I think it is silly to think that DLC has increased the cost of gaming - it hasn't but people do not accept the value of money.
I like FPS games, but paid the same price and sometimes less for almost 2 decades. My experiences have been mostly on PC, but they remain relevant when discussing cost vs value of gaming.
In 1994 I paid £20.00 for Doom II.
In 1996 I paid £29.99 for Quake.
In 1999 I paid £29.99 for Quake 3.
In 2004 I paid £29.99 for Half-Life 2.
In 2005 I paid £29.99 for Quake 4.
In 2007 I paid £29.99 for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (and £34.99 for CoD4)
In 2011 I paid £29.99 for Rage.
I can still play Quake, Quake 3 and Quake 4 online, as well as CoD4. Sure the community is way smaller but to be fair it is many years after release.
In 2014 I paid £39.99 for Titanfall. As of last week there were only around 1200 players
globally!
I tried playing but kept getting connected to foreign servers and the lag was atrocious. I also had £19.99 worth of extra maps in the form of the season pass that can't be played online as there were no players using them, globally. None. Nil. Nada. Zip. So it is useless content.
It has been out less than a year and the standard of the servers and the gameplay is shocking, and the player base is almost none existent.
Compare that to a game like Quake 4, Quake 3, CoD4, even Counterstrike and you see it is a damning indictment of the cost of games vs the value for money. Even after 5 years Quake 3 had a far larger player base than Titanfall, or CoD:AW, or BLOPS2.
I appreciate fully the value of my money because I have to work hard to earn it. You can try and argue that inflation makes our money worth less these days, fair comment. How, then, can you argue that what we receive for the money is good value when most modern releases are only a 3rd of content games used to have, they are full of bugs, they often need DLC to remain relevant and if they have online features they usually only last a year or so with a decent player base?
Indeed, I have suspected for a while it is by design that new online games are mostly dead in the water after 12 months. Why? Because of the release cycle and the fact that most modern games have no option to have player rented dedi's - which are the lifeblood of online gaming. All this P2P crap is simply a device to reduce the longevity of a game. Why won't SHG/Acti let us have rentable dedis for CoD:AW for example? I suspect it is because their game has been designed with a 12month (ish) shelf life, and after which the cycle starts again and they want another £39.99 off you for CoD:AW2 (+ £19.99 for the DLC season pass which consists of content that should have been in the intitial release).
Sure, they will tell you it is because they want an optimised experience for all users. Do you believe them? If the online experience in CoD:AW is 'optimised', please shoot me now and let me play Quake 3/Quake 4/Counterstike/CoD4 in heaven! lol. They don't want you to have dedis because it takes away their control and manipulation of the market. Do you think if CoD:AW had nice fast rentable dedis the player base would have plummeted so fast? Do you think the people playing it would be more or less likely to buy an only slightly improved CoD:AW2 12 months later for £39.99 when they can still play the first one just fine?
So it is simply absurd to try and say that gaming does not cost any more these days. It does, way more in fact. I can still play Quake 3 for the money I paid for it back in 1999.
I can still, to be fair, play Titanfall but only Attrition and only on lag ridden foreign servers. It is less than a year old. Where is the value for money when I have paid a total of £59.99 for the game plus season pass and after less than a year I can only play attrition on the core maps that come with Titanfall and even then only on laggy servers? But there is light on the horizon! Titanfall 2 has been announced! Thus the cycle starts again
I can still play AW, but have to put up with ridiculous matchmaking, crap servers and no ability to start my own or rent one. The player base has plumetted since release so my investment come later this year will go the same way as Titanfall - IE down the pan right about the time when AW2 is released
On consoles it is even worse. I am having to pay for a PSN subscription to suffer the crap CoD:AW experience! lol
These days it is not about passionate developers making amazing games with longevity and great value for money. It is about greedy publishers milking the market with the next iteration of a franchise that is only ever so slightly different to the last and attaching a premium price tag.
I accept that the cost of developing games has vastly increased in the last 20 years. But that does not explain or excuse why so many titles in recent years have been appalling in both content terms and their quality and longevity.
Long term bugs, day one patches, microtransactions and DLC, poor support, poor optimisation, poor console to PC ports (and poor PC development in genral), poor online experience and so on and so forth. I would happily pay £60 per game if it had quality content and longevity and worked out of the box like games used to.
Can anyone honestly argue that, bang for buck, gaming was not far better value 15 years ago?
Compare CoD4 to CoD:AW - there are roughly 7 years between them. Can anyone honestly say CoD:AW is progress? It looks better. Thats it. That is all they have managed to achieve in 7 years. The online experience - which is what CoD is all about - is atrocious. Be it PC or console, the recent CoD games have been an abomination. But allegedly it is progress and an optimised experience!
