Agent D's House of Rant.

[Agent D.]

Okay, been posting for a while here, and most of my good posts have been rants and rage induced walls of text. However, they always pertain to a certain topic, so I never get my full two cents in. I am dedicating a thread to my full on rants, and invite any and everybody to join in with their own or comments regarding mine or anyone elses' rants and raves. To kick this thread pff, I give you...

DLC RAGE

Okay, I know we all bitch about it and such, but dlc is getting ridiculous. 15 years of console gaming never once required me to buy additional content. Granted I don't have to buy it now, but that's like saying I don't have to pay for the bacon on my bacon cheeseburger....WHY DO I FUCKING ORDER A BACON CHEESEBURGER TO HAVE TO BUY BACON FOR IT AFTERWARDS?! I buy a goddamn game to play the game, not to see if they bring more stuff out so the okay game I bought will be less shitty later. What the fuck, when did it become okay to leave shit out of a game and sell it later? If sony sold me a new tv without a power cable, you bet your ass I'm getting my power cable for it immediately. This is such horseshit, and what makes it worse are the fucking masochistic fanboys who approve of dlc, and forcefeed it down everyone's face that dlc is good, etc etc. Fuck you, dlc is horsecock and we all know it. Capcom and it's fucking lame dlc maps for a game that isn't even fucking out yet, and then to really rub iodine in your open dick sore, they get EXCLUSIVE DLC based on where you fucking buy the game! Fuck that, I am not down with this shit, best buy is nowhere near me, and amazon is always second day after release, I am stuck with lamestop. LET'S ASSUME I buy the game right now, if my friend gets his from best buy, I don't even get to play the same dlc with him now.

I work as an audio video installation tech. I know I have used this reference before, but it really fits. If I was hired to install a television and sound system for a customer, then my job entails installing the television display either on a wall mount or a standard mount, and installing their chosen sound system, be it a multi channel surround system or a sound bar. I do not put the tv on a stand and turn it on and say done, but if you want to see an image, I have to charge you additional fees for hooking it up to a source, that's fucking part of the installation. If I don't finish installing it that day, I come back and finish, not tell them it's almost done and leave, and then charge them more to come back do the rest after we agreed on a price. This is proper business etiquette, anything else would be pathetic and an insult to my profession.

SO WHY THE FUCK IS IT OKAY FOR GAME COMPANIES TO SELL US UNFINISHED SHIT AND CHARGE US MORE TO FINISH THEIR GAME?! WHY DO WE AS CONSUMERS GET FUCKED? WHY DO THE MORONS WHO DECIDED TO TAKE A RISK AND SUPPORT A GAME COMPANY AND BUY THEIR FUCKING GAME GET PERPETUALLY BUTTFUCKED AND SCREWED FOR THEIR DEDICATION? WORST OF FUCKING ALL, WHY DO WE KEEP FUCKING BUYING THIS BULLSHIT STORY OF DLC BEING OKAY?!

Fuck dlc, I am so fucking tired of it. At least ffxiii-2 is almost offering decent content, but capcom and its horseshit can die.

[Dincrest]

I'm still old enough to remember the days when computer games worked perfectly right out of the box and I didn't have to download patches and stuff. 

I don't enjoy giving monetary rewards for peoples' mistakes. 

[Vanguard]

You know what really grinds my gears?

[Agent D.]

You know what really grinds my gears?

I was going to title the topic that, but I was ranting way before Peter Griffin.

[John]

I'm still old enough to remember the days when computer games worked perfectly right out of the box and I didn't have to download patches and stuff.  

I don't enjoy giving monetary rewards for peoples' mistakes.  

I don't remember any sort of days like that.  I remember days when you loaded up games and had to deal with any bugs that they had.  I remember when games cost $80-90 in 1994 dollars, not $60 in 2012 dollars.  (Chrono Trigger would have cost you more than $110, adjusted for inflation.  Virtua Racing would have been almost $140.)  I remember when expansion packs for games cost you almost as much as the original title and often times didn't give you as much as some of the DLC packs you see.  I'd rather have Broken Steel or Old World Blues over retail expansion packs like Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors.

Now, I don't disagree that non-aesthetic DLC for pre-orders is kind of garbage, I think that the rose-tinted glasses that people look through when they look at the past of gaming really do cloud their judgment.  Things in the days of yore were not as peachy keen as you remember them.

Fact of the matter is, I don't buy Agent D's line of "Why do I have to buy bacon afterwards?".  You don't.  If you want to buy the fries and the drink afterward, you're more than welcome to dip into the DLC, but the burger's on your plate.  Just the same, I'm sure that you charge your customers for mounts and cabling that they don't already have.  You come in with the assumption that DLC is part of an "unfinished game", and I don't believe that that's true for a majority of games.  Don't get me wrong - I am pissed when there is "bad" DLC; listen to my rant on the latest podcast about how Namco Bandai handles their DLC, which I think everyone agrees is absolutely horrendous.

I don't even think Day 1 DLC is bad - when the content guys are finished 2-3 months before the game goes live because of QC, they have something to do - create DLC.  DLC only has an 8-12 week gestation period, usually, so that's enough time to create and debug what they've got.  In the "old days", these folks would be placed on new games or laid off.

We're paying less for games than we ever have before in the disc-based world, when games are becoming more and more expensive to produce.  Would you pay $90 for Skyrim if it had additional development time?  That's what pricing was like in the cartridge days.  Today, we have access to games via digital media that cost $10 or $15 that would have cost full MSRP in the SNES era.  We have some of the best deals available in gaming today, and everyone just seems to think the old days were better.

[Agent D.]

I don't agree John, games aren't cheaper. Some games were more expensive then compared to niw, but not all of them. Playstation games only cost between 40 and 50 dollars back 15 years ago, and ps2 games were generally 49.99 (all prices US because lolidk currency conversion) and that's only 10 years ago. Snes and sega days, honestly I am hard pressed for remembering as I wasn't buying games then, I was only 7 when I got an snes. I do remember Mega Man X being a shockingly high 70 bucks, but look who made it, one of the biggest offenders of my douchebag dlc hate, Capcom. We can throw around inflation all we like, but honestly, I am making now what I made 10 years ago, and my dad who does the same type of work now that he did 20 years ago also does roughly the same, only the demands got harder. If anything, companies are saturating the market now, releasing multiple titles far more quickly then back during the snes days. I admit, the 16 bit era is a bit fuzzy, but 32 bit and above I can defend fully. Games cost less and generally offered as much content, at a loss of visuals and maybe voice acting. Any real gamer can tell you that graphics don't make a game.

As for the burger comment, I meant it as an actual item like buying a bacon cheeseburger at a specified price, and then being told the bacon is a seperate item, your burger is just abke to support the bacon. You still need to buy it.

[ZeronHitaro]

Yeah; I gotta call shenanigans on the 'games are cheaper now' statement too. I was a child during the NES/SNES era and I could actually afford games on an allowance. I bought titles like Super Mario RPG and Megamax X for $20 off the Wal-Mart shelves. Even during the PSOne era titles never cracked more than $40; which I could easily get by 'redirecting' my lunch money for 2-3 weeks easily.

Even used it takes over a year and to be generally disliked/bad for a current era title to drop that low. If you were paying top pricing like that for cartridges you were either impatient or being scammed big time. I even remember the days when Chrono Trigger sold for about $15 when my local movie rental stores were clearing out old product. If only I knew then what I knew now...

[Agent D.]

Yeah; I gotta call shenanigans on the 'games are cheaper now' statement too. I was a child during the NES/SNES era and I could actually afford games on an allowance. I bought titles like Super Mario RPG and Megamax X for $20 off the Wal-Mart shelves. Even during the PSOne era titles never cracked more than $40; which I could easily get by 'redirecting' my lunch money for 2-3 weeks easily.

Even used it takes over a year and to be generally disliked/bad for a current era title to drop that low. If you were paying top pricing like that for cartridges you were either impatient or being scammed big time. I even remember the days when Chrono Trigger sold for about $15 when my local movie rental stores were clearing out old product. If only I knew then what I knew now...

In his defense, snes games like chrono trigger , or even worse an original Earthbound with thr strategy guide, were extremely expensive. I know that, but they are a handful compared to the rest of the nornal priced games.

[John]

I don't agree John, games aren't cheaper. Some games were more expensive then compared to niw, but not all of them. Playstation games only cost between 40 and 50 dollars back 15 years ago, and ps2 games were generally 49.99 (all prices US because lolidk currency conversion) and that's only 10 years ago. Snes and sega days, honestly I am hard pressed for remembering as I wasn't buying games then, I was only 7 when I got an snes. I do remember Mega Man X being a shockingly high 70 bucks, but look who made it, one of the biggest offenders of my douchebag dlc hate, Capcom. We can throw around inflation all we like, but honestly, I am making now what I made 10 years ago, and my dad who does the same type of work now that he did 20 years ago also does roughly the same, only the demands got harder. If anything, companies are saturating the market now, releasing multiple titles far more quickly then back during the snes days. I admit, the 16 bit era is a bit fuzzy, but 32 bit and above I can defend fully. Games cost less and generally offered as much content, at a loss of visuals and maybe voice acting. Any real gamer can tell you that graphics don't make a game.

As for the burger comment, I meant it as an actual item like buying a bacon cheeseburger at a specified price, and then being told the bacon is a seperate item, your burger is just abke to support the bacon. You still need to buy it.

Genesis/SNES era games were expensive.  VERY expensive, especially when you got to larger cartridge sizes.  This wasn't a Capcom thing - Chrono Trigger was $80.  Virtua Racing was $100.  Sonic 2 was $65.  My parents got me Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego? for Genesis for my birthday when I was a kid.  That was $65.

See, I can't even agree that games in the 32-bit era (or even many in the 64-bit era) have as much content.  Games today tend to have online components.  Dual inputs from a single console are simple to code compared to online coding.  That adds 2-3 members to your dev team.  Same goes for modern 3D graphics, sound effects, music, etc.  All of these things used to be done by teams that were smaller - or going back far enough - even by one guy.  These size teams are actually still very prevalent - working on PSP/DS/3DS/Vita titles.  Which are all  in the $50 or less price range.

Your definition of "any real gamer" is likely only a very small portion of the actual target audience for a game.  I hate to break it to you, but video games are a product.  It matters that you match up to the competitors in the market.  Just as a movie that had special effects like the original Star Wars would likely not be very successful due to its lack of widespread appeal, a game with outdated graphics is likely to be unsuccessful with a wider market.

If you think titles are being released more rapidly now, I think you are mistaken.  Look especially at the end of the PSone era and the middle of the PS2 era, when companies were releasing game after game with the same engine.  2K released EIGHT Spec Ops games in four years.  You saw the beginning of the Dynasty Warriors overkill (which, I will fully admit, continues today).  Six Rainbow Six games were released in three years.  Crash Bandicoot?  Spyro the Dragon? SOCOM? Medal of Honor? All series with multiple releases within a very short timeframe in the PS2 or PSone era.

You'd be lucky if your fighting games had more than an arcade mode and a versus mode in the 32-bit days.  Tekken 3's Tekken Force and Tekken Ball modes were pretty damn amazing for their times, and it's pretty much expected now that fighters will have a fully-developed story mode.  When they don't (like SCV), they get trashed.  This is all stuff that costs development time.  I certainly don't begrudge the fact that publishers added $10 to the MSRP pricepoint moving from consoles that supported mostly SDTV to those that supported HDTV.  Development costs rise.  We're still getting a much better deal than we were in the 16-bit era.

Yeah; I gotta call shenanigans on the 'games are cheaper now' statement too. I was a child during the NES/SNES era and I could actually afford games on an allowance. I bought titles like Super Mario RPG and Megamax X for $20 off the Wal-Mart shelves. Even during the PSOne era titles never cracked more than $40; which I could easily get by 'redirecting' my lunch money for 2-3 weeks easily.

Even used it takes over a year and to be generally disliked/bad for a current era title to drop that low. If you were paying top pricing like that for cartridges you were either impatient or being scammed big time. I even remember the days when Chrono Trigger sold for about $15 when my local movie rental stores were clearing out old product. If only I knew then what I knew now...

Are we talking about price of older product or MSRP?  If you don't want to pay for DLC, go buy a copy of Oblivion Game of the Year brand new for $20.  Obviously games get cheaper over time as new product comes in.  That's how the market has always worked and that's how it continues to work today.  I can buy Persona 3 FES off of PSN for $10 today.  That doesn't change the fact that the original was $50 when it was released and FES was $30.  Just the same, you can buy the DS version of CT (and likely an old SNES cart) for $20.  That doesn't change that it had an MSRP of $80 on the SNES.

If you think that price drops are uncommon today, I have to call bullshit on that.  Let's see... on games released since the beginning of the year, on Amazon, not even hunting for sale pricing for 2 or 3 minutes:

Soul Calibur 5, MSRP $60: $44 (http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Calibur-V-Xbox-360/dp/B003O6EA4E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334246922&sr=8-1)
Mass Effect 3, MSRP $60: $48 (http://www.amazon.com/Mass-Effect-3-Xbox-360/dp/B004FYEZMQ/ref=pd_ts_zgc_vg_4924903011_3?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&pf_rd_p=1355521642&pf_rd_s=right-6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=14220161&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0MPRJRMCPMGJ8V6HZXP3)
SSX, MSRP $60: $30 (http://www.amazon.com/SSX-Xbox-360/dp/B003O6C9LK/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_21)
Final Fantasy XIII-2, MSRP $60: $30 (http://www.amazon.com/Final-Fantasy-XIII-2-Xbox-360/dp/B003O6EBRA/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_22)
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, MSRP $60, $51 (http://www.amazon.com/Kingdoms-Amalur-Reckoning-Xbox-360/dp/B0044SA70M/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_33)

Going back to titles released in the Holiday of last year.

Tropico 4, MSRP $50: $20 (http://www.amazon.com/Tropico-4-Xbox-360/dp/B004H0H890/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334247223&sr=8-1) I got the PC version of this for $5 late last year.
Gears of War 3, MSRP $60: $37 (http://www.amazon.com/Gears-War-3-Xbox-360/dp/B002I0H79C/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_17)
Batman Arkham City, MSRP $60: $35 (http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Arkham-City-Xbox-360/dp/B002I0JAVK/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_24)
Assassin's Creed Revelations, MSRP $60: $36 (http://www.amazon.com/Assassins-Creed-Revelations-microsoft-xbox-360/dp/B004YVOCYG/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_25)
Dead Island, MSRP $60: $33 (http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Island-Xbox-360/dp/B004PAGJOC/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_55)
Dark Souls, MSRP $60: $37 (http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Souls-Xbox-360/dp/B004NRN5DU/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_64)
Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster, MSRP $50, $17 (http://www.amazon.com/Sesame-Street-Once-Monster-Xbox-360/dp/B004OCK9KG/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_73)
Rage, MSRP $60, $13 (http://www.amazon.com/Rage-Xbox-360/dp/B00354NAYG/ref=zg_bs_4924903011_77)

[Kevadu]

I was going to comment, but John beat me to it.  He said everything I was going to say...

But in addition to the fact (and it is a fact, you can't just ignore inflation...) that games are cheaper now than ever before, development costs are higher now than ever before.  It's a peculiar situation, and developers have to find some way to make money.

Though personally I hate the nickel and diming.  I actually would prefer to just pay more (and wait longer) for the complete product.  But I feel like I'm in the minority there.

[ZeronHitaro]

XIII-2 already dropped that low? ._.; Well damn. My local branches must just suck then. I don't often see newer games at a used price below $49.99 even months after release. Although I'll confess my statement is more or less made in the vein of 'Going into a shop and casually browsing every other week' than 'hard research'. XD

_______________

Depending on the line of argument; I'd say that inflation actually can be ignored because it works more in theory for cost estimates than in practical application.

Example: My aforementioned statement that in High School I purchased games with my lunch budget. I'd get by usually just buying a pizza pocket or something out of the local hotboxes. Pizza pockets cost about $1.50 then. I can go down to the gas station here in 2012 and get the same food for the same price regardless of inflation.

So as such:
1990s- $10 per week from school budget. New game costs $40 most. One game per 4 weeks.
2012- $10 per week from school budget (if I were still doing such). New game costs $60 most. One game per 6 weeks.

That is a marked increased in gaming expense. So while the laws of inflation say 'games are cheaper', the law of physical money in the wallet says 'games are not cheaper'.

[Hathen]

It might just be that your realization of the value of money from being an adult has caused you to feel like games are more expensive than when you were a kid. =P

[dyeager]

I was going to throw out more stats on just how much cheaper games are not just based on inflation but average game prices, used game market, etc. - but let me just say instead that you CAN'T ignore inflation. It matters. If you don't think so then the argument just grinds to a total halt because we are no longer talking about the same thing - one side is talking about reality and the other fantasy.

[dyeager]

Also, totally agree with John on the issue of BUGS. There was almost no recourse back in the day if you bought a buggy game, and although it is a "mistake" it is absolutely unreasonable to expect every single possible bug to be caught before release because no matter how large your QA team, thousands of players will come up with scenarios you simply never thought of no matter what you do. Public betas help but there is no substitute for putting the game (or any software product) in the hands of users. They will find a way to break it. That's just part of doing business, it's not an attempt to screw people over.

Also, I just don't think all DLC is bad. The Amalur DLC (Legend of Dead Kell) was absolutely fantastic and well worth the $10 price tag, but didn't detract in any way at all from the original game if you didn't have it. There are ways to do this right. I get the original point that some companies (Bioware) appear to be going down a path where DLC is coming very close to required (I'm thinking ME2 more than anything proposed around ME3 actually) and that's taking us into weird territory for sure - but it has never been a better time to be a gamer than right now.

[Agent D.]

Okay, part of the rant is the ability to come back when less rage-fueled and see things with a more open outlook. Maybe I was a bit bullheaded stating inflation doesn't impact it so greatly, and I do admit that there is some dlc that isn't a huge kick in the balls. However, my rant was pretty much based solely at capcom right now, and EA to an extent. They are releasing games with extra content already taken into account. Yoda mentioned it in the re6 thread, 3 different stores, 3 different "exclusive"dlc packs, meaning 3 weeks later we can assume they will be on sale for spme ludicrous amount of money. I can also point that at ffxiii-2, with the pre order bonus horseshit that they release later as dlc. This kind of fluff dlc is where my rage really triggers. Deus ex human revolution had a whole dlc episode, 14.99 at release, that in terms of comparable play time, was MAYBE 1/20th of the content of the main game. How can you fairly charge 15 bucks for content of a game that cost 60 bucks and it doesn't even have 1/10 the content, nor can you play it without the actual game present? Companie are making whole games for that price (skullgirls for example) and without even owning it I can safely say it has more than 5 hours of gameplay.

So yes, I can safely say I did rage with a slight bias, but you can't blame a guy for being tired of getting fucked over by an industry he stood behind since he could stand.