Chardish Games

Capcom’s community manager Seth Killian, usually fairly on-the-ball with his analyses of community trends, totally drops the ball on the issue of unlockable disc content:

DLC costs money because it costs additional money to create. Those costs are the same, regardless of whether the created content gets delivered on a disc, or as a download. I can understand wanting as much as you can have for the lowest price (and SSFIV will give you a lot at a low price), and not wanting to pay for DLC at all, but I have never been able to understand the whole “on the disc” vs. “downloaded” distinction.

To sum up: you’re going to pay for DLC anyway if you want it, so who cares what form it comes in? The answer is: everyone. Let me offer a brief rundown of why unlockable disc content (I’ll adopt the acronym UDC) is objectionable:

1. Consumers don’t like it.

Sure, people are accustomed to buying plenty of goods digitally now. Digitally purchased music, movies, and TV shows are fairly commonplace now, alongside PC games, which have enjoyed a heightened burst of success due to the growth of services such as Steam and Direct2Drive. But console games are still for the most part a physical good. They are revered for their simplicity - those who prefer the console experience appreciate the fact that no installation or configuration is required - you just pop the game in and play it. Console gamers appreciate the fact that their games are physical goods - they see the physical medium as providing a versatility that PC games lack.

Console gamers are also in it for the long haul. Many never sell games they once acquire, preferring instead to keep them forever, knowing they’ll work as long as the systems they’re built for are still running.

So when a console gamer purchases a game from the store, she doesn’t perceive herself as having bought a non-transferable single-user license to use this product and included documentation (the ‘Software’), blah blah, etc. She bought the game. The game is the thing on the disc. The disc is now hers. It’s hers to do with what she wants. She doesn’t want an arbitrary software mechanism preventing her from accessing content on the disc. She wants to do whatever she wants with the disc, because she bought it, and it’s hers.

2. Consumers don’t like it.

Since we’ve established the fact that the disc is a physical good which is perceived to be a commodity, not a license, it is an affront to the consumer to sell him a product which contains a smaller product which is locked, and can be unlocked for a fee. (Oh, and there are people watching who will revoke your access to services you use if you try to break the lock.) Of course, even if the locked smaller product is thrown away, it’s infuriating to know that you own this thing you bought and you’re not allowed to use part of it without paying more. This simply doesn’t sit well in the mind of the consumer.

3. Consumers don’t like it.

In the mid-90’s, Circuit City spearheaded a now-infamous experiment called DIVX (not to be confused with the DivX video codec.) With DIVX, you would buy a DIVX disc (similar to a DVD) from a store at rental prices, and then you could play it on a DIVX player for 48 hours after the initial viewing, after which point the system would forbid you from watching the disc again until you paid an additional fee for another 48 hours (or a larger fee to unlock the disc forever.) Circuit City’s logic was that you were essentially paying rental prices for a rental, with the added advantage that if you wanted to rent it again (or buy it), you didn’t have to go to the store again. The result? DIVX was a terrific flop. Ironically, Circuit City’s selling point (that DIVX offers convenience over multiple trips to the rental store) is similar to Killian’s justification for UDC (that it offers convenience over having to download content before you can play it.)

4. Consumers don’t like it.

UDC isn’t really about convenience for the consumer, it’s about convenience for the publisher. Microsoft and Sony both have limits on the size of DLC that developers are allowed to offer, and (if XBLA and XBLIG are any indication of an industry standard) their pricing tiers are set based partially on the size of the content being sold. Putting the DLC on the disc as UDC allows the publisher to circumvent these restrictions and simply make the downloadable part of the “DLC” a key to unlock parts of the disc.

5. Consumers don’t like it.

There’s a prevailing mindset that the game on the disc is the whole game and that locking disc content behind a pay gate is essentially selling a partial game, then selling the rest piecemeal. This is hardly behavior that seems to put the consumer first. With current-gen games costing $60 at launch, charging an extra $2.50 to use a character or play a level that is already on the disc (and thus, in consumers’ minds, part of the game) feels like a nickel-and-dime tactic.

6. Consumers don’t like it!

Does it really need to get more complicated than this? Consumers don’t like locked content on discs. Why are the developers (and publishers) spending effort trying to convince consumers that they should like this, instead of simply trying to provide content in forms they do like? Killian should know this - it’s one of his primary jobs to keep a close ear to the community pulse.

DLC is here to stay, that’s for sure. Hopefully, though, the industry will soon realize that listening to their customers will do more good in the long run than attempting to force upon them an alternate mentality of how they should perceive the value of the things they have purchased.