Gamesylvania

Are you paying good money for nothing? The history of downloadable content has been spotty, at best. Publishers have seen the light and are striking gold by creating downloadable content that, apparently, has no actual content. In a recent post, Is Take Two Double Dipping With BioShock 2 DLC?, Blake Grundman over at Games Are Evil has asked a rather fair question in regards to exactly what we are getting for our money.

The downloadable content in question is the “Sinclair Solutions Tester Pack,” which costs 400 MS points and is 108kBs on the Xbox 360 (24kBs on the PC) in size, according to CVG.com

Features of the BioShock 2 DLC include:

• Rank Increase to level 50 with Rank Rewards
• New playable characters Louie McGraff and Oscar Calraca
• 20 new trials (some only available after a player achieves a rank of 41 or higher)
• A third weapon upgrade for each weapon
• Five additional masks (some only available after a player achieves a rank of 41 or higher)

In other words, not much. In fact Take-Two has already admitted that the DLC doesn’t have any actual content, but rather an unlock code that opens content already included on the disc; content you already paid for. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time gamers have been asked to pay for content already included on a disc.

Namco Bandai employed a similar tactic with Beautiful Katamari, offering 4 extra levels for 800 MS points in a content pack that occupied about 384kB of space. Once again, the small size suggests that the content was already on the disc. Is this reasonable to anyone? (To be fair, as the Destructoid article states, the base price of Beautiful Katamari was only $20, raising the price to about $30, which is still far less than the average retail price of most Xbox 360 games.)

I’d like to say something along the lines of “DLC is a failed experiment that needs to stop,” but that’s being too harsh. I don’t want DLC to stop; I want it to get better. I want content that is worth paying for, content that extends the game and adds something I couldn’t get, otherwise. Something novel, and truly unique.

Criterion Games had an interesting idea in offering premium vehicles for Burnout Paradise that were based on famous vehicles like the Time Machine/Delorean from Back to the Future. I felt that some of the Fallout 3 DLC was worth paying for, and the DLC available for Borderlands has been extremely high in quality. But when you see things like Oblivion’s infamous horse armor for 200 MS points, you start to see where downloadable content has been, mostly, too expensive for too little and arriving way too late.

The solution is to simply stop buying this crap. Given the history of DLC sales, however, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Apparently, contentless DLC sells; but who’s buying? Is it you? Leave me a treat in the comments, if you dig… would you kindly?

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