Reserve and Culture DLC: Solved!

One of the biggest problems in gaming is the culture that has developed around downloadable content and video game pre-orders. It has gotten completely out of control. These issues are actually two completely separate issues, which have significant overlap. The reason I’m linking them together is because they both have the same solution, which I’ll get to later.

Let’s start with the pre-order. The problem is that you are paying money before you receive a product. It’s a crazy concept. You have no idea what the quality of the product can be. Have you ever played a game that was absolutely rubbish? If you haven’t, I wish I were you. Can we change our lives? This has nothing to do with this article, I just hate my life. Anyway, I’ve played really horrible games before. Unfortunately, the first “Two Worlds” and “Cabela’s Big Game Hunter” come to mind. They were both pieces of absolute garbage. Now imagine waiting in line for two hours in the cold waiting for a game you’ve already waited a year and a half for. You paid $65 for this game with money you worked hard for. You followed the news of this game from day one. You were absolutely devastated to hear that it was delayed for six months. You are super excited and drive home. You took the next day off even though you know you need the money, just so you can play all day with a much-needed day off. You put the game and let it install. It does its thing and you rip it off. Hmm, that’s weird… this doesn’t look like it did with the previews. Your controls are a bit weird. A couple of hours later and you’re furious. The game is not only bad, it is bored. It’s uninteresting and bland. Its missions are strange, the revolutionary aspects of the game are just gimmicks. The story that everyone has as attractive is horrible. The main character has a wooden plank personality. The game I am describing is the 2014 disappointment known as Watchdogs. I was excited about this game for a long time. I bought a PS4 to play this game. This was the best case for the next-gen console. The poster child for why you should upgrade your consoles. Basically, I was tripping over myself to give my money to the game’s developers and publishers. And then he came out. Then all the controversy happened. It turned out that the game we were shown at E3, or electronic entertainment expo for those who don’t know, was running on a very high-end PC. The game we got looked just like that game, but it went through the worst Instagram filters in the world.

This shows the problem. The textures are muddy. The lighting is noticeably less lifelike. Shadows are less dynamic. If you look at the lights above the head of the main character in the E3 version, they seem to have real depth, in the PC version they look blurry and painted by the laziest artist in the world. And that’s the PC! It is running at maximum graphics, all features enabled. I was playing on a console, which wouldn’t even look that good. I might as well have been playing with my dad’s glasses, or playing a completely different game. I’d sue these guys for false advertising if I knew what that meant.

Seriously, we were promised that the game would look like the one on the left and that it would run on consoles. Let’s relate this to the pre-order. You walked into the store in, say, May. The game comes out in November. That’s six months of which they have your money, and you haven’t even received a product. Why would a company want to back their claims of graphics, gameplay, story, or even technical proficiency if you’ve already given them your money? They know that if you had waited to see reviews of this game before it came out, hopefully you would have saved your money for food and water for your hungry kids. So what do they do? They offer you a shitty level consolation prize in the form of pre-order bonuses. Oh boy, a skin for a weapon, an exclusive pet, oh boy, a DLC level that is made up of already created assets. These bonuses are there to trick you into giving up your money, with little to no effort on the part of the publisher or developer to give you something worthwhile. It’s a cheap scam to make sure you’re in their pocket before they have to provide you with anything. It’s seriously a stupid concept. There is a pre-order concept that particularly annoys me.

I’m a big fan of “Mass Effect”. If you ask any of my friends, they’ll ask you what my favorite things are, it goes “Mass Effect”, food and “Mass Effect”. In that order. However, when “Mass Effect 3” was released, they announced a pre-order bonus. An entirely new mission that would add about 30 minutes of gameplay to the game, as well as a new character to talk to. The best part was that you got it for free just for booking! That is incredible! However, as the game got closer to release, it was discovered that pre-order bonus downloadable content (or DLC for short) was already on the discs being shipped. That meant it was already in the game you just bought. The DLC you just bought was essentially a code that allowed you to access that part of the game. In the game you just bought for the full sale price. That really pissed me off. That is actively trying to screw the consumer. It is truly an anti-consumerist policy. The concept of pre-ordering as a way to gain access to a game you’ve already paid for should be unthinkable, but instead it became quite common, and the phrase “Day one DLC” was coined. This leads me nicely to my second problem that needs fixing: DLC.

It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s that I’m disappointed

I remember when the DLC was very expensive, but it was really worth it. Back then it was called “Expansion Packs”. Watch “Dragon Age: Origins”. “Dragon Age: Awakening” was a full 30-hour game that you paid a lot of money for, 40 dollars. However, you get a lot more for your money. Fast forward to the current game in the series, “Dragon Age: Inquisition,” where you pay $15 (or so) for around 3 hours of gameplay. There were 3 big DLCs, which means you spend 45 bucks for 9 hours of gameplay. That is a clear loss for the consumer. Worst part? Dragon Age is an example of DLC done right. Call of Duty has been charging $15 for map packs for several years. Several of those maps are just recycled maps from previous games. So you were literally tricked into buying the same thing twice! How crazy is that?!

So here is the solution: Stop. Only for. Stop ordering in advance. Stop buying shitty DLC. Stop buying products before reading a review. Hell, that last piece of advice applies to everything, not just video games. Please be careful with your money. At the end of the day, money is a physical manifestation of the time you have spent. If you don’t value your money, surely you value your time. If we stop allowing developers and publishers to take advantage of us, if we stop giving them money for services they don’t get, if we stop buying cosmetic items for too much money, they will surely listen to us. That is the only time they will listen to us. When we say enough! We will not be taken advantage of. You need us, we don’t need you. We have to hit them where it hurts the most: their wallets.

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