Rick wrote:
Since DLC came into our lives, gamer life has been in some sort off turmoil. Nowadays you never know if a game has that full value of an entertaining compelling story that it follows through till the end. Game developers too gladly release DLC with the attachment of “full gaming experience” and tie- in the story that’s not embedded in the game itself on release.
We pay a lot off money on release to see what happens to our favourite characters, only to find out that the story just doesn’t end there.
Compare today's games to the games developers worked on just six years ago when I was at Naughty Dog and the original XBox and PS2 were on the shelf. The scope and scale is almost incomparable! Budgets have doubled at minimum, tripling or more in many cases. Teams have doubled, and outsourcing is a must to keep up with production needs. Projects are taking far longer to complete. Yet the price on the shelf is roughly the same. Taking inflation into account, games may actually be cheaper!
I also fail to see any evidence that developers are removing content from the games they release in order to sell it later. DLC currently sells to a small subset of the gamers playing the full game. To risk bad reviews, a feeling unfulfilled expectations, or other negative response to the full game because important parts of the game were removed would be a bad strategy. It simply isn't being done.
To my knowledge, most DLC content is created after finishing the full game. In other words, if the developers were including the DLC, the games might have to be delayed. If there weren't a possibility of increased revenue from DLC it wouldn't be rolled into the game... it simply wouldn't be done.
Admittedly, there is certainly some strategy being deployed in creating plot "holes" and other opportunities to work the DLC into the game's universe. But again, I don't see this as a strategy to decrease the value proposition of the full game so much as create an opportunity for the DLC to make sense in the universe the game plays in. "I didn't get the full story" is about as fair a complaint for DLC as it is for sequels. The Death Star was destroyed, how dare George Lucas build it again... over 2 movies no less... and make me pay for two more tickets to get the complete story!
And there are cases of truly inspired DLC that obviously are wholly new experiences. I submit the Red Dead Redemption's Zombie expansion as an example of this.
As I responded to Rick:
DLC itself is not causing the problem. Certainly we can imagine a world in which every game fully completes the story and DLC is just added on top. Think the Zombie addition to Red Dead Redemption. That was clearly an optional add-on and not a plot addition. So if DLC is being abused then that is a decision of the game creators. In this case you are correct that gamer revolt (not buying DLC) is a fair response. I am pro-market. If you feel you are being ripped off, then don't buy. At the price offered, I thought the Zombie addition to Red Dead was a GREAT deal, and a wonderful way to get more of a game I loved.
I don't think on average Games are being shortened by DLC. If anything, games are getting bigger, longer, and fuller. You now often get a full 1 player game, multiplayer, and co-op for a single price. That almost NEVER happened in the old days. Having said that, development times are getting longer. So Naughty Dog used to be able to put out a game a year during Crash. Then Jak became a 2 year production. Though after I left Naughty Dog remained one of the most efficient devs out there, maintaining 2 year cycles, most other teams (especially Take 2 and RockStar) moved to 3 year or more cycles. As a fan of a game it sucks to wait 3 years for a sequel. DLC keeps the game fresh during that time. Without DLC, single team development (not like COD with multiple teams working on every other project) becomes a waiting game.
If you don't like DLC, don't buy it. But I fail to understand the agony.
Jason
Hi Jason. I really enjoyed your interview @ EBA and I'm really glad some people, like yourself, have a very sober point of view on the topic of DLC. Yet, there are some caveats to this issue.
ReplyDeleteI remember sitting down to play one of my first PS games, Crash Bandicoot 2 and enjoying it a lot. It was a fun little game that I still put into my PS2 machine (and to this day, I still think the best Crash game). Anyway, the game wasn't just about the content. It was about having fun and the fact that the game can stand up to the games of the current generation is a testament to you (and your team's hard work). Today, I feel like some games are manufactured like on treadmill. There are many examples of this and thus people might feel they are just getting bled for their money.
In general, I love the idea of DLC. I have bought several and enjoyed them a lot. I never felt I was being bled for money or purchasing something, which was taken out of the core experience. However, there is one game, which HAS taken out core gameplay at the expense of the players: Mafia II.
I am from the Slovak Republic and when the first Mafia game came out, Many Slovaks and Czechs were fairly proud of having a triple-A developer (Illussion Softworks), which was publishing on the PC, Xbox and PS2. Well, that was 2002/2003. It wasn't until this year that we finally got Mafia II, and oh boy were we disappointed. The game was just a linear progression of missions, which took about 8 hours to complete on Hard difficulty. New characters were being introduced in almost every missions and often, the player never revisited in the storyline. If the player approached one of these characters, the NPC would just said he had no missions available. The same goes for the telephones in all the apartments. There's obviously an interface to call people but there's nobody to call.
In a recent open panel at a small game convention here in Slovakia (NextGen expo), one of the developers mentioned, they had been working for several years on a sequel with the Criterion's RenderWare; however, when Criterion was purchased by EA, they lost the rights and had to restart from beginning with a new engine. It wasn't clear why they lost the rights; however, at that time they also had to deal with the upcoming Xbox 360 and PS3, which RenderWare wasn't optimized for. I asked why they didn't license the Unreal Engine and he said there was a fear of losing the rights like with RenderWare.
In conclusion, I understand that 2K took a huge bet by funding a really complicated project and financing it for a long time. I also really appreciate that they managed to sell an actual product. I enjoyed about 2 hours of those 8 hours (driving around the city) I spent playing the game; however, by the end I felt cheated. I felt like I got an unfinished product. If the game wasn't released when it wasn't, I probably wouldn't have played it at all ... but yet, I still feel cheated :(
Marcel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Crash Support! I loved working on those games and am always happy to hear from someone who enjoyed them.
With regards to Mafia II, I appreciate your frustration. I have not played the game, but I understand that your displeasure is shared by many (if not most) people who have played it.
Game making is hard work. And there are a lot of uncontrollable variables. It sounds like the development team got very unlucky with regards to their engine license. Now that Mafia II is behind them they have a clean slate. I wish them the best going forward.
I think there are more efficient pricing mechanisms that benefit gamers and creators, but there will always be moments in which the player holds their noses and feels like they were taken - even if they have only invested time, and haven't spent any money!
We would all like to see that happen less.
Jason
Very well written Jason!! I agree game development has become far more expensive and requires more resources to complete.
ReplyDeleteI'm also a huge fan of the Crash Bandicoot games from the Playstation some of my all-time favorites. I also would agree DLC has extended many of my favorite games such as Mass Effect 2 and Alan Wake with longer story and more overall content to experience.
There is some DLC that is better than others but as you mentioned at the end of the day you decide whether to buy it or not.
Thanks for the great games at Naughty Dog!!
Dakinggamer
ReplyDeleteThanks for your support!
Jason
Mr. Rubin I'm a Crash Bandicoot fan, and I really like the first 4 game that you and Naughty Dog developed.
ReplyDeleteI want to ask you what do you think about the Crash bandicoot games after you sold the rights?
Hi Jason,
ReplyDeleteBig fan here. Crash Bandicoot was a fantastic game, and Jak and Daxter blew me away on so many levels. I was all over the recent blogposts that you and Andy did over on his blog.
I only just recently listened to the Epic Battle Axe podcast, and your thoughts are very well thought out and insightful. So I was hoping I could pick your brains on 2 topics: DLC and Digital Distribution.
DLC - I definitely agree with you on the fact that DLC is adding so much more, especially since games are much bigger, offer far more replayability and DLC helps keep the disc in the console longer. Red Dead Redemption lived in my PS3 for about 2 months, and then it lived in there for about a bother 2 months when the Undead Nightmare Pack came out. So I definitely agree about DLC in that respect.
What I wanted to know is what your opinion on on Console exclusive content? Stuff like playing as the Joker on the PS3 only with Arkham Asylum. How CoD and Fallout release their DLC a month before PS3 and PC? Instead of MS and Sony trying to grab exclusives, I feel more and more that we are heading towards the path that there will be 2 types of games - console exclusives that are generally developed by first party studios, and multiplatform titles that will have some DLC tied to a particular platform in a specific way. Your thoughts?
Secondly, Digital Distribution. I agree with your thoughts on the podcast that the next generation (next next gen, or whatever they call it) of consoles will be when Sony and MS really start to make the push for PSN and XBLM and will likely take over retail sales, but will Digital Distribution ever fully take over and kill off the disc? For me, I always prefer to have a physical copy. One that I have to keep, to show off in my collection (I have all the Naughty Dog games and a sweet Jak II statue :). But at the same time, I haven't bought a PC game in over 5 years. Steam is just so easy, so manageable and convenient, but there is the knowledge that I'm not actually buying those games: I'm buying the right to play them. If for some reason my Steam account is banned, I lose all my games. But are they my games? I wouldn't say they are. So I feel we are starting to head towards a future where retail discs die out, and we'll have subscriptions, similar to OnLive (minus the play over the internet thing). And this is a future I really don't like. I want to own my games. *I* want to own it. I want dust building up on its case, I want to lend it to my friend if he/she wants to try it out, I want to be the physical owner of it. Anyway. Rant over. What do you personally prefer, a digital game or a case, manual and disc? Do you think subscriptions will take over the model for digital distribution?
I'd love to hear what you say. Also, because you very clearly voice out your thoughts and present a fairly compelling argument, you should totally do an Irrational Interviews podcast with Ken Levine. That, I'd love to hear!
Cheers,
Randeep
Randeep,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your support!
I don't know what to say about console specific content. While I certainly understand the eco-system, and how the publishers and console manufacturers use it in trade, I don't know that it makes much of a difference in the grander scheme of things for gamers. It seems like more inefficiency is caused by the lack of porting good content to all available platforms than is offset by the "decision changer" in terms of purchasing one console or the other. And in cases when both major platforms get their own exclusive content it seems like a distinction without a difference. In any event, it is well within the rights of the publishers and hardware manufacturers to keep negotiating console specific content, so I imagine that it will continue to happen whether it makes real sense or not.
In the long run that the disc will indeed be phased out. The Disk Drive went. The CD/DVD drive is on the way out (look at the latest Mac Airs). In the "long run" the Console disc will die. I cannot predict when this will happen, it could be a decade or more, but I am comfortable saying that it will.
I understand your fears and concerns regarding digital downloads vs. hard copies as well. There will always be pros and cons associated with changes in distribution.
I am old enough to remember having the same type of discussions with people who couldn't imagine living without cartridges. Their arguments most often included the better "weight and feel" of cartridges, the fact that the boxes could be read better when stacked vertically (thickness), and the fact that they couldn't scratch. I know this sounds silly now, but back then it was all important to them.
The scratching commentary regarding CD's is relevant here. Digital downloads don't scratch. Nor can they be stolen by a burglar. My entire CD and game collection was stolen in college. I haven't forgotten the pain of paying to replace them.
Your fears about distributors going out of business are fair. But I believe that is less likely than the cumulative odds of flood, fire, theft, scratching, loss, angry girlfriends, dogs, etc. on your hard copy collection. And I think things can be done to make the digital stores even safer for customers in the long run.
And in the long run, I think digital distribution will allow different pricing platforms that make "loaning" a thing of the past. Ownership of titles will move to ownership of your characters and personal content. You would never loan someone Farmville because they can just play it for free. Nor would you loan Angry Birds. They can download the free copy, and buy the ad-free version if they like. There is no reason to believe that a lot of game content won't go in similar directions. When distribution becomes next to free (bandwidth costs alone), publishers will be more willing to give players a chance to taste the games before buying. So loaning won't matter.
We all suffer from what economists call Familiarity Bias: a strong tendency to prefer what we know. The arguments that you are making are all against change and new, unknown things. There ARE arguments in favor of change, like the fact that digital downloads can't be broken or stolen, or that games might become easier to try for free, but they are harder for us to imagine and believe in because we have little experience with a future that doesn't exist yet.
There were people just about marching in the street in defense of the record against the tape and CD. Sure, you may know someone that uses records still, but you know they are just old school (and a little crazy - the things hiss like a gas leak). In the same way, you might miss the Disc when it goes, and fight for it to stay. But your kids won't care, won't miss the disc, and will likely think we were all crazy for driving somewhere to get a copy of what can be played immediately from the comfort of home.
Jason