It’s all about the cha-ching, cha-ching

So, the release date of the game you have been waiting months for is finally upon you.  You take your hard earned cash with you, maybe a trade in or two and you head to your local gaming emporium to purchase your new favourite game.  After handing over your wonga you skip merrily out of the shop and head home to fire up the shiny disc of delights.  Shaking off the weather you make a bee line for your console, take your game out the bag, rip off the cellophane and slip the disc into your chosen gaming portal.  Before you start the game you have a look at what new things are available to download and at this point you feel a strange sensation.  The sensation is like a huge force pushing upon you, at first it gravitates you towards a table, then, without hesitation, it bends you over and rams it right up you!  A sensation I’m sure all gamers are familiar with, but what would cause this to happen at this exact point in time?

We’ve all seen it, browsing the marketplace for  something new and you come across new content for the game you’ve just bought.  In some cases the content is slipped up for purchase before the game is in the shops.  So you are then stuck with a dilemma, do you ignore the extra content or do you purchase it in case it takes something away from the overall game?  The problems and implications of these day one downloads are many fold and in many ways, wrong, but not without merits.  First up, let’s have a quick look at why these items of extra content are wrong.  I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that it looks like we are being fleeced over by the publishers before we’ve even played the game.  If you’ve just paid full price for a game the last thing you want to do is fork out another ten quid or so on more content.  Why wasn’t all this stuff included on the disc?  To be honest, I can’t answer that question, it perplexes me just as much.  Games generally are  manufactured a month or so before release so there is plenty of time to include the extras that have to go through a certification process to be put up for download.  It therefore looks like a pure money making process, some games that start out at £40 can end up costing nearly twice as much if you include the extra content.   Games like Yoostar 2 and Lips and of course any music game have had a wealth of extra content up on a regular basis that would bankrupt most gamers if they bought it all.

Of course, these items of extra content can also be a good thing when it comes to expanding the longevity of a game.  Extra maps, songs, tracks, vehicles or whatever the content may be, can bring new legs to a tired game.  I think the secret here, though, is to drip feed the content with longer intervals between releases, something the Call of Duty games do well.  This allows us time to get used to and ultimately familiar/fed up with the content, so we are ready for new content.  Another game which got this right was LA Noire, here you paid once for the Rockstar pass and the content that was put up was, in effect, free.  You never felt you were being overcharged and it added some longevity to the, already long, game.   Of course there is still an issue with the pricing of all theses add ons, some seem reasonably fair while others are just plain extortionate.  Over £10 is a bit steep for five new maps, but less than £9 seems quite reasonable for new cases and scenarios.  The decision comes down to how passionate you are about the games.

Of course there are several stings in the tail with all this downloadable content.  The most noticeable is with map packs, where if you don’t have the maps you can’t play with those who do.  This can be a total pain in the arse when it divides the people playing. Of course the decent people will still play the old maps with you, but if they’ve paid for the new ones, you know that’s where they’d rather be.  Some games allow you to buy maxed out characters from the get go which gives a hugely unfair advantage over others.  Basically, extra content makes the playing field a bit of a minefield instead of a level surface.  There is, of course; the holy grail, where the extra content is free and available to all, but it happens so rarely that it’s almost unheard of.  The upshot is that we should all boycott day one extra content.  If the publishers can’t be arsed to put it on the disc then we should show our disdain by not buying it!  I dare you to find the game you’ve bought the most add ons for and work out how much the whole package has now cost you.  You will be shocked.