So this past week, Christian Svensson took to the Capcom Unity forum to inform us that Capcom was re-evaluating how DLC is done in the future. So the corporate figures at Capcom have finally realized and understood how their consumers feel about DLC. Plans seem to be in motion to change how things are done for future releases. Everyone rejoice and feel relieved that the nightmare is over.

Well…….Sort of?

Hey…. wait a minute?!?

Ah, shit!

I’ve read and re-read the original posting and it just doesn’t add up as anything to be happy about. Call me cynical, but it just reaffirms that things will still transpire as business as usual in Capcom’s DLC nom de plume. They’re not changing their DLC ways, just the way that it’s delivered. They even state so in the announcement,” how such additional game content is delivered in the future” and “unable to make changes to the way some of their post release content is delivered“. DLC practices aren’t going to change just the delivery method.

Their not changing the price gouging of withheld content practices, their just not locking it directly to my disc so I can pay them for the privilege later. Fans aren’t pissed that DLC exists or wether it’s on or off the disc or not. It’s the representation and execution that people don’t like.

For an example look at either Street Fighter X Tekken or Dragon’s Dogma. Both games are new unproven IP’s yet both games from the outset of development have side content withheld in order to make more money. The game has not even made it to the shelf or is not guaranteed or even needs extra content, so why is extra content being made before the game has even succeeded.

Money. The promise of making more money.

Instead of strengthening the title in order to get the best possible product out there, your getting a parsed out product with incremental additional purchases for something that was conceived and produced as a whole. Instead of making Dragon’s Dogma the best the product it can be so that consumers will buy it and want to buy more, content is being made and withheld behind a pay wall weakening the full experience. This is digital panhandling.

DLC can be done responsibly and can can increase the longevity of a game, but it should be done so when you have a product that consumers have bought and want more of. Not in the anticipation of making more money on top of the initial point of purchase.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think Capcom is actually listening to the consumers or is this just a misdirection in order to soften the blow?

Via Capcom Unity, Joystiq, and Destructoid

Game have had it rough recently, no luck finding lenders, not bringing in any new stock for March, their stocks frozen losing Activision, Microsoft, THQ, Ubisoft, EA and Capcom, and even losing their CEO on the eve of entering administration. And now 277 of their GAME and Gamestation stores nationwide are closing shop. That’s 2104 employees, or 40% of their workforce. The stores aren’t all that’s gone now either, as the gift cards/loyalty card discounts (you can get points, but not use them), refunds and returns are gone for the time being too. They’re over £180m in debt, struggling to pay rent and wages, closed 39 stores last year, and were planning to close another 60 before this. And after this initial cut, the administrator is still courting the Royal Bank of Scotland as a potential buyer, that is, if they can convince them that GAME and Gamestation are worth enough to take on their debt.

Now at this point, you probably think I’m sympathetic to their situation. Well… I feel bad for some of their staff at least. XD Those who relate Game Group to being the UK equivalent of Gamestop are more apt than they might know. Since Electronics Boutique bought Game in 1999, and other smaller retailers like Virgin Games and Futurezone, they brought the concept of “Pre-owned” to Game with them. Merging Game with Electronics Boutique stores across the country gave them a lot more brick and mortar stores, even when they’d been near by and you now suddenly had three or four Game stores within 5 minutes of each other. This is the problem with buying out your competition, but not re-evaluating your costs and distribution.

After Electronics Boutique and Gamestop passed their merger, they didn’t waste any time snapping up the smaller retailers they could across Europe and the Commonwealth too. Before I go too much deeper here, let’s just remind ourselves that Game is now a failing company that was bought by failed company Electronics Boutique that bought many failed companies like Futurezone, all of which are ultimately owned by extension by Gamestop. XD So following this through, it’s really just a process of elimination wherein dedicated game retailers are slowly consumed by bigger retailers to prolong their own life, buying out Gamestation, their only major competition in the UK is ultimately the rather large straw that broke the camel’s back.

Game, still had relative autonomy from Gamestop, used to have the pre-owned section managed by individual managers at the stores, so the value of your trade-in used to vary depending on how the manager thought good value for a used game was. After a while, they centralized the system to work more like Gamestop, so used games are now sold a set discount, and a set amount of store credit given for each. Game have recently upped their value to guarantee you get 75% store credit of what they’ll charge for it, which really only speaks to exactly how big a profit margin they made on used games before changing it to attract customers; since used games is the only new stock they really have right now. While with the individual managers, some would discount them as much as £5 or even £10 for used games, since Gamestop sensibilities became more common, you end up with the situation where Game are selling used copies of Uncharted: Golden Abyss for £42 (with the new copy selling for £45, or $71), and giving 75% store credit in exchange. The discount hasn’t changed, just how much the seller gets out of it, which should give you a picture of how Game has been punching pure profit on barely discounted games for a while now.

I’ve known good employees who try to help customers find what’s best for them and get better deals, but they often seem to be put down by the management, who didn’t remember if they were part time or full time, and judged employee performance by sales made moreso than anything else, not to mention that many of the employees/middle management often don’t know much about the PS3 or 360 because they own the other one, or generally misunderstand their audience. It’s been too often that I’ve walked into Game and had to explain to a parent that Red Dead Redemption or Dead Space really isn’t suitable for the 4-8 year old asking them for it, after seeing Game staff advise them to buy the pre-owned version for £2 less (but a better profit margin too). I can’t really say I’ll miss Game, employees who valued the consumer more than their money have seemed to be the exception rather than the norm, and have always misunderstood their audience and been slow to react to change.

With HMV really being the only other major retailer (And only real competition by default, as they’ve never priced themselves competitively) in the UK besides the super markets (who can often undercut the triple A titles for less than it would cost to buy them wholesale), there’s not a whole lot left standing between the UK, and going to a digital-retail-dominated scheme. Perhaps Game will find their saviour in the RBS, or maybe they’ll go under, and HMV will benefit from being the stand alone high-street retailer.

What do you think, and what do you want? Have you worked at Game or have any stories to share? Are you just sick of hearing about them? Drop us a comment and let your voice be heard, lest Game end not with a bang, but a wimper!

So, I’ve recently had the chance to try the demos for two third person shooters I’ve been highly anticipating. Mass Effect 3 and Binary Domain. I’m going to stop right here and qualify my points by saying exactly what I’ve played and seen. I’ve watched every trailer and demo for each, and a lot of Japanese marketing for Binary Domain, which is immensely more in depth and informative about the game’s systems and features, if you’re able to understand Japanese. (Rather than music videos and funny camera angles, it’s normally a list of features, a minute or so of music video, and narration describing the game’s story and systems throughout each.) I’ve played both of the demos, and since that, Binary Domain was released in Japan, and I have a PS3, so why wait?

The games are an interesting pair. Both are from developers better known for their RPGs before trying their hands at third person shooter gameplay. Both bring in non-linear elements to enhance their story telling. Both feature squad command systems, and place importance on the trust of your companions. And they even both represent the first attempt of the studios to add multiplayer to their games. But the big difference is the stage these two titles are set to step out onto when they both release within weeks of each other, starting with Binary Domain on Feb 24. Mass Effect 3 is the conclusion of a trilogy, with a huge investment from EA, and the previous experience of two other games to draw on. Binary Domain on the other hand is a new IP, one of SEGA‘s few games that are developed by one of their teams rather just published, and is not only the team’s first third person shooter, but is also a Japanese developed third person shooter, the reputation in the genre being just another obstacle the game will have to overcome.

Now, to be fair, My article sort of hinges one big technicality. While both games only have demos out in the US/EU, Binary Domain is already out in Japan, and the Japanese marketing is always a lot more transparent than western marketing (remember, Binary domain isn’t just a game made by Japan to sell internationally, it’s a game made to sell /well/ to both the west, AND to Japan. So dual marketing campaigns is an interesting thing most people won’t pick up on.) And most importantly, every character speaks the language of the country they come from. The Japanese people speak Japanese with English subtitles, and the Brits speak English, and the Americans speak… as close to English as an American can. The accents are passable, and those that actually have actors of each nationality clearly stand above the others, but the most important thing Binary Domain brings that Mass Effect doesn’t is the lack of that, Sci-fi cliche of some unmentioned catastrophe somehow meaning that only Americans actually go off exploring space and sitting on the United Earth Coalition.

If the CG trailers were up to snuff, this would mean we could expect Shepard to be taking notes from Mario.

Mass Effect 3 showed London in it’s debut, and a British soldier with SAS markings in CG, but the otherwise lack of any non-Americans in what’s been shown in game is rather irritating. Why show me something that resonates with me in CG if it ISN’T going to be in the game? I can defend CG trailers like the one for Deus Ex, or Assassin’s Creed, because all of those hint at things that you’ll get to see and do in game. The CG trailers for Mass Effect 3 are almost nothing but stuff that hasn’t shown hide or hair in the ingame showings thus far. And while I’m discussing CG trailers, the children in the take back earth trailer? No more poignant than the child in the demo. That demo child is, according to Casey D Hudson on twitter, the ONLY child character model in the game. And that child is unimportant. No name, barely even a full minute of screentime, and he’s only there long enough that you can recognize him when he gets killed. It’s a cheap trick, and emotional kick in the balls, and a twist I’ve been writing into fanfics since I was 13. We don’t need children being implied to be killed off-screen to make us feel bad. Especially if you’re not actually going to see that child in the game. I’d probably put it up there with the “No Russian” level, for interupting the pace of the game and being an entirely unnecessary shock value scene. (And because I still can’t not point it out, all of America’s media there wouldn’t of been half as bothered by No Russian if they’d known it was a Russian airport and not a US one.)

Now, I know Binary Domain has children in it too, before you start saying I’m guessing, having watched the full sequence featuring the kids, it’s a lot more tastefully done. The kids are a genuine alternate perspective you get given some insight into, with a father figure to anchor them, and a good few minutes to demonstrate how they’ve adapted to machinery kicking arse all over the place besides hiding in an air vent. And you know what, it isn’t half the cheap shot that the child’s death in ME3 is, it affects you making you feel like you’re helpless to influence their situation, and that whatever happens to them, you won’t be there to see it. Showing you a snapshot of a story and giving you enough information to know what will eventually happen to the children is a lot more emotionally affecting than just watching a child run and get blown up.

The real reason I’m more excited for Binary Domain now rather than Mass Effect 3 (besides the fact that one of my favourite franchises has become a whore for exclusive weapons and DLC content for every mass effect item imaginable) is story. Binary Domain is a much more solid shooter and has it’s non-linear elements, but Mass Effect 3 has shown very little interest in the slower, more considered pace of games like the original Mass Effect. And rightly so, reapers are here, you can’t run off and spend 2 months out in the Terminus Systems mining. Though there’s a chance you can, if you feel like destroying your immersion. ME3 has only seemed to express any interest in throwing around some Diehard style oneliners, and flaring up the electric guitar and fire effects while Shepard flashes his omni blade around. To be honest, I don’t even consider Binary Domain and Mass Effect 3 to be much of a comparison at all, they’re very different games, even if the original was more of the slow and considered look at each level of the society in it’s world. Looking at the release windows, I’d daresay that the best comparison for Binary Domain, would be Spec Ops: The Line.

And I’ll give Binary Domain one thing, competitive multiplayer is another point of pride to prove a Japanese Devleoper can actually produce something worthwhile in that arena, so it’s less of a bullet point on the box than for Spec Ops. Binary Domain does have, however, hubs and area’s to interact with the characters and people of the area and an upgrade system to keep my RPG sensibilities busy, as well as deciding how much face time I want to put with which squadmates with the free time I have. And this as well as your tactics in the minute to minute gameplay also affect the events of the prefab cutscenes. It’s not quite a dialog wheel, but it’s more subtle and doesn’t result in 30 second pauses while I read every option, while still influencing the opinion of the squadmates and their behaviour as a part of the squad or as an individual. Being able to do the squad voice commands and stuff without kinect is nice too, for a PS3 owner. Regardless, I’ll likely to both of these games in the coming months to provide what I really want from Mass Effect 3 (Of course I’m still buying it, what are you, crazy?).

I’m just going to have to accept that Mass Effect isn’t the slowly considered look at how a society copes with these massive shifts, and it isn’t quite a best in class third person shooter either.

So with all three of these games looming, what do you, the EBA audience think of what you’ve seen? Are you looking forward to the story, excited about the new characters? Are you just waiting for the gif of Chobot licking her character’s face on a vita?

Now back to Gabe.

Gabe has come out with the following statement about the demonic protection game companies use: “You know, it’s a really bad idea to start off on the assumption that your customers are on the other side of some sort of battle with you.” That’s a smart consumer perspective on Valve’s part. Usually companies tend to look it from their own perspective, but Valve is the least hostile towards gamers than any company out there.

He continues: “We tend to try to avoid being super dictatorial to either customers or partners. Recently I was in a meeting and there’s a company that had a third party DRM solution and we showed them: ‘Look, this is what happens, at this point in your life cycle your DRM got hacked, right? Now let’s look at the data, did your sales change at all? No, your sales didn’t change one bit.’”

Or, even worse, the company might have lost money, because we don’t want this insane DRM brick wall in front of us. The DRM often hurts legit gamers more than those who hack the game. I know I have always had a douting mind about Valve due to their power, but this shows, at least at this moment in time, that Valve actually has our interests in mind. What do you think? I can guess that a lot of people will be happy with Gabe’s talk, but what should be the best approach to keep games secure and accessible?

Source: PC-gamer