Good grief! Bonus game content is a load of geek-fleecing crap
I can’t take it any more. I have absolutely had it up to here [points to top of own head] with bonus game content. And I mean bonus content of all types. I mean bonus in-game content, whether it’s DLC, pre-order content or special edition content. And I mean bonus merchandise like all the crap they throw into special editions, like CDs and DVDs and books and maps and keyrings and toys and all that.
Every day I get e-mails telling me that consumers can get extra pointless stuff with their game so long as they meet some stupid set of conditions. Like if you pre-order Gun War XXV on behalf of your unborn grandchild on the seventh Sunday after the summer solstice then you get a bonus in-game shoe as an exclusive pre-order bonus. Or if you get the Special Elite Collector’s Edition of Enemy Shooter: Revenge then it comes with an Enemy Shooter branded vest and underpants. It’s all such total, utter junk but if it’s an effective marketing strategy then I don’t really blame the companies that do it. I blame the idiots who lap this stuff up so enthusiastically.
What people need to realise is that there are two types of ‘bonus’ content. At best it’s stuff that simply would not exist if it hadn’t been made for the sole purpose of manipulating gullible geeks into parting with more of their cash and parting with it sooner. That’s bad enough, but the other kind is worse.
The other kind is stuff that would simply have been integrated into the game had its publisher not seized upon the opportunity to make it appear more desirable by separating it out.
At least when he snaps up the first type of content, the gullible geek is just filling up his own life with pointless tat and/or adding content to his own game that is at best pointless, at worst throws the game’s level of challenge and pace of progression completely out of whack. But any gullible geek taking the bait when it’s the second type is giving publishers more incentive to tamper with everyone’s game experience.
People often complain about bonus content being on the game disc but locked. That’s kind of my point, but at the same time I think it’s missing the point. That being that there is a far broader, more general problem – regardless of whether bonus content is on the disc or not, the simple fact is that games are being designed with these kinds of marketing strategies in mind. As a result, the line between those two types of bonus content is blurring and the idea of a developer making the standard version of the game as definitive, complete and well-balanced as possible is being slowly eroded away.
Stop taking the bait, people, and we’ll all get better games.
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Again, stop complaining big girl’s blouse
He’s basically right. But it’s only part of the problem. When games are becoming a basic uncompleted product, that you need to pay extra to unlock it’s full experience, is bad already. But if you take into consideration, that the half made experience that goes to the shelves, gets out at prices well over 50 bucks, it becomes alarming. Games are growing increasingly expensive, at the same pace as they become more and more incomplete.
10 or 15 years ago, we would complain that games were expensive, and the price of a top game , full quality features, with lots of hours of entertainment, would correspond to something arround 4% of the minimum wage in my country. Sure, sometimes, an expansion pack would come out, but not before a year had past, in most cases, and it would be a game by itself, or a complete overhall to the original, making it feal a brand new thing.
Right now, a choped, cuted, basic content top game, will be priced at arround 15% of the minimum wage in my country. (on any other country, the situation is similar, with mild twitches to the figures), and in less than 2/3 months, the developer will be reliesing extra content that should have been in the first pack in the first place, and will be doing it regularly like clock work for the next year or so, forcing anyone interested in having the full experience of the original game, to spend as much or even more as they originally did. So, whenever I ear them speaking of how second-hand sales are damaging their business, I have to laugh. What else do they expect? Do they really think that if they start charging for online passes for those 2nd hand gamers, the online lobbies will be as full as before, for the same amount of time?
Interesting points Tigus, although in this country, the UK, games are actually getting cheaper all the time. The standard price for a new console game has remained at £49.99 since the days of the NES, which of course means they’ve become cheaper in real terms. I personally also think that iOS is setting an example that will eventually force the prices of games down even further. You can get awesome, full-sized games for pocket change on Apple devices and it’s starting to embarrass the rest of the market.