You may or may not have read Cliff Bleszinski's Kotaku entry that covers a lot of the hot topics in the gaming industry, mostly dealing with the future of microtransactions and the inclusion of DLC with just about every single game that comes out. The blog entry caught the righteous ire of the gaming community and gaming press alike, with many telling Cliffy B to go back into semi-retirement and stay there.
The billion-dollar-brand man behind hits such as Gears of War, defended many of the publishers' tactics in his post on Kotaku. Bleszinski comments on how the gaming industry is still an industry above all else and it's all about profits first. He mentions that gamers should be “throwing money” at the greedy mothersuckers, the same mofos who don't care about anything other than beating forecasted profit margins. Cliff also talks about how gamers who whine are in the minority, but we'll get to that later.
Cliffy goes over how disappointed he is with gamers attacking EA, writing...
I'm going to come right out and say it. I'm tired of EA being seen as "the bad guy." I think it's bullshit that EA has the "scumbag EA" memes on Reddit and that Good Guy Valve can Do No Wrong.People love to beat up on Origin, but they forget that, for a good amount of time, Steam sucked. No one took it seriously for the first while. Years ago, when Gabe pitched it at GDC to my former co-workers they came back with eye rolls. (Who's laughing now? All of Valve.) It took Valve years to bang their service into the stellar shape that it is in these days. Yet somehow everyone online forgets this, and they give EA crap about trying to create their own online services. Heaven forbid they see our digital roadmap for the future and try to get on board the "games as services" movement.
Wow, how much did EA pay Cliff to make that comment? There's a reason people hate EA and we listed 10 simple reasons. Nothing elaborate.
Origin has also been around since 2006, we have an article dedicated to how Origin is not new. I'm not really sure if too much pot mucked up Cliffy's memory or if he's just astroturfing. That's not to mention any of the Origin forum bans resulting in account bans and the crazy spyware crap.
Steam may have sucked when it first started many years ago, but Valve wasn't punishing consumers with piss poor corporate bull crap while they were still trying to work out the kinks.
Anyway, Bleszinski goes on to talk about how DLC is a good thing and a necessary thing to keep companies operating, and that EA's bid to add DLC to every future game isn't inherently evil.
I should point out that EA was lambasted recently for exploiting the microtransactions in Real Racing 3 (funny how people like to pretend this kind of stuff doesn't exist), I'm not going to bother explaining it because shills will just dismiss it. But if you want the full story just read up on it at Gamasutra. Most gamers won't be surprised, but I would like to know how shills would defend that kind of monetary gouging.
Let's not forget that EA was also proud to get people to pay for day-1 DLC. It doesn't matter how it makes the community feel about the content stripped off the game, just so long as they make money. Capcom was in a similar boat with the disc-locked content for Street Fighter X Tekken.
Also, let's not forget how EA was screwing people over with NHL 12 and NHL 13 microtransactions, as well as charging full price for FIFA 13 on Wii when it was just a logo change from FIFA 12. I'd like to know how the shills have an answer for a “bug” that required people to pay real money in order to progress in a full $60 retail game.
According to Cliffy, those of you out there who are real gamers – the ones who put money into the industry and expect not to get screwed – you're a minority...
If you're currently raging about this on GAF, or on the IGN forums, or on Gamespot, guess what? You're the vocal minority. Your average guy that buys just Madden and GTA every year doesn't know, nor does he care. He has no problem throwing a few bucks more at a game, because, hey, why not?
I guess Cliffy B is right. We are a minority compared to the billion or so mobile and casual gamers. I guess we should all sit down and eat corporate piss-pie because the guy who probably submitted his soapbox rant to Kotaku while driving to the bank in his Lamborghini basically said we should all stop whining about getting screwed over.
Stickskills and just about every other gamer worth his or her salt, has definitely made it loud and clear that Cliffy B is wrong...not about the industry wanting to make money, but about letting big corporations do whatever the heck they want to make money. Remember folks, it's still YOUR money.
Cliffy further stated that...
Every console game MUST have a steady stream of DLC because, otherwise, guess what? It becomes traded in, or it's just rented. In the console space you need to do anything to make sure that that disc stays in the tray. I used to be offended by Gamestop's business practices but let's be honest…they're the next Tower Records or Sam Goody. It's only a matter of time.
I played the crap out of GTA IV way before even considering the DLC. I put in crazy amounts of hours into Resident Evil 4, Lost Planet 2 and Saints Row 2 without any DLC. In fact, I have close to 100 hours in Saints Row 2, which is a heck of lot more than I have logged for Saints Row 3 (which I haven't touched again after beating it...once), even though I've got tons of DLC for that game.
The point is: if you make a good game they will buy it and play it and love it. You don't need gimmicks, tricks or traps to make money in the game industry. Word of mouth is what helped DayZ move as many copies as it did for Arma II and Terraria didn't need DLC hanging out of every orifice to move more than a million copies.
Still, Cliffy B is talking about getting and staying rich by any means necessary. And if you agree that your hobby is only good for making people like Bobby Kotick, John Riccitiello, John Carmack or Cliff Bleszinski rich enough to afford their Lamborghinis, Porsches, yachts and golden toilets with matching bidets, then keep feeding the machine, at least they're getting something good out of it.
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