It has become almost expected, a usual trend. In the weeks leading up to a popular games release, we begin to see commercials titillating and teasing gamers with EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. Pre Order your game at Gamestop and get a unique weapon skin, buy your game at Best Buy and get a unique character model, buy your game at some other retailer and get a limited edition jockstrap or something. Gaming Industry sales trends have become so widespread and predictable it is quite annoying.
It seems that everyone wants something for absolutely nothing these days. After I put my $5 down for a pre order so I can get my limited edition vehicle or something or other, I then get my game that has been whittled down in order to create seemingly larger DLC releases, and even then they want me to shell out money in advance for a “season pass”. Now services such as EA Access have me paying just to get access to demos! But with games having gone up in the past few years from $50 to $60-$65, and the amount of content on-disc going down, I see an unfair standard being set. What the industry seems to be saying is “give us all your money now and we promise we’ll handle everything later”. And this is radically untrue.
One huge example of this was this years hit, Watch_Dogs. A game that I am a huge fan of, and turned out to be a defining success for Ubisoft… Financially. But after running to the bank laughing, with sacks of our money in hand, they seemed to have abandoned us. Rampant bugs and glitches ruined parts of the game for many, and went unfixed for quite a long time after release. By the time they managed to patch many PC issues, I had already beaten the game to almost 100% Completion. While this title may have been a huge hit this time for Ubisoft I will now be cautious (as I am sure many others will) before diving into their next title.
Ubisoft is not the only gaming company to disappoint their fans, bigger devs such as Activision, and EA have chapped a fair amount of bums themselves. But what I do not understand is where companies feel all of this trust is coming from, because they have not done a thing to earn it. Also, what does this mean for gamers? Between Pre order bait, season pass scams, pay to play services such as EA Access, it seems we will have to guard our money a bit better. Perhaps this will make wary consumers out of us all, or perhaps it will lead to even further dissection of games to fool you into thinking you are getting your moneys worth.
I say we nip the issue in the bud. Refuse those incessant pre order offers at local retailers, refuse to buy season passes, and most of all refuse to pay for services like EA Access. Make games prove themselves, rather than putting your trust and money into the hands of greedy developers. What do you think?