Okay, DLC is something that is really getting on my nerve lately.
For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, DLC is DownLoadable Content. It’s when you buy a game, then later you can purchase extra missions, and other things, to extend the game. In theory it’s a good idea. In practice, some game developers are taking it a little too far.
Take Assassin’s Creed 2 for example. The game is divided up into Memory Blocks, and there are 14 in all. But when you get to Memory 12 and 13, they are mysteriously corrupt, and it skips over to 14. You never get to play 12 and 13 in the main game. Now, they have announced that you can purchase 2 DLC’s that will fill up the 12 and 13 space in the game.
Now I don’t mind the idea of extending a game past the end, but to deliberately leave a gaping hole in the middle of the game is just petty. They are hoping that people will want to fill a hole (because nature abhors a vacuum), and it would entice people to play the game. In fact, they even admitted that these missions were supposed to be in the original game, but were cut for various reasons (time, money, etc). I understand the need to cut things from a game, but as a writer, I also understand that you don’t leave big holes in your product!
I’ve had to cut plenty of things out from my stories, but I would never leave my book with Chapter 11 going on to Chapter 14 – then later make people pay to read Chapters 12 and 13. Its idiotic, and ruins the story. They could have (and should have) quite easily renamed the missions so that when playing, you wouldn’t even notice there was a hole, then released DLC that EXTENDED the game. Extend is the key word here. The AC2 DLC does not extend anything, it just fills in a hole that should never have been there in the first place.
Another good example is Dragon Age: Origin. In this game, when you make camp there is a character standing right at the edge of your camp offering you a quest. The trouble is you need to pay extra to access that quest. As I said, I don’t mind purchasing extra quests and such, but I don’t want a character in my game telling me I need to pay real world money. It breaks the immersion of a game when a character tells me I need to download extra content (and pay for it) in order to help him with his problem.
It’s the equivalent of this:
Dilemma walked through the door. “Hey reader,” she said. “If you want to find out what happens in this room, you need to purchase the ‘Dilemma in the Room’ expansion story, available now for the low price of $10”.
I don’t mind buying DLC, but it needs to be ‘extra’ content, not filling in holes!
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