The Scourge of the Season Pass February 10, 2014

With all the paid DLC coming out for major game releases, why not pay for all of a game’s content at once and get all the DLC at a reduced price?  Since around 2011, publishers started offering players the chance to buy a Season Pass with their game.  For the customer, they sound good in theory.  Not only can it be cheaper for your wallet, it can be a lot easier than having to navigate though a dozen individual downloads, sorting through downloadable videos, demos and avatar clothing, and being really careful not to repurchase any redundant content by accident.  Just buy a Season Pass and all the downloadable content will unlock in your game automatically as it gets released.  Every time you boot up your game you’ll get a small pop up when new content is available.  From there you can immediately download it without having to pay any extra money.  It couldn’t be simpler.  It also works well for the game’s developers.  By getting money in advance for content they are working on, it can finance future game development and ensure post-release content for a game will be more likely to see a release.

So if Season Passes are a win on both sides, why is this article titled The Scourge of the Season Pass?  Well because not everything in theory works when put into practice, and as I plan to explain further in this article, every once in a while game developers and publishers can get a bit greedy.  This system, once a benefit for gamers, is now becoming an issue.  Let’s look at our recent gaming history and find out why.

Season Passes are nothing new to the gaming industry.  Episodic games have used a similar payment option since games were delivered by shareware, and more recently when Telltale Games started work on the first season of Sam & Max in 2006.  Instead of charging for each game episode individually, Telltale offered a second payment option while the episodes are still under development and promised customers who paid for this second option access to all the game’s episodes as soon as they got released.  The price for this second payment option would still be a reasonable amount more than just one episode would cost, but less than what the consumer would have paid had they bought each episode individually as they got released.  By offering this simple common sense payment option, Telltale Games became a powerhouse during the Episodic Gaming Boom, whereas other larger developers like Valve Software and Ritual Entertainment failed to capitalize in it.  To this day, I still stand by the statement that had the SiN: Episodes offered a similar payment plan, Ritual Entertainment would still be around and further SiN: Episodes would have gotten developed past the first one.

So what are the problems with Season Passes?  First off, they’re getting incredibly overpriced, especially for games on the latest consoles. The Season Pass for Dead Rising 3 costs $29 US, and while Capcom is promising to release a series of Single Player expansion missions for that game, the Dead Rising 3 Season Pass is still ten dollars more expensive than the Season Pass prices of most other games are, even other games on the Xbox One.  Dead Space 3 also offered a Season Pass right after it was released, but all that was included with it was some extra weapons and armor that EA had already released on Day One and was planning to sell individually.  You’re not exactly paying in advance for future content when it is already out on Day One.  Since EA was already bundling DLC codes for similar content inside new copies of the game, EA should have released their Season Pass’s content free to anyone who preordered the game (or bought the game’s ultra rare Dev Team Edition).  Some extra weapons and armor didn’t make for much of a Season Pass.  When EA released Dead Space 3’s Single-Player expansion pack to wrap up the game’s cliffhanger ending, they charged separately for it.

There are other concerns with Season Passes being offered for sale so early, and that is “what if the game’s developer cancels future DLC development due to poor sales?”  It’s almost like a catch-22.  You don’t know if you should pay the developer in advance for extra content after a game’s release because if the developer cancels their post-release content you don’t know what will happen to your money, meanwhile the developer can’t fund post release content for their game because not enough of their customers purchased Season Passes.  Recently, there has been a lot of news about this problem because WB Games has cancelled all future DLC for the Wii U version of Batman: Arkham Origins, even though they were selling a Season Pass for it.  Fortunately, Wii U gamers who had purchased a Season Pass for Batman: Arkham Origins were automatically refunded their money, but there’s no guarantee in a digital market what can happen to your money if a publisher can’t deliver on it’s promises, even if they already have your money.  The default stated policy on digital content through the various online marketplaces is NO REFUNDS.

Then there are the other times when the content covered by the Season Pass just stops for no reason.  For some reason the final DLC for Halo 4 was not included with the Season Pass, forcing Season Pass adopters to have to shell out an extra ten dollars for the game’s last downloadable content release.  If you’re going to sell me a Season Pass, INCLUDE EVERYTHING!  If you can’t include everything, don’t offer the Pass at all.  Many other Season Passes, like the Season Pass for Gears of War 3, while it offered new multiplayer maps and a single player expansion, it did not include any of the premium weapon skins that were put for sale at launch.  If you wanted to obtain them, you had to buy them separately, and since there were a lot of them up for sale on the day of the game’s launch, buying all of them could be quite expensive.  Since the weapon skins serve no function other than aesthetics, I’m sure a lot of players were angry Epic dared to charge for them for it in the first place.  They should have been unlockable content, or offered with the Season Pass.

Well, how do we make this better?  Well, I believe a Season Pass should be included with all Collector’s Edition releases of a game.  Obviously if the game in question is not getting a Collector’s Edition release, you don’t need to include a Season Pass with a regular edition, but if the game is getting some form of a CE at a premium price point, a Season Pass code should be bundled with it.  Since Halo 3’s Legendary Edition was released in 2007, Collector’s Editions have gotten incredibly expensive, and in a lot of cases recently their high price cannot justify the exclusive content that was included with it.  By including a Season Pass with the game’s Collector’s Edition, you will probably get more demand for the premium release at launch, and consumers will consider it a very good deal.  Games like Halo 4, God of War: Ascension, heck even Forza Motorsport 5, released with Season Pass codes bundled inside their Collector’s Edition releases, and they greatly justified their prices along with the rest of the exclusive content that came with each game.  Sure the redeemable codes included with the Collector’s Editions were labeled something other than Season Passes, but the codes offered the same function a Season Pass did.  Why isn’t this done with every Collector’s Edition?

Also, as I said earlier, if you’re going to offer a Season Pass for sale, make sure it includes everything the game offers.  The Season Pass for The Last of Us, while not included with the game’s Collector’s Editions, is without a doubt one of the best Season Passes currently offered on the market.  Not only are both of the game’s multiplayer map packs included with the Season Pass, an entirely new single-player campaign, an exclusive feature-length making-of documentary and all of the paid premium multiplayer avatar content is included with the Pass.  Naughty Dog really did a good job planning that one out, and it puts into question why couldn’t Gears of War 3’s Season Pass offer the premium weapon skins?

Or you know, you could just go back to the early PC days and make all of a game’s DLC free.  People have been asking about that since Horse Armor was put up for sale in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  Offering post-release DLC without charging extra for it isn’t like offering the content for no money.  People still would need to purchase the full version of your game to use the DLC, but if you continue to support your game, more and more players will want to pick it up just based on word of mouth.  It would increase goodwill and bring loyalty to your studio, publisher and brand.  The Witcher‘s developers had that philosophy when they were developing the first game on the PC, and any time they rereleased the game at retail with new content, they offered that content for free on their website to anyone who had previously purchased the game.  Recently, the only way I’ve seen players get a game’s DLC as part of purchasing a game new is by purchasing a Game of the Year Edition.  While a GOTY version of a game can be a good deal for new adopters of a game, it is a bit of a disrespectful slap in the face to players who paid full price for the game on day one.  In fact, I’ve purchased several Game of the Year Editions of games I already owned (and in some cases already bought $100+ Collector’s Editions of) just because rebuying a GOTY edition of the game at retail was a better financial deal then buying all of the game’s DLC was online.  When having your customers rebuy your game is a better deal than purchasing all the downloadable content for it, developers need to take a step back and look at the new market they have created.

Please, do it quickly.

Best Console Launch Titles…Ever February 5, 2014

No matter what console you’re planning to launch, any smart game developer knows that a video game console isn’t sold based on its technical merits alone, but by the games it plays that you can’t play anywhere else.  If you want your console to sell, it needs to have a killer app and fast.

Today, we’re going to be talking about some of the greatest launch titles for game consoles in the history of video games.  They could be groundbreaking in their own right, show off the technical capabilities of the system that they launched with, or just provided a great experience you couldn’t find anywhere else.

Game Boy – Tetris

Tetris is without a doubt one of the most addictive games ever made. Even my own father, who never played a video game before in his life (and hasn’t since) played this game on my original NES to the point he would have dreams about it. So it was logical for Nintendo to bring one of the most popular games for the NES to their flagship handheld console, the Game Boy. While this game was not a launch title on the Game Boy’s initial Japanese release, it was ready in time for the Game Boy’s North American launch.  Through a clever bit of foresight, a copy of Tetris was bundled with each new Game Boy and for really good reason.  There was no title at the time that could have better shown off the Game Boy’s 2-player functionality and by bundling each Game Boy with a copy of Tetris and a Link Cable (which was needed for multiplayer), it encouraged early adopters to use all the features the Game Boy offered and set a high bar for the platform that Nintendo’s competitors could never reach.

SNES – Super Mario World

I believe that Super Mario Bros 3 perfected the Mario platformer formula, but Super Mario World cranked it up to eleven.  After the tremendous success of the Super Mario Bros series, Nintendo had one of the most iconic mascots of any medium at their disposal, and they were going to use that momentum to sell their brand new 16-Bit system, the Super Nintendo.  All the classic Mario features were back, but now the Super Nintendo could bring even more.  There were more levels, new enemies, new power ups, and a whole new world to explore.  Nintendo knew that by taking a character we all knew and loved and bringing him to the new system as a launch title, Nintendo could show just how much more powerful their new console was over the NES.

N64 – Super Mario 64

This is the game that defined the 3D platformer, and to this day there are still imitators that aren’t able to do it as well as Nintendo did.  This can be considered by many to be Nintendo’s entry into the first official 3D graphics generation, and Nintendo would set that bar as high as they could.  You could do everything Mario was known for, only now you could do it in 3D.  The control was darn near perfect.  You could run, jump, swim and even fly.  In fact, this game was so good, it transcended its success one more time to one other platform. Nintendo wanted to show off how great their new DS was,  so they ported Super Mario 64 to the DS.  When people saw the DS could replicate the features of a Nintendo 64 by bringing one of its best titles to the new handheld platform, it became a best selling title and contributed to a lot of early DS adoption.

Xbox – Halo: Combat Evolved

The year was 2001.  One of the most successful companies in the world was entering a field they have never been a part of previously.  They needed to sell as many consoles as they could quickly in order to be competitive against the industry heavyweights of Sony and Nintendo, especially in the wake of the overwhelming success of the Playstation 2.  Their answer was to take one of the highest anticipated titles for the PC, buy its development studio, and bring the title they were working on to their new platform.  When the original Xbox launched, there was no title that showed off the console’s capabilities better than Halo: Combat Evolved.  The control was perfect.  The graphics were superior to anything that could be done on their competitors’ systems at the time.  But the most enduring legacy it has is it brought the formerly PC-centric ritual of the LAN Party to console users.  The game continued to be a best seller for years after the console’s launch.  In fact, according to author Steven Kent, years after the game’s release the Xbox continued to be referred to as the Halo Delivery System.  It was only removed from the console’s top 10 sales lists when its sequel was released in 2004.

Playstation 3 – Resistance: Fall of Man

Sony’s first entry into this list was the reason I got a PS3.  The game was hardly considered groundbreaking or revolutionary for its time, and many didn’t think the graphics were even that good, but for everything this game did, it sure did it well.  I’m a huge fan of History Channel and Discovery Channel documentary series, and this game presented its story in a way that felt customized specifically to my tastes.  In fact, I once wrote the game’s opening narration on a High School blackboard and asked a class to identify where it came from.  They all thought the narration was from a real-world event.  True to developer Insomniac Games’s pedigree, it had some of the most unique weapons ever seen in a console FPS.  It also had some of the best multiplayer I have ever played on a console.  Everything felt well balanced, and new players could be competitive against grizzled veterans.  Sadly, Sony has announced their intention to discontinue the game’s multiplayer permanently pretty soon.  Sad, I never could make it to level 60.

Wii – Wii Sports

Nintendo made their entry into the first ever HD console generation a sub-HD game console with a control system unlike anything consumers had ever seen before.  To make it clear to the consumer what their unique console was capable of, Nintendo chose to bundle a game with it that fully took advantage of all the console’s motion control capabilities and their avatar maker (affectionately dubbed Miis).  Their decision was one for the history books as it propelled the Nintendo Wii to become one of the best selling consoles of all time, and made the game that was bundled with it, Wii Sports, one of the best selling titles of all time.

Wii U – Nintendo Land

Nintendo’s first entry into the HDTV world was another unique console which brought the capabilities of the Nintendo DS to the home system.  To fully embrace this unique touch screen control system and pay homage to all of the classic franchises they have produced over the years, Nintendo released Nintendo Land as a bundled game with all of the premium launch models of the Wii U.  The game offered tons of different minigames to explore, each one modeled after a classic Nintendo property.  While the Wii U is currently sitting in last place in this generation’s console war, I still think it’s a great system and I recommend this game to anyone interested in picking one up.