Gears of War 3 and its first piece of DLC, the Horde Command one, caused quite a stir when players found out that the content for which they needed to pay extra was already on the game's disc, but the developer, Epic Games, admits that it's just a basic part of the making a game nowadays.
Downloadable content is becoming an increasingly touchy issue in the games industry today, especially since most gamers barely have money to buy new games, let alone spend extra on content that usually arrives right after the game's release.
After
defending the Horde Command DLC for Gears of War 3 earlier this month, the producer of the game, Rod Fergusson, has expanded on this aspect of game development and how studios now need to plan in advance for content that will be released after the actual game is launched onto the market.
"What people need to understand is that extra content is something that you have to plan," said Fergusson. "There are people who think that the first day of DLC development is the day after you launched. That's not the way it works. A lot of it is that you have to prepare and plan and manage your resources and your people and everything to allow for that," he said to Game Informer magazine, via
CVG.
The Epic Games developer also believes studios need to adopt this train of thought if they want players to stay interested in their game and not trade it in for a new one.
"I think that as the industry has matured we've gotten more into that," added Fergusson. "It's less about shipping what's left over. It's not about, 'Oh, we had this map left over'... it's keeping the disc in the tray. In a used game culture that you have to actively fight against, I think DLC is one of the ways that you do that."
Do you agree with Fergusson's argument or do you think studios should just put all their content on the disc and just hope players will enjoy it for a longer time?
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