EA Considering Releasing Paid "Long Demos"

[Shorty]

According to analyst Michael Pachter, EA is considering a strategy that involves selling pre-launch DLC (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27759/Analyst_EA_To_Release_Paid_DLC_Prior_To_Packaged_G ame_Launches.php) that would essentially act as a "long demo" for a smaller price, to be followed by the full-priced release. User feedback from the "long demo" could also be used to make adjustments to the full-priced version.

So basically, the "Prologue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Turismo_5_Prologue) approach". Or if you're really old, you might be able to spot some parallels with shareware (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware).

Personally, I'm not too sure about this idea. I can see the idea of this being an alternative to existing demos, but I'd rather developers just make a better free demo rather than charge for only part of a game.

[Lazlow]

The less I have to download the better.

edit: and by that I mean I hate this idea. I'm all for physical distribution, and I'd rather be paid to test a product.

[TrinityJayOne]

Shareware is cool, but we kinda already have that (in a more limited way) with XBLA trials.

Giving out part of the game first for testing purposes is great as in-house testing can only do so much (Blur for example has seen some changes from beta feedback, hiring 600+ testers would send them broke), but making people pay for it? Maybe if there was a redemption scheme in place so you get the full game cheaper, but it'd be hell to implement.

[SOX]

I would consider pirating long demos

[Stevorooni]

I'd only pay if it was cheap, a decent length and a game I really wanted to try.

I'd hate for this to completely replace free demos though

[AranchineD]

I'd hate for this to completely replace free demos though

Well that's good, because that's specifically what EA have said they won't be doing.

And as such I think there's no reason to make a fuss over this whatsoever. If they put enough content in the demos that they equal the enjoyment you can get out of, say, complete indie games that are also $10 or so, then this is all a completely moot discussion.

[REQUIEM]

EA can go kiss a dick. If it isnt a bad enough that DLC is being abused its another way of securing more cash. Demos should be free and if the game is good enough I will by the game plain and simple. I am a game box fan so it doesnt appeal to me at all. You cant trade in Downloaded games if I ever wanted to.


"If DICE were able to follow Battlefield 1943 with a full-blown European WWII campaign game a few months later, it would have been a wild success," Pachter said.

What crystal ball does he have to make such a statement?

[AranchineD]

Demos should be free

People, THEY ARE NOT GETTING RID OF FREE DEMOS

[REQUIEM]

People, THEY ARE NOT GETTING RID OF FREE DEMOS

Calm down thats not what I said. You took it out of context. Its another way of getting cash then realeasing the full game. This is EA king of DLC abuse. THEY DO NOTHING FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE GAMER. (since you love the caps) If you are paying cash for ANYTHING but a full game its a demo.

[aubergine]

Using "demos" in the thread title is misleading. This has more in common with BF 1943, Mass Effect Galaxies or GT5 Prologue. If you could buy a single track and car from a racing game, that's unincluded DLC for the main game, to test the driving model in advance of full purchase, or play "Bring Down The Sky" Independant of Mass Effect, etc.

[AranchineD]

Okay.

But there'll still be free demos. And you don't have to pay for premium DLC to play those. The gaming world will be exactly the same as it is now, just with 'extra' stuff that some people might want to pay for.

Any point you can raise is negated by these things.

[aubergine]

@ Requem- um, what about expansions? This is just an expansion that precedes the game.

[Lazlow]

REQUIEM; doesn't realise that EA are cool now.

[REQUIEM]

Okay.

But there'll still be free demos. And you don't have to pay for premium DLC to play those. The gaming world will be exactly the same as it is now, just with 'extra' stuff that some people might want to pay for.

Any point you can raise is negated by these things.

EA grabbing cash isnt negated by any of your facts. The games industry was fine before DLC. I know I played the dam games for over 20 years. Why? because games were released with ALL the content included. Now they hold 30 % back to sell at a later date and most people LAP IT UP. Negate that fact.

[aubergine]

I will argue with you when I get to a PC later on. THEN you'll be for it.

iPhone typing shits me more and more.

[REQUIEM]

I will argue with you when I get to a PC later on. THEN you'll be for it.

iPhone typing shits me more and more.

Lol ok aub I will wait with baited breath for you discussion.

[AranchineD]

Well now you're arguing about DLC in general, which isn't the point I was contesting at all

[REQUIEM]

@ Requem- um, what about expansions? This is just an expansion that precedes the game.

Most exspansions nowadays are withheld levels simple.

[REQUIEM]

Well now you're arguing about DLC in general, which isn't the point I was contesting at all

ITS ALL JUST DLC ! cant you see through the smoke and mirrors Aran?

[AranchineD]

ITS ALL JUST DLC ! cant you see through the smoke and mirrors Aran?

Okay.

[Lazlow]

ITS ALL JUST DLC ! cant you see through the smoke and mirrors Aran?

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/6752/pennandtellersegacdpreb.jpg

[TrinityJayOne]

Apologies for continuing the derailment, but the only DLC I really loathe is the stuff that is already on the disc, eg- the download is a 100kb unlock code. :\

[Natrak]

Just about every time a publisher talks about paying for anything other than a standard game itself gamers board the whinge-train. I'll reserve judgement until I actually see what they do and if the content proves to be worth what they charge.

It honestly doesn't sound like a bad idea, and it's not as though anyone would be forced to purchase this 'PDLC'

[Lazlow]

My only problem would be if a 500mb - 1GB free demo of a game is replaced with a 2-7GB paid trial. I like to sample without having to either pay or wait for extended periods of time for it to download.

[REQUIEM]

My only problem would be if a 500mb - 1GB free demo of a game is replaced with a 2-7GB paid trial. I like to sample without having to either pay or wait for extended periods of time for it to download.

good point.

[borgster101]

I'd only pay if it was cheap, a decent length and a game I really wanted to try.

I'd hate for this to completely replace free demos though

Also you should also be able to earn achievements/trophies for the portion of the game you have paid for .. and then when it gets to the end ... you have the option to "unlock full game". Alternatively achievements/trophies you earned during the "demo" are automatically unlocked upon paying the full admission fee.

[Natrak]

My only problem would be if a 500mb - 1GB free demo of a game is replaced with a 2-7GB paid trial. I like to sample without having to either pay or wait for extended periods of time for it to download.

By the sounds of things they're not looking to replace standard free demos. Hopefully that intentions sticks around.

[Araenel]

EA grabbing cash isnt negated by any of your facts. The games industry was fine before DLC. I know I played the dam games for over 20 years. Why? because games were released with ALL the content included. Now they hold 30 % back to sell at a later date and most people LAP IT UP. Negate that fact.

I guess you forgot about shareware.

[TrinityJayOne]

i guess you forgot about shareware.

12345

[Stevorooni]

Apologies for continuing the derailment, but the only DLC I really loathe is the stuff that is already on the disc, eg- the download is a 100kb unlock code. :\

I'm sure that they managed to fit Yoda's 3D model, animations, moveset, storyline and sound effects into a 100kb file when I bought it him for Soul Calibur 4 on PS3! File compression techniques are amazing these days

[Lazlow]

Probably referring to stuff like the extra maps on BF:BC2, or the extra costumes in SFIV >_>

[Stevorooni]

Yoda was the quickest example I could come up with

I quite like it when games are able to be updated some time later, you get more loving out of it inbetween having to wait for a sequel

[REQUIEM]

Yoda was the quickest example I could come up with

And an example of one of the biggest rip offs gaming has seen bar the madden DLC.

[aubergine]

I don't do second drafts for the internet so this might be a ramble.

EA grabbing cash isnt negated by any of your facts. The games industry was fine before DLC. I know I played the dam games for over 20 years. Why? because games were released with ALL the content included. Now they hold 30 % back to sell at a later date and most people LAP IT UP. Negate that fact.

I've been watching the evolution of the physical / download relationship with interest for years now, and I think EA is only just getting to the nub of what I thought was obvious years ago. It's tied in to several industry issues: second hand trade, piracy and anti-consumerism.

To bear with me you will have to first be on the same terms as I am: that for things to be healthy the consumer (you) must win but also the producer (EA etc) must also win. For issues like Piracy the music and software industries have often made very ham-fisted and anti-consumer attempts to (in their eyes) protect their revenue from thieves. I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that it's wrong for Ubisoft to try to protect themselves from thieves, it's just a shame that no one has invented a remotely successful means to do so.

What you are calling "100%" of a game is a complete fantasy idea, more so than ever. If the "complete game" package you buy, for a narrative game for example, has a beginning, middle and end and can exist independently of other content, then how does it render the game "incomplete" if they also release extra levels and so on?

The only way your argument has a leg to stand on is if what they are releasing does not represent value for money. For example, there is universal agreement that Oblivion's "Horse Shit" add-on did not represent value at 400 points (about AU$7). You also would be talking to yourself in a porn theater to suggest that the base package of Oblivion does not represent fantastic value. Disregarding taste in games a moment, for my $100-ish I played Oblivion for 100 hours then sold it with less than half the content completed. I re-bought it at a later date and probably replayed it for more than another 100 hours.

Let's say for Elder Scrolls 5 Bethseda has developed an all-new engine and mechanics and want feedback or to generate excitement. They release a standalone game area before releasing the main game. They charge money for it. If the package represents value, more people will buy it. Then, after the main game's release, the pre-release continues to be sold but functions as what we'd recognise as regular DLC, being an extra quest you'd otherwise pay extra for.

What you seem to be moaning about is that it is more difficult now to be a completionist. Despite my own OCD tendencies I still managed to buy all the Oblivion DLC except Horse Shit, which I refuse to buy on principle. Are there going to be mistakes made? Hell yes, of course, but most developers / publishers are pragmatic enough to quickly figure out what will actually work. Activision, probably not, but respectable and intelligent ones who deserve your money will.

So long as value for money is maintained, then the anti-consumerism possibility of paid DLC should not be an issue. That's a very Eye-Of-The-Beholder issue though - since it's hard to compare the "complete" Resident Evil 4 or The Orange Box (two very, very generous packages) with any far more common 6-10 hour single-player release. Paid DLC helps solve the disparities in the second-hand market for games, providing a potential revenue stream for developers / publishers WITHOUT introducing a truly anti-consumer system, eg download-only full games, I remember there was talk about using writeable discs for console games that would become bound to that console once used.

All that is needed for this system to work is for the core game to represent value and the DLC to be compelling but unnecessary. You can (and rightly) argue that DLC is sometimes content culled from the main game - Tomb Raider Underworld, Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed II are recently examples. In ACII's case the content was culled from a game that was overlong anyway (IMO) or that at least cannot be called under-value, and the content was NOT TERRIBLY GOOD ANYWAY so who cares? In the case of the other two games, their review scores and sales were adversely affected by their shortness / perceived incompleteness, so this becomes a lesson for the publisher. None of those games were from EA incidentally.

How it ties in with piracy, if not already obvious, is that (like second-hand trade) there is a possible revenue stream for the industry beyond the game's release / theft, and in fact there's more scope for a latent kind of piracy protection because the extra content may not work with cracked games (eg a required title update detects the crack).

Paid DLC provides a means for a game to continue to collect deserved revenue for the production end of the industry far beyond it being sold in shops - Bethseda could easily keep making money from Oblivion / Fallout DLC for many years, especially if next gen platforms are backwards compatible. Anything that makes games more profitable while still providing value-for-money to consumers will only benefit everyone, with better budgets and support available for better games.

With development costs in the tens of millions now, a "flop" can easily bankrupt a beloved developer, (for example Irrational didn't do so great for a whole decade before Bioshock - their best and most famous game System Shock 2 was a flop!) yet now we have fledgling episodic games that can fund the development of subsequent portions (and build following) and so reviving an otherwise dead-and-too-risky genre like Point-And-Click Adventure.

What you are complaining about (which I believe just comes down to your perceptions of "value") is the best thing to happen to the industry in our lifetimes. The business model is becoming versatile, experimental and, just like new hardware or new monitors or controllers, changes to the business model itself actually results in new kinds of gaming experiences. Portal, Braid, Oblivion, everything on XBLA and similar services, episodic adventures, there's all sorts of thing possible now because financial risk is reduced, support can be ongoing very easily and providing those better experiences to consumers is worthwhile for the production end of the industry because there's a buck in it.

If you think Bioware and EA should be doing it all for free then see yourself out.

[Shorty]

I would also point out that other developers have provided much better examples of post-release support through DLC - Rock Band's weekly song releases, the GTA IV "episodes" and Burnout Paradise's game-changing DLC all come to mind. Lumping them in with "Horse Armour" is a tad harsh.

[aubergine]

I would also point out that other developers have provided much better examples of post-release support through DLC - Rock Band's weekly song releases, the GTA IV "episodes" and Burnout Paradise's game-changing DLC all come to mind. Lumping them in with "Horse Armour" is a tad harsh.

I never lumped them, I never mentioned them. We could make a list of DLC and how it rates though.

Interestingly, the GTA DLC was highly rated, better than the main game in some respects, but flopped. People can only speculate on why that is, generally a mixture of late-release, size / price and GTA-fatigue are blamed.

BTW When I say "size/price" I don't mean "low value" but that nobody wanted to download that much or pay that much for extra content - I think before Dragon Age Awankenings the GTA episodes were the biggest DLC packages / expansions for console ever? In any case the GTA DLC is regarded as good value, it's just that no one wanted it.

I suspect The Shivering Isles had a similar result. Bethseda, I believe, probably got a kick in the nuts on DL sales of the major Oblivion expansion and fashioned more discrete packages for Fallout 3 instead of one huge one.

[Shorty]

I never lumped them, I never mentioned them. We could make a list of DLC and how it rates though.

Interestingly, the GTA DLC was highly rated, better than the main game in some respects, but flopped. People can only speculate on why that is, generally a mixture of late-release, size / price and GTA-fatigue are blamed.

BTW When I say "size/price" I don't mean "low value" but that nobody wanted to download that much or pay that much for extra content - I think before Dragon Age Awankenings the GTA episodes were the biggest DLC packages / expansions for console ever?

Actually, I was criticising REQUIEM's point, not yours. My bad for not making that clear.

[REQUIEM]

Actually, I was criticising REQUIEM's point, not yours. My bad for not making that clear.

Yawns... lap it up DLC lovers. NAMING 3 OR SO good DLC doesnt make the point of DLC being a good idea any more legit. Its being abused and gamers know it. BAR the Guitar hero/ Rock Band stuff which makes sense as music titles are endless and continuing DLC is a rip off 90% of the time.

[AranchineD]

DLC more like 'DownLoadable Cocks"

[Araenel]

Yawns... lap it up DLC lovers. NAMING 3 OR SO good DLC doesnt make the point of DLC being a good idea any more legit. Its being abused and gamers know it. BAR the Guitar hero/ Rock Band stuff which makes sense as music titles are endless and continuing DLC is a rip off 90% of the time.

So don't buy it. If people don't want it, then they shouldn't buy it.

An equilibrium will establish between price and quality of DLC.

[Shorty]

Yawns... lap it up DLC lovers. NAMING 3 OR SO good DLC doesnt make the point of DLC being a good idea any more legit. Its being abused and gamers know it. BAR the Guitar hero/ Rock Band stuff which makes sense as music titles are endless and continuing DLC is a rip off 90% of the time.

It's the same as with any other business practice - some will get it totally right and others will get it totally wrong. Just because some people abuse it doesn't mean the idea itself is irredeemable. Being so strident about it (e.g. "lap it up DLC lovers") doesn't help your case, either.

And as Araenel pointed out, if you don't like it, you're perfectly free not to buy it.

[Natrak]

My favourite part of the DLC hate is the ridiculous sense of entitlement. It's a business. Just because Mummy coddled you every time you threw a tantrum doesn't mean you deserve any and all extra content for free.

[aubergine]

The short version of my long post is that I'm very excited
about the possibilities being explored with DLC models.

[9warbane]

The short version of my long post is that I'm very excited
about the possibilities being explored with DLC models.

Now that I read. :p

If Bethseda did Oblivion / Fallout DLC they would have to be bloody good, add a decent amount to the games and not clash with existing mods.

Otherwise modders can easily out do them. A good example is the horse armour. Bethseda made it then a modder made a better version.

A massive turn off for buying DA:O for me is the DLC. The DLC was made (most of it) before the release. The game knows it and so there's quests I can't ****ing do. I didn't buy it and wouldn't be buy Awakening.

Paying for long demos? Yeah, I might give it ago but more likely I'd just wait till the game is cheap and buy it (C&C:RA3 for example).

[aubergine]

The DLC was certainly PLANNED before release but you aren't missing a complete package without it. The Stone Prisoner is good but not value at 1200 points. In this, Mass Effect 2 has done far better with its "ten dollar" DLC, but it's still worth more like 800 (though the addition of the Firewalker material should change that.)

[Natrak]

Planning to support your game through DLC =/= withholding content for later sale. Don't be retarded.

[REQUIEM]

. Being so strident about it (e.g. "lap it up DLC lovers") doesn't help your case, either.

I dont have to help a case. Its my opinion and its because most people lap it up so to speak that the case has already been lost and it will just continue.

[aubergine]

Planning to support your game through DLC =/= withholding content for later sale. Don't be retarded.

Bullshit. There's been content cut from every game ever made
due to time and budget constraints. DLC has changed the playing field for developers so they can more easily release game expanding content if base sales justify continued work. That the
base package is PLANNED to allow DLC just improves the quality of the DLC.

If a developer or publisher is being cynical then their base package will review and likely sell poorly.

[Araenel]

Planning to support your game through DLC =/= withholding content for later sale. Don't be retarded.

What about the things Trin mentioned? DLC that's already on the disc when it's released and all you get is an unlock code. I'd say that's withholding content.

[TrinityJayOne]

I think Natrak is specifically referring to games like Burnout Paradise (Big Surf Island patch etc).

[Araenel]

I don't need context!!

[Xanafalgue]

Didn't Microsoft do something similar with Fable II?

[Shorty]

Similar, except that these proposed demos would come out before the rest of the game. Like the Gran Turismo "Prologue" games.

[Natrak]

What I meant was; just because a developer plans to support their game through DLC does not mean they're holding back on content that you would otherwise get on the original game disc. I wasn't even responding to Aubergine, I was actually supporting the post he made above mine. I guess It's my mistake for not quoting 9warbane, really.

This is not to say that there aren't indeed cases where developers purposely restrict content they could easily include on the disc for sale as DLC (Street Fighter IV's costumes being a prime example).

Basically it was a response to 9warbane being adverse to DA:O just because it had launch DLC. DA:O is not an incomplete game without the DLC and the method they chose was mostly an attempt to better incorporate it into the game rather than simply tacking it on (after the disaster that was Mass Effect's DLC).

[aubergine]

I misunderstood the symbol in your post, which I now peer at again and recognise as NOT equivalent to.

[Natrak]

My fault for being lazy and not using words.

[Cubby]

DLC like what Forza 3 had, it had an extra disc which was great, but also a bunch of other stuff to D/L day 1, that shit is annoying.

EDIT: Mass Effect 2 was bad in this respect too.

[aubergine]

Has anyone tried Firewalker yet? I left it to download before my nap.