Bad Company Can't Get Enough (Of Your Money)

The topic of weapons-for-pay in Battlefield: Bad Company has been coming up a lot lately. I've been enjoying the closed multiplayer beta, which lets you plainly see what the weapons are, how you'll be able to acquire them, and statistically speaking, how they'll perform in-game. The graphs used to rate the weapons don't make the paid weapons look any better than the stuff you'll get just for purchasing and playing the game.

Naturally, the whole concept has stirred up a whole lot of Internet emotion, ranging from Sarcastic Gamer's attempts to get a boycott going to somewhat-measured responses from people like Joystiq's Justin McElroy and Sexy Videogameland's Leigh Alexander. Honestly, after seeing that Sarcastic Gamer has ad banners plastered on its site that point to its Bad Company boycott page, this looks a bit like an installment of Sensational Headline Theater. But the site's heart is definitely in the right place.So I see both sides, but this isn't a new argument because it isn't a new issue. This is precisely the same argument we had when Oblivion added horse armor for pay, or when EA first started experimenting with downloadable unlocks in games like The Godfather and Need for Speed Carbon. If the concept of paying for additional guns in Bad Company gets you mad, what do you say to the concept of paying 200 points ($2.50) for a "Maxed Out Player" for Tiger Woods 08? Paying for cheats that automatically max your created player's skills out to 110 percent? Sorry, but that's waaaaaay filthier than anything in Bad Company.I believe it was a famed Canadian economist, Bruce McCullough, who first introduced me to the concept of "dollar votes." We vote with our money. If something outrages you, don't buy it. Bang. Zap. Done. Move on! I know that sounds simple, but it's way more effective than trying to feign outrage on the internet about something you probably weren't ever going to buy in the first place. Or, hey, maybe you're a big enough Battlefield fan that you'll be willing to pony up for some more guns. I think that's crazy talk, but dude, it's your money.Even beyond the basic outrage that a lot of people are feeling at EA's various attempts to push the envelope on getting people to pay for the same cheats and bonus content that we were all getting for free just a few short years ago, we're approaching a real crossroads of sorts for paid downloadable content.Right now, it's tough to really assess the actual value of any piece of content. Is $2.50 the right price for an additional multiplayer map in a game that you really enjoy? That's what Activision is charging for COD4 maps right now in its $10 package. That same $10 can buy you Ikaruga on Xbox Live Arcade. Are those two packages of the same relative value? What about the Rock Band songs, some of which are going for a dollar each? Where do experimental microtransactions like cheat code golfers and additional cars or guns fit into all this? Boycott or otherwise, the power for all of this is in your hands, and we all have to come to our own decisions on this stuff.I decided that $2.50/map was a fine price to pay for additional content in Call of Duty 4, a game I absolutely adore. I also decided that paying $5.00 for 13 additional cars in Forza Motorsport 2 was over the line, so I passed... but I understand why a Forza superfan would find that to be a great deal.But I'm never going to buy access to more in-game money, or cheat codes, or anything like that. In my view, those things cross the line and I get a little frustrated that they're even being offered in the first place. I'll get over it.Where do Bad Company's guns fit into all this? Well, until we can try them ourselves, we won't know for sure. There are two ways for this to go. If they're perfectly balanced in with the rest of the game's weapons, then they're pretty much useless, only for people who want to show off and say "yeah, I totally like this game enough to buy the extra guns." If they're out-of-balance and more powerful than the standard weapons, that's an arms race, where the haves play better than the have-nots. The have-nots probably aren't going to stick around very long, and won't be around to buy any maps or other, more substantial content that may be in the pipeline. And the sour taste of being bullied into that decision probably means that fewer of those players will buy the next game in the series. It's not like we're hurting for high-quality online first-person shooters these days, right?In short, getting angry about paid offerings is pretty silly right now, because even though we're a couple of years in on it now, it all feels super-tentative. Let companies like EA run their nefarious experiments, and have confidence that it'll all work itself out in the end. Because if no one casts their dollar vote for more guns or extra Godfather dollars, at some point it becomes a waste of time to even offer it.Also, while I'm at it, THIS is why we're planning on reviewing (and allowing you to review) downloadable content, such as map packs and horse armor, here on Giant Bomb. This stuff costs real money, and I really feel like certain publishers are trying to pull a fast one on the public when it comes to how much this stuff costs. If we all sort of look out for each other, we can help get these prices to a place that makes the most sense, no boycott required.Besides, we should really be saving our rage for in-game advertising, anyway.[UPDATE] IGN did a bit of journalizing and got a senior producer from DICE to clarify Bad Company's weapon unlocks. He stated that the paid "Gold Edition" weapons will unlock when you hit level 25. So now you can spend money on early access to those weapons, rather than exclusive access. In other words, now it's only as bad as the Need for Speed car and upgrade package unlocks, which you could purchase if you didn't feel like actually playing the game and earning them. Which, you know, is still sort of bad.The other five weapons will unlock based on your participation in "EA marketing programs." EA told IGN that it'll be as "easy as signing up for a newsletter." Great, now they're trading in-game items for your e-mail address and personal data... not to get all privacy-paranoid here, but I think I might have liked this better when it was just money changing hands. Still, a rare and shining example of an angry internet making some kind of impact, so that's kind of cool.