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http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/108/1081389p1.html
Call Me 'Mapathetic,' See if I Care
State of Play: Are DLC offerings like Modern Warfare 2's Stimulus Package just scams?
by Rus McLaughlin
April 1, 2010 - I will not buy any downloadable maps for Modern Warfare 2.
Honestly, I don't have anything against Infinity Ward or lack a certain faith in the quality of their work. Quite the contrary. Their map pack likely delivers some prime frag-fest real estate. In fact, I know it does, because 2/5ths of it is recycled from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I can pop that game in and roam Crash or Overgrown without paying another dime. It's not like there's a ton of difference between one title and the other. Unless you count the avalanche of exploits and hacks in Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer threatening to bury the fun entirely.
None of that rests at Infinity Ward's door. No, my "mapathy" is directed at solely at Activision. They set the price (and nixed a public multiplayer beta that could've solved the bugs pre-launch) for the euphemistically dubbed Stimulus Package at $15 for three new maps and two cut/paste jobs, or five bucks more than comparable content for any other AAA-game. That's the kind of gall I'd admire, if it didn't come off as a big middle-finger salute to their own fans. Times are tight, their product is buggy, and yet they up prices by 50% and tag it with a pseudo-clever name that misses "irony" and goes straight to "smarmy."
Feel free to play along if you want, friend, but not me. I'm drawing a line and returning Activision's salute with one of my own. And that's a shame, because downloadable content is one of the most interesting and exciting components of gaming today. And more often than not, it feels like an insult at best, a rip-off at worst.
Let's start with the way it's presented. The line you'll find it in nearly every interview and press release is "will continue to support." I begin to suspect PR agents simply have the phrase hotkeyed. You want more game, they'll make more game. Awesome! But despite the whole "for the fans!" vibe they put on, it's no secret DLC is strictly a pre-planned event from the earliest design stages forward, up to and including release schedules. Truth is, it's as vital to a top-tier game's economy as subscriptions are to MMOs. We're talking about relatively low-cost content with a high profit ratio to offset (in Modern Warfare 2's case) budgets that hit the $40-50 million mark. Publishers aren't supporting the games so much as the DLC supports the publishers.
So the first question is, since most DLC is developed parallel to the actual game, are publishers releasing incomplete games and gouging you for the missing pieces? Maybe.
In some cases, the add-on content is staggered with the game's schedule, so no, it's not actually finished by the time the game goes gold. You can still make the argument this is content that should've been in to begin with, but that might depend on the game in question. It's fair to say Fallout 3, for example, didn't cheat out on content, and its five mini-campaign DLC packs really did add new life and interest to an aging game in a fair way. Not so where a three-hour tour like Beautiful Katamari is concerned. Ostensibly released as a budget title like previous entries in the series, Namco also dropped a bunch of DLC right at release... content that brought the play time up to full-game status and the price up to the standard $60. Then someone noticed each of Beautiful Katamari's DLC levels only ate up 384kb of hard disc space, way too little for what you got. That's because those additional levels were on the disc the entire time.
On-disc DLC is the popular new wrinkle on the same old gouge. Developers lock a certain amount of content on the game disc you already paid for, then charge you an additional fee to download an unlock code under the guise of buying the actual content. They don't mention this, of course, because it might sound suspiciously like they're cheating you. Which they are.
