I look back into my past and remember that all the games that I bought are in the Neat little disc. I put it in, and a complete game installs into my computer. There were no patching then. If there is an expansion, you have to get that new disc and install it. These expansions are full games too, even if they are not stand alone. Now, we have games that have several DLCs. Some are games that are released are divided into several episodes. Content is divided among the three. There are also games following the freemium model, and you have to get those DLCs to win in multiplayer games! Using DLCs too much is a bad business move. I only bought DLCs once and it was for Total Was Shogun. Have you bought DLCs? What are your thoughts on these?
Definitely a bad trend in my opinion, now you're buying essentially half the game and have to fork out more money for the full experience. Just look at Civilization Beyond Earth for example, the base game is severely lacking and reviews have been horrendous. They are probably saving the best for the DLC.
I have read the reviews of Civilization Beyond Earth. It was so lacking indeed. The last Civilization V was much better compared to Beyond Earth. This is why I am avoiding that game. Aren't they committing business suicide by releasing that game in its current form? If I were them, I would release a game so awesome that people will really buy the DLC. Releasing it lack luster would just push away the gamers. Unless they are banking on the hard-core fans to pick up the sales slack.
Yeah I am over the new generation of gaming. I will still cherry pick Steam titles that are loaded to the gills with DLC or micro transactions, but I am staying with the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube games from now on. You have the game, and that is all you need. You are not forced to connect online, or download constant updates. Just have some local friends and have a blast.
I like the improvements that were made in the gaming industry. It has now become accessible to a lot of people. However, DLC is something that I'm not agreeing to. If I purchase a game, I assume that I no longer need to purchase anything else. However, developers nowadays tend to offer their games in bite sized pieces. They let you pay for something but they don't give you the entire game! They just give you a portion of it then they let you purchase the rest. I'm cool with micro transactions for free to play games. But paid DLC is just bogus IMO.
The thing is, developers have realised that offering game preorders will yield them plenty of money. Looking at recent preorder numbers for AAA games like Beyond Earth and Assassins Creed, both of which had terrible day one releases, the numbers were high enough to have made them a tidy profit. There's no incentive for them to polish the game or offer the full game straight away when they can make more by sitting back and releasing the DLC slowly. The only way to stop such a despicable practice is for gamers to stop preordering games before they know what they are really getting.
We should vote with our wallets on this. It is time for the industry to clean up its act. The gamers should too. We have to stop buying Alphas an preorders now. We may have good Alphas in the past, but this is only making the devs sloppy. We need to make stronger statements with what we buy. As a gaming community..
It's unequivocally bad in my opinion. People general look at DLC's as extra content, but they're really not. Look at it this way: You could ship an unfinished game that's barely playable so that on top of pre-orders, you are GUARANTEED revenues from sales. People are buying unfinished games thinking that they are finished. DLC's are basically an extension of the deadline for the launch of a game. The content in the DLC's should have been in the game in the first place because they most likely have been part of it since the concept stages. The company just didn't have enough time to implement these concepts.
Civilization V was exactly as empty as Beyond Earth, with DLCs being the thing that turned the game around in public's eyes.
