When it comes to the list of things that game publishers and developers get attacked for, day one DLC, early DLC, and on-disc DLC seem to be right up the top, often garnering the hate of game enthusiasts the internet over. I’m not usually one to side with the controversial moves huge corporations often make; I think online passes are a bad idea, I’m often disappointed with wilful unoriginality, I hate it when companies price things exploitatively, I’m against bad EULAs, and I think invasive DRM is bullshit. But in the case of day one DLC I think consumers have got things wrong, and that this kind of business move, while it can certainly be abused in some pretty serious ways, doesn’t by default deserve to be lumped in with some of the more insidious practises the industry has developed.

From what I’ve seen the essential problem that people have with day one DLC is that they feel like they’re by default being conned out of content they’re owed, regardless of how much content is in the main game or how much they’ve paid for it. The general impression gamers seem to have is that DLC available at launch is either always content that is ripped out of the main game and sold separately, that it’s something that is made by man hours which would have originally been spent on the main game being diverted, or that the company is in some other way swindling us over. I don’t believe this is a fair and accurate assessment of day one DLC as a concept, and I believe the points people often raise against day one DLC are rooted in misunderstandings or a misplaced sense of entitlement.

The Dev Cycle

In games development it’s not simply the case that all employees of a studio work on a game, that game releases, and then they can move onto other projects. With on-disc games there is a significant amount of time between the development on a game being finished and that game seeing release, where the game must go through approval, the physical boxes, discs and manuals must be manufactured, and the game must be distributed to retailers. This leaves a lot of time during which developers are potentially sitting around and doing nothing. Even during development of the game it’s not as if every person on the team is constantly working at all times. Obviously, after the initial bulk of design work that goes on nearer the start of the project, a designer has significantly less work to do, and a full team of artists isn’t a great deal of use during the big-fixing stage. I think you can see where this is going.

Often, there’s a considerable amount of spare man hours just laying around for a development studio to make use of, especially towards the end of projects. With digital marketplaces allowing for game content that’s fairly small, and can easily be developed relatively quickly, it only makes sense that developers who are able to, would use that spare time for creating early DLC. Remember, developers who aren’t working on something are essentially going to waste and may even be laid off. This method of creating day one DLC ensures that the developers stay in work, the companies and businessmen still make money, and we can get more content from the games we enjoy sooner. It’s potentially a win all round, and yet many consumers criticise developers and publishers over any kind of day one DLC, knowingly or not calling for a system where developers do their work on a game, then sit around twiddling their thumbs for weeks or months on end before working on DLC. It doesn’t make sense.

Honestly though, even if developers and publishers are not making DLC just by using the spare man hours of the employees working on the main game, I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem. Imagine we had two identical retail games which were created using the same amount of resources, employees, and time, but for one of these games the development studio had brought on board more resources and staff to work on the DLC while the main game was being developed, and planned to release both at the same time. For both games the consumer would be paying the same amount of money and get the same level of content and quality from the main game, but the game with day one DLC would be attacked by certain consumers for ripping off customers, even though we can obviously see that wouldn’t be the case.

On-Disc Woes

In addition to downloadable day one DLC there seems to be a particular disdain for on-disc DLC. Essentially, I make all the same arguments for that kind of content that I would for any other launch DLC, but people seem to regularly express the view that purchasing on-disc DLC means paying for something you’ve already bought, in a way downloadable launch DLC doesn’t. However, it can be seen that this is not the case from the fact that many of the people who complain about on-disc DLC know about the on-disc DLC in a game when they buy it. They will enter into a deal where they pay money for a product in which they know some of the on-disc content is restricted, and then complain that they’ve been ripped off, despite the product functioning exactly as they believed it did when they willingly exchanged money for it.

I believe a large part of the controversy over on-disc DLC specifically has come about because people feel that if something is physically in their possession then they should have access to it, because we have traditionally been used to buying products and having access to everything in our possession, instead of also taking into account licensing issues and content restrictions that have come with the digital age. However, I have yet to hear a good argument why such content restrictions alone mean we’re getting conned. In terms of how it functions and what you’re paying for on-disc DLC is identical to any downloadable day one DLC, except that customers can get their content without lengthy download times and those with little hard-drive space don’t have to have it consumed by downloaded data.

The True Problem

Ultimately I think the controversy over day one DLC begins to touch on a very important issue in the industry, but I think it has its sights a little off. We shouldn’t be whining over whether games have early DLC or not, but what we should be looking at is whether game content, whatever form it comes in, is giving us value for money. I’ve seen no good argument for why we should be owed any more than what we’ve paid for, and there’s no reason we should be given anything simply because it was made before the release of the main game, that’s the exact kind of thing people are talking about when they use the phrase “gamer entitlement”. If a company has given you a product of appropriate quality and length for the money you paid, you can’t say fairer than that. My issue is that a lot of companies aren’t doing this, and this is what we should be voicing our complaints over, instead of attacking the red herring of the concept of day one DLC.

At least here in the UK I think the default £40 price tag just seems like too much for the average game, and many out in the U.S. have argued that $60 is too much as well. What’s more we have seen a lot of badly priced DLC, from single-player experiences that end all too soon for what we’ve paid, to handfuls of maps for popular games being sold at extortionate prices. I doubt they’re going away any time soon, but in a world where we don’t all have limitless bundles of cash to spend on video games, and the industry is quickly trying to eradicate the used game market and take more control over their sales it’s sad to see. Don’t hate day one DLC, hate not getting your money’s worth.

-Gamer_152

When it comes to the list of things that game publishers and developers get attacked for, day one DLC, early DLC, and on-disc DLC seem to be right up the top, often garnering the hate of game enthusiasts the internet over. I’m not usually one to side with the controversial moves huge corporations often make; I think online passes are a bad idea, I’m often disappointed with wilful unoriginality, I hate it when companies price things exploitatively, I’m against bad EULAs, and I think invasive DRM is bullshit. But in the case of day one DLC I think consumers have got things wrong, and that this kind of business move, while it can certainly be abused in some pretty serious ways, doesn’t by default deserve to be lumped in with some of the more insidious practises the industry has developed.

From what I’ve seen the essential problem that people have with day one DLC is that they feel like they’re by default being conned out of content they’re owed, regardless of how much content is in the main game or how much they’ve paid for it. The general impression gamers seem to have is that DLC available at launch is either always content that is ripped out of the main game and sold separately, that it’s something that is made by man hours which would have originally been spent on the main game being diverted, or that the company is in some other way swindling us over. I don’t believe this is a fair and accurate assessment of day one DLC as a concept, and I believe the points people often raise against day one DLC are rooted in misunderstandings or a misplaced sense of entitlement.

The Dev Cycle

In games development it’s not simply the case that all employees of a studio work on a game, that game releases, and then they can move onto other projects. With on-disc games there is a significant amount of time between the development on a game being finished and that game seeing release, where the game must go through approval, the physical boxes, discs and manuals must be manufactured, and the game must be distributed to retailers. This leaves a lot of time during which developers are potentially sitting around and doing nothing. Even during development of the game it’s not as if every person on the team is constantly working at all times. Obviously, after the initial bulk of design work that goes on nearer the start of the project, a designer has significantly less work to do, and a full team of artists isn’t a great deal of use during the big-fixing stage. I think you can see where this is going.

Often, there’s a considerable amount of spare man hours just laying around for a development studio to make use of, especially towards the end of projects. With digital marketplaces allowing for game content that’s fairly small, and can easily be developed relatively quickly, it only makes sense that developers who are able to, would use that spare time for creating early DLC. Remember, developers who aren’t working on something are essentially going to waste and may even be laid off. This method of creating day one DLC ensures that the developers stay in work, the companies and businessmen still make money, and we can get more content from the games we enjoy sooner. It’s potentially a win all round, and yet many consumers criticise developers and publishers over any kind of day one DLC, knowingly or not calling for a system where developers do their work on a game, then sit around twiddling their thumbs for weeks or months on end before working on DLC. It doesn’t make sense.

Honestly though, even if developers and publishers are not making DLC just by using the spare man hours of the employees working on the main game, I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem. Imagine we had two identical retail games which were created using the same amount of resources, employees, and time, but for one of these games the development studio had brought on board more resources and staff to work on the DLC while the main game was being developed, and planned to release both at the same time. For both games the consumer would be paying the same amount of money and get the same level of content and quality from the main game, but the game with day one DLC would be attacked by certain consumers for ripping off customers, even though we can obviously see that wouldn’t be the case.

On-Disc Woes

In addition to downloadable day one DLC there seems to be a particular disdain for on-disc DLC. Essentially, I make all the same arguments for that kind of content that I would for any other launch DLC, but people seem to regularly express the view that purchasing on-disc DLC means paying for something you’ve already bought, in a way downloadable launch DLC doesn’t. However, it can be seen that this is not the case from the fact that many of the people who complain about on-disc DLC know about the on-disc DLC in a game when they buy it. They will enter into a deal where they pay money for a product in which they know some of the on-disc content is restricted, and then complain that they’ve been ripped off, despite the product functioning exactly as they believed it did when they willingly exchanged money for it.

I believe a large part of the controversy over on-disc DLC specifically has come about because people feel that if something is physically in their possession then they should have access to it, because we have traditionally been used to buying products and having access to everything in our possession, instead of also taking into account licensing issues and content restrictions that have come with the digital age. However, I have yet to hear a good argument why such content restrictions alone mean we’re getting conned. In terms of how it functions and what you’re paying for on-disc DLC is identical to any downloadable day one DLC, except that customers can get their content without lengthy download times and those with little hard-drive space don’t have to have it consumed by downloaded data.

The True Problem

Ultimately I think the controversy over day one DLC begins to touch on a very important issue in the industry, but I think it has its sights a little off. We shouldn’t be whining over whether games have early DLC or not, but what we should be looking at is whether game content, whatever form it comes in, is giving us value for money. I’ve seen no good argument for why we should be owed any more than what we’ve paid for, and there’s no reason we should be given anything simply because it was made before the release of the main game, that’s the exact kind of thing people are talking about when they use the phrase “gamer entitlement”. If a company has given you a product of appropriate quality and length for the money you paid, you can’t say fairer than that. My issue is that a lot of companies aren’t doing this, and this is what we should be voicing our complaints over, instead of attacking the red herring of the concept of day one DLC.

At least here in the UK I think the default £40 price tag just seems like too much for the average game, and many out in the U.S. have argued that $60 is too much as well. What’s more we have seen a lot of badly priced DLC, from single-player experiences that end all too soon for what we’ve paid, to handfuls of maps for popular games being sold at extortionate prices. I doubt they’re going away any time soon, but in a world where we don’t all have limitless bundles of cash to spend on video games, and the industry is quickly trying to eradicate the used game market and take more control over their sales it’s sad to see. Don’t hate day one DLC, hate not getting your money’s worth.

-Gamer_152

Hmmm, as see it is, you neglected to mention a few major issues here. And so I must ask... are you in development at all?

First, (and I'm speaking to the idea, not your opinion) it's utter baloney to say that DLC development lives entirely outside the realm of the original title's budget. Even if the entire DLC team is/was seperate, and you really believed that they"waited" until the end of the initial development run (which obviously would never happen with day/month one DLC) , those items still have to be coded into the actual game. That takes time out of the original dev cycle that wouldn't need to be there otherwise. Guess who pays for that? In a sense, the consumer of the main product. It's almost like people think DLC is developed independantly of the main code as a tack-on entity or something, and that's simply not the case. These things have to work together, and that takes a lot of effort.

I'm a software developer; right now I'm developing a series of eLearning courses for a major automobile manufacturer. Say tomorrow I or my boss decided (and we do it all the time) that some part of the app (or sometimes the entire shell) is going to be reused in the future for another client, or perhaps just re-issued with new content for the current client (exactly what i'm working on right now). Guess what I have to do? Spend hours and hours making the course modular/dynamic so that new content can be added later.

Yes, that new content will be developed and charged seperately if and when the client comes back for a new course, but the time I spent making that shell dyamically updatable fell into the original dev cycle of the software. It is IMPOSSIBLE to entirely seperate the two things.

Moving on, lets talk about BioWare/ME3 as that's been all over the news lately for this. This is directly from the mouth of Mass Effect executive producer Casey Hudson:

""It takes about 3 months from 'content complete' to bug-fix, certify, manufacture, and ship game discs," he tweeted. "In that time we work on DLC... On [Mass Effect 3], content creators completed the game in January and moved onto the From Ashes DLC, free with the [Collector's Edition] or you can buy separately.""

Even if it was actually true that not one single second of the standard development cycle for this game went into the DLC, how would this schedule even be possible?

They obviously knew from jump-street that there would be DLC (you have to code in the ability to accept it after all), and then they waited for the game to go to QA ("bug-fix") before they began work on it?

Ok, first off, QA is a process, not a hand-off, and as far as my company (and probably any other one on the planet) is concerned, you are still in full-swing development during the QA cycle. Point being, it's very strange that he's delineating that entire section of the development cycle as some foreign entity with it's own time frame, or worse yet, giving the notion that the dev team has free time during this period...

Then look at the fact that there is a collectors edition with the DLC included. That means that by the time the game went gold, they had already marketed, promoted and created the damn boxes for that special edition. And then after all of that, they waited until they had shipped the game off to QA (with crossed fingers I'd say) to even BEGIN working on the promotional tie-in content they were now totally committed to?

This also makes zero sense when you stop to realize that the DLC would have to go through QA as well, so all the same steps would have to be taken when it was done being created (albeit a lot faster since it's less content.) But still, it's not going to magically fall into this perfect window between the main game's completion and its in-store date, where you conceive, create, test, repair, and release the DLC.

So, unless it's just the most magical coincidence ever that the DLC made it out in time for release, they would have had to have held up the game's release to wait for the DLC to be tested and certified too...

Or (and much more likely), they were working on the DLC at the same damn time as the game (because it IS the game) and it's just more profitable to split it up and market it this way. What sub-team actually created the new assest is totally irrelevant. Someone already had to pave the way for them to do that, and you paid for it.

@Gamer_152: I posted nearly the exact same set of arguments in that insane Mass Effect 3 thread about Bioware lying yesterday. Good breakdown of a situation that it seems many are having a very difficult time understanding fully.

@Noct said:

Or (and much more likely), they were working on the DLC at the same damn time as the game (because it IS the game) and it's just more profitable to split it up and market it this way. What sub-team actually created the new assest is totally irrelevant. Someone already had to pave the way for them to do that, and you paid for it.

This is exactly right. When it was made and who made it is totally irrelevant. They are a company and if it made more sense to rip out a mission or character to increase profits that is exactly what they should do. It is up to the consumer to reject the additional content or even the main game if the value proposition is compromised by the developer's business practices. If consumers come out in droves to buy the game and the DLC, as is appears they have with ME3, then the company made a smart decision. If people do not buy the product, they can freely lower the price and re-evaluate their strategy for the next game.

Agreed good sir. In the age of the internet everyone is a "expert" on everything or so it seems. Funny thing is they usually don't know what they are talking about.

Don’t hate day one DLC, hate not getting your money’s worth.

Aren't those the same thing? Day One DLC is always garbage. That is why people complain about it being there to begin with. Why are you making garbage to go along with an otherwise great game? And why are you lying to us about this being a totally separate project when you made this with the rest of the game and simply want to sell it separately. Strike at Karkland was DLC created after BF3? You're telling me Wake Island wasn't built during the normal development of the game? Karkland, the most popular map for BF2...that was just going to be extra? It's beginning to stink too much not to speak up. These companies need to just be honest and say, "Hey guys, we know you really want this game so we're going to only include a portion of it when you buy the game at retail and then other parts you'll need to pay extra for. We're trying to make the most money possible so I think you'll agree this is the best way to do it."

@Noct: You're right that introducing DLC to a game in a viable way requires some work during the development of the main game to make it compatible with DLC, but on a relative scale this isn't usually a large amount of work as long as they're building the project from the ground up remembering that they'll need to support DLC. As I'm sure you'll agree going back into a program and changing it's compatibility with such things afterwards is a much longer process. I don't see why anyone should really take issue with this though as long as the product as a whole remains worth what the customer has paid for it.

I wasn't going to talk about the whole "From Ashes" situation but since you brought it up, I don't think it's as simple as QA being another phase of development and not a hand-off. Perhaps programmers might be firing on all cylinders as they would in a software development firm like yours, but traditional software firms aren't full of artists, audio people, designers, writers, and similar positions on the scale that a big games development studio is. As I noted above, it is for example inconceivable that as many 3D modellers and animators as it took to create all the content during the production phase would be needed during the QA procedure. I think the point about the on-disc Collector's Edition including day one DLC is a good one and you're probably right that the main game was held back on for business reasons, but to bring this back round I don't think "I paid for DLC support" stands up as an argument if the person is also saying "I thought the game was good value for money". Either the game is appropriate for what they paid or it isn't, if it's not then they need to voice that and not make these vague attacks against the concepts of DLC support or day one DLC, and if it is then I don't see where the problem is.

@Demoskinos: @BRich: Thanks guys.

@Tumbler: You're post is a little vague but if it's garbage then that's a quality issue, not an issue to do with it being day one DLC, but if it is that bad why do you want it in the main game anyway? As I explained in the blog, it's often not as simple as it being "developed with the game" or "not developed with the game" and you're not entitled to content simply because of when it was developed.

I'm for any kind of support a developer wants to give their game. Day 1 DLC doesn't particularly bother me either since I'd rather play games with extras the first time through.

The only reason people are complaining about Mass Effect 3's DLC, which is the only one anyone is complaining about, is because Bioware is using extra content that used to be an incentive to buy a game new as a way to milk money out of long time fans who were going to buy the game day one no matter what.

@LordXavierBritish: People were complaining about day one DLC before ME3 and people have been complaining about it since, Bioware just happen to probably be the biggest target of this kind of negtive attention. What does it mean to "milk money" from their customers though? It's a vague term.

@LordXavierBritish: People were complaining about day one DLC before ME3 and people have been complaining about it since, Bioware just happen to probably be the biggest target of this kind of negtive attention. What does it mean to "milk money" from their customers though? It's a vague term.

Also I'd just like to say I like day one DLC because usually by the time DLC comes out I've shelved said game and moved on to other things. If the Deus EX DLC had come out a month or so earlier I might have snagged it. I think developers NEED to get the DLC cycles started early. Gamers have a very limited attention span (me included) and if you take too long I won't buy it no matter how much I loved your game.

It's a good thing that the Mass Effect 3 DLC has no significance to the ME universe at all and that the people who would buy the game day one would have no real interest in what it offers.

@LordXavierBritish: Well EA/Bioware did actually put an incentive in the main game to encourage people to buy it new and that was the online pass, but whether it was part of the new game, part of the collectors edition, or only sold as its own piece of DLC people would still be paying extra money for the Prothean DLC. I think it's a bit of a grey area but I guess if people want to say that the Prothean is exploitative that's a fair enough argument, but there are far too many people losing their heads over the fact that the game just contains day one DLC or that there's DLC content on-disc.

@Demoskinos: I've heard other people say similar things. In fact I've heard some people say if DLC doesn't come out early enough for them, when it does release they've sometimes traded the game in for store credit or sold it off.

@Skooky: My blog post said nothing about the ME3 DLC, but if you want to go there I don't really think there's an argument that EA/Bioware should be putting out DLC which people don't have interest in and doesn't have any significance to the main game. Even if there was, I think the points I made in this post would still stand.

Well put.

I think we should worry about companies abusing DLC, but we shouldn't automatically assume it is a completely greedy move by the publisher. How much is an hour of gameplay worth? Compare it with DLC you like. Take each game as a separate case, and then decide if the DLC is worth buying. Sales figures will govern whether or not a publisher continues their DLC strategy moving forward. The internet also has an unfortunate tendency towards knee-jerk reactions, without looking at the facts about something before responding.

@Gamer_152 said:

What does it mean to "milk money" from their customers though? It's a vague term.

Okay, imagine a cow, right? Full of milk and hamburgers and junk. But now imagine that cow was filled with money and instead of being a cow it was the fanbase of a game series.

Still want a hamburger?

@Ravenlight: Yes, with fries and coleslaw thank you.

@Gamer_152: Great post there Gamer; Hopefully it will give a little insight to those that believe they know everything (but don't).

I have no problems with dlc and understand the development cycle dlc usually has. That said day 1 dlc is something I can't get behind. If you want to release a bunch of dlc the next week be my guest but as a consumer after buying your product day 1 for full retail price and seeing when I put in the disc a prompt or ticker on the screen to buy more content it's a little disgusting and sours my experience. It encourages me to never want to buy a game for full retail again if it is going to have day 1 dlc.

@Corvak: I very much agree, although I think when deciding how much a game is worth we should consider quality as well as length.

@Ravenlight: I'm not sure if you're asking if I'd eat Bioware fans or buy a money burger, but the answer to both is yes.

@ccampb89: Thank you.

@msavo: Stuff like that sours my experience too, but is the problem there day one DLC, or is the problem people putting up windows and ticker tapes displaying advertisements before you've even had the chance to try the game you've already bought from them?

@Tumbler said:

Don’t hate day one DLC, hate not getting your
money’s worth.

Aren't those the same thing? Day One DLC is always garbage. That is why people complain about it being there to begin with. Why are you making garbage to go along with an otherwise great game? And why are you lying to us about this being a totally separate project when you made this with the rest of the game and simply want to sell it separately. Strike at Karkland was DLC created after BF3? You're telling me Wake Island wasn't built during the normal development of the game? Karkland, the most popular map for BF2...that was just going to be extra? It's beginning to stink too much not to speak up. These companies need to just be honest and say, "Hey guys, we know you really want this game so we're going to only include a portion of it when you buy the game at retail and then other parts you'll need to pay extra for. We're trying to make the most money possible so I think you'll agree this is the best way to do it."

No I don't think they are the same thing. In Mass Effect 3 for instance I played through it without the dlc and it felt like a full experience to me well worth my 60 bucks. Not saying that it doesn't happen but that is what you should base your judgement on day one DLC on, did the final product feel like it was missing something or not? Does it suck that I didn't get more mass effect 3 for 60 bucks? Sure I guess but it certainly didn't feel lacking even with that fucking ending.

@Gamer_152: A little of both. Seeing advertisements for content before I have even pressed start just makes it feel like a scam, to me anyway, no matter the quality of the game. I just can't make a purchase of dlc on the same day I buy the physical product. Like I said in my previous post just wait at least a week before releasing dlc and this won't be an issue for me and likely the majority of users. If I like the game and dlc is released in the coming weeks I will eat it up or at least try one piece, for example I loved all the Borderlands, Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space 2 dlc, and because of that additional content I tend not to sell those games because everything was handled well and I feel great displaying those games on my shelf.

Content has value. It has a cost and it has a value. You're not buying EVERYTHING THAT STUDIO MADE BETWEEN THE LAST GAME AND NOW, you're buying whatever package they've decided they can get you to pay 60 dollars for.

They'll make a Mass Effect game where the base game is totally free, but every character or mission is 5 bucks. And then the players will decide which missions or characters are worth the money piece by piece.

Sorry, the bottom line for me is that the developers had the resources to create extra content for their game and they chose not to. I don't see how the dev cycle matters in the least.

@laserbolts said:

@Tumbler said:

Don’t hate day one DLC, hate not getting your
money’s worth.

Aren't those the same thing? Day One DLC is always garbage. That is why people complain about it being there to begin with. Why are you making garbage to go along with an otherwise great game? And why are you lying to us about this being a totally separate project when you made this with the rest of the game and simply want to sell it separately. Strike at Karkland was DLC created after BF3? You're telling me Wake Island wasn't built during the normal development of the game? Karkland, the most popular map for BF2...that was just going to be extra? It's beginning to stink too much not to speak up. These companies need to just be honest and say, "Hey guys, we know you really want this game so we're going to only include a portion of it when you buy the game at retail and then other parts you'll need to pay extra for. We're trying to make the most money possible so I think you'll agree this is the best way to do it."

No I don't think they are the same thing. In Mass Effect 3 for instance I played through it without the dlc and it felt like a full experience to me well worth my 60 bucks. Not saying that it doesn't happen but that is what you should base your judgement on day one DLC on, did the final product feel like it was missing something or not? Does it suck that I didn't get more mass effect 3 for 60 bucks? Sure I guess but it certainly didn't feel lacking even with that fucking ending.

It seems a lot like a car dealership going around and ripping the hub caps off their cars. You're still satisfied with your purchase of the car right? Well then nothing to complain about. You can buy the hubcaps if you want to but those are optional. It's a poor way to treat your customers. Maybe we'll just take your radio out too. I mean look how great a value this car is! It's still a great diving experience. And power windows/ door locks, well we'll just remove this little tiny switch that makes them work...ok now you can just manually roll them up and down. Still a great experience!

They're just going to keep going.

I'd rather buy a car that has all those things included and then the company behind it actually makes additional features to add to the car. Tinted windows, allow wheels, accessories on the outside of the car in addition to the core product. Game companies seem to be going the opposite direction. They don't want to make any more game than absolutely necessary so they "make a car and then start looking for things they can pull off."

@Tumbler: I get the comparison you are trying to make but I don't think it's the same. No radio in a car is crazy and i'm not even sure what a hub cap is. If I got a new car and it didn't have a radio I would feel way more bummed out than playing Mass Effect without a character that I don't feel I need at all. I guess it depends on the person then.

Also I'd just like to say I like day one DLC because usually by the time DLC comes out I've shelved said game and moved on to other things. If the Deus EX DLC had come out a month or so earlier I might have snagged it. I think developers NEED to get the DLC cycles started early. Gamers have a very limited attention span (me included) and if you take too long I won't buy it no matter how much I loved your game.

Content has value. It has a cost and it has a value. You're not buying EVERYTHING THAT STUDIO MADE BETWEEN THE LAST GAME AND NOW, you're buying whatever package they've decided they can get you to pay 60 dollars for. They'll make a Mass Effect game where the base game is totally free, but every character or mission is 5 bucks. And then the players will decide which missions or characters are worth the money piece by piece.

@Jimbo: I appreciate your thoughts.

My only qualms with DLC is the average price of DLC these days. Honestly, DLC gives me a way to play more of the game, if I so choose to. What is not to love? Of course, day-one DLC may seem like a complete bummer, but I feel as though the Dev-Cycle sort of excuses that issue.

If they had waited a week to put out this DLC to appease some people, many more people who have already finished the game would not feel compelled to jump back in for one $10 mission.

I bought Kasumi and it felt like such a waste as I was never going to run through the whole game again.

Between Dragon Age & Mass Effect franchises, both have gone a little nuts with different retail specific DLC that doesn't really make much sense. Honestly they should just give people who bought the game new a virtual token with a list of extra items (ie. armor, weapons, characters) then the player can pick from the menu what they want as a DLC bonus.

One thing I didn't spot in the original post on this. Is to point out from my limited time spent in QA with the video game industry is that apart from some digital distributor like Steam, most games are locked down at a certain date in order to go to the companies that are burning the content on the discs for retail versions. The day one patches are just there to catch anything between the time the game went to being burned on all those retail discs, in my opinion the day one DLC is more of a marketing gimmick at just giving new players something more than what the game came with as an incentive to buy it new.

That graph is bullshit, you realise?

If it was "DLC or lay off everyone" then there would be no videogame industry. Sensationalist bullshit to forward an agenda.

@Jimbo said:

@Brodehouse said:

Content has value. It has a cost and it has a value. You're not buying EVERYTHING THAT STUDIO MADE BETWEEN THE LAST GAME AND NOW, you're buying whatever package they've decided they can get you to pay 60 dollars for. They'll make a Mass Effect game where the base game is totally free, but every character or mission is 5 bucks. And then the players will decide which missions or characters are worth the money piece by piece.

That's where they'd like to take it for sure, because all of those pieces of DLC would add up to way more money than if they were sold together as a traditional game. I don't think there's anything wrong with them trying to do that, but I don't think it'll work either. Somewhere between here and there (and we may even be there already) we'll get to a tipping point where enough people will think 'Fuck that, too much effort' that it'll give diminishing returns. The mainstream audience doesn't have the patience for anything like what you're suggesting. That business model will work for kids (because they have time to figure shit like that out) and people that buy Train sims (because they're obsessive enough to figure shit like that out).

It appears to work for F2P. Granted, those are largely multiplayer things, and 'episodic' gaming has largely turned out to be a non-starter overall.

But my point is that content has a value, and a retail product is not everything that has ever been made in that system. It's however much Game they think you will pay 60 dollars for. If they put too little Game in there for 60 bucks, people won't buy it. If they put too much, well that's not necessarily cost effective (though they'll probably get better sales). Ideally they're trying to find that exact threshold where it's the right amount of Game for the right amount of dollars at the highest margins. It's not like Game Dev Story where Budget = Quality = Profits.

I just want to restate that people should just judge each product (whether it's a full retail game, a downloadable game, or an add-on to a game) on it's own. I'll agree with anyone, the Prothean DLC for Mass Effect is overpriced. I don't think it's really worth 10 dollars to anyone but real die hard fans (who already got him in the Collector's Edition anyway). But people are getting upset because they feel Mass Effect 3 isn't 'complete'. Not that 'it's a bad value for 60 bucks' because it's a great value for 60 bucks. But they're doing a different arithmetic, they're making a judgement based on a fictional version of the game and not what's actually there.

@msavo: While I could argue you might be a little over-reactionary and I don't think there's really grounds for heavy criticism of a developer here, if that's how you feel then that's how you feel. However, early DLC still gets some degree of flack for the same reasons day one DLC does, and this business model is not suitable for all cases. Some DLC may meant to be enjoyed potentially from the start of a game or during the course of it, many people complete games inside of a week and wouldn't want to wait an extra week for content, and for people who are renting a game having content available immediately could be top priority.

@Brodehouse: I'm not so sure about your Mass Effect prediction but I totally agree with the rest of what you said.

@StealthRaptor: But if you're talking about studios best using their resources and time to create a good product then why wouldn't the dev cycle come into this? I apologise but I don't really understand the other half of your argument. One of the points I'm making here is that day one DLC is the very manifestation of them using their time and resources to create more content than they otherwise would. How does not making day one DLC help them produce more content faster?

@Tumbler: I see a few things wrong with your analogy. Firstly, you're assuming that day one DLC inherently involves removing something from the game, this is not true. Secondly, I don't think selling a product which is exact value for money and nothing more is a bad way to treat customers, it's a neutral way to treat customers. Why should we be entitled to anything more? Thirdly, I don't think this element carries over to the games industry, which in many cases is providing us with very polished high quality experiences, not the equivalent of a car with missing hub caps. If anything my equivalent would be that the dealership is providing us with high end cars which are over-priced. Lastly, what do you mean about removing the radio and the buttons to make all the extra features work? It's not as if video games are being robbed of core components, functions and features so that day one DLC can exist. The analogy doesn't carry.

If anything my analogy would be that a car company manufactured two versions of the same car. A base one and one with extra features and accessories for a higher price, but consumers were saying that because the fancier model was developed at the same time as the base one and that it's available at the same time, they should get the fancy model for the same price as the base model. Obviously that's not rational.

@Jimbo: I didn't say this was a choice between developers being laid off or developers working on day one DLC, I simply said it's a possibility that they may be laid off. I think it would be equally wishful thinking to say that all devs simply go onto another project when they're done with what they're currently working on. Plenty of studios may not have another project to move them to and you can't assume that the positions that need to be filled on the new project fit exactly the people who just finished working on the last project. As for the ME3/From Ashes argument, that doesn't concern any inherent problem with day one DLC, that's a problem with consumers not getting value for money.

@jorbear: I completely agree with you, the ruckus over day one DLC may largely be about nothing, but I think a lot of DLC these days is overpriced.

@fox01313: You're right about the lock-down, but as I mentioned that it takes time to manufacture discs, boxes, etc. I assumed that was implicit in my post. I apologise if it was not.

@GunslingerPanda: The graph doesn't actually say DLC or lay-off everyone, it says employees would be laid-off or moved other projects were it not for day one DLC. Even if you take issue with that why does that allow the dismissal of the rest of the information the graphic presents?

@Gamer_152: Nope it was there somewhere about the packaging process, sometimes when reading I tend to fast forward a bit after drinking coffee or distracted then lose my place. Another thing too apart from the day one DLC is all the QA testing done on the patches that come out after the game comes out, fun stuff going through everything again to makes sure patches work on their own or all together. GLHB!!

@Jimbo: I didn't say this was a choice between developers being laid off or developers working on day one DLC, I simply said it's a possibility that they may be laid off. I think it would be equally wishful thinking to say that all devs simply go onto another project when they're done with what they're currently working on. Plenty of studios may not have another project to move them to and you can't assume that the positions that need to be filled on the new project fit exactly the people who just finished working on the last project. As for the ME3/From Ashes argument, that doesn't concern any inherent problem with day one DLC, that's a problem with consumers not getting value for money.

@Jimbo: I think the idea that a lot of people criticising day one DLC don't understand it isn't a bullshit reason at all, I see people across the internet attacking launch DLC without any kind of structured belief and understanding of the situation, they attack day one DLC simply because they think they're entitled to it by default or think it always represents "cut content" from the main game. As for the statement that "It's day one DLC or everyone on the team gets laid off", I've heard this kind of thing floating around but I've never heard that exact statement spread by the companies. That's not to say they're not doing it, I just haven't come across an instance of it myself, but obviously, if they are, yes, that's gross misinformation. I think saying the real reason behind it is just money is a bit reductionist though. For the most part, for the people funding games everything in the industry is about the money, but it's not as if there aren't plenty of people in the industry who care about their work, the employees of companies, and getting more content to their customers faster.

I do actually agree that part of the issue with the Mass Effect 3 DLC is probably to do with the commitment fans have to the series, although I suspect how essential it is to the story may have been overblown by many. I don't think it's just the day one DLC model which allows companies to do this though. For a long time now there have been businessmen backing sequel after sequel, sometimes with minimal changes between the games, hoping that's it's brand loyalty that keeps gamers coming back for more, and there it's not simply £5 to get the latest greatest version of the game and stay ahead of the curve, it's £30-£40. While day one DLC can be used to further facilitate exploitative moves by publishers I don't think we can criticise day one DLC as a concept for that, just like we wouldn't criticise on-disc games because companies can misuse them to make money out of treating the customer badly there.

I also don't think we can lay the blame for this high priced DLC squarely at the feet of developers and publishers either. They are essentially forced into whatever pricing model the online stores give them. Notice that on Xbox LIVE, no matter how small the DLC, Microsoft never seem to let publishers fine-tune prices to their liking or sell missions or map packs for anything less than 800 MS points. The only conceivable action that the publishers and developers could take against these rigid price structures would be to say they won't publish DLC at all on those systems and I don't think anyone would like that. Considering the track record of EA I think they'd be the exact kind of guys to jack up prices, even if that pricing model wasn't there, but I'm not going to criticise them for things I think they could potentially do.

As for the whole completeness issue I don't think it's as simple as a game being 100% complete or not being 100% complete, and the way you word your statement makes it sound like content is being cut out instead of being added. If you went to a restaurant and ordered a meal, you could get a side dish or not get a side dish. Maybe you want that side dish, maybe you don't, you're obviously going to have to pay extra if you do want it, but you wouldn't consider your meal incomplete simply because there's some complimentary element you could get that you didn't. It's not as if they're doing the video game equivalent of cutting scenes out of a movie or chapters out of a book, I believe it's perfectly possible to tell a complete, high quality story and then add to it with DLC, without making it feel incomplete or hindering the creator. Look at games like GTA IV, or Fallout 3. The main games were very well-received without giving players any feeling of incompleteness and in many cases they were also lauded for having high quality DLC.

There are plenty of perfectly complete-feeling games, TV series or films which then go on to have extra episodes or sequels added, I don't know why the same thing can't happen with games and DLC. I don't think creators should be pushed into any situation where keeping the game open for DLC impedes what they want to do with it, and I do take that view pretty seriously, but in the majority of cases I don't think that's going to be a danger, I think it's a point you could argue for full on-disc games as well as DLC, and there's nothing inherent about DLC which means that has to be the case. I'm not saying companies won't try to misuse day one DLC, because I agree with you, some will, companies try to misuse everything, but when people gripe that there's something inherently wrong with day one DLC, I have to disagree.