The Day the Music Died.

Written By Joey Carole

Try to remember 2002, Nickelback, Nelly, and Linkin Park are on the radio.  Spiderman, and Lord of the Rings are playing at the movies.  George W. Bush is president.  Sony and Nintendo have been dueling it out for the console crown and Microsoft just came on the scene.  It's an exciting time, a hulkish new console with green accents has entered the console war.  Also birthing xbox live and the capabilities for DLC, downloadable content.  Developers were experimenting with adding content post launch.  It was awesome, Michael Jackson was still alive and now we could see new stuff in our games months after release instead of waiting years for a sequel.  Hearing about DLC was new, we wondered what we could come to expect.  Some developers did it for free, just to keep community support strong with their game and some did it for profit, but it was usually reasonably priced and worked in everyones favor.

Jump forward to present day and the term DLC makes me feel anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering ...

Evolve by 2k has DLC coming out March 31st featuring 4 new hunters and 1 new monster The Behemoth!!!!  The 4 new hunters are all included with the $25 season pass and roughly $7 each without it.  The monster is free to anyone who pre-ordered but $15 if you did not, regardless of your season pass status.  Did you know Evolve had 44 pieces of DLC on launch day all priced between $2-$7?  If you wanted to buy all the DLC and get everything Evolve has to offer, this would cost you $60 for the game + $136 (roughly) for all the DLC and $25 for the season pass.  Your'e looking at over $200 here...  Did you get all that?

Now to play devils advocate all 44 pieces of DLC offered at launch for Evolve by 2k are purely cosmetic.  It's nothing but guns and character skins.  Meaning no matter how much money is spent there is no advantage gained over other players, which beats out some other games, *cough* Last of Us *cough*  But this is still not okay.  Skins used to be un-lockables in games usually taking some time to get, giving players something to strive for, a sense of achievement and a visual cue to opponents that you aint a noob! don't mess with the best!  Now character skins tell your opponents you paid extra money for a little video game flare... Not nearly as cool.

Now if 2k games only charged for cosmetic stuff,  I could get over it. Or a trade-off would be nice, like every 500 kills you unlock a hat or you can pay $2.  It really sucks that a player can't earn those same skins by being good at the game.  But why should I care if someone else wants to spend an extra $100 making their character look cool?

(Oblivion Horse Armor notorious as the worst paid DLC ever)

So on top of all this extra paid DLC, 2 months after release there is 4 additional Hunters and 1 additional monster you must pay to play.  This means if you don't cough up extra on top of the $60 price for the game then your missing out on almost half of the unique playable characters... This is where the developer is taking advantage. For a game with a heavy focus on multiplayer and little to no storyline leaving half of the characters locked is like missing half the game.  It's hard to say for sure but the developers most likely already did the work on this extra content but chose to with-hold it from the game at launch so they could put a squeeze on consumers later on.

It's become common practice with developers to ship locked content on your game disks, only giving you access after you pay additional fee's for DLC.  Game's such as Destiny from Mega-developer Bungie are advertised as "Massive expansive universes, ready for you to explore!" and are sold only featuring a small portion of said massive universe with "Many more planets to explore!" promised in future paid DLC patches...

It's also becoming more standard for games to come with a season pass now and they are usually priced between $20-$30, but you're rarely if ever guaranteed a time frame for the DLC included.  Or even what kind of DLC it might be.  Bioshock: Infinite promised future game content DLC with a season pass.  The game released March 26, 2013 and Part 1 of it's 2 part DLC didn't release until November, 2013.  Roughly 8 months after release, and part 2 didn't come out until  one full year after the game release.  Completely unreasonable.

Nintendo has more recently been using Amiibo's which are tiny plastic figures that are compatible with certain games.  Certain Amiibo's will unlock game-specific content depending on which figures you have.  So purchasing one Amiibo can unlock content in multiple games for you.  I'm not very familiar with this one so I can't weigh in on if the price is worth it.  Other types of dlc like micro-transactions have started to plague our games as well but that's a whole other discussion.

Now this isn't the case with all developers, some of them (CD Projekt Red) have promised free smaller DLC's such as cosmetics, maybe some extra weapons, and small missions post launch in their upcoming Witcher title.   Likely with larger content patches at a price later on.  A DLC strategy I fully support, it's handled the way DLC should be.  All content already made by the developer is put on the disk and given to the player at launch.  Anything made after launch is only charged for if the content is substantial.  It show's respect to the player.

It's unfortunate DLC has become what it is. But there's always a way to come out ahead.  Don't buy season passes unless you know what's coming with it.  Wait and see what kind of feedback it gets.  Hold off a little bit and DLC almost always drop in price or go's on sale.  Depending on how often your online, services like PS+ can get you more then you're moneys worth in free games and DLC's each month as well.  Oh, and I actually like most of the game's I talk about here even if it feels like they are being bashed! I only dislike how they treat DLC!