Video game publishers are seriously starting to piss me off.

I read recently that Electronic Arts (one of my most hated companies) have "begun" prepping DLC for their latest title Dante's Inferno. This struck me as odd. At the time the game hadn't actually released yet, so where was the indication that it would A) be a hit/mega seller, or B) generate enough popularity and interest to be deserving of additional content? Hmmm... Maybe thats because of the paradigm shift in the industry that now has companies seeing nothing but big green dollar signs. I'm talking about the latest and greatest initiatives to present Downloadable Content to consumers. Now don't get me wrong, I love the idea of being able to purchase small patches or additions, expansions if you will, to a title I have purchased and enjoyed thoroughly. What I do not like, is how I am seeing trailers or reading all sorts of information regarding it before I can even buy the retail version of the game.

The way I see it, I'm almost certain that when designing the games these games, companies are sleazily looking to nickel and dime their loyal customers by stripping out content intended to be in the retail version, exclusively so they can repackage and redistribute it for an additional fee. It seems like a great economical strategy for these guys. I would not be one bit surprised if Dante's Inferno was to include all of said DLC, but some smart executive decided that "Hey, by leaving this stuff out - we can actually just charge them extra for these features". 

Back in the good ol' days, we used to have expansion packs. Typically these would release sometime after the game had been a proven success, and would give you more reasons to keep playing and enjoying a title you were particularily fond of. These days, DLC and other paid 'features' are being pumped into games wherever they see an available opportunity to charge for content. Case and point - I am a fan of the NHL series from Electronic Arts. This year we had the pleasure of purchasing stat and equiptment upgrades. Now, this wasn't actually too sleazy a move. You could actually unlock all of these rewards through playing the game. The problem was, in order to do so, you really had to go through some rediculously stupid challenges. Some of which, still did not unlock your reward - in some cases, not following a particular order of completion, would render that reward locked indefinately with the only ability to unlock coming through a purchase. Similariy EA has done so with the Skate series, enabling all of the games locations unlocked if you would pony up rather than struggle through some of their (yet again) rediculous challenges designed to unlock as you progress. Now the major problem I had with the NHL case, was that in order to be competitive in the online mode for the game, you needed to obtain some of these unlockables. Anyone who had been playing since the release can attest to the unbelievable unbalancing of characters who had and who hadn't. Essentially, this resulted in 90% of the people I know who played the game purchasing upgrades, and the other 10% stopped playing all together.

That was just one example of what I consider to be a pretty scummy move. In some cases we have even found that pay DLC may have been included on the disc only to be unlocked after a code had been purchased from PSN or XBL (whichever your poison). Now that is downright evil.

I'm not against DLC, I just believe the subject should be approached with some morality. A studio should set out a very clear intention for their game, while also some potential DLC ideas, but should not even begin to work on the extra stuff until the game has shipped and been well received enough to warrant such a thing. I'm all for standing behind your game, supporting it over time, but I wont stand for taking advantage of your fan base or for scheming up ways to turn a $60 game into an over $100 investment for a gamer - only to receive what he/she should have in the first place. If this is going to be the case, we need to start avoiding these games and studios like the plauge until they reduce the prices on those games and it starts making a stronger case for releasing only bits of it at a time. You know, we do have a such thing as episodic content as well, and it's actually a pretty wonderful idea. And it may even benefit developers and gamers to take note of how Sony approached Siren: Blood Curse, which not only is offered as a full game (download or retail), but also as a game split into episodic chunks. (Granted that has NOTHING to do with DLC, its just something I thought was a pretty sweet idea for a game that also released as a full version on a disc. Sam & Max would be another example, but they release like one episode a year, so nobody follows what the f*&% they're doin')

But this could just be my opinion.