Here's my Money, Now Where's the Rest of my Game?

In a recent interview Witcher 2 developer Adam Badowski told Rock, Paper, Shotgun that he didn't like to see "gamers treated like dairy cows."  What he's talking about is DLC, and to an extent, I kind of agree with him.

I'm not against DLC at all.  I think it's a great way to add something new to a game and get people back into it.  But Badowski is talking about studios that are, to keep with the cow metaphor, milking every dollar out of their fans to the point where sometimes players are having to pay around $80 to get the full game.

Not always a bad thing. For example, Fallout 3 released four new missions after the game had been on shelves for a while, allowing characters to reach higher levels, explore new areas on and above the Capital Wastelands, and giving players a reason to jump back on a game they probably already devoted way too many hours too.  But the added material was new, something developed after the release of the initial game, the genuine article.

On the other hand there's L.A.Noire.  I loved L.A. Noire, but before the game even came out it was common knowledge that some cases, for whatever reason, had been cut from initial release and would not be on any of the three disks that came with the game.  That was in May.  Not long after that I checked on Live and there were 4 new missions to do, none of which, of course, were free to download.  Now there is a "Complete" version of L.A. Noire coming out this November.  That's six months later.  See, this is where we have a problem...cutting material out of a game so you can sell it to me later is just grimy.

Don't even get me started on Marvel v. Capcom 3 vs. Ultimate Marvel v. Capcom 3.  While I didn't purchase MvC3, I would be pretty upset if I had.

But I guess what it comes down too is DLC, at least in my eyes, was supposed to be a way to add a new aspect of a game that may have already been played out otherwise.  More and more, however, it seems DLC is being used by studios as a way to drain you of your hard earned cash, holding back on giving you what should be included in the initial release in order to drain you of more of your hard earned cash later.  To me, that's a misuse of DLC.

Just a Thought on Bullying

I don't know if this is true.  It's just a theory.

In high school I saw first hand the difference a good principal and leader can make.  My first year at the school I got a 97 average the first quarter.  The second quarter I was walking down the hall and the principal said hi to the kids who were in trouble all the time and had no idea who I was.  For three years I watched as students would be sent to the office only to be sent back to the classroom.  Nothing got better.

My sophomore year Br. Paul Beaudin became principal.  Now when students were sent to the office they had a good chance of being sent home, sometimes for good.  It was a private school and Br. Paul had the luxury of expelling troublemakers.  I saw a lot of kids who had been trouble in the past turn themselves around.  The whole school was better for it.

But it got me thinking about schools where the principal doesn't have that luxury.  Where did the troublemakers go?  On top of that I heard stories about parents defending their kids bad behavior, and from an outsiders perspective, it seemed as if the public schools in the area were edging more and more towards a climate in which teachers were afraid to discipline students for fear of being disciplined themselves.  Eventually, it wouldn't be worth it, and the inmates, as the saying goes, would be running the prison.

Granted I come from Schenctady school district, and not too far from that is Albany, a school that  counts stabbings the way other schools count missed homework assignments, so my perspective of the public school system is a bit skewed.

Now there is a national outcry to stop bullying.  Has bullying gotten worse in the past few years?  I don't know, I'm not in school, but I do know this, at least when I was a kid I got to go home at the end of the day and what I didn't have to see was a bunch of nasty comments on my Facebook page.  Not everyone today has that luxury.

But that isn't really the point.  I don't think Facebook is to blame.  So who is?  Well, I already said it: The inmates are running the show.  Teachers aren't just supposed to discipline students, they are supposed to protect them, but the two often go hand in hand.  How is a teacher supposed to protect one student when he or she can't discipline another?

You want to stop bullying, or at least reduce it because kids are kids and some bullying is going to happen, but if you want to stop serious bullying then the schools need to stop pandering to the bad kids and even more so the bad parents and give the teachers back their power.  Administrations need to step up or things are never going to get better.

But like I said, just a theory.

GI Asked if Hitting the Reset Button is Cheating - I Answered

Last night, May 23, an interesting article was posted on Game Informers website by Ben Reeves.  Reeves asked readers if they thought hitting the reset button in a game was considered cheating, and it focused mainly around L.A. Noire, as many people apparently aren't happy unless they get a perfect run on a case and a lot of resets are occurring.  You can read what people had to say about the subject in the comment section to the article.

While I subscribe to GI and frequent the website, I decided write my answer here instead of in their comment section.  My answer, the most lawerly of them all - it depends.

I know, seems like a cop out, but I really do think it depends on the game.  For example, in L.A. Noire, once a mission is complete and a case solved, you are allowed to go back and replay any case you want for the purpose of trying to achieve a perfect score.  In this case, no, I don't think hitting the reset button is cheating, it is just a faster way of doing what the game will allow you to do anyway.  How can it be cheating to do what an in game mechanic allows you to do?  I don't think it is.

On the other hand, when a friend was recently about to be eliminated in a game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals in NHL '11 he was quick to quit the game and give it another shot.  Is this cheating?  I would say so.  The player was going to lose so he took himself out of the game in order to give himself another shot.  There was nothing in game that would allow him to do this, so essentially he had to go out of game, and what do we call not playing by the rules of the game?  Cheating.

What I worry about more when I am debating whether or not to hit the reset button is not cheating, it's cheapening.  Hitting the reset button takes you out of the game, and in a day and age when gaming isn't just a plumber squishing a mushroom man, when the story and the characters matter, nothing breaks that fourth wall faster than resetting because things didn't go the way you wanted them to.  I don't think anything demonstrates this better than the Fallout series.  In Fallout 3, for example, the game plays entirely different depending on whether you save or destroy Megaton.  While I don't begrudge anyone from multiple saves, seeing how things play out first and then making a final decision, it does take away from the game experience.  A big aspect of Fallout, as well as many other games, is that the player doesn't get game over when they make a decision, but instead has to live with the consequences.  It's what makes the decisions matter.  If you can just reset, then what's the point?

So that's what I think about hitting the reset button.  I personally don't like to do it, but I know a lot of people do.  In the end though remember it's just a game.  Play how you want.