By ALEXANDER PECHA
Arts Editor
Why does it seem like every time a new AAA game is about to be released, it has some huge, controversial issue? “Assassin’s Creed: Unity” was basically unplayable, “Shadow of Mordor” tried to coerce reviewers into good reviews, basically everything about “Watch Dogs” was wrong, and now “Evolve” has over 100 dollars in day-one DLC, or DownLoadable Content.
“Evolve” is a multiplayer game featuring four players playing hunters who are hunting a giant monster, played by a fifth player. The game had a huge amount of hype before its release, and it seemed like a novel idea.
However, what also caught a lot of people’s attention was how the game shipped with over 100 dollars’ worth of DLC, which mostly came in the shape of early character unlocks and weapons skin. These parts of the game were either purposefully cut out beforehand or help players bypass parts of the game itself. On top of this idiocy, one of the game developers actually stated that the game was built “from the ground-up” to support DLC in the future.
So, to recap: “Evolve” is a game that costs $60 at release, where you need to pay $100 more to unlock everything that should be in the game to start with, and then the game plans to nickel-and-dime you in the future for even more money. See the levels of bull-manure on display here?
It seems like the game industry truly doesn’t respect its consumer anymore. Broken-at-release games, nickel and diming, trying to lie to the public about a game’s quality. What happened to releasing good games? I’m not the first one to say this, but it’d be really nice if the game industry could go back to making great games.
Companies used to release games they wanted to make and success naturally followed from their effort. Nowadays, it seems a company thinks of a good game idea, and then either they or their publisher insists on either releasing it before it’s done or finding a way to make the consumer pay out the nose to enjoy their game.
Personally, I think a lot of this comes from the increasing size of the industry. Instead of game developers more or less running the industry, it’s now based on game developers answering to hired CEOs and businessmen who have little to no understanding of the industry they are now basically running.
To these people, it all comes down to numbers. How they can use the most numbers to create a game that sells a bunch of numbers which translates into a bottom line number which can be invested in more numbers and numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. It’s all numbers!
I understand that, like any company in any industry, a gaming publisher and developer need to end up in the black and not the red. But the emphasis is obviously no longer, “let’s make money to make more games.” It’s “let’s make tons of extra money to make more money.” Good games are still made, but more and more often those games have something that is obviously inspired by the corporate attitude and less by good game design.
This probably makes me sound anti-business, but I’m not anti-business. I’m pro-gaming. As a gamer and someone who pays attention to the industry, I just want developers to worry less about money and more about making great games.
I don’t mind companies making tons of money by making great games, and the cruelest irony is that time after time it has been proven that if you just work on making a great game, the money will come naturally.
You don’t have to add hundreds of dollars of DLC or in-game microtransactions to make a profit off a game. Games like “Skyrim,” “The Witcher,” “Civilization,” and many others have proven that just making quality games will make you money.
