But that is the step for every game design. "So we have ideas X, Y, Z. Our budget allows 2 of those to be well polished and included in the game. We think X & Z are the best ideas, so Y gets shelved." Y in this case could become the DLC.
Am I the only one that's a little thrown off by this?
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They are not done EUIV, and they won't be done it for a very long time. Unless EUIV is released with all the content they promised in it, all of it absolutely bug free, then there is no excuse to be spending time, resources, and money on DLC
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Just to put this straight, I don't think paradox, nor every company with a DLC model, is an evil company that's only trying to extort money from they consumers and fan base. At least for Paradox, they deliver a nice finished product (at least since CK2) which, surprisingly, is their first game on DLC policy.
Also, I'm not defending that DLCs shouldn't exist, or that it doesn't have a good side. I'm talking of what I think is happening on videogame world, that it's tending too much onward one vision and one model.
It's really problematic when consumers start thinking as a company, justifying things from, in this case, developers point of view. This is not a consumer job. Its job is to "analize" their boughts and see if it delivers what they expect. Not that you can't see through another person's eyes, nor that there isn't a good side on this, but this does not ends the discussion. Because it's a business model, doesn't mean it's working as it should be or that it's inerently right.
For example, this "limited budget justification", it's put as if there was an absolute table that stated how much a person's job is worth and yet it is used to justify almost every cut-from-base-game decision. How would you react if you came to me at my work, something unpredicted happened, and my employer said that his budget doesn't pay me to solve the problem? Not that that analogy aplies 100%, but I think it relates.
Another thing that irritates me is dealings with some aspects of game development as minor issues, like, "Oh, it's only cosmetic". There's a whole segment of game industry (actually, it's the core of nowadays industry) where cosmetic is the main aspect of a game, and even on paradox games, which cosmetic is not the main point, it's extreme relevant. Just think about map changes from EU3 to Sengoku to CK2 to EU4.
The point here is cosmetic is an integral part of a game. Do you want to play a Master of Orion where every race looks the same and you have to pay a DLC for every race to have it looking diferently? Cosmetic is an integral part even in a retro or low end graphics game. Nice examples that comes to my mind are "Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery" and "Bit trip Runner".
DLC model seems like a good market aproach, but it institucionalizes games as an unfinished product, which might be good in a technical gameplay aproach, but it's bad for creativity, which involves an amount of risk (funny that EU is based on a game based on risk and Johan had to take a risk when releasing a new and inovative videogame). This is the difference between entering just to win and funding a vision, taking the risk to bring something new, unseen. A game with day-one DLC is an unfinished product, there's no way around it.
I'm seeing the whole "gamer" market embracing models big companies and media are pushing without thinking about them. It's good for EA, Ubisoft, and might be good even for the industry, in therms of money, but this is in the short run not and necessarily for consumers, who are getting more of the same everytime. Just take some recent quotes from huge game companies as example: EA just said they will only make games that can turn into a franchise, some time ago, an (I think) Ubisoft representative said that the market needed a new generation of consoles to "help" developers be creative, and yet, you see Wii U getting bashed everytime on game press when it's the only console that brings something new.
This Wii U bashing is a nice example of what I'm saying. Since its release, I see it everywhere being criticized for it low power. Then, surprisingly, PS4 and XBOX One specs are revealed to be almost the same. For a big game developer company, this is a bad market enviroment, since it might turnout that 1/3 of the market have to be more specific in therms of game delelopment, given Wii U's uniqueness. They want to maximize profit, even if in the expense of creativity.
And then you see on game foruns or game media sites consumers predicting success and failures, as if they were market analysts, only thinking in therms of emediate success, while bypassing inovation and creativity. PS1 is always remembered by its success, the first to break the 100 million barrier, but, really, its greatest success was introducing the standard for a gamepad. Original Wii was a console that pushed inovation, which ended with microsoft pushing boundaries even further with kinect. I personaly am not a big enthusiast of neither of them for gaming, but I recognize that it just not only atracts new consumers, enlarging the market, but transcends the "game world" having other uses like on education and rehabilitation. It might not have an emediate return, but in the long run it's bringing videogames to the center of our culture.
And this is not only a hardware issue. Games themselves are following the same route, hours of gameplay/time as a reference for money worth being used explicitly all the time, while games are being stuffed with "fillers" to extent its lifetime, or companies changing their games end to easy tension on their market, games looking more the same, gamers and developers becoming each day more alike, the ideal world for revenue, but the worst possible for inovation. You see everyday games being compared to movies, how storytelling and technical realism evolved, and yet the market, and worse, media, can't handle and ambiguous or inconclusive end or gameplay being used as subtle mean to storytelling like on "Trauma" or "The Path", or even on "Mass Effect".
The bottom line is consumers are being tamed, as movie industry did, without even knowing it. Hope I didn't digress too much.
Also, I'm not defending that DLCs shouldn't exist, or that it doesn't have a good side. I'm talking of what I think is happening on videogame world, that it's tending too much onward one vision and one model.
It's really problematic when consumers start thinking as a company, justifying things from, in this case, developers point of view. This is not a consumer job. Its job is to "analize" their boughts and see if it delivers what they expect. Not that you can't see through another person's eyes, nor that there isn't a good side on this, but this does not ends the discussion. Because it's a business model, doesn't mean it's working as it should be or that it's inerently right.
For example, this "limited budget justification", it's put as if there was an absolute table that stated how much a person's job is worth and yet it is used to justify almost every cut-from-base-game decision. How would you react if you came to me at my work, something unpredicted happened, and my employer said that his budget doesn't pay me to solve the problem? Not that that analogy aplies 100%, but I think it relates.
Another thing that irritates me is dealings with some aspects of game development as minor issues, like, "Oh, it's only cosmetic". There's a whole segment of game industry (actually, it's the core of nowadays industry) where cosmetic is the main aspect of a game, and even on paradox games, which cosmetic is not the main point, it's extreme relevant. Just think about map changes from EU3 to Sengoku to CK2 to EU4.
The point here is cosmetic is an integral part of a game. Do you want to play a Master of Orion where every race looks the same and you have to pay a DLC for every race to have it looking diferently? Cosmetic is an integral part even in a retro or low end graphics game. Nice examples that comes to my mind are "Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery" and "Bit trip Runner".
DLC model seems like a good market aproach, but it institucionalizes games as an unfinished product, which might be good in a technical gameplay aproach, but it's bad for creativity, which involves an amount of risk (funny that EU is based on a game based on risk and Johan had to take a risk when releasing a new and inovative videogame). This is the difference between entering just to win and funding a vision, taking the risk to bring something new, unseen. A game with day-one DLC is an unfinished product, there's no way around it.
I'm seeing the whole "gamer" market embracing models big companies and media are pushing without thinking about them. It's good for EA, Ubisoft, and might be good even for the industry, in therms of money, but this is in the short run not and necessarily for consumers, who are getting more of the same everytime. Just take some recent quotes from huge game companies as example: EA just said they will only make games that can turn into a franchise, some time ago, an (I think) Ubisoft representative said that the market needed a new generation of consoles to "help" developers be creative, and yet, you see Wii U getting bashed everytime on game press when it's the only console that brings something new.
This Wii U bashing is a nice example of what I'm saying. Since its release, I see it everywhere being criticized for it low power. Then, surprisingly, PS4 and XBOX One specs are revealed to be almost the same. For a big game developer company, this is a bad market enviroment, since it might turnout that 1/3 of the market have to be more specific in therms of game delelopment, given Wii U's uniqueness. They want to maximize profit, even if in the expense of creativity.
And then you see on game foruns or game media sites consumers predicting success and failures, as if they were market analysts, only thinking in therms of emediate success, while bypassing inovation and creativity. PS1 is always remembered by its success, the first to break the 100 million barrier, but, really, its greatest success was introducing the standard for a gamepad. Original Wii was a console that pushed inovation, which ended with microsoft pushing boundaries even further with kinect. I personaly am not a big enthusiast of neither of them for gaming, but I recognize that it just not only atracts new consumers, enlarging the market, but transcends the "game world" having other uses like on education and rehabilitation. It might not have an emediate return, but in the long run it's bringing videogames to the center of our culture.
And this is not only a hardware issue. Games themselves are following the same route, hours of gameplay/time as a reference for money worth being used explicitly all the time, while games are being stuffed with "fillers" to extent its lifetime, or companies changing their games end to easy tension on their market, games looking more the same, gamers and developers becoming each day more alike, the ideal world for revenue, but the worst possible for inovation. You see everyday games being compared to movies, how storytelling and technical realism evolved, and yet the market, and worse, media, can't handle and ambiguous or inconclusive end or gameplay being used as subtle mean to storytelling like on "Trauma" or "The Path", or even on "Mass Effect".
The bottom line is consumers are being tamed, as movie industry did, without even knowing it. Hope I didn't digress too much.
Here's the thing. I've never been one to care for sprite packs, faces, music, and the such. They don't make my experience in paradox games any better, they don't change the game at all, so I don't pay for them. I'm happy that I'm not being made to pay for them with EUIV, even though it's only $5. I'd rather spend that on a couple beers at the bar.
*preface*
Seems the P-Dox forums sent me a few pages back - similar comments like mine may have already been made**
No - The Call to Arms campaign came first.
Or any to suggest the opposite - There IS however plenty of examples of games where pre-order and similar advertisement related DLC becomes publicly available shortly after release.
Seems the P-Dox forums sent me a few pages back - similar comments like mine may have already been made**
No - The Call to Arms campaign came first.
Or any to suggest the opposite - There IS however plenty of examples of games where pre-order and similar advertisement related DLC becomes publicly available shortly after release.
That should go in free patches, or by modding. For me events are the basis of the game, eveyone should have them and have the same.
As long as you don't start mixing my gameplay DLC with that silly music, sprites DLC, I will be fine.
The main issue with day one DLC is that the cost in relation to the budget is often bloated compared to the base game. So if you added the budget for the dlc to the base game and used it to develop the same things and used the same percentage to get the price of the game it would be cheaper. A lot of companies have adopted this strategy and will charge you like a quarter of the cost of the game for 1/25 the content.
I generally don't have an issue with DLCs though certain things like having to pay extra for black people to be black is ridiculous. Graphics that aren't about vanity or something added for new content with a DLC/expansion should be considered part of the base game.
I generally don't have an issue with DLCs though certain things like having to pay extra for black people to be black is ridiculous. Graphics that aren't about vanity or something added for new content with a DLC/expansion should be considered part of the base game.
DLC´s are anyway horrible. Mods will give the game more depth than all dlc´s together. Hope this dlc trend has an end soon.
If Paradox started selling DLC that changed the colour of the icon for the .exe file for $1 apiece (ie a change costing all of what... a minute of time.. say a budget of zero. Johan does it on his spare time, making the marginal profit of the DLC 100%), would you cry "Foul!" and demand that they stop cheating you of your hard earned money, or would you go "Well F*** that, I'm not buying it."
Together with support, you mean? Don't worry, I don't think the devs actually need to eat. It's just a clever ruse!
The anti-DLC side can at least be happy this game doesn't use portraits - imagine how many portrait DLCs could be made!
I am 31 years old and played games when I was 8. Until I became 20 I never heard about famished developers while there was not this DLC trend. Just later when EA and other companies came up with some heartbraking strories, I heard about it. After reading gaming news most of us know it´s indeed a clever ruse. And some are still hungry... When you are six hours into playing Battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to reload. What would you do?
There were no DLCs, but there were expansions, which cut out support for the previous version instead of adding another layer of needed support.
No, you heard about game developers who worked out of their garages and "studios" that employed 3 guys.
The market has matured, deal with it.
I can´t understand how you DLC-bashers can prefer the arbitrary system with expansions where players HAVE to buy them to get upgrades and even basic bug fixes. Even if the total cost of all DLC´s become slightly bigger then that of expansions it´s still preferable because it provides CHOICE and more importantly a player with the 'only' the basic game can still get full support.
The idea with DLC´s compared to expansions is to get more players for the game. If you as a buyer know that you will have support for a game without having to buy expansions at regular intervalls you will probably be more inclined to buy it even if you have a limited budget.
The thing is that if you got an expansion in the past for let me say 40 dollars, you got also value in form of massive new content. They have been very feature rich "patches". They were in my opinion worth every dollar. But also this is changing. Today even expansions are ridiculous compared to the past.
It´s not easy to buy an expansion with two or three new features and some graphical changes for 40 dollars because those three new features have no value. I do not have any problems if devs wont to sell these marginal graphical changes for 3 dollars anywhere due to the fact that I anyway never would buy sprite-packages. But I just hope that they never will sell real game features as dlc. Because I dislike it to be bombarded with dlc´s... it´s fairly easy to lose overview then. I really prefer it then one time in a year as expansion with "more features" added.
Don´t get me wrong I love Paradox because they are for me the last people who support pc hardcore gamers and the only devs left on our planet who create hardcore games with grand complexity. I just hope that they include things like events and so to the game by release and not with dlc´s. I never ever will buy any dlc and as they are rather daunting because they today come in mass and if anything comes in mass, then you will lose overwiev where you spend your money and this is the ruse.
So if they come up with these kind of dlc´s mentioned in this thread here, I wont even buy Eu4. That is one fact. I am very hardliner at this point. DLC´s or microtransactions, crossplatform games and too much casualized games will always discourage me as they are in my opinion the new plague of the gaming insdustry and I don´t even see that the market got mature. In my opinion the market got greedy and childish. Without such "game feature dlc´s" I would be interested in Eu4 and pay any money. But if they come up with this, then I fortunately still have Eu3 which has gameplay and re-play value since many years and which will even have re-play value the next decades.
I love paradox and all I say is that I would not like it if they hop on the (for example) EA train.
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