Allan Schumacher wrote...
I don't think it does, the whole pretense for "Day one DLC wasn't cut content" relies on the validation cycle of the platform owners. Without that delay, with a release structure such as that for the PC, this becomes a much more clear picture. Day 1 DLC would still be present, because it's a revenue initiative to stealth the price of the game up another $10, but it would lack the excuse of "These people would be idle for 3 months", and so be very obvious what the intent is.
For people who are aware of how the Industry has operated over the years, it's obvious that's what is happening even with the excuse. The old way of creating games was that pre-production would start on the next title ~6-9 months prior to release, and when the team was winding down, those people would be moved over to ramp up production on the next title. We can see this outlined in the Torment Kickstarter where Fargo talks at length about how they could do two at once.
DLC in general is a form of risk mitigation in leveraging an existing title for additional revenues with lesser overall costs compared to a full game. We could transition our teams over onto a new project, but that comes at the opportunity cost of providing content for the current game through post release content for it. I don't think it comes at a huge surprise, but DLC is created in large part to help make money.
What Fargo did with his team was take his current staffers, and rather than get funding to work on DLC, he got funding to work on a different game. Both solutions are viable, and both are done to ensure staff isn't sitting idle.
As for the "cut content" perspective, doing what you suggest would simply mean that instead of From Ashes existing and being released at Day One, some other project would have been worked on instead. If DLC (as in the incremental updates) didn't exist at all, post release content would either need to be packaged as an expansion pack.
I think a better example would probably be Tales of the Sword Coast for Baldur's Gate. Instead of sitting idle, they started their work on Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. In it, they were able to bring back in a lot of cut content since those ideas were already in place, and they were delivered as an expansion pack. Alternatively, had a DLC model existed back then, it may have been possible to split the Tales of Sword Coast expansion pack into smaller deliverables, which would have meant that some of the content would have been delivered sooner (perhaps even day one, perhaps not).
I understand what you're saying, and I'm not saying you're a liar, but I'm having a difficult time with your assertion on From Ashes.
The reason I'm having a difficult time with it is because Prothy has a fair amount of dialogue, a fair portion of which is active banter between NPC's, which indicates that the character made it through pre-production intact, and through voice recordings, so it was in a advanced stage of development. While I don't know what happened, I find it difficult to believe that EA brought back most/all of the cast to do more voice recordings late in development just to implement banter. This is highly indicative of content that was in an advanced stage of development at the very least in parallel with the main game. As such, it would be strange to me that the decision was made to cut content that already had one of it's largest expenses paid for. It strongly telegraphs to me that Prothy was cut for the specific intention of selling him alongside the main product for an extra $10, *especially* since he's the only non-recurring character that could sell Day 1 DLC, as he's instrumental to the lore.
I am asserting that it would be better to move those people to a different project. The industry is horribly, horribly, stagnant right now. The majority of games are just endless sequels of something that sold well, and most of them are gravitating towards pure shooter mechanics, with the bulk of the remainder gravitating towards action-adventure.
Regardless, you can see my problem here. EA asserts that this was something they came up with in the validation period, but I'm sitting here looking at content that clearly has a high level of interaction with things that were supposedly completed, locked down, and voice recording that would have required the entire cast to return. From my perspective, what I see says "Cut Content to sell as DLC".
Keep in mind, this isn't my first experience with EA's DLC policies. I spent $80 on the Dead Space 2 Collectors Edition for the PC, to get home and find out that half of the doors in my Collectors Edition game were permanently locked because I hadn't bought a pre-launch DLC that wasn't available on the PC. So I have a really hard time believing EA wouldn't find another way to hold content hostage.
Again, I'm not calling you a liar. I'm just wondering if the executives who make decisions aren't deciding something is "Cut content" and "Could be a DLC" based on their ability to sell it as a DLC on day 1. Because I can easily see them reaching a point where they can't complete everything on schedule, deciding something needs cut, and then instead of cutting the character least important to the story, cutting the character most likely to sell as Day 1 DLC. At that point, we're no longer talking about "Cut content that wouldn't see the light of day" as the Industry generally asserts, we're talking about content that was specifically cut for it's ability to sell as DLC.
Modifié par Gatt9, 12 avril 2013 - 01:50 .
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