Hate for DLC has gone too far

I know exactly the reason why many people perceive DLC to be a bad thing, particularly due to some companies producing a lot of meaningless DLC to squeeze money out of consumers, but look at the bright side of DLC: it allows studios to work on content that they can put later in the game after they've completed it.

I've always feared that eventually the whining about DLC would scare off a developer from making it regardless of it being a good idea or not, and sure enough, it has happened in what is probably the series that would benefit from it the most:

Do you think we can take this message and soften our stance towards DLC?

edited 25th Nov '14 10:38:19 AM by WaxingName

I'm okay with DLC when it is done right.

I just don't like when they take something out of the game to release it as DLC or charge money for something that should be free like costume for a character.

When DLC is handled like expansion packs where it adds significantly to the game then I'm all for it.

A bit...complain-y...about complaining...

I think it's helpful to distinguish between kinds of DLC. For example, Civilization V has DLC in two flavors.

Flavor one: Gods and Kings and Brave New World, which are basically the digital equivalent of a full-fledged expansion pack.

Flavor two: You get a new Civ or map to play for five dollars.

Flavor two is kind of problematic, particularly when it comes to nickel-and-diming. I'm personally willing to cut Civ V some slack, however, because it gives you the nice option to buy all the DLC with the game at a reduced price, and because I like Civ V so much. I take more issue with something like Painkiller: Hell & Damnation.

Also, Nintendo making Mewtwo available for free is a great move, on their part. It'll win them a great deal of goodwill from the player base, similar to Valve and CD Projeckt Red.

edited 25th Nov '14 11:05:28 AM by Pannic

@Pannic: A more positive example of #2 would be Street Fighter's DLC costumes. Everybody loves those, you look so pretty.

Oh yeah, cosmetic stuff. Cosmetic stuff isn't really a problem, either, in my opinion.

People just don't like it when they feel like the game had content cut so they could squeeze money from DLC. See, for example, Capcom's "on-disc" DLC, where they are, in the view of consumers, selling a code to unlock material that's right there on the disc.

Though I think Total Biscuit once raised a good point about DLC (in relation to the used games market) in that video games tend to only have one revenue stream - the initial sale of the game - as opposed to other media like films, which have the initial theatrical release, then home video sales, then they get royalties from tv broadcasts, etc etc. Paid DLC and online passes are just games trying to get additional revenue streams.

The thing about cutting stuff out of the game to sell later as DLC is that it's not always so easy to determine when that happens. Every game has a lot of stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor. In Dark Souls 1 pretty much everything new in the DLC was stuff they originally planned to have in the game but simply didn't have time to include due to the fact they needed to rush towards the end to get the game out on time. If the team has a lot of cool ideas they didn't get to implement, i think dlc is fine. without it, you wouldn't get to experience that stuff anyway.

Mewtwo won't be that free. You need both consoles for it.

Still, it's a step in the right direction.

There's also misconceptions about Day 1 DLC. Sometimes it genuinely is cut stuff, but other times the dev team just decided to get to work on some additional stuff after the game went gold. Like there's time between a game going gold and then there's all the marketing, and then the game actually being in stores.

For the record, it's just paid DLC if you only have one of the consoles.

edited 25th Nov '14 11:28:13 AM by Marioguy128

Extra Credits goes into that pretty closely.

This has only been raised because Nintendo started doing and it has an overly defensive fan base who think if people bash the company too much it will go under or something.

I'd only say DLC hate goes too far in that it is hardly the only frivolous gimmick in video games today.

There is One Game for the Price of Two, a field Nintendo pioneered in and has shown no signs in slowing down in, though they have gotten slightly less obnoxious about it over the years.

"HD" was started by the monkeys we call Congress demanding every television receive a "digital" signal but that doesn't excuse a system costing in excess of 300 USD for what basically amounts to "The picture looks better on a wider screen." That hardly sounds like an "innovation" worthy of a 100 USD hike. At least DLC add something new, in theory.

That action figure trend I think Activision Spyro the Dragon started? It used to be new peripherals added new controls, new ways to actually interface with the game. At least downloadable content...well I actually don't think it is any better or worse but it's still hardly the only trend of its kind.

Predating all of this is Capcom Sequel Stagnation, which really speaks for itself.

In that context, Downloadable Content gets too much hate. But why not make a wider variety games, cheaper games with differing game play at a lower cost and a higher frequency? How about games that focus more on larger amount of content to interact with instead of larger amounts of pixels and polygons on screen? Games that load faster than a worm infected laptop? Games that move faster, why are the overwhelming majority of my "modern" shooters slower than Doom? Smoke and mirrors. "L" is enough reason to hate "DLC". Download is one word! When did our culture get that stuck on text messages and twitter? Or have we time warped back to the 1930s?

Too much potential for ambiguity and confusion with only two letters?

Another good example of DLC done right: Ace Attorney Dual Destinies.

Hey, I bought DLC way before it was cool. Only PC and Xbox DLC though, so far.

Why does it have to be an acronym? If your service is really too stretched for you to type word "download", why should you be trusted with the 60 USD you expect for your product, much less whatever else "DLC" costs?

If your service is twitter, it can be forgiven but common lexicon can't be. I get enough inane acronyms from Professional Wrestling, but at least most of those companies don't have grand delusions about what they are. The video game industry is nowhere near as fresh, inclusive, innovate, artistic or mature as claimed. I play console games, very much enjoy them. But I get sick of apologetic rhetoric in defense of their flaws, "DLC" practically being a culture of its own, rather than an occasional perk is very much one of those flaws.

I see no reason that typing out an entire word is better when the acronym is understood by all relevant parties, easier to type, and has no downsides.

Anyways: People who hate DLC as a concept are plain wrong. Content, that may even be free, that was given extra to a game one already owns can't be an inherently bad thing.

On-disc DLC you have to buy? Bad. Extra content you don't need? No downsides.

Little-to-no-tolerance.

For a moment I thought this was leading to "well, some idiot decided to threaten a game developer if he/she released DLC". But this is about a developer making a conscious choice not to make DLC based on his own observation of gaming culture.

Even if he had been threatened, this isn't the first time I've read about a game developer/director supposedly being threatened for making a decision about their game, and as far as the internet has made me aware, no game director has been attacked by a fan/hater because they decided to "nerf Metaknight" or "make Mewtwo DLC".

He made a directorial decision because of potential criticism. Should we soften all criticism, then? Potential criticism doesn't stop a game from selling - this was Sakurai's choice. He could still release DLC regardless of what the Vocal Minority says about it. I don't think that's any reason to bend our highly advanced, evidently game development-influencing, digital complaint system.

On top of that, Sakurai's already proven to be quite the rebel: eschewing a story mode due to people uploading said mode on the net, which according to him, corrupts the integrity of the mode. Not only that, the internet's been pouring sympathy on him because, according to some of his interviews, he's been testing Smash Bros at the expense of his own health (a la, the "Jesus died for our sins/Sakurai died for your game balance" meme that's been making the rounds on Tumblr). The man, despite his ingenuity and fame, has made some questionable decisions in regards to game development.

So Sakurai making another decision that affects the features of a game, included from release or otherwise, really doesn't tell me, "We're being too harsh with our criticism, we're drastically altering how game directors think." There's no gun to Sakurai's head.

edited 25th Nov '14 5:33:37 PM by FOFD

....huh?

Why should I trust you when you can't even spell out "United States Dollars"?

"DL" was an established abreviation of "download" well before DLC was established jargon, I'm pretty sure.

And actually, I think there's a valid concearn about having paid DLC characters/arenas in a game like Smash Brothers. Someone mentioning Totalbiscuit reminded me of what he usualy said when complaining about paid map DLC for shooter games: the claim is that it "splits the community". Depending on how it's done, people that don't buy the DLC may not be able to play games against people who have.

Not much you can do about splitting the community in shooters and racers as long as the business wants to encourage buying the DLC. Though it does mean the company really shouldn't release too many different DLC packs a game. I think Mario Kart 8 handles it fine, letting you choose which combination of packs to join in case not enough people buy the DLC.

United States Dollar is three words, three letters in USD. Other countries have dollars too. Should I have just highlighted "joking mode" and dropped it? Eh perhaps. But I didn't say "acronyms are bad", I said "inane acronyms". More hypocritical of me is using USA, which should be USOA, but then the name of the nation doesn't make sense anyway.

USA's still a better acronym than DLC though, especially since "DL" is short for something completely different that predates computers altogether.

Can we drop the semantics derail? As fascinating as the discussion of whether it should be "DLC" or "DC" is, it's not the topic of this thread.

No one is "right"...ifs not even a big deal. Why make it one?

Besides, everyone knows it shouldn't be DC, it should be Marvel

Well, Nintendo's DLC I don't worry about, since Mario Kart 8 has been awesome. It's other companies I don't trust.