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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It seems to me, In all other forms of media or entertainment, It's quite simple, either a consumer decides to buy a product or not. But gamers seem to be the only ones who continue to buy said product but then complain about how it was packaged. It's doesn't make much sense to me.
I say, we need to lose this warped sense of entitlement. The developer has a product. We get to decide to purchase the product or not. We also get to influence the direction and some areas of development, to a degree. We don't get to decide every facet of how it's developed. And I feel we should be ok with that.
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