Don't Look Closely

Downloadable Content (DLC) used to be an exciting prospect. As time goes by it seems more an expensive disappointment. The realisation doesn't hit you at first but the main problem with DLC is it has zero resale value. Even though the amounts seem small, if you take the combined cost of the Fallout 3 DLC, it exceeded the original purchase price and yet actually represents nothing like the same value. The critical reception of the Fallout DLC also largely failed to approach that of the original. By comparison the healthy used marketplace means it's often possible to lose very little money on a retail game.

The timing of DLC is also becoming increasingly cynical. Gears of Wars 2 Snowblind and Combustible map packs originally sold for 800 points each but were included with the additional campaign in the All Fronts pack for 1600. Existing owners of these map packs were offered no concessions or rebate though on All Fronts. After initially buying the Snowblind map pack it was also frustrating that the public horde option was unavailable without the Combustible map pack. How can it be right to offer the "Icy Dead People" achievement and then offer no public way to achieve it without buying something else?

A further irritation of DLC is how it confuses games shown as complete in your achievements. Even without the poorly received "Pinnacle Station", Mass Effect is shown as complete. Oblivion however is only considered complete when "Shivering Isles" is too. Surely a game should be shown as complete when you have completed all the content you have? In theory a game could get new DLC at anytime, so can a game ever be considered complete? Will games move to and from this complete status?

The media industry wants us to think of their products just as we do those more tangible. I have no issue with that. Theft is theft. It's only reasonable then to expect that games media has a resale value and it needs to be transferable, just like tangible goods. Otherwise it needs to be priced to be disposable. I don't believe DLC is sufficiently inexpensive to be seen as disposable. A recent development has seen the introduction of downloadable retail games. Currently these are priced at full RRP, come with no manual and have no resale possibility. The large download would also have implications for those on capped ISP contracts. If this is an attempt to curb the resale of games it looks likely to fail as who would buy games under these conditions?

In the end it seems we are being played by the Advertising and Marketing people, the people Bill Hicks joked should kill themselves, so if you are, do, no seriously...