Future of Gaming: Beyond the Credits

Hello IW readers and welcome to the Spring term, a wonderful time of great weather and somewhat lax workloads (hopefully). Spring term is a great time to grab a Frisbee and head out onto the vast green space available on campus – oh, wait, they put a building there? Well, back to video games it is then.
For this article, I’m going to be looking at some of the ways companies have extended the lifespan of their games long after the initial release date. Some companies do this through downloadable content (DLC) while others use much more subtle techniques to still make money off of a game, either through microtransactions or through continued word of mouth.
Since the introduction of online systems like Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, developers have had an easy way to extend the life of their game by offering expansion packs which can add new areas and new features. A good example of this from an Xbox 360 game is the “Keys to the City” pack released for Crackdown. The expansion pack added a couple of new vehicles and weapons, but also offered a new exploration/god mode, where you had access to most of the developer tools to spawn any type of vehicle (including a ramp truck for doing crazy stunts) and an infinite number of exploding barrels to make a giant pile to detonate and watch the resulting mayhem. The mode also enabled the player to level up the character completely as well as providing infinite life and ammo – it makes for some very entertaining speed run possibilities.
While Crackdown didn’t offer any new areas to explore, this can also be a very common path for developers to follow, sometimes with mixed results. In many cases the extra missions and areas to explore end up feeling like an addition that has just been tacked on rather than a cohesive part of the game. I think this comes from the inability for developers to control when a player accesses that content without putting restrictions on it. If an area is populated by enemies rated for a mid-level character but is freely accessible, then experienced players going back will find it boring and complain it wasn’t worth the money, and entry level players will be overwhelmed and won’t buy it. There is also the problem that these kind of expansion pack areas rarely have the same level of story development as the rest of game, again because you can’t control when a player accesses it, and also because you can’t have anything that affects the main storyline in case a player did not buy that expansion pack.
These kind of expansion packs can still be a fun addition to a game, as long as they are priced well in proportion to the gameplay time they provide. The biggest controversy that has occurred with DLC has been when companies load the content on the game disc but only unlock it when you buy the DLC. This ‘DLC’ is actually just an unlock code that allows you to access the content on the disc you already purchased. Many people have said that this is basically robbery, and that if the developers had finished that extra content for the game before release then it should have been part of the initial release and not charged extra after.
Having finally started playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I have been very surprised with the amount of extra content and modifications that are available for free. I am playing through Valve’s Steam system, so most of the content I’m talking about is from the Steam Workshop. New weapons and magic spells, alterations to existing features like blacksmithing, increased texture packs for villages and scenery, new species to play as – and all of this is free. Most of this content was not created by the original game developer, instead it is created by fans of the game who take the existing code and decide to take it a step further to shape the game into more of their vision. Sometimes these mods aren’t just additions to the games but change the basic gameplay in a fundamental way. A common example is the use of mods to reduce or eliminate the weight of an object the character is carrying. For those that haven’t played the game your character can only carry so much weight before they lose the ability to run and can only shuffle around slowly. When you get to this situation you are pretty much forced to drop some of the objects you have previously collected, which can be very difficult to do. Should you leave behind health potions you bought or made? What about that weapon you paid for? How about a trophy of a quest you just completed? I’m sure a good number of people remember back to the days of playing Pokémon and finding that you just didn’t have room for that extra pokéball – it can definitely be maddening. While I understand that the weight limitation makes for a more realistic game, it can take away the fun – which is the entire purpose of the game anyway. So in that case I don’t have any problem with modifying the game code so your giant battle axe is magically weightless. If I wanted realism I’d go to the local blacksmith, get some amazing armor and go find a dragon on my own – wait, that might not be the best plan, I have assignments to work on.
Well, that was definitely a tangent, back to DLC and Valve offering free content for games. Maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise when you consider that Valve has a history of releasing the source code for its own games, leading to amazing spinoff series that no one would ever have expected. Team Fortress, for instance, was originally a mod for Quake (by iD Software) and is now a huge craze for Steam with Team Fortress 2. TF2 recently went in a completely new marketing direction by dropping to the incredible price of free! Yes, it is now possible to play the entire game completely free, so how do they make any money? Through micro-transactions, where players can purchase equipment and character customizations, while the main content is free and will remain free even when new features are implemented.
Allowing the public to play around with the source code of your game is a great way to extend the lifespan of the original game and entice new people to purchase the original. Without any new content, a game will normally appear in the used games bargain rack within a year or two, sometimes sooner in the case of Duke Nukem Forever of course. If there is continually new content for the game, with new quests, weapons, entire skins making the game entirely new and different, then the game itself is almost continually new and will continue to spread through word of mouth. The biggest benefit to the developer? They don’t have to do a thing, as they aren’t the ones spending money and time developing new content; the public is generating its own content based on collective interests. The best mods, or the ones with the most popular content, will naturally become the most prominent – and that is the best source for new talent in game development.
That’s it for this article, hopefully you know a bit more about DLC, what kinds to look for and what kinds to avoid. Of course everything is open to interpretation, so if there is DLC that is already included on the disc and you basically are just buying an unlock code, that is totally cool – just make sure to complain to the company too. So enjoy the summer term, and Keep on Gaming!