This piece is solely the veiwpoint of the author and not of GemuBaka as a whole or any of its affiliates.
While Downloadable Content is nothing new (even the Atari 2600 had a form of it using a phone line), I feel developers of this day and age are using it to be fairly lazy, especially when compared to development studios, say, 10 years ago or so. When I first received BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger for the 360, it wasnt but three days after its release before patches where coming out to tweak the game and I must say it irked me. Why not just test the game more? Games are basically ready months before release, so a few more weeks of heavy playing shouldn't push the game's store release back. Most high-profile games that have come out - Gears of War, Halo, Fallout 3 and Resident Evil 5 - have had to have patches to make the gameplay work the way it was originally intended to. I think highly respected companies such has Namco, Activision, Capcom and EA have gotten lazy to the point of saying, "Well, let's just pump it out ... I mean, if it's too bad, we'll just fix it later." I'm sure glad I at least have some access to the Internet through my 360 since I would feel really bad about spending $60 USD (or for that matter, 20) on a game that's made to be fixed later by means I can't even access.
Even if everyone does have online play, I don't care to see the bar on good gaming lowered. Take a look at Velvet Assassin; the game was released with so many bugs it was basicly unplayable at parts and had to be patched a ton within a few days. I laugh everytime I read that the game received "mixed reviews upon release" ... No wonder: Half those reviews were more then likely reviewing the fixed version.
"But if a game gets fixed, why does it matter that it shipped with some bugs?" I know some of you are saying. Well, it's just that it's hard to improve upon utter crap and developers should be pushing the graph UP and not this WWW shape that I'm seeing. Even at its best, Velvet Assassin recieved around a 7.5 out of 10. Not near stellar, if you ask me. Also, that's if players have access to online gaming. I paid for Velvet Assassin, I should be able to play the game without having to worry about the Internet being there to back me up.
But that's not my biggest gripe. My biggest complaint about DLC is forcing gamers to pay twice for a single game. There are so many exspansions on Fallout 3 that getting everything the game has to offer would cost $120 USD easily. Some of the downloads simply make getting to already on-disc content possible and all of this could have been put on one disc. Why wasn't it? So you would have to pay the big bucks. Most DLC is basically ready as the game is shipped out, so it's not like that extra level or new car wasn't planned well ahead of release and couldn't be added, it simply wasn't. I'd wager if DLC was the standard back in 1997, Final Fantasy VII - known for being a great game - would have released at about the same time without a lot of content it had. Vincent's entire story would be 20 dollars a few months after release. Yuffie would follow for another 20 dollars. A good chunk of items, spells, the ability of passing level 50 and possibly all of the level 4 Limit Breaks would be another download. Add the fact Square would most likely have been lazy just as developers are getting now, and FFVII would have had its share of bugs. You want to know why it's considered the best game of all time now? It's smply due to the fact Square knew it only had one shot, so it made sure it did the game right the first time.
Face it - DLC is not a way for developers to keep games alive past their shelflife, not a way to show they care about the fans but another way to milk games. The only execption would be for games like Rock Band, where DLC makes keeping up-to-date songlists and owning songs you care about simple, easy and more cost efficient than Konami's old idea of coming out with a new version every six months, a la DDR, or even Japan's beatmania IIDX. Otherwise, I just would like to see DLC getting dumped. When I pay good money to buy a game, I want to ensure that I'm buying a full game since I'm paying full shelf price for it.
~Lar
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