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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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My understanding is that whenever anyone makes a game, they put lots of stuff and features in that get cut. At some point in the process people start saying "it would take too much work to make this fun and we can't afford it", so things get cut. Taking the ideas that would still work if given a bit of love and packaging them up as DLC enables that stuff to carry on and get made, because now there's a budget for it.
That doesn't mean that all DLC is OK mind - I'm not defending horse armor! But the DLC for ME2 was worthwhile and I reckon that'll still be the case for ME3.
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