Are the DLCs worth it?

DLC is possibly one of the best and worst things to happen to games. (Stick with me)

 

First of all nothing ticks me off more than UPS showing up at my house with my brand new game in hand on the day of release and as I'm popping the game into the PS3/360/etc. I notice through twitter (or whatever gaming news site you like) and notice how they've already gone and announced a bunch of DLC for the game. Most recently for me this occured with Dead Space 2. Day one of release and the Severed DLC pack was announced. Now on the one hand (I haven't got to play it just yet but I'll be picking it up on Thursday) this sounds and look like it's going to be a great piece of content. It's totally separate from the main story of the game and seems like it'll be adding something to it and that's great. However, at least have the decency to wait a couple of weeks after your game is out to announce DLC. Announcing it day one just makes your fans feel like they're not getting a full product. Dead Space 2 for example is a freaking amazing game. There's loads of content in there and you're not getting some gimped version of the game with DLC to come to take you to that full 100%. You are paying full price for what may be to some one of the best games of this year and you're getting a darn good deal. However by announcing it on day one suddenly you have this crowd of people who suddenly feel like this Dead Space 2 game they have in their hands is somehow incomplete. Developers wanting to push out DLC like Severed that is separate from the main story to the game and maybe adds some neat stuff to it is great. More Dead Space is fantastic and for seven dollars that's honestly not that bad. However there is a major issue going on here...

 

The ‘Dead Space 2: Severed DLC’ is available now on PSN and XBLA.

Assassin's Creed 2 is a TERRIBLE culprit of DLC that is downright shameful. If you remember there were something like two memories throughout the course of the game that "mysteriously" weren't working correctly and then low and behold OH HEY DLC GUYZ!!!111 Seriously, screw you Ubisoft. This is the first thing that comes to mind as far as developers deliberately cutting out parts of a game to use as DLC later on. Now perhaps that's not exactly how it happened but to force me to buy DLC to get to play through missions that are just over half way through your game is downright shameful. Especially when that content is ALREADY ON THE DISC. Give me extra missions that take place afterwards, give me some kind of cool bonus story line that was NEVER PART OF THE ACTUAL GAME...but don't cut out content that's midway through this story you're trying to tell with the intention of pushing it out as DLC later on. You're doing a disservice to yourself and to your fans.

 

Other forms of DLC that I see people complain about a LOT are generally costume packs and things of that nature. Honestly as long as these packs come later and are not a 86kb unlock file for something that is ON THE DISC I'm okay with it. There's an artist out there who needs to put in some work in making these costumes and they should get paid for the work they do. Which I guess brings us to this whole "DLC should be free" thing. Well no...no it shouldn't. When a game is finished there's usually a good amount of down time for the developers. Lets just say that it's somewhere around a month. Obviously you're not going to want developers sitting around doing nothing for a few weeks while they wait for the game to ship. Sometimes this ends up being the development team gets to work on planning some post-release content. The game is finished. It's done. When you go to buy that game at a store you are getting the full game. For instance lets look at Borderlands. About a month after Borderlands released we got the Zombie DLC. The zombie dlc was never part of the original game but the developers thought it'd be neat to add that mission set into the game as DLC. It was 10 dollars and gave you a few more hours of playtime. That's totally fine. The developers finished Borderlands, which is a pretty great game with a LOT of content, and they continued pushing out for the most part quality content for their fans. These developers worked hard to give their fans content that they knew they would enjoy. They SHOULD get paid for it. Gamers in general (not pointing anyone out for the record I just see this way too much) have the worst sense of entitlement I've ever seen. Do I get upset when DLC gets announced day one (or sometimes even before the game is released)? You bet I do. But the notion that somehow we are entitled to get this content for free? That's freaking ludicrous. There are teams of people working hard to give even more hours of content to fans of their game and they deserve to get paid for their work. If it's DLC that was very clearly ripped out of the game then that's a different argument all together but for the most part it seems to be getting better. We're seeing DLC like Undead Nightmare, Lair of the Shadow Broker, the LBP Level packs, WipEout HD Fury and much more. These DLC are all super high quality and well worth the money and sometimes more. While some developers are certainly trying to abuse the system it's clear that there are a lot of devs who 'get it'. Which is what I'd like to point out now.

 

There are new trophies added in the Fury Pack for all you trophy mongers out there.

 

Undead Nightmare came out last Halloween and took Red Dead Redemption and flipped it on it's head. By adding zombies to the game suddenly the way you played RDR had to be totally changed. Instead of being able to take cover during fire fights you were constantly being chased down by zombies and you had to change how you played the game. This is one case of perfectly executing what DLC should be. They gave us a very lengthy piece of content for ten dollars that delivered a totally different experience from the main game.

 

WipEout HD Fury remains to be (in my opinion) one of the BEST pieces of DLC ever. The original WipEout HD ran for 20 dollars and delivered one of my favorite games this generation. It's one of few downloadable games that I honestly believe gave 60 dollars worth of content and I loved every second of it. Then over a year later WipEout HD Fury comes around. For ten dollars we got a SECOND campaign mode that was just as long as the original game and with loads of new tracks. Not only that but there were something like 4-5 modes added to the game both offline and online. For half the price of the original game they gave you a DLC pack that added just as much content as the full game did. I honestly felt like I had enough content to make for two fantastic WipEout games.

 

Heck the obvious example that I don't know if anyone has mentioned in this thread is Rock Band. Over 2000 songs. They can easily push out more and more songs as they get the rights to them and continuously expand the Rock Band platform. It's a GREAT way to take advantage of DLC while also pleasing your fans. The songs are a fair price and more Rock Band songs is always a great way to expand the life of that game.

 

Rock Band songs is always a great way to expand the life of that game.

 

This post is getting long so I'll wrap it up. I think it's pretty clear where I draw the line with DLC. If it's something that was taken out of the game to be saved specifically for DLC then that's dirty. Costumes that are on the disc but locked until you pay for the key is shameful. When we're being nickle and dimed in that way then yes, screw DLC. However, DLC has also given me some of the best gameplay experiences of the last few years. I usually like a buffer of at least two months or so until I see DLC for a new release game but honestly it does kind of depend. DLC should be something that really does add to the game. We shouldn't feel like we're being gimped when we hear the phrase DLC we should react in a positive way. We should see DLC news and think "Oh awesome this means I get even more new content for this game that I love". That means that developers should start to put more effort into delivering post-release content that's worth it though. Don't gimp us only to expect us to pay more money for the complete version of the game in other words.

 

EDIT:  I figured it'd be fun to get a developer's take on this. David Jaffe recorded a video blog where he talked about Game sharing, DLC, Day One DLC and such in about 9 minutes. The DLC stuff begins a few minutes in but I honestly agree with everything he says in the video. Jaffe gets crap from a lot of people but he tells it how it is consistently and I believe he tends to nail the issue on it's head each time. So here's the video for you all to watch it was from about a year ago but I feel it's relevant to this topic.