when a game that doesn't totally suck comes along, suddenly everyone is behaving like well-programmed consumers. They're leaping all over it like rabid, gushing fanboys... as if this game were the greatest thing to have ever happened in their lives.

This is precisely what the talentless suits at EA want you to do and that's why they're all reading this thread and winking at each other. And that's why they can get away with serializing a game like DA:O...  and get away with charging everyone full price for an incomplete product. They have rightly deduced that most of you will be so eager to pay extra for a game that doesn't totally suck rancid monkey nuts, that you will happily fork over a fat chunk of your salary to play a so-so game that most of you will completely forget about within six months.

Let's try to get this into perspective here. There is nothing amazing or special about Dragon Age. Let's get that fact clear, shall we..? It's a formulaic RPG, period. It has nice graphics. It has decent voice acting. But so what..? Shouldn't the goal of ANY studio be to produce games of high quality..? Why do they feel entitled to be paid an exhorbitant amount of extra money simply for DOING A GOOD JOB...?

Let's try a couple of analogies...

When you go to the movies, would you be willing to pay twice the normal ticket price to see a film, simply because it didn't suck..? Of course not... because you would have every right to expect that the eight bucks or whatever that you are paying should be more than enough price to see a decent movie.

And when you buy a new car and pay full sticker price for it, would you be outraged if the dealer then turned around and informed you that the steering wheel was not included for the premium price that you just paid..? After all.. the car still works without the steering wheel. It's just not very easy to turn corners that way. But hey... if you pay him an additional 40 bucks, then the dealer will be more than happy to install a steering wheel for you. After all... you're special.

The point I am making is this: that the game buying public has every right to feel entitled to GET WHAT THEY PAID FOR and NOT BE RIPPED OFF. Dragon Age was released in an incomplete state on purpose, so that EA and BioWare could milk it for every cent that they could squeeze out of you. We're seeing the same sort of greed and lack of ethics that ran Wall Street into the crapper last year... and yet, nobody seems to have learned any lessons.

Be a sheeple if you must. Be a programmed droid who happily pays a premium price for mediocrity, simply because the preponderance of mediocrity these days has brainwashed you into complacency. But I'm old enough to remember a time when MOST games being produced for the PC market were well-written, fairly original and COMPLETE upon release. And if the game happened to be a hit, then maybe we'd get a sequel.

But what we're seeing here is an industry which has learned how to engineer their own "hit status," by hyping the crap out of a new product before we have even determined its staying power. Or ANYTHING else about its merits, for that matter. And as usual... the sheeple are eating it up and even worse, defending the people who are overcharging them.

That's how the market is dictated, folks. By greed, hype, payola scams (//waves at GameSpot) and the dictatorship of forced consumerism. The only way to put a stop to it is for all of us to vote with our wallets. I for one will not be paying another penny to EA... no matter how un-mediocre their next release might be. They simply do not deserve it... and their abysmal track record of studio smashing and blatant greed has made that fact quite clear.

    Also, I'm not too sure if you can hear me all the way up there. (on your high horse bud) But I just wanted to say thanks for taking time out of your day to grace us with your presence. I'm sure you're busy watching the stock market...amking calls...guide others...thank you for sharing your wisdom is what I am getting at!!!!!

[Dragon Age1103]

Digital Freak wrote...

Welcome to the new Bioware... EA's b!tch.  No way in hell am I paying $40 for an expansion pack. 

On a side note, I picked up Mass Effect for $4.99 during the holiday sale on Steam.  MUCH better game than DAO in all aspects.  Why does a 3 year old game have much better graphics than one that was released 2 months ago?

   HAHAHAHAH that was a good one, thanks!

[bjdbwea]

Kjellan wrote...

When you go to the movies, would you be willing to pay twice the normal ticket price to see a film, simply because it didn't suck..? Of course not... because you would have every right to expect that the eight bucks or whatever that you are paying should be more than enough price to see a decent movie.

Uh. Unlike others, I actually agree with much of your essay. But that was a bad example. Movie prices have increased more than PC game prices. But the quality of most movies today? Don't get me started. Just like in video games, graphics (visual effects) don't make a good movie. Most of what Hollywood (and the rest of the movie industry) release today is trivial, meaningless mainstream - and indeed, "when a movie that doesn't totally suck comes along, suddenly everyone is behaving like well-programmed consumers" (your words). At least video games haven't started to try and force a political agenda upon us.