And by the same token, arguing that there's a line where people will no longer be willing to pay isn't conjecture either.
Obviously there will also be a line where people aren't willing to pay. I simply believe that line will be much further out than is reasonable for many aforementioned reasons. Saying that people will suddenly stop at a reasonable distance is, in my estimation, kind of a unworthy assumption.
No, it's illegitimate for two reasons; the first being that there are examples where people haven't stood for it and the company has changed their mind and second because you're making a huge leap from people paying $10 for content created 5 months after the game was released to a situation where you're constantly forced to drop $60 on a game and then pay another bill just to make it playable or 'worth it'. That argument basically leaps from premise to conclusion without taking into account how unrealistic it is to get there and ignores the very valid middle point of buying a game because you think it's worth it in the first place and then later deciding that you're willing to drop some more money on it because you enjoy it.
We're *talking* about leaps from one extreme to the other. I'm not saying I think this will happen within two days, or that middle ground will simply cease to exist, or that there won't be any other options available to players who don't want to pay extra money; I'm saying I think it's going to be a very prominent model in the future that I and a lot of other people will want no part of. I'm not even saying it's an unnatural flow of the market, I'm just saying I think it's going to happen and when it does I won't like it. Of course I believe in the valid middle point of buying a game because it's worth it then later dropping a few more bucks to get new stuff. It's called an expansion pack and has been done for years, and now those expansions are coming in smaller drops over long periods of time. The difference is I don't like the way that works either in timeframe or having to spend small fractions of money over and over again, I don't like games being split up just so more content can be sold at a higher cost, and that I think a lot of DLC is a bad value and will get to be an even worse value moving forward as publishers realize how much people are willing to pay. I'm not ignoring anything, I think you're just arguing semantics.
Where I percieve the elitist attitude coming in is where you start claiming people are idiots because they're dropping down $10 (again, nothing) on four mp maps they think they'll enjoy.
Well, keep in mind I never even stated that I think $10 for 4 maps makes anyone an idiot. Personally I think it's stupid and way too expensive, but as I said in that very same post, I come from the background of FPS maps costing nothing and being completely awesome as well as in large quantity. But the
Quake 2 days these aren't, in part due to the technology increase where it's hard to make great maps that look as good as the stuff a developer releases, so... yeah. My retyped quote from Ghandi before was just to be funny. Don't mistake my doomsday prophecies for being a commentary on current stuff. I don't think we're there yet, I just think supporting efforts like this will lead us there much more quickly than people seem to think.
And I don't think $10 is nothing. Sure, for one game it isn't much, but what happens when you buy 5 games that all have DLC you want and you have to spend more than the price of another game to get all that stuff? This is the problem. People like me want a complete game experience, but we also buy a lot of games. People like you don't buy that many, and chances are you won't buy DLC even if it's available for the games you do buy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't seem to play many PC games (I think you've said you have an aging rig), and you don't own a 360, Wii, or PS3 that I'm aware of, which means you've never really even had the opportunity to buy DLC (or play a game where you could easily see that the DLC should have been included with the game in the first place).
The makers of CoD tried to sell maps for $2.50 and it worked out for them. Generally everyone was happy. Sony tried to sell GTHD as an empty disk and an engine and people didn't stand for it. Chances are things will end up somewhere in the middle with games being released and then supported for a few months after. People are already starting to check into it and find out if unlocked content is on the disk or not and that level of awareness is a good sign for the future.
But Sony might be able to sell something along the lines of
GTHD later on with less resistance as people become more accepting of this type of thing, no? Now
you're ignoring the middle ground. We already know this is the route a publisher will go if at all possible since it equals the most profit, so the more resistance they can melt to stuff like that, the closer they'll get to the end ideal. That's done gradually, and with more power in the hands of publishers than ever before, expect them to try and gradually do it using their entire roster of IP, pressuring developers into making content based on this model whenever physically possible.
But to be honest, I probably came off sounding a bit too harsh in the last post and that's my fault.
Nah. I just enjoy discussing all this because it's an industry that I find interesting and have been involved with for a long time. I'm not one of those people who'll act personally insulted just because you don't agree with my perceived outcome of a certain business practice.
I don't understand the woe is me bullshit when it comes to the topic of DLC. If you don't feel the content is worth the money, don't buy it. If you're bitching because you have to pay 5-10 dollars for content, then obviously the content in question has some value to you for bitching about it to begin with.
I'm not bitching about having to pay anything. I don't even own
CoD4, so what the hell do I care? I'm just talking about the general trends, not a specific product. The topic simply came up due to
CoD4 and its extra content. And why is it wrong for somebody to bitch about having to pay through the nose for something they want? Again, I'm not talking about a specific example here, but what you're saying is that nobody has the right to want something yet feel the price point is too high. If horse armor had been free, people would have downloaded and enjoyed it just because it was something fun, but charging for it everyone bitched because it was too expensive, not because horse armor had no value. It was a nice addition, nobody wanted to pay that price, and they had the right to bitch about it. The bitching is what let Bethesda get a feel for what
Oblivion players were willing to pay for. Along the same lines:
I was excited for Lumines Live when it came out on XBLA. I purchased it only to find that the 'complete' game that had been advertised wasn't complete in the slightest. Coming from someone who loved the game on PSP (and was very much looking forward to the XBLA version), I was noticeably angry and frustrated. I ended up buying the "expansions" to make the game whole. In the end, I spent about as much as I would on a standalone release for a console. I could have said "fuck it", cut my losses, and walked away. But I didn't. Obviously because it had some intrinsic value to me, the game ended up being worth it even though the method of delivery pissed me off to no end (enough to warrant a long email to Q entertainment). Lots more people bitched and complained, and in the end extra packs were offered at a discount presumably to 'make up' for the tactless release. The only reason I was upset to begin with was because Lumines Live had been *advertised* as a whole game. If I had known going into it what I was going to get with my initial investment I would have had zero room to bitch.
You still would have had every right to bitch even if the stuff was properly advertised yet at a price you thought was too high. What if they wanted a total of $80 for all that stuff? Would you say, "Oh, they can charge whatever they want if people are willing to pay, blah blah blah?" Probably not. You'd say, "What the fuck, why is it $80? I wanted it, but there's no way I'm paying that price." And then you'd feel sad because you wouldn't have the thing you wanted. Obviously that wouldn't happen because they know people wouldn't pay that much, but my point is that just because there's interest and someone doesn't think it's worth the price doesn't mean they can't complain. If enough people are willing to pay and the company makes a profit it's happy about then yeah, that guy who doesn't want to pay is fucked and his bitching won't do any good, but that doesn't necessarily make his point invalid. Generally there is a consensus on this stuff, but when it comes to new markets like this there may not be, particularly when you're moving from an old model to a new one and the new one offers less dollar value than the old one. Then you've got old guys that remember the good old days and think the new kids are dipshits for accepting the changes.
Don't get the idea that game developers/companies used to care about you, because they don't. We have never mattered to them. All that has ever mattered is our money.
Wrong. You seem to have this assumption that just because someone is in business means there is
no other consideration than to make the most money possible. So what, all ethical considerations are completely moot in the face of capitalism? Obviously a business needs to make money because that's the foundational principle on which it exists. We all need money to survive. Fine. That doesn't mean there aren't companies who act nice to their customers because they feel that strongarming people into paying money isn't the better option, and they'll increase their business revenues by offering people more for their money, thereby leaching more customers from the competition. Why do you think monopolies are bad? It means companies don't have to be nice or offer a good price. They can do whatever the fuck they want you can't do anything about it. Developers used to offer all kinds of bonuses to gamers because they thought offering them cool additions to the game for free would get more people to buy their game and
future games because of reputation. I had a friend who bought
Sacrifice because patch 3 had all kinds of neat shit bundled in with it. I know people who bought some of the old Epic games because of the free bonus packs. Of course Shiny and Epic wanted our money, but there was a respect for the consumer that they thought would benefit everyone, including themselves by building a loyal customer base. I bought games from developers who had treated me well in the past very frequently, avoiding products from guys who seemed stingy or weren't as interested in community. Development houses used to very regularly care about their customers and many still do, making decisions that reflect their desire for their communities to grow. Not giving a shit is a much newer trend, and has much to do with giant publishers buying up all the individuals and putting leadership into the hands of a very powerful few. Yeah, business is business and everyone wants to make money, but I don't believe that means quite what you imply.
EDIT - I seem to have mixed up some quotes. Should be right now.
