IGN: "Are games learning the wrong lessons from tv?"

[cmdrdredd]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/11/28/are-games-learning-the-wrong-lessons-from-tv

Basically selling episodic content designed to keep people from leaving a game when they have finished the main story or have played enough MP to be content with putting it down.

Part of it is to keep people from trading games in or selling them and trying to break down the used market, part of it exploitation. Interesting stuff and some of it pretty true.

The writer Michael Thomsen says it's like a movie theater selling you a ticket and inviting you back for a 20minute side story once a week for 10 weeks. He says

"Serialized content is added value and certainly wonderfully creative things can be done at any length and in any format, but no one ever hears about the wonderfully creative idea that could only be accomplished in a 10 minute cooperative mission. It's always the other way around. "We need five new, 10-minute cooperative missions. Someone think up something."

Which seems a rather tough stance on the issue but perhaps that is what is happening sometimes. Like they have no new ideas for games so they just add on to what they've already come up with as if it were something new.

I feel that some companies are releasing part of a game, it's a whole game sometimes but it's not the entire story they want to tell us. So they release add-ons later on to keep people interested in the game. Like TV shows...to be continued tune in next week or next season.

 

[Doppel]

It is a brutal time to be making games. Also I have wondered at what point am I being ripped off or not--meaning if I buy a "complete" game but immediately there is DLC that tells more story, when do I feel that should have been part of the original or not?

Personally, I am really low on DLC. It always feels to me like add-on just for a few bucks and I rarely bother with it. I found the idea of completing, for example, Mass Effect and then getting DLC after (only playable if I basically go back in time) as silly.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I almost never buy DLC. However I think the way Halo 4 did Spartan Ops is pretty decent. It tells a different story from the main game and it's free right now. It's almost a whole game's worth of levels to play through with a friend. Then later on I assume they continue that story. I can appreciate that, using the base game engine to go a different direction.

What gets me is when part of a game feels missing. Like something is said in the game and you feel as if you're supposed to be able to do some mission or quest there but it's kind of hanging out in the distance looking at you. The Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3 kind of felt that way. Like it only makes sense if you would do that mission before the end of the main story. At least I had totally thought we would be able to go back there in the main game but never did. I'm glad they are telling the story but it really felt left out.

At least with the way Borderlands is handled each DLC adds something to the game that doesn't feel like it was missing, it blends in with the action.

The only DLC I've dedicated myself to purchasing was for Skyrim. It added enough to the main game for me to hop back into the world and discover what's new.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

The only DLC I've dedicated myself to purchasing was for Skyrim. It added enough to the main game for me to hop back into the world and discover what's new.

Obviously you didn't play on the PS3 like me, where the DLC never arrived...lol

I've got the same case as you btw, the HAF 932, and am loving that thing. If it holds up I will probably be using it 10 years from now...hahaha

 

[cmdrdredd]

Yeah I love my case.

No I don't play PC games on my ps3 unless its a terrible port. Skyrim IMO is first and foremost a PC game. Despite its console centric feel, it seems best on a PC to me.