The days of getting the most for your gaming dollars are gone. A trend brought on by the digital age. The digital age was once herald as the end of high costs for many products and their respected industries, especially videogames. I fondly remember reading an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) as a teenager about how digital content would forever change gaming. Buying video games digitally would be much cheaper and would allow developers to release patches, game expansions (remember those?!) and other digital content to you quickly. The article was partly right on the latter part, but as for the cheaper prices, we’re still waiting

One of Call of Duty: Black Ops's many DLC packs.

The exodus of CD’s and DVD’s for digital formats is upon us, so is the era of the “incomplete” video game. We have accepted greater graphic fidelity for lower gameplay quality and replay value. Video game publishers claim that the rising costs of game development, which rivals or even surpasses many Hollywood blockbuster movie budgets, are the blame for higher prices and less content. They also say that modern gamers simply don’t have the time to invest in games that offer 50 plus hours of gameplay.

I would agree with these assertions if not for the existence of Downloadable Content (DLC). The simple fact is that since the introduction of DLC on consoles, video games have gotten shorter in length and the replay value has suffered. Prices for a complete game have skyrocketed since the analog(?) days of gaming. Before I go deeper into my rant, I will define what a complete video game was.

The Whole Enchilada

Pick almost any title from the early 90’s to the end of the 128bit era (i.e. Xbox, GameCube and PS2). I’ll pick one of my favorite gaming titles of all time, Perfect Dark (PD) for the Nintendo 64. Perfect Dark had it all, a lengthy and challenging Single-Player component, Co-op, and an extensive Multiplayer mode. Rareware packed so much gameplay into Perfect Dark, I was still playing it years later. Perfect Dark was worth the $54.99 I paid for it.

Now compare such a substantial title to say, Call of Duty: Black Ops. Both titles have Single-Player, Co-op and multiplayer modes. Perfect Dark has roughly 10 to 15 hours of gameplay for your first walkthrough of the single-player mode and Black Ops has 4 to 5. Factor in the difficulty levels in PD with their increased objectives and the game spans 15 to 25 hours. I won’t even get into the amount of hours you can squeeze out of Perfect Dark’s fully customizable multiplayer component compared to COD’s once lauded multiplayer mode that is now a practice of long, monotonous leveling.

There was a time when quality and replay value played an important role. Older titles extrude tremendous value for the dollar, years’ worth. Modern games are the complete opposite. You play the “gateway” fee of $60 and another $15 to $45 more for the complete story you would have otherwise gotten years ago. Some companies got so lazy they included DLC on the disc which you unlocked later for more money while others blatantly remove portions of their game to sell as DLC down the road. Yet, these publishers want to feed us bullshit that development costs are to blame.

While I will not deny the fact that the cost of developing a title has grown, I do not agree that every modern game cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. This is an excuse used by mega publishers like Activision, Electronic Arts (EA) and others to increase prices and/or charge for DLC. Then these same companies have the audacity to try to force you to buy their games new, otherwise you may have to pay up to $15.00 to use your game’s online multiplayer mode.

Change Gonna Come

DLC has just begun to hit its stride, but eventually it will hit a wall. Just as annualized titles are becoming an endangered species, the gaming public will rise against DLC and demand more for their money. This is where the indie developers come in to demonstrate the true meaning and purpose of DLC. I believe DLC is the realm of the small developer (and larger developer that wishes to experiment). With so many similar titles flooding the market, DLC should be used as a creative channel for new gaming ideas.

Fortunately, we have DLC games like Flower, Limbo, Braid, Bastion and one of my favorites, Castle Crashers (a title that reminds me of one of my favorite games of all time, Guardian Heroes – which itself is going to be a DLC title very soon), among others that showcase what you can do with DLC. In addition to brand new experiences, DLC could be used to deliver classics to new generations. This is the vision of which that article in EGM proclaimed and I second it, but until we as gamers vote with our money against the dogging trend of throwaway DLC we will never reach the pinnacle point of what DLC can be. That point is fresh ideas, gameplay and experiences that will elevate gaming to new heights and as a gamer, what more can you ask for?