Some Players Want Day-1 DLC, Says BioWare 357
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at GDC Europe this week, BioWare Montreal's Fernando Melo spoke about how the oft-disparaged first-day downloadable content for video games is actually something a significant amount of players want. 'Melo argued that on the occasions when BioWare hasn't provided DLC from day one, those players who complete the game quickly then complained that there was nothing more to play and asked for extra content. If DLC isn't provided for these players, they may well move on to a different game and never come back to play DLC later on. As proof that day one DLC also works in terms of sales, Melo said that 53 percent of all sales for the first Dragon Age: Origins DLC pack — which was released on the same day as the full game — were made on release day."
Re:DLC? really? (Score:3, Interesting)
The one that gets me is the "DLC" that isn't even DLC. Instead, it just unlocks content that was already on the CD/DVD.
Re:Well fuck. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is stupid.
It makes no difference to the company whether you play a game or not, the only thing that matters is whether you pay for it. If you pirate to save money, then yes that's wrong. If you pirate because you were not going to buy it anyway, then that's fine.
Companies need to learn to offer good games. Day 1 DLCs are scams. Short games are scams. DRM is a scam. The moment your game has any of these attributes, I do not buy it. However I do buy a few dozen games and spend over $1000 a year on games that do not have any of the above.
And if you still don't like the fact that I pirate your DRM-ridden game, well just tell yourself that you scammed all the people who bought it and didn't deserve all that money in the first place.
But more importantly: I did not pirate until recently. I was in full boycott mode when it came to music, movies and games I didn't like.
But then some companies decided they could violate our rights to make profits - you've heard of SOPA I presume. From then on, this was war. I no longer care about being nice and doing the right thing and not using what I didn't pay for. Now I download for free from all the companies who supported SOPA or tried to make DRM circumvention illegal, etc. Now I want to take advantage of those scumbags. Thank you for the free games, EA and Ubisoft (and others). That's what you get when you fuck with me.
Also, what are you going to do to stop me? Pass SOPA 2? LOL!
Go cry under a couch, clown.
Re:Well fuck. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, who are these people who finish an RPG in 1 day? Do they pay for a hooker and finish in 2 minutes? Do they order a fine steak and drink it out of a blender? What the world?
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Interesting)
Kinda....
Games used to have things like pre-order bonuses and so on. That was fine when there were a lot less games, getting a guaranteed pre order was trivial and when you could have reasonable confidence that a developer wouldn't make crap.
But times change. If you're a bit OCD, a bit of a completionist or if you just want everything having all the goodies some people get for 'free' (or bundled with things you don't want like a statue) you still might want that same content, which is DLC, and might be willing to pay for it.
Some of the Bioware DLC then makes sense, in the scope of say an extra character or an extra mission that you want to see when you play the game. And for say 5 dollars it's still cheaper than a 10 dollar special edition with an art book that you don't want. Think of some DLC then as 'a la carte' limited/collectors/special edition parts.
Day-1 DLC was supposed to be in Day-0 product.
That's both subjective on a case by case basis, and really hard to argue in a lot of cases. Charging 5 dollars for day 1 DLC is partly a way of increasing the price by 5 dollars but cutting the various middle men out of the process. If you are a semi indie studio and you sell a game for 50 bucks at Walmart, walmart takes about 15 bucks (steam, gamestop about the same), your publisher takes 17 or so, and you're left with 17. But you get 100% of the DLC. So rather than getting 17 dollars for a copy you just got 22 (without having to push the whole cost through the chain). Usually publishers these days are smart enough to demand a cut of the DLC so it goes from being the publisher getting 35 bucks to split with you to getting 40 to split with you, but either way, the developer still takes home a lot more cash this way.
Most DLC is also not really major, relative to the price. A 5 dollar DLC doesn't have 1/10th the content of the game in it, if you're really lucky it has 1/20th, so you're significantly overpaying for that one piece of content in the hopes that more money goes back to the people who actually made the product than the people who distributed the product or left it in a box in their bathroom waiting for you.
Lets take a non bioware topical example: Guild Wars 2. Every retailer near where I am sold out on pre -orders of the collectors edition day one. Too bad I was away that day on business and missed my pre-order chance. Now with a 'digital deluxe' or similar edition I'm basically buying in a bundled DLC, call it whatever you want, you're paying for day 1 DLC. So I can't get the collectors edition, or at least, I can't be sure I can get the collectors edition, but I can be reasonably sure I can get the important game content one way or another.
In short: your concept of DLC and his aren't necessarily the same thing. You're not wrong, but neither is he. That perspective matters a lot. He's talking to other game developers, and in that sense he's right. Day 1 DLC (including in collectors editions or content that could have been in collectors editions but a player didn't buy that) is hugely popular, and that should be obvious enough to everyone.
Extra less relevant bits:
Dragon age origins (the product in question) launched with 3 version. Regular retail. Collectors (physical) and digital deluxe. The digital deluxe had a *code* to download the day 1 DLC for free (so he's counting that in his stats almost certainly since it wasn't technically bundled), but the digital deluxe had a soundtrack and some desktop theme crap too. Why pay for the sound track and desktop wallpapers when you can just buy the actually game content for 7 bucks or whatever, save yourself 3 dollars, (or maybe 13, i can't remember). In his context a significant portion of the launch day had people buying basically the 2 special editions or a la carte versions of the special editions.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Interesting)
Downloadables are faster.
You might not know this, but once a product is finished, there's often a 2+ month lead time before it can be sold. In that time, the pressings have to be scheduled in, followed by the warehousing and distribution.
If the game is ready, it goes into cert, which can take a month while issues that come up are fixed and resolved. In the meantime, you have a bunch of developers sitting around (rarely do you get something that involves the entire team - those kind of bugs are usually caught before it goes into cert). Once approved, the discs can be pressed (alongside with other things for special and limited editions), which can take another month, from then it's another month to ship it to the various retailer warehouses and for them to ship it to their individual stores.
So there can easily be a 2-to-3 month period of idleness for developers. You could either lay most of them off, keeping the few you need to handle launch day issues, or have them producing DLC in the meantime. As it's downloadable, once it's passed cert, it goes into the store - no waiting for pressing or distribution (which are the slow parts).
The process can be sped up if you're doing a console exclusive title or if the manufacturer really wants your game, but you're still looking at over a month.
Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution. Who might as well work on DLC and probably finish some stuff they couldn't do during main development. Leading to more day-1 DLC.