“DLC is pretty much accepted.” “Season pass is pretty much accepted.” “Resistance is futile.” These are the messages conveyed by Chris Early, Ubisoft’s Vice President of Digital Publishing, in a GamesIndustry International interview . Okay, I lie. The first two quotes were given by Chris to the Brendan Sinclair. The last one’s from The Borg . But it totally sounded like it fit, right?
That’s because Early did say something similar in that same interview. Except his exact quote to Sinclair was, “There was no resistance. Maybe there were 12 guys somewhere who said something, but whatever. As a whole, there wasn’t a problem.” It’s dismissive, condescending, and absolutely sounds like something the Borg Queen would say (I’m not really up to date on my The Next Generation , so maybe she did).
The fact is, everything Early said is true. Instead of being upset about DLC, we’re just accepting it. Companies are locking away aspects of games that would have been included for free 10 years ago. They’re shoving in microtransactions for people who don’t want to expend 15 minutes of effort. Season passes to get extra scenarios, different armor variations, and a few more weapons are commonplace, and even desired since they knock a few dollars off of the price of this supplemental content.
Yet, it’s easy to see why gamers are just taking it. There’s nothing we can do. DLC, microtransactions, season passes, and paying for online multiplayer have become a fact of life. It’s going to happen. Even if a few people stand up and revolt, it won’t make any difference. For every one person who stands strong and doesn’t buy an alternate outfit for an in-game avatar, there are two who do.
The companies don’t listen, because they don’t have to. They’re still making money. The vocal minority may boycott, but there are some people who cave because they can’t resist some minor luxury that, in 2000, would have been something they would unlock with hard work. I’d even say that the furor behind DLC served to make companies more sneaky. They search for the chinks in players armor. I can say I held fast against DLC until I became invested in BioWare’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect series. I resisted the armor and weapon packs, but when it came to additional characters and storylines, I caved.
We know we can’t resist DLC anymore. Developers and publishers have seen that they can earn more money off of holding things back and, as long as the extra content is made to be super appealing, we’ll cave in and buy. It isn’t that we like the notion of DLC and season passes. Gamers just know that companies are going to offer them whether we support it or not. Speaking up won’t do anything, resistance is futile, and all we can do is either wait for the Game of the Year edition or save our money for the extra content that really counts.