As a follow up to my review of F.E.A.R. 2 – Reborn, a sort of “how to” on DLC. This will be presented in the form of questions I asked myself while thinking about the subject.
What is DLC?
This question is not nearly as easy to answer as it should be. Take for example, World of WarCraft expansion packs. These are available digitally through Blizzard’s online store. They add content to the game, though not as much as you may think – only level, monsters and areas are actually part of the expansion, everything else being a “free” patch; parts of which are not accesible until the expansion is paid for. Should these be considered DLC? What about the “free” patches? While they have all the hallmarks of DLC, they are not optional.
For the purposes of this article, we will define DLC as anything which describes itself as such. Fallout 3’s addons, FEAR – Reborn, Skin packs, etc. However, I will also draw comparisons to free upgrades; such as multiplayer maps released for RTS and FPS games.
What is the right “length”?
That piece of FEAR DLC that I reviewed was at maximum fifty minutes to an hour of gameplay, for £5.99. In comparison, a Steam sale of Braid recently went up, allowing six hours of some of the most critically acclaimed gameplay of the year for £3.39. Also compare with any RPG ever released that is now on budget, fourty hours or more for under a tenner.
So, from this we can deduce that DLC is often going to be a rip off. It is aimed squarely at the fans of the original, knowing that they will pay more for less. I have no quarrels with this, as it is a fact of capitalism and not something a blog post is going to change, but it also means I cannot recommend DLC that is as ridiculous as the FEAR example.
This is especially true when we allow comparisons with free (or cheap) map packs released for multiplayer FPS or RTS games. Because of the massively replayable nature of these type of releases, the effective hours/cost ratio is in turn massively more favourable.
It seems pretty obvious that any single-player DLC (or even game) is unlikely to have as good a ratio as multiplayer versions. However, there are ways around this. First off, I believe that Bethesda has had the right idea as far as DLC, if not the right price. For Oblivion they released very cheap, very small additional content. This is aimed at people who very much enjoy the game but want a sort of “premium mod” to enhance the experience. The low price means that it is more likely to sell and yet still make a decent amount of money compared to the development effort put in. This is comparable to skin and model packs for fighting games.
Bethesda’s other DLC selection, for Fallout 3, is also acceptable; if missing a step here and there. Some are too short, others not in-depth enough but in general, the $10 price-tag for 3-4 hours of gameplay is as good as we can expect. This is equal to, after all, the vast majority of episodic content released by Telltale.
What will people pay for?
This is the real question and one that has many different answers. For example, Team Fortress 2 players (by this point) are likely unwilling to pay for anything except for a complete engine upgrade, entirely new maps, new classes and a big 3 on the end. Even then, they are likely to complain it’s the same thing we’ve had for years for free.
Some Left 4 Dead players are unwilling to pay anything for a total doubling of the content they bought in the first place, comparing it to Team Fortress 2’s free upgrades. Nevermind that the comparisons don’t fit, they’re not going to pay any attention to silliness like that.
On the other hand, as mentioned above, players of Telltale Games’ myriad adventures are quite willing to shell out for three or four hours of gameplay that could often be described as exactly the same as any other Telltale game, only with a different skin. As another example, MMO players are perfectly fine to pay every month simply for access to a game (or, in the case of Dungeons & Dragons Online, have access to certain elements without as much in-game effort).
This is entirely about setting a precedent. People will pay for what they have paid for in the past and they will not like to change. This is why some have never paid for a piece of DLC in their life and it is why it can be so hard to convince people it is worth it.
So, to answer the original question: God knows. It is almost impossible to determine beforehand how a community is going to react to news regarding DLC. It is also rather easy to ignore them and simply hope that your original game is good enough that people will pay for more of the same.
How should it be distributed?
If the past two years has taught me anything, it’s “Digitally, don’t use Games for Windows Live”.
In addition to this, I believe that “Game of the Year” editions that contain all the DLC released thus far are a good way to bring in new players. This should also come with an option to purchase just the DLC at a reduced, bulk price; for those that never got into when it first came out, but do have the full game.
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Stupid computer crashed yesterday and lost a couple of paragraphs of this, meaning I really didn’t want to finish it at 2am. Anyway, very much an opinion piece, agree/disagree? Additional types of DLC I should have covered?