@-Damien-: When you only play call of duty and don't widen your horizon, you're going to only know those games that are slapped in your face with big commercial marketing campaigns to back them; I find it pervert that you call the longest journey a " no name bargain bin game". You might be surprise how engaging the story is. And why categorizing kickstarter game as insignificant, would you like to see how star citizen is doing ?

On an intellectual level I could live the most with the answer that there's shorter stories and that games have become more expensive, and then it seems like if they just split up development between the main game and then making side stories that would the same game potentially more expansive. But also there I believe you can place a nuance, and the first one is again that every dlc is optional and let's assume there's no godly entity forcing you to buy anything. Than that's still not a problem.

Also, Game development in general (at least for these aaa titles) take lots of time to make but at the same time sales have to be made as well. I believe that companies have to choose the best position in the the "problem" spectrum that those 2 isues deliver.

If every game has to last more than 40 hours, then inevitably developers would also have to spend more time in a development cycle. We would only see a CoD game every 2 or 3 years and about every new IP would take even longer to make. Watch dogs has been in the making for 5 years now as a new ip, thats because the groundwork had to be made, then the story and because it's a first iteration everything has to be invented. I guess it will probably go faster the second time around but that will depend on the success (if they would even make a sequel at least)

So I guess from an economical standpoint it's better to have games with shorter stories, which have this potential of growing: which is nice. If they didn't do it this way, wouldn't there be too much draught ? It would help that many companies are delivering content right now but especially for single player games that arent' systemic and self sustaining with lots of replay value (like dota 2, which just generates money because of that fact), Story tellers need need an income as well, and not only once every 5 years. Ubisoft releases many games but that's also how they keep alive you know.

And I often refference to toys that you can buy optional sets for. And I for one find it more engaging to play with lego where you have lots of expansions for, than with that one toy that is just one toy. And I use that as analogy for games, i'd rather have that game that maybe doesn't have an extended main game.

Can't we really blame widespread piracy for this behavior also ? Companies need a way to sustain themself. There was widespread consensus that games should be played illegally. That has slightly became less spoken about but some are very vocal about the fact that they will play a game illegally if they don't like the control scheme, if they don't like the graphics, and the perception lives that game companies are bad if they do too much dlc's and is also used as excujsed to play everything for free.

You would think that if this runs rampant, no wonder that companies harden themself against it and the paying customer actually has to live with the consequences because a large base don't want to pay and have all kinds of excuses.

But kickstarter is actually a great thing, because as company (especially a startup) you can make sure your game is funded and not even add drm because everything is payed in advanced.

I gave a comparison with "real hardware which is yours but isn't really". But you don't even have to make that comparison. If you buy a CD, the medium is yours but the "work of art" that it produces, in this case music, isn't. It's yours to listen to but an artist licenses it to you.

I believe that people don't have to make this easy determination of "if it's on my hdd it's mine and I determine if it should be free". The data will be physically located on milions of user's computers, but the data is on your pc, and the experience it produces when you execute that data is the developer's property. So they have the right to lock or unlock extra experiences.

It's true that some of the watch dogs' pre order bonus is the same as the FIRST PART of the seasons dlc, but if you don't want this you can just pass out, not buy the seasons pass and buy everything you really want individually. Or cancel your pre order and buy the gold ps4 version which include the most important pre order missions and the seasons pass. So it's very flexible.

This is my bias but You can't really discuss on a general level what value dlc is. It's like saying that every green colored car is bad, and only red is good. So the issue I have in this debate is that some taste and bias is used as a factual determination. DLC = bad = fact, and everyone needs to bark at dlc because I bark at it.

So I'm still looking for a purely ethical and economical reason why dlc's are wrong. If it was so wrong they wouldn't be so popular.

@SrgtSaggy101: See that is the weird part. Everyone does this. This is spoken from the preposition that you actually HAVE to buy it but it's optional. It's like a hand that tells you to want this but you're in conflict because you don't want to pay money for it. But if it's not worth something why want it in the first place, now that's the real question I believe.

I bought all dlc's of payday 2, just to have a rich arsenal and see what I can find to mod, but I didn't buy dlc of mass effect 3, although the game was good and there were some very memorable moments that I fondly think back of, somehow I don't like dlc's with story which is patched "inbetween", because you know that the game will end like it ends anyway.

So ofcourse there's lots of reasons why you do or don't want to have it. But I wouldn't really demand it for free either.

I don't understand how people can't handle the notion of stuff that is on YOUR disk but not your property until you buy it.

There are things like that in your very lives. The electricity counter (at least in our country and with our power suppliers), you are not allowed to open them. They are in your own garage or basement but there's a seal on it that you can't open them, not even by paying more :)

Something to think about right.

@turtlethetaffer: You are assuming they are lazy. Can you make story dlc for a game. Should be simple right, and also if you're an office clerk you DO want to get payed for simply opening and closing word and spending time typing an invoice right ?

If you keep that in mind it ain't so "easy".

@maynardburger: Yeah, if you extend that to cars. "every option should be inside a car". And in a house it's a same if you would compare this to the disposition against dlc's. "every house should come with a swimming pool, a waterslide, an alarm, automatic gate and automatic lighting" but cost the same price. Sorry that's not true, and why should it be true for games ?

But again I'm afraid I'm putting my own bias here. I want to leave room for a constructive reason and a moral, economical and ethical standpoint as to why dlc's in game should be always free and included from the start. Can anyone accept this challenge ? :p

Well that is not entirely true. The games that cost $50 are all games from studios that are supposed to have high end means of producing a believable story. Big sound design abilities, motioncap studios, Studios that produce their own tools and asset designers that work with them.

Valve for example have their own sound designers, music producers , animators, video creators etc, story writers etc.

There are smaller studios that outsource this stuff, and sometimes just hire outside animators, contractors, freelance story writers etc. There are these studios that come from the indie scene and don't use such big high tech stuff to make their games but have talent to create animations with third party programs, and then there's the formula of "games constantly in evolution" like payday 2 where you pay a less amount of money for the base game but it's constantly being reinvented to make it better. So people experience part of the production process that would otherwise be hidden until the studio thinks there's enough iteration;

There's so many flavors of formulas nowadays, and the big budget games just cost $60 and all that is added "optionally" costs money as well.

Point one: the idea of "a full game". what is this meaning ? If we go deeper on this, why do many ppl define it in such a way that a full game cannot be the main game without all the side and expansion missions being made ? even if they are made alongside or slightly later as a means to extend the life of the game ?

The critical thinking here seems to be "as long as it's installed alongside the game, we should also be able to play it for free ?

But that is incompatible with the idea of a seasons pass because we know for a fact that a seasons pass is like a time limited subscription to a game which will provide unfinished dlc later on. So the main problem is that it's sometimes delivered way too soon and that is preceived as stealing right ?

But history says players always have the chance of NOT buying it, but therefor the story isn't uncomplete, there's just nothing extra. It seems like that nuance is very brittle and open for much debate. Is the glass half empty or half full , But history also says players have the chance to buy "everything" at a reduced price after a year and you have a "game of the year" edition. But this is something sepparate from the release.

I guess if we're talking about content which is partially installed already but unaccessivble until you buy extra is a notion i have an easier time with because I have conciously experienced the glorious days of "shareware", where you also had software that you could install and use, but you could only use it's full potential when you payed for it. This is nothing disturbing because after all, if you're installing a game you install a license to experience it, and because it's such a volatile thing like software people have the idea that if it's "artificially divided" into different formulas and prices just to have extra money.

There is software in the music industry which I can install and see different kinds of instances for a sepparate license that I can't access because I don't have a license for it on my dongle. Each of these sepparate licenses are a different product but I can only access it and it will only read the data when I have the license for it. But they sometimes install these "libraries" or "instruments" already on disk for convenience because it's such a big thing to download, they provide it on disk.

So I assume with gamers, they seem to have a problem with this notion that everything has a license and is a creative asset and because it's on the disk it should be accessible, but this is just how software companies that do serious business have been doing business the past decade already, it's now just coming into the game industry and is somehow not well received. Again I've got an idea why that is but I would like to call out somebody else on why they think that is.

So I was sitting here the past week, trying to find arguments on what has become a repeating controversy the last years, namely DLC's in general. And how do we deal with those ? How does the perception around DLC deform as more people are taking a stance against them ?

That's a question which troubles me more and more these days, just because so many people are saying the same thing about day one dlc's or season passes or pre order bonus. It should all be free and should all be included for free, but why ? How does such a mainstream consensus between gamers come to existence ?

The more companies do for their games, make them more elastic, make them more long lasting, bring new stories, new maps, new content, new weapons new hats, the more people seem to hate it. But I notice a double standard that works against this idea as well. Companies like ubisoft and EA are called evil for doing microtransactions and dlc's; But on the other side there are working huge markets of cosmetic items (hats) being traded for lots of money just because they are labled oranged and are called "rare". How does that make any sense to have one part of the community holler against dlc's but the cosmetic market from valve does good business ?

So I'm a bit confused. Are we adopting a modern game market and are we taking pieces of art coming from software or third party developers seriously ? Or are we not ?

There's this perception that when a company is developing content alongside the main game (and that development continues after the game has been released), it's "supposed to be for free and included in the game". But where does this perception come from ? Why do gamers find it so hard to accept that pieces of art, and extra content should cost money ?

It's always preceived to be too much. $20 for bioshock infinite, too much, $20 for a watch dogs season pass with lots of new content which is equal to a mission expansion is considered "too much". $5 for a payday 2, way too much for a weapon pack.

But it's all stand alone and you don't need to buy it to play the game. If you're a fan you'll be more than willing to spend more money on it.. or are we ? What makes that we don't have problems paying for options for our cars, workbench or bathroom or extra alarm instalation for the house, but we don't accept it in games ?

I've written my bias about it elsewhere (like on youtube and on the watch dogs forum for those who're interested) but I left it out here just because I'm asking this question in a neutral sense.

It just seems to be a consensus of mass player attitude who seemingly don't want to pay for anything but the main game. And it's very hard to ask them to look in the mirror and ask themself if they would want to work for free.

It seems very hard for those people to objectify extra content as a valid piece of extra art, even if they got so much during a pre order, it stil lseems they need everything that comes after the release "for free".

It seems very hard to ask for players to look at a game as a work of art which companies want to be compensated for because they need to feed their employees as well. How come that it's suddenly this thought that is omited because it's "entertainment software" ?

I sure know about all the DRM problems there have been, and some game companies didn't actually deliver on the promise of a game, but I see that lots of people find it all too easy to expand these cases to all games and think all companies are bad because they bring dlc which is more succesful than others.

So it's a whole lot of questions I have but it all comes down to a fundamental question. Do we have respect for this industry as a gamer ?