Gamers and Entitlement Issues

[AgentNein]

There's a youtube video of a middle aged man yelling at a mall (probably people in the mall) to let him in and purchase wares. It was closed for holiday. But damnit, he felt he had a right to purchase things. So yeah, this sense of entitlement is really nothing new.

 

[Continuity]

why? Does this problem extend beyond gaming? Is this just the attitude of the new generation?

Its plain and simple, people have bought a game, they expect to have bought all of the content for that game... if more content then tips up with a price tag they feel cheated.

Simple.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Eh, I've washed my hands of the DLC debate entirely. I personally think it was a very promising feature of this console generation, but corporate greed has predictably warped and ruined it. The vast majority of my DLC purchasing experiences have been extremely disappointing, which is why I no longer buy the stuff unless I hear from multiple sources that something is very good. Which really hasn't happened yet, tbh.

 

[Waif]

If I like something, I generally get it. It's much better if it's free, I'll sometimes get free stuff that I don't particularly like just because it is free. Though I respect the idea that the companies need to make money, and I don't feel entitled to anything. I've learned that the world isn't fair, and that it is best to not expect anything.

 

[Zhalath]

To me, DLC seems like something removed from the game or that should have been added, and then sold to you later. It's like having to buy some of the Pokemon in a Pokemon game (but none of the good ones, so you can still go through the game just fine).

I think it's already been established that that's not the case.

Well, that's what it feels like to me.

 

[Iron Mal]

The nearest comparison that most gamers have to DLC are mods (which are usually free), so it's only to be expected that having the sudden change from every single one of them being free to having to pay a reasonable sum hasn't gone down very well.

Put in short, gamers are used to extras being free (because those extras used to be made by amatuers who made them for fun rather than actual game developers) and change which involves an increase of personal cost is always hard to accept.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Why do people feel like they're entitled to free healthcare? It used to be that poor people got no healthcare at all, but now we're giving them discounts on a few things and they feel like they're entitled to get everything free!

To be less sarcastic: They paid for the game and that's what they expected to get, the entire game. It does tend to irritate people when they expect us to buy stuff that would at one point have been put in the original release.

Except, it would have never been in the original goddamn release. it would've been cut, and left cut, and maybe fit into a sequel which you would pay another $60 for and be like OMG THEY ADDED SO MUCH NEW STUFF THIS SEQUEL IS GREAT!

60 dollar sequel?

or 30 dollars of DLC.

You decied.

To me, DLC seems like something removed from the game or that should have been added, and then sold to you later. It's like having to buy some of the Pokemon in a Pokemon game (but none of the good ones, so you can still go through the game just fine).

I think it's already been established that that's not the case.

Well, that's what it feels like to me.

You are sadly incorrect, sir. DLC tends to be cut features, or stuff thought up after the crunch. As abysmal a comedy as Game Dogs was, it was very accurate on what it's like to work as a Game Developer in alot of cases - there's an entire episode devoted to 'feature creep', when idea's you NEVER WILL HAVE TIME TO FINISH start to crop up and you have to nix them.

I feel things should be free that are already built into the game at launch. Day-One DLC pisses me off because that really is just the developer attempting to grab a few more bucks from you for something that should have been part of the game already.

DLC after the game's launch that was built to expand the original game can be charged if the developer feels that's right. For this example, I feel that the price is justified, but in some cases there really is unfair DLC prices, the best example still being $10 Horse Armor for Oblivion.

In the end though, it's just the mentality of this demographic. Plus Valve keeps us PC gamers spoiled as hell with DLC. We've gotten about, maybe 12 major free updates now.

Valve operates on a different level because of Steam, though. It get's paid a flat amount to advertise other companies games and sell them, through steam, and to play TF2 you have to go through Steam.

It's like a complimentary dinner or a great priced restaurant/buffett at a Vegas casino. To get to the free/discount stuff, you have to go through the casino. Go to the bathroom? Go through the casino. That casino is a money sink, and they make more money off that casino then they spend on comp'd services. Therefore, Steam is Valve's casino - you have to go through it and use it to DO ANYTHING. This also gives Valve an extra layer of protection against piracy, which is why so many games are requiring Steam now.

Alot of developers, including console developers, don't have their own steam casino's. Infact, I think Stardock might be the only company besides Valve that owns it's own digital distribution center, and even then Impulse isn't as centralized as Steam is and thus can't be as much of a revenue source.

In short, Valve is making PLENTY of money off of you, it's just not where you expect. It's not a business model everyone can follow, so Valve is a very unique example.

 

[Sgt Doom]

Expansion packs of the days of old generally had more content.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Expansion packs of the days of old generally had more content.

They had to, to justify the cost of going to disc print. DLC is disc free, so they can be smaller transactions. DLC is not a ripoff. Now, DLC price points are a trickier matter, and you MAY be paying too much for DLC.

As it is, companies price their DLC at whatever premium they think they can get people to pay. Microsoft inparticular manipulates this market because they get a cut of whatever goes through X-box Live, so it's very rare anything is priced below $10, and because it was so common $10 became an industry wide, ubiquitous price point, the value for which is varied. It's just what the publishers pull out of their hat, so they can share their cake with Microsoft.

To use the original post's example, Red Dead is an Xbox game, so naturally MS will have a say in whatever the cost is for those DLC. As far as DLC goes, Rockstar is giving a -VERY- good value for their DLC; most new DLC might include a game mode, a few new models, and a new weapon or two. IF that.

 

[hawkeye52]

you get problems when game companies release dlc that will directly effect those that dont have it will suffer for it. case and point is mw2 since the people who could be playing a server will get kicked off if they dont buy the dlc for new maps (or old ones from cod4) and that map comes on.

its effectively making people buy content by annoying the shit out of them which is kind of a dick move.

in other words content that will directly effect you for not having it should be free since its not "additional" its mandatory in some circumstances (especially in multiplayer games). its one step off of making us pay for patches.

however content that will not effect you if you dont buy it. e.g. fallout 3's operation anchorage you should have to pay for since its completely your choice to buy it and your not being coerced in anyway to buy it (unlike cod6 kicking you off a server) which is great.

people also complain when people on consoles have to pay for dlc while people on the pc dont (tf2 or cod4) but thats not the game companies fault thats the xbla or watever trying to make a profit out of it.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

you get problems when game companies release dlc that will directly effect those that dont have it will suffer for it. case and point is mw2 since the people who could be playing a server will get kicked off if they dont buy the dlc for new maps (or old ones from cod4) and that map comes on.

its effectively making people buy content by annoying the shit out of them which is kind of a dick move.

in other words content that will directly effect you for not having it should be free since its not "additional" its mandatory in some circumstances (especially in multiplayer games). its one step off of making us pay for patches.

however content that will not effect you if you dont buy it. e.g. fallout 3's operation anchorage you should have to pay for since its completely your choice to buy it and your not being coerced in anyway to buy it (unlike cod6 kicking you off a server) which is great.

people also complain when people on consoles have to pay for dlc while people on the pc dont (tf2 or cod4) but thats not the game companies fault thats the xbla or watever trying to make a profit out of it.

I can more or less agree with this, getting map-kicked because you don't have an expansion sucks. You can always host your ow-

Oh wait. No dedicated serves.

PS: Drifter, WB, stay a while! your 4 posts from a thousand!

 

[Redd the Sock]

We're an entitlement culture through just about all facets of our lives. It's kind of sickening that people somehow can't live without things exactly as they wish. You could have picked a lot of gaming issues like removed features, game length, or extra features, but DLC is good.

Addmittedly there is something to the concern of people against DLC. Yeah, a lot's been received free in the past, and all the stories of the work going into it after production lose steam when your purchase is a megabyte sized unlock code, not the content itself. I'm not honestly fond of all the downloaded material for games in the first place (prefering completed disks without the need to patch glitches) but I do see the end benfit as well. No needless and uninspired sequals, just expansions for half the price. But when DLC can be so limited like color or weapon packs, it's hard not to look at it as a cash grab.

And there's the larger problem. While the rational mind would say that a company tries to balance a fair profit and low price for the customer, after Enron, and stories of corporate corruption and bloated executive pay, we as a culture no longer see price as a function the cost of production, but as money flowing to some crooked bigwig or other undeserving entity. And it may be. We usualy don't have enough financial information to make the fair judgement, so we make rationalized judgements.

 

[gamer_parent]

To me, it's a simple matter of understanding one very basic principle: somebody needs to pay for the DLCs. When the DLCs in question are actual new content, somebody has to carry the burden of that cost. I actually don't think most DLCs are essential to that part of the game. Or rather, it is not essential in that you can general play the game without it. Otherwise, the game would be unplayable and then you're looking at a company with the worst PR strategy ever.

In the case of new content, the companies need a way to monetize it, or else that new DLC development will not be worth the companies time. How they monetize can differ from game to game. Games that have subscription fees can just use the revenue from the subscription fees to pay for it. PC games can maybe get by with ad revenue. And free to play MMOs like Maple Story do so through non-essential DLCs like custom items. You can argue that the price of the game itself should cover this, but then that means you're just looking at companies charging additional amounts in the beginning, or face a longer ROI. (and in a world where the average game's lifespan is less than 6 months, that's asking a lot)

That's pretty much the bottom line.

Asking for a company to voluntarily take a loss or even just less profit to make DLCs free is just not a good enough response. It's not like they're forcing DLCs down your throat, and make your game unplayable if you don't pay for it. the only exceptions to this are competitive games, where the lack of a newly released DLC might actually hurt your ability to compete. But in most cases, the games being discussed here are single player games or games where the multiplayer play is not inherent competitive. In that particular sense, you don't need more DLCs to make that work for you. As such, the argument of not getting the full game is flawed because you ALREADY HAVE THE FULL GAME. Sure, it's not all the content that will come out in the games lifespan, but you're basically getting A complete product.

that's the mentality that needs to change.

Yes, it sucks that games are getting more expensive for the average consumer. but you gotta understand that the production value of games ahve also gone up 1000 fold since the good ol' days where a small team of 5 can churn out a AAA hit.

The fact that games don't cost 300 bucks a pop is in and of itself a marvel of the current market.

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

It's not just Gamers who have entitlement issues. I understand where your coming from but using the Red Dead DLC may not be the best example.

I unerstand that rock star wants to be paid for releasing new content. but alot of people feel like games are purposely being shortend so that will have to pay for the DLC on top of the $60 for the game it's self. now Red Dead did have alot of content so it may not count, however it happens so often that when gamers hear about planned DLC with a high price tag this tends to be there natural reaction to it.

 

[knumpify]

There's a youtube video of a middle aged man yelling at a mall (probably people in the mall) to let him in and purchase wares. It was closed for holiday. But damnit, he felt he had a right to purchase things. So yeah, this sense of entitlement is really nothing new.

It wasn't closed for holiday, (if you're talking about [url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqRPOEa3P44)]this middle aged man[/url],) that's a clip from the G20 summit in toronto. They closed the Eaton's center for a riot downtown.

OT: Although I am indifferent most of the time to DLC, I feel left out when it's regarding other missions or finishing storyline because I'm an offline gamer. I don't have xbox live, I'm not connected online with any consoles, I don't play multiplayer. Games are something I enjoy myself, so it really pisses me off when I hear things like "oh, did you do the other *downloaded mission*?" well, no, I didn't get to do that and get the super-cool-useful item that it gives. I feel very grumpy about anything that's DLC and mainly affects solo aspects of the game. you could have put it in, if it was too big, you could have made another disc, if it's not practical (it's practical, lost odyssey was four freakin' discs long, you can manage one more mission), then you can release it as an expansion disc as well as DLC. Don't fuck me over because I like the campaign.