DLC: Good or Bad

Downloadable Content (DLC) seems to be all the rage these days with video games. Hasty generalization you say? Well, tell that to the last few games we’ve purchases that have had a least two DLCs available that are fun to have, but burn a hole in our wallets.

Back in the day, new content for games came in expansion packs. You paid a lot of money upfront and got a lot of new content for your game, and it was worth it. A couple of examples for this would be the Brood War expansion pack for Starcraft 1 and Lord of Destruction for Diablo II.

Before I start ranting, here are a couple different types of DLCs that I’ve learned about.

One type of DLC is the one that that adds some content to what’s already there. This would include map packs, time trials, game scenarios, character skins, costumes and playable characters. For example, last month Nintendo released new courses, racers and karts for Mario Kart 8. They are fun to have, but aren’t necessary.

Another type adds unrelated, add-on content that is for mere fun rather than adds anything to the game. One that I’ve seen that The Gamer enjoyed was Festival of Blood in Infamous 2. The main character was turned into a vampire and the player had to hunt down and kill the vampire who turned the character all in one night.

Ok, here’s my beef with DLC. It’s a money grabber and gamers love it. Buyers can cheat their way through a game by buying all the stuff that they could get in the game after many hours of grinding, crafting and so forth. There’s a hefty price for those that want everything at once. I feel that would come at a price though because those types of players wouldn’t have the experience they needed to fight and actually play the game with others.

Another thing I dislike is Day One DLC. Why isn’t it included in the game if it’s going to be released the same day as the game’s launch? Grr. According to Joel White on The Daily Cougar, DLC also has been referred as disc-locked content. This means gaming companies will lock away a certain percentage of its content that’s already on the disc and hold it for later release as an add-on.

Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of all Super Smash Bros. games, expressed his frustration on DLC last week on the game’s fan site, saying that the DLC scam is becoming an “epidemic." Now, his latest Super Smash Bros. game came out with Mewtwo DLC last month, but he assured buyers that it was authentic DLC, and not locked content.

However Sakurai also realized that in order to keep up with other companies, DLC is almost inevitable. Economically, DLC is a good idea, "Development is more costly than ever, yet the price of games has remained the same, so more income would help offset that imbalance."

If buyers want the DLC fiasco to stop, then they need to stop buying it. However, I don’t see that happening. Everybody wants the newest thing and wants to be the first to own it. I think Stranjak from Sophistry explained my point well.

“Blog posts and angry YouTube comments may make us feel better having vented, but the investors that pay for the games largely don’t care how you feel about their product so long as you pay for it. If we want to change our medium for the better, we have to give credit where credit is due, not just with our opinions and reviews, but with our wallets as well.”

We’ll see you next week!