Why Online play and DLC are making you pay more for your games

While I do play on X-Box Live or PSN from time to time, anyone on my friends list will be the first tell you that I am far from being an avid online gamer.  I'm passable, at best, and often feel like I bring down the team I happen to be on, rather than helping.  That being said, I'm not really against online gaming or DLC.  A game like Borderlands, for instance, is amazingly awesome, but is even more so because of the co-op gameplay and four DLC packs released over the next 12 months.  However, I find that a game like Borderlands is actually the exception to the rule, and not the standard on either of these fronts.

Yeah, gratuitous Moxxi shot here.  Talking about Borderlands means I have to.

For $15 bucks you can play as Buffy!

First, let's look at the math.  Call of Duty Black Ops was released in November of 2010 for $59.99.  Over the next year, Activision released 4 multiplayer map packs at $15 each.  That's another $60 on top of the $60 you initially paid for a grand total of $120.  Now the truth of this is that the publishers are now purposefully holding back certain content in order to make money money off of you later on.  Further proof of this is a game like Gears of War 3, which had a first batch of DLC that they initially charged money for, when it was already on the disc.  So, technically, in that case, Epic wanted to charge you for content you technically already paid for, since it's on the disc.  Then to make matters worse for Epic, die hard Gears of War fans purchased a Season Pass for all the DLC that was planned on being released for the upcoming year.  They promised a 33% savings for all who purchased the season pass.  Of course, after this debacle, Epic made the first batch of DLC free, meaning if you did indeed pay for the pass, you didn't save a dime.  

Was I worth the $10, or should I have been on the disc?

$29.99, same price as all DLC purchased seperately

Back before the day of online and DLC, game companies packed  their chosen medium with as much content as they possibly could.  If something came up that they wanted to do but couldn't, that content was usually pushed into the sequel.  The point is that when you went to the store and purchased a game, you got everything the developer had, which means the most for your money.  Now I'm sure that if you kidnapped a publisher head (I'm not saying you should.  In fact, please don't), and made them tell you all the secrets as to why they do what they do, they would blame part of it on the used gaming market.  There is some truth to this.  In order for people to keep their copies of Saint's Row The Third, THQ wanted to be able to lease DLC for it months later, keeping fresh content pumping into the game.  In theory, this would limit the amount of trade ins of the game.  In reality, it doesn't really matter much.  If someone wants to buy Borderlands 2 next month bad enough, they will trade in all their stuff in order to get it.  A new, desirable game, will always be more desirable than a game someone's had for months or years.  Because I gotta play Borderlands 2, and I beat Skyrim months ago.

Trump approves!

The next problem here is that the more multiplayer content developed for a title, usually the less time that is spent on development of the actual 1st player game (which is the most important part of the game, since everyone who buys it has access to that, while 0nly half of the X-Box 360's are connected to X-Box Live).  A game like Call of Duty Black Ops, 15 years ago, might have had a 1st player mode that would last between 15-20 hours before multiplayer.  Now, with multiplayer being the more profitable part of the game, since of DLC, developers spend less time developing proper 1st player levels, and more time on making multiplayer more robust.  Black Ops could be completed in less than 10 hours.  

To make matters worse, this length of first player mode is now starting to become the norm, even when there is no DLC or multiplayer to speak of.  Anyone who played Lucas Arts' Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2 knows exactly what I'm talking about.  This game was 8 hours at best.  So if you paid $60, you really got ripped off for the amount of gameplay offered (and the ending, but that's another story).  

The only real pain here was the $60 bucks fans shelled out for 6-8 hours of gameplay