AMT: Why Was 2013 a Terrible Year for Videogames? Part Two

Then there’s the issue of DLC, a term that, once exciting, now conjures up a slew of negative connotations. Remember the good old days of ‘expansion packs’, when a few years after the vanilla game released, you’d spend £20 for new levels, new characters and new items? Me neither. Nowadays DLC means multiple, pricey ‘micro-transactions’ that add little to the game or even worse, unlocking rewards you get for actually playing the game.

Battlefield is especially bad for this, giving you the option to spend real money to unlock every piece of equipment of a certain class so you don’t have to unlock it yourself. The most-recent contender for the most blatantly anti-consumer DLC, however, has to be Forza 5, where you can either grind (remember when that used to be a dirty word?) over 500 hours to unlock the most powerful car in the game or simply pay a mind-blowing £32.50 to unlock it straight off the bat. Remember when you used to buy a game and actually had full access to all of its features from the off? Now it feels like in order to get the most from a game, you have no way to do so without constantly digging into your wallet.

The fact that games are released with DLC in mind and offering ‘season passes’ for items that you know nothing about is additionally abhorrent. Despite the fact that it was a mechanically mediocre title, I rather enjoyed Bioshock Infinite and, despite the risk, decided to invest in the season pass. It was a huge mistake, as Burial at Sea, despite its initial promise, turned out to be a lacklustre, boring and unforgivably short exercise in how to execute a fantastic idea poorly. It was a waste of money and I’ll never be investing in a season pass again, no matter how much I may like the original title.

And then you get the odd case where not playing the DLC becomes an active barrier to entry to a title’s story. Take Mass Effect 3, for instance, where a character’s backstory is spoiled and made confusing for people that hadn’t forked over for the story that featured them in the previous title. It’s admittedly a great piece of content, but should you have to pay extra to experience something that’s so vital to the fantastic backstory of the universe the characters inhabit? The only company that seems to be doing it right these days is Rockstar, made evident by its expansions (in the truest sense of the word) to Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption, a trend that will hopefully continue with GTA V.

It’s not just me, either: other people have noticed the cynical and exploitative direction the videogames industry has taken. Friends tell me how rubbish the latest big releases they’ve bought at full price have been, threads on the internet about the next upcoming videogame crash are hot topics and the Bit Socket Boys made a video about the potential disturbing future dystopia of videogaming.

Don’t get me wrong, there were a few fantastic games released this year, such as the sublime reboot of Tomb Raider and the deliciously metafictional The Stanley Parable, but these titles were sparse diamonds in the rough of money-spinning mediocrity. It really says something when it came time to vote on our Games of the Year, I discovered I’d only actually played about four releases from 2013. It’s even worse when some of the most fun you’ve had in the year has come from replays of the Mass Effect trilogy and Postal 2.

I still like videogaming, but I’ve fallen out of love with it. I still think there’s hope for the state of the industry to improve its practises, take consumer reception on board and do away with the greed and cynicism that currently permeates it, but not until a massive change has come about.

I guess all I can do until then is see what 2014 has in store for us and hope that Dead Rising 3 will eventually make its way to Steam. A boy can dream…