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Mass Effect designer defends day one DLC, says game developers 'are not evil'
by Andrew Yoon, Mar 09, 2012 3:00pm PSTWhen BioWare revealed day-one single player DLC for Mass Effect 3, players were up-in-arms about how content had been cut for the sole purpose of making more money. But is that really true? Christina Norman, former designer and programmer of the Mass Effect franchise (currently at Riot Games), presented a one minute rant at Game Developers Conference, asking consumers to simply "judge our games based on what they are."
"There's no point in releasing DLC a year after your game has come out when most people have already sold your game back to GameStop three times," she told the audience. "That means getting it out early; that means even day-one DLC. That is a terrible thing to some players. Players rant--they know nothing about this DLC that's coming out except its name. But then it's 'oh this game must be incomplete, the game must be ruined.' Game developers are not evil. (Some are evil.) But most are not evil."
"We just want to release awesome stuff. Players please, give us a chance. Judge our games based on what they are. Judge the DLC based on what it is. Stop thinking you're a producer and telling us when and where we should be building our content."
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Christina Norman, former designer and programmer of the Mass Effect franchise, discussed day-one DLC and why it is not "evil" to do it.
Christina Norman, former designer and programmer of the Mass Effect franchise, discussed day-one DLC and why it is not "evil" to do it. : Shacknews
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Just... so fucking misinformed. That's about as quick I can be with getting out how I felt reading your reply.
Of the 8 games I've shipped and ~14 I have been apart of not once were features cut with the reasoning being "we'll do it in DLC".
Scope is constantly checked against the manpower a team has. Every single one of those titles started off as 150% content of what the game actually shipped with. It's not so shit could be cut and added in later to maximize profit, they were cut because otherwise we'd never reach our deliverable dates. IF the cut features were strong enough to go in to a DLC later on down the road (E.g. Cut multiplayer maps that could be included in a multiplayer DLC) then they would be. Otherwise they stay in the trashbin.
While its easy to look at EA/Bioware and go 'They did the Day 1 DLC for the moneyhats', as a developer, I can easily see it being where they were content complete for their main deliverable (the shipped product) earlier than anticipated or right on schedule that they immediately focused on DLC right after. This happens a lot in games.
Unfortunately perception is a mother fucker in this industry - both internally and externally. The perception is that EA are money grabbing whores and will do shitty things like "cut features to charge for it more in DLC". In my experiences, that was never (read: never) the case on the developer floor. 99% of the time features were cut because there simply wasn't the manpower to put in those features while reaching our deadlines.
I haven't worked for EA so perhaps I am just jaded by this shiny wholesome pedestal I've had my career on.
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