Stop Pre-Ordering Games

I've mentioned before, in passing, my deep loathing — shared by many — for day-one DLC and pre-order bonuses.

I'm not going to pretend that the downloadable content of today is fundamentally different from the expansion packs of old; in theory, they're very similar. Expansion packs would either add content to an existing game, or act as a continuation of the game in the form of additional levels, but they were typically not as "big" (or as expensive) as the game itself. DLC almost always follows this example, albeit with a different delivery method and, thus, fewer constraints. With no discs and no shipping, selling everything in smaller pieces is no inconvenience to the publisher, which is why we're seeing ever smaller DLC "expansions" with (ideally) smaller prices than those of traditional expansion packs.

But there's another difference. While the traditional expansion pack was typically released some time after the base game, DLC is often available immediately. No doubt the industry believes this is a great thing, but not everyone agrees.

When DLC is released concurrently with the base game, people inevitably jump to the conclusion that this "extra" content belongs in the game itself, but that it was removed, and sold separately, for the sake of squeezing more money out of customers... like a car salesman selling you everything but the steering wheel and then demanding extra cash for the "extra" part. Of course, "day-one DLC" doesn't really mean that the publisher took a finished game from the developer and broke it up to be sold in pieces. It's likely that most games with DLC additions were meant to be sold this way from the very beginning, and were developed with this in mind. However, developing a game with DLC in mind still means to many that the base game will be inherently incomplete. I think we can all admit that this isn't necessarily true — a lot of these games still feel "complete" even without all the (mostly useless) add-ons — but appearances and first impressions, whether or not they're accurate, are pretty important.

Personally, I don't mind if a developer or publisher wants to sell a game in pieces. I usually ignore DLC unless I'm absolutely in love with a game and feel a compulsive need to experience every bit of it. Furthermore, most DLC consists of strictly non-essential content. Sometimes, this means purely cosmetic changes to a game, such as the character packs in Killing Floor, and I think this is a pretty harmless way for the developer to earn a few extra bucks from anyone actually willing to throw away their money for such a frivolous thing. I certainly don't feel compelled to buy this stuff, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

However, the same can't be said of DLC that would, for example, add extra weapons to a first-person shooter, or extra levels to the campaign mode of a story-driven game. I suspect a lot of players — completionists especially — feel that, when they buy a game, they need to own the whole game, and this drives them to pay for half a dozen little expansions that can add up to a lot of cash.

Ultimately, each of us is responsible for how we spend our own money; nobody is shoving extra content down our throats and forcing us to buy it. But when this so-called "DLC" is available on release day — and sometimes even included on the game disc, just awaiting authorization — it's typically seen as a part of the game for which we thought we already paid, not as an optional expansion to it, and uninformed customers tend to get pretty upset when they find out. While this is the source of a lot of controversy, I think it's also exactly what the publishers want. The idea that an integral part of the original game has been taken away to be sold separately is what makes us hate day-one DLC... but it's also what makes us buy it. It's a shame that the average consumer doesn't have the willpower to boycott a product.

While it wouldn't be completely crazy for me to say that DLC itself is downright evil, I don't think that's a very constructive thing to do. First of all, DLC itself isn't the problem. We're the problem. If the game industry is doing something wrong, it's partly because we reinforced that behavior with our purchases. Second of all, it's not DLC that we should hate, but rather the host of generally evil business practices that come along with it. For example, so-called day-one DLC is often used as an incentive for pre-ordering a game, or even for pre-ordering the game from a specific retail outlet. And instead of buying a game, and then buying an expansion if we really liked the game, we're encouraged to buy a game and all of its additional content at once — before the game is even released.

Welcome to the wonderful world of pre-orders and pre-order bonuses. No, don't think, just hand over your wallets.

Some DLC was just announced for Assassin's Creed III — a game which, by the way, hasn't yet been released — and all five of the upcoming DLC packs can be purchased with a $30 season pass. Add that to the usual price tag of $60 for the base game, and you've got quite a large purchase. Yes, the Gold Edition of the game (which includes this season pass) is a whopping $90. Of course, there's a benefit to buying this season pass; it's significantly cheaper than buying each DLC pack separately, for a total of $40. But I'd much rather wait until a year after release — when the game and its DLC are cheaper, and when I know whether the game is worth playing — before I spend any money.

You've probably guessed that I think pre-ordering is a horrible idea and that anyone who pre-orders anything is a mindless sheep. You guessed right. Naturally, the whole concept of a "season pass" for DLC is, to me, a bit absurd. It's essentially a pre-order for DLC which, like the game itself, might not even be good. The fact that the game is a sequel makes it all slightly less crazy — fans of the series have a pretty good idea of what the game will be like — but it doesn't seem like a great investment either way. When you pre-order not only a $60 game but also $30 worth of DLC on top of it, you're betting a whole lot of money that the game won't suck. Why not wait until after it's released so you can read some reviews and get maybe a better price? What's the benefit of pre-ordering?

In the old days, the only reason for pre-ordering was to reserve a copy of a highly anticipated game for which supply was expected to fall short of demand. It guaranteed that you'd get your game on release day instead of waiting for the next shipment while all your friends played the game without you. But the industry likes pre-ordering for another reason. It makes their sales figures look better. They get to say they sold a hundred thousand copies of their game on the first day. They get to say their game went gold before it was even released.

In the context of modern PC gaming, the word "supply" is meaningless. Just about every PC game can be downloaded; there are no shipments, and copies of a game are unlimited. So why should anyone pre-order a downloadable game? I think the industry asked itself this question and came up with an answer: pre-order bonuses. Not only do they make the absurdity of pre-purchasing a downloadable game seem a bit less absurd; they also make the foolish act of pre-ordering physical copies even more tempting.

The fact that developers would spend their time making DLC exclusively for those who pre-purchase the game — content which the rest of their fans may or may not be able to access at a later date — says a lot about the industry, namely how much value they place in those pre-orders. Could it really be all about inflating those first-day sales figures? Or could it be that they desperately want us to buy their games before anyone gets to find out if those games are worth playing? Why anyone would pay $60 for a game that hasn't even been reviewed yet is beyond me, but the industry has put a lot of effort into convincing people to do it.

Meanwhile, very few demos are being released these days, and I can't help but wonder if this is because developers are afraid that fewer people will spend money if they see what their games are like first-hand. Clearly, at the very least, they don't believe that releasing a demo has any benefit anymore, since they've already figured out how to convince millions of consumers to buy their product without even waiting for the critics to have their say.

What I'm really getting at, here, is that people who pre-purchase games are irresponsible and reckless. They're also harming the industry, and the industry is helping them do it. As consumers, we communicate with developers and publishers primarily through our purchases. No doubt the people who make video games occasionally hear our opinions, if we're loud enough, but what they really care about is where our money goes. If you hate a game after you buy it, they still have your money, and your opinion isn't going to hurt them unless you convince others not to buy the game.

So stop pre-ordering games you've never played. Stop telling developers "yes, this game is great" before you know it to be true.

I'd like to tell you all to stop buying new games entirely, since paying $60 for a new game is just a waste of money if it's going to be 75% off on Steam or Amazon less than a year after its release. Of course, there's always the argument that multiplayer games are most fun during the height of their popularity (i.e., before the community moves on to better things) and that waiting too long to play them means missing out on the fun. But if an online community dies so fast that you need to buy the game on day one to get in on the action, the game is probably terrible anyway.

Maybe if we all think a little more carefully about our purchases, developers will focus more on making games enjoyable and worthwhile, instead of coming up with a thousand other ways to get our money more quickly and more often.

Humble Bundle Strikes Again

As many of us already know, the sixth incarnation of the Humble Indie Bundle is on sale right now, and will be available for another six days. I didn't exactly come here to plug it — I'm not on their payroll — but it's hard not to say a few nice things about a pack of games that you can buy for almost nothing. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read this so I don't have to explain.) It's been more than two years since the very first Humble Bundle, and they've gotten a whole lot of good press since then, so there's no need for me to rave about how awesome it is. But, for the record, it's pretty neat.

Of course, despite the pay-what-you-want model, not everyone loves Humble Bundle. Some game developers have expressed doubts that being part of a Humble Bundle sale is really a profitable and worthwhile venture. (Customers can choose where their money goes, and the recommended "default split" for the current bundle is 65% to developers, 20% to charity, and 15% to Humble Bundle, Inc., but the average amount, per game sold, that a developer gets is probably rather low, since so many consumers will pay as little as possible instead of paying what they honestly believe the games are worth.)

Furthermore, a lot of people have some bad things to say about indie games in general. While many have taken the extreme view that so-called "indie" developers are the last hope for originality in a stagnating video game market saturated with too many nearly identical and equally overpriced first-person shooters, others go to the opposite extreme; they look at indie games and see cheaply made, outdated, pretentious hipster trash. In particular, any mention of "retro graphics" is sure to draw a lot of mockery and criticism, though the indie developers keep using this term in marketing their games, probably for the sake of appealing to older players and anyone else who treats "retro" as a codeword for cool.

If you like indie games and you don't have a job, the Humble Bundle is perfect for you. On the other hand, if you're not fond of indie games and other "retro" stuff, you should probably pass on this deal. The games in a Humble Bundle sale generally aren't the big-budget, high-definition, mainstream type. There's no such thing as a Humble Call of Duty Bundle as of yet, so good luck naming your own price for that.

I should also mention that "pay what you want" is slightly misleading... but only slightly. Technically, it's true, but the Humble Bundle guys aren't idiots; they do employ a few tricks to encourage customers to spend more than the bare minimum. (Otherwise, they'd probably never make any money, except from the generous and wealthy few who donate thousands of dollars.) While you can pay as little as one cent for the five core games that make up the bundle, you won't really be getting the whole bundle. There are always a few extra games, some added later in the sale, reserved for those who spend more than the average amount. (You'll also have to spend at least a dollar if you want keys to activate the games on Steam.) Since a lot of people choose to exceed the average contribution by one cent, so they can get all of the games, that average typically creeps upward slowly throughout the sale.

With the four games that were just added yesterday, Humble Indie Bundle 6 is now up to ten games: Rochard, Shatter, Space Pirates and Zombies, Torchlight, and Vessel can be stolen for a penny, but you'll have to beat the average (just above $6.00 now) to get Dustforce, Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown, and Wizorb as well. Five games for a penny is great, but ten games for six bucks and change is pretty good too.

It's worth noting, however, that Humble Bundles often include a few repeats, and this one is no exception. Specifically, Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, and Jamestown were included in Humble Indie Bundle 4, and Humble Indie Bundle 4 included (as a bonus) the first five games from Humble Indie Bundle 3. Sometimes, if you already own a previous bundle, you might find that paying above the average for the next one isn't as great of a deal as you might have hoped. Since activating a bundle's Steam key won't give you giftable copies of any games you already own, there's no benefit to buying a game twice. You'll just have to decide whether the other games in the pack are worth your hard-earned pocket change.

When the fifth Humble Indie Bundle came out last spring, I already owned Psychonauts, and none of the other games seemed appealing at the time, so I passed. In retrospect, I'm starting to regret this decision, since I've heard such good things about Bastion and some of the other games. I can only hope they'll be repeated in future sales. This time, I'm facing a similar dilemma: I already own Torchlight — arguably the most important game on the list, considering the highly anticipated release of Torchlight II last week — and I also bought Humble Indie Bundle 4 last winter — easily the best video game purchase I've made in recent memory. So I already own four of the games in Humble Indie Bundle 6, but six bucks for the remaining six games is still a sweet deal.

To put things in the proper perspective, Dustforce alone is currently $9.99 on Steam.

All in all, you can't really go wrong with the Humble Indie Bundle, since any one game is typically worth more than what you'll pay for the whole pack. And if you're content with only getting the five base games, you could always be a cheapskate and pay only a cent. Of course, if you do this, Humble Bundle, Inc. probably suffers a net loss due to bandwidth and transaction fees. Honestly, you might as well pirate the games, and I guess that's why so many people do so despite the fact that the games are practically free. Or maybe they just can't be bothered to put in their credit card information. Or maybe they don't have credit cards. Or maybe they pirate things out of principle because they're super bad-ass renegades who break all the rules because shut up.

The games in the Humble Bundle aren't just cheap. They're also free of digital rights management, playable on every operating system that matters, and available in torrent form in addition to a direct download. In other words, they've made an effort to appease even the pickiest of players. They've eliminated every good reason to pirate their games, but it still hasn't eliminated piracy.

I'm getting a bit off-topic now, but this is something to remember next time someone tries to justify piracy by citing high prices, intrusive DRM, inconvenience, or a general desire to deliver a slap in the face to big, evil corporations like Electronic Arts. The fact is that people turn to piracy no matter how low the price of the game, or how reasonable the publisher's behavior, just to avoid paying at all. It's not my place to judge those who engage in software piracy — the extent to which it actually harms the game industry is still up for debate — but pirates should just accept that what they're doing is a selfish act and nothing more. They should be able to make their decision and live with it, without trying to rationalize it after the fact, but they still come up with all kinds of excuses and pass the blame around. Simply put, they're in denial.

For those of us who don't mind sending a few dollars to the hard-working people who make our favorite pastime possible, the Humble Bundle is a great opportunity to grab a few interesting games without breaking the bank.

Real Life

Do you ever come home from work, sit down to play video games, look at the clock, realize that you have to go to bed in three hours, wonder if this really gives you enough time to make significant progress after installing your new game and configuring all of the options to your liking and watching the opening cutscene and going through the usual tutorial nonsense, decide to go for it anyway, get five minutes into the game, and quit because you can't stop thinking about real life and it's ruining the experience?

Me too.

I've been kind of busy this week, which is why I'm not actually writing anything except this short complaint. In fact, I'll probably be posting less often from now on, since my current work situation is slightly unpredictable and the job I'm taking when this one ends is likely to suck what's left of my soul right out of my body. But I'll find time, somehow.

Until then, put this on repeat.

What Makes Video Games Fun?

A lot of "hardcore gamers" (regardless of whether they identify themselves as such) will tell you that the video game industry is in sad shape. It's not just because of the past decade's unfortunate shift toward increasingly more intrusive digital rights management, or the recent trend of releasing "extra" downloadable content on day one to encourage thoughtless and irresponsible pre-orders, or the deliberate efforts to use both DRM and DLC to destroy the used game market. Rather, it's because they think that too many of the games being released today are crap.

And they're not just talking about shovelware that nobody buys. This is popular crap. So what's up with all the hate? Well, it should be no surprise that the games which tend to attract the most violently negative attention are always the popular ones. After all, if you want to complain about a genre, a feature, a console, or a developer, you pick a popular game as an example, and then you claim that the chosen game means the downfall of gaming as we know it. This has been happening for a long time. But in the past few years, I've been reluctant to shrug it off as the usual fanboyism, hipsterism, and attention-seeking antics of a vocal minority. It's more likely indicative of something else.

As I see it, this backlash is due to recent changes in the industry which aren't entirely imaginary. The industry is, in fact, changing, and not just in response to the emergence of nearly ubiquitous high-speed internet service, which facilitates digital distribution and piracy alike. Video games have changed also because of their growing audience. Thanks to cell phones, social networking sites, and a few other things which should never have games on them, games have crossed farther into the mainstream than ever before. Meanwhile, those who played video games back when it was an obscure hobby reserved only for children and computer geeks have grown up, and some of them are still playing. It's only understandable that some of these old-schoolers would be a bit shocked by the current state of things.

So, what is the current state of things?

It's complicated, and there are a lot of little topics I'd like to bring up — e.g., how girls went from "eww, you play video games, you're such a nerd" to "hey, I can be a gamer too" and "tee hee, I'm such a nerd" — but most of these things are too far off-topic and will have to wait for some other week. Simply put, if I can allow myself to get to the point, casual games and social networking have taken over. It's not hard to see that this is an expected (and perhaps necessary) consequence of video games getting a slice of that mainstream pie.

Games directed at casual players get a lot of hate, particularly from the more "hardcore" gamers, many of whom grew up when video games were considerably less forgiving than the ones made today. For these players, the whole point of a game is to provide a challenge. Winning should be a struggle; that's what makes it so satisfying. This is why they fail to understand the casual audience. More importantly, this is why they're angered not only by strictly casual games but also by the perceived "casualization" of modern games as a whole.

Are the majority of today's video games a lot easier than the ones of my childhood? You bet. But is this really a terrible thing? Not necessarily. Difficult games still exist, and we should keep in mind that a lot of older games were only hard because of their lack of a save feature. (Wouldn't a lot of modern games be damn near impossible to beat if saving weren't an option?) Other old games were stupidly hard because of poor design, and still others were intentionally made difficult because they were short and would have been beaten too quickly if they weren't frustratingly hard to finish. (Truly master Super Mario Bros. and you can beat it in less than five minutes; without using warp zones, it can still be done in less than half an hour.) Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, playtime can be extended in ways that don't involve dying repeatedly, and games can be entertaining for reasons other than sheer difficulty.

So now we get to ask an interesting question. What actually makes video games fun? Some say it's the challenge, while others will say it's the story/characters/immersion (for single-player games) or the social experience (for multiplayer games). Still others, I suspect, would say they just like to blow things up. In reality, for most people, it's a combination of all of the above.

How much, in particular, should difficulty matter? From the developer's point of view, a game should be difficult enough to entertain the experienced players — to let them know that winning takes effort so that winning feels good — but easy enough to avoid alienating the casual players who might not even bother to finish a game if it frustrates them at all. Personally, I think most developers have done a pretty good job of accomplishing this. Say what you will about the harm caused by pandering to the casual audience, but most games worth playing have multiple difficulty levels, the easiest of which is usually tame enough for "casuals" and the hardest of which is usually a challenge for anyone who never played the game before. Nobody should be disappointed unless a developer makes a serious miscalculation.

This is why I was surprised to see such a negative reaction to this article on Kotaku a little more than a week ago, in which Luke Plunkett gives a fairly reasonable rebuttal to Assassin's Creed III lead designer Alex Hutchinson's (rather preposterous) claim that "easy mode often ruins games." (It's kind of funny because Assassin's Creed, a game with only one difficulty, isn't that hard, and the same is true of all the sequels I've played.) I'm not a big fan of Kotaku, nor am I a fan of Luke Plunkett, but I have to agree with him here. At least, I agree with his headline. A game can't be ruined by a difficulty setting.

I'm willing to say that the "easy mode" of a game can often be the worst version of that game, as Hutchinson claims, but the inclusion of an easy mode surely doesn't spoil the whole game unless it's the only mode available. Don't like easy mode? Play on hard. If the harder settings are still too easy, or if they do nothing but make the game more tedious, you've picked a bad game. If the harder settings are locked until the easier ones are completed, you better hope the easier settings are hard enough to keep you entertained for a single playthrough; otherwise, you've picked a bad game. Bad game design happens, but if you're blaming it solely on the inclusion of an "easy" mode, you're probably overlooking a deeper problem.

Still, I won't say I agree with Plunkett completely, since he has entirely different reasons for disagreeing with Hutchinson's argument. Specifically, he makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't care about difficulty at all, and that he plays story-driven games only for the story. He probably wouldn't mind if a game like Assassin's Creed III consisted of no interaction besides "press X to continue." And if you're like this, you probably should ask yourself why you're playing games at all, rather than watching movies or reading books. If, on the other hand, you can appreciate the unique things that games have to offer, instead of just complaining that everything is too hard, then your idea of "fun" is just as valid as that of the hardcore gamer dude who plays everything on the hardest setting and skips all the cutscenes.

So where do I stand?

Let's just say I was more than a little annoyed by the fact that it's literally impossible to lose in the 2008 version of Prince of Persia. I won't go so far as to say that the protagonist of a game needs to be able to die, and "losing" is hardly a setback in any game with a save option (assuming you use it often enough), but being automatically revived after every fall in PoP 2008 seemed like a step down from the rewind system in The Sands of Time, which actually required some minimal skill and had limits. If there's no consequence for falling off a cliff, the sense of danger and suspense is gone and the game becomes only tedious where it might otherwise have been exciting.

On the other hand, you know I'm a sucker for story-driven games, and the need for a genuine challenge can be subverted by decision-making and role-playing elements. Since Choose Your Own Adventure books were terrible and there's no equivalent in the movie world, I think it's pretty safe to say that the existing technology used for video games is the ideal medium for straight-up interactive fiction. I see no reason not to take advantage of this. The problem is that what might be described most accurately as interactive fiction, and not as a traditional video game, will nevertheless remain stuck under the category of video games. This tends to generate all the wrong expectations. Story-driven titles are often criticized for having too much "story" and not enough "game" (even if the developer's primary objective, admittedly, was to tell a story).

Regardless of how far a developer decides to take the storytelling aspect of a product, and regardless of what you call it, the fact is that difficulty (and, indeed, gameplay itself) often matters less when story matters more, and if you're looking for a serious challenge, you should probably stay away from plot-driven games, even ones like Assassin's Creed. They make it difficult enough that any given mission might take two or three attempts, but they know they're not serving the hardcore crowd exclusively. Sometimes, though, I think the hardcore crowd still hasn't caught on.