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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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Game budgets are rising but a lot of these AAA games aren't getting any better, and some are even getting shorter and simpler and less interesting and the sequel fatigue has never been worse. And these expensive games lose their value faster than anything. That $60 game becomes a $28 one the second you open the wrapper.
I'm still of the opinion that games would sell more and thus make more from the sheer number of sales if they weren't so expensive. It's a pipe dream for the industry but it's reality to me. I'm much more likely to buy an indie or PC or XBLA or PSN game without thinking twice than I am something like Mass Effect 3 at launch, especially when they pull some DLC bullshit like this. The only reason I even got BF3 was a $42 preorder deal on amazon. Fact is, there are too many games these days and because they lose their value so quickly more people are starting to wait for the prices to drop by $20 in a month or two, plus there are the huge sales that you see regularly on Amazon & Steam. There's not a lot of incentive to even buy most of these games new (especially when SP is the draw) when there's always something less expensive and just as good to be played, only difference is that it's slightly older. It's still the same exact game and quality though.
Of course a lot of people buy into the hype or just love what they love and have $60 to burn every week on something they'll put down after a few hours, or maybe not even touch for months. I still buy $60 games, it's just getting rarer and rarer these days because as entertainment very few are actually worth the price of admission to me. I got SSX at full price and loved it for the first few days but now I realize I should have just waited and played something else instead. Skyrim was the last game in a long time that I felt like I got a good deal for my $60.
I probably would have caved and bought ME3 if the DLC was included like Zaeed & Cerberus was in ME2, but I gotta draw the line somewhere no matter how asinine people like you think it is and how futile I know it is in the grand scheme of things.
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