Inspired by Greed and DLC.

So today I picked up a copy of borderlands, I haven’t even tried the game yet due to also picking up Guitar Hero 5 which I have tried. Both games intrest me and information about them will appear in other articles where I am probably going to be a bit less angry than I am now.

Downloadable content or DLC as it has been abbreviated to is basically any kind of game or addition to a game that can be downloaded to either a console or PC. Things like bought expansion packs don’t always appear to count towards this for some reason. Not sure how they like to work it but for example Fallout3 can be bought as an expansion for the PC version, but is classed as DLC for the Xbox360 version. Fuck knows but then, who cares either. DLC is nothing new to the market, infact its been out since the days of the Sega Megadrive but its potential has only really been tapped into recently. Microsoft for one appear to be massive advocates of this and its for the simple reason that everything involving microsoft boils down to, Money…

The milking of DLC by microsoft and developers of Xbox games has reached a proportion that can only be described as monumentally disgusting, it is actually sickening to see just how far some greedy fuckers are willing to push things. We can start by tearing microsoft a new one, a new one that will open a gap so wide the aerodynamics of the situation itself is going to improve by several thousand percent. Microsoft likes to make money, then again so do most companies and its not something you can really fault anyone on. But the problem is when they get their greed on, and you may think im talking about the situation where they bend you over a chair and you pray to your god/idol that its not going to hurt. The greed situation in this case is the one where they bend you, and several other people over a chair, and explain simply that it is going to hurt, your going to tear, and bleed, and there is nothing you can do about it. We shall take a case in point to illustrate this.

Geometry Wars: Retro Wars its a fun little game on Xbox live, some nice people made it and they wanted to release it over Xbox live and they said they would be happy to do so for free. Im not sure how this made them money but im sure there was some plan behind it, or they just did it for some good fun and happiness for all involved. Microsoft decided that this would not do, and that the writhing mass that already pays a subscription fee for XboxLIVE has been freeloading for too long and taking the piss by effectively stealing money from Microsoft becuase the subscription is only 5% of what they would actually like to charge. Arguements went backwards and fowards between microsoft and the developer Bizarre Creations. The story ends on a happy note with the game eventually being released for free 400 microsoft points which is the minimum microsoft will charge. $5 or about £3.50 which I take as the score being 1-0 to excessive greed. The customer loses out, and the developer was probably unhappy.

Other rumours along the same lines concern Gears of War developed by Epic again they wanted to release free downloadable content for their games again Microsoft was against this once again (apparently) and there was a big blowout from this was well. Unfortunately this did all occur around 2007 and I did not have an XBox at this point so I just kinda lost intrest after a while because I didn’t have to give two fucks about it.

I have always classed myself as part of the PC gaming master race. I like my FPS games to have a mouse and WASD and I like my menu’s to be point and click. PC gaming as always been fair when it comes to pricing. Hell, most games that are out for Xbox and PC have a difference of about £10 and its ALWAYS the PC version thats cheaper. Call of Duty 4 charged for maps in their multiplayer for XBox, as a PC user I got every single one for free, and it was the same for COD5 as well, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 though they finally saw past the game and the fans and got their greed on, with all content being chargeable for both PC and Xbox.

DLC is basically a new way of taking a £40 game which is already fairly expensive, and turning it into a £50 or £60 game. Ill take the artcle full circle now back to the beginning when I reference Borderlands. The game was still in development and they already had the DLC shit in the planning and programming stages. I think its pretty disgusting nowadays that they are pushing this shit for rediculous prices and they have the money machine ready to roll as soon as the game is out the door. I’ve been spoiled by the MMORPG genre, a genre with a set of companies that thrive on keeping a community happy because long term success is far more important than fast cash. As much as I hate to sound like one of the usual morons from an MMORPG site the subscription cost of an MMO per month really is worth it when compared to console crap. We can use simple maths to work some shit out, and im going to do this with reference to hardcore gamers, and infact im going to use Ballsmasher as an example because he is hardcore in the sense he will play games for half his day lol.

World of warcraft can offer challenges for several hours a day, infact doing some dungeons, raids and PvP can easily keep him happy for lets say 8 hours at a time. Multiply that by say 30 days in the average month and you have 240 hours of gameplay easily, now im going to be a bad writer and take the side of the console advocates. World of warcraft involves 3 games. The orginal and two expansion packs, im going to pretend for this situation that all 3 were bought at the same time, and also pretend that Blizzard/Activision are greedy fucks (the latter actually is at times) and that you don’t get a free month: The net cost is £38.89 (£27.97 for the games and £8.99 for the months fee). The final sum £38.89 divided by 240 hours of gaming works at at £o.16 per hour, and this is with an inflated price overall for your first months entertainment. By month 2 the cost is down to £0.09 an hour and by the end of a year we are left with the following: £155.76 total spent on Warcraft (barring a new expansion)  for 2920 if you play hardcore at 8 hours a day. Total of £0.05 an hour for your enjoyment, if you played an averge of just one hour a day it would work out at about £0.42 an hour max.

Unfortunately im going to be lazy with the console ones and pretend (in favour of consoles) that Azose can manage a single game in a month before finishing it and getting bored, and to be fair some stuff like Guitar Hero will probably not rack up 240 hours of entertainment in a month, and probably not even in its lifetime, even with DLC. Most other games are not going to offer 240 hours of gameplay, so we can go with something like call of duty 4 which can be bought new for £29.99 or £39.99 for game of the year edition for Xbox360 and your month of Xbox live which averages at about £5 making it a total of £35 for the lot and if you can truly accumulate 240 hours of the game  online then you have beaten World of Warcraft in terms of cost per month at first, going on you can technically stay in the lead but I doubt the game could genuinely hold you up as long as an MMORPG.

Technically I could concede defeat, so if you have managed to play Call of Duty 4 for 8 hours a day every day for a year without buying any other game then you have beaten me, the problem there is you missed the point of gaming in general and its pointless for you to own a console. I think its about time the greedy console market started looking at the PC market and seeing what they can do to compete. If games started releasing for cheaper, with a steady stream from reasonably priced DLC which adds a fair amount of content, as well as fixes and patches and functionality to boot, then they can start milking their cows properly, providing a nice stream of income and keeping many people happy, you know instead of just cutting off the udders for a quick fix of milk for a handful of people. Ill leave with a nice closing statement.

10 million people play world of warcraft and they bring in a lot of money. Lets say with all things factored it could be around £5 per person per month. Thats £650,000,000 (Six hundred and fity million) per year, and thats before you factor in things like renaming characters, transfers and all other manner of things they charge for. The great part of most of their additional content based on Microtransactions is that you don’t need it to enjoy the game. If some console company wants to take a potshot at this kind of money, they need to hit about 16million copies sold, and not too many console games surpass that kind of sales, although Nintendo has a good trackrecord with the Wii fitness games and Super Mario. Even with all that on board I bet £650,000,000 a year in subscriptions alone is the kind of thing they all dream about, I mean you can also pretend only 10million people ever tried it and that would fact to another £290million in box sales alone.

So, developers how about you start playing the long game than focusing on greed and immediate gratification?