[Note: This is not intended to call out Nick or Grim, or any of the commenters in Nick's blog]
Today I was jamming to some Rock Band, playing the same fucking songs that come with the original disc, not that they’re not fun songs, but, you can only 5 star them on expert so many times. I was thinking about buying some of the extra packs, because I have not purchased any of them yet, as much as I want to, I am a poor college student that needs to eat. While I was pondering whether or not to add some MS points, I started remembering all the fuss that happened when Guitar Hero 2 came out. If you don’t remember, here’s a
link. And, in the interest of proving a point, I am going to give an excerpt from the actual blog, followed by blurbs from the comments.
“I can't even fathom how much ecstacy was being snorted when the decision makers behind this pricing decided consumers would be okay with this great service. If you pay for this s**t, you are a f**king a**hole and you are part of the problem (no offense if you've already been raped this morning). You're sending the message to publishers that this is okay, that you'll bend over and take anything they have to offer.”
“DO NOT PAY FOR THIS! What the hell people?”
“DO NOT PAY FOR THE FUCKING PACKS ASSHOLES!!!!”
“seriously, if you buy these packs you are letting someone rape you, and possibly rape a family member.”
“D O
N O T
B U Y
T H I S
S H I T E”
“500 points is mental! No way M$! I didn't drop the soap, so stop trying to fuck me!”
“Fuck them, they are not getting a penny from me for this bullshit!”
“If you buy those Song Packs then the terrorists have already won....DON"T BUY THEM!!!!!”
“Please, if you've bought even one of these packs so far, give me your address. So I can come to your house with a baseball bat. And knock some fucking sense into you.”
Get the point? If you even considered dropping 500 MSPoints on the packs, you were a heretic. Now flash forward to today. Rock Band tracks are 440 MSPoints, cheaper by less than one dollar, and we cannot fucking wait for the next week to get here to see what new goodies Harmonix has to offer us. We even are back on good terms with Guitar Hero 3, as seen in the
blog announcing the Classic Rock Track Pack.
“…the Classic Rock Track Pack can be yours for 500 Microsoft Points. The songs included in the pack are Boston's "Peace of Mind," Journey's "Any Way You Want It," and Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero." If there was ever a time to scream "DO WANT" at the top of your lungs, now would be it. Seriously, feel free to go crazy.”
So my question is, what happened? I know the first GH2 packs were songs that were already on GH1, and that accounts for some of it. But that can’t be the one deciding factor can it? Have we the gamers become more lax with our microtransactions? Has the quality of the microtransactions risen so we don’t mind the price as much? Or did we just pull whatever it was out of our asses?
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I also think that, at the time, we were probably less accustomed to this sort of DLC. Or not. I don't know. Just a thought.
I know that certain games can kiss our entire asses for some of the shit they want us to pay for, but there are some worth shilling out some coin for.
If that makes any sense. It's late. But I will say this: Rock Band has changed the way I listen to music; I can't listen to a song without thinking "This would be GREAT to play in Rock Band." I've never felt that way with the Guitar Hero games. There's just so much more value in each of the tracks.
I'm so worked up, that if it weren't 2am, I'd fire up Rock Band right now.
DLC is something the publisher add's later to try to make the game exprience more enjoyable for those who frequently play the game. And just like the game it self, extra content takes time and money to create. So why shouldent they charge for it? (provided it's GOOD downloadable content). it's your choice to buy it, it's the players choice. The person screaming about "Don't let them rape you". Fine, if that is what you beleive it is, then you are entilted to that opion, and it's your loss.
Not to mention, not ALL DlC costs money. Look at the plasmid packs on Bioshock and the diffrent outfits on Dead Rising. That is FREE DLC (Most likely becuase it was not enough individule content to charge for it). But it's a gift from the publisher, which shows that not all game companys are trying to take every dollar in your wallet.
In short: If you don't like the DLC, or feel your being cheated: Don't pay for it, and shut the hell up.
(None of that was directed at you Coonskin, btw).
Anyway, basically people where complaining for more reasons back then, different groups of people were complaining about:
A)Price
B)No option to buy songs individually.
C)Not the songs they liked from GH1.
D)Lack of new songs.
E)The fact that it's DLC.
Right now RB's DLC is cheaper, we believe that it's more demanding to get a song in RB than to get it in GH, we can buy only the songs we like and we are more used to DLC pricing in general.
As for GH3 and Rock Band, I don't have RB yet, and I fucking love Boston.
This afternoon we have a date with the B-52's.
Its just not the same as buying extra armor to make your avatar look fancy in a single player game.
besides, the RB songs are cheaper, even if its only a little cheaper. Hence using the word "cheap". I think.
Guitar Hero also was one of the first games to do it, so the pricing came as a bit of a shock. Remember the bitching about horse armour? That was another effect of the first wave of microtransactions. Now they're everywhere, and no one really cares as long as they aren't on the disc in the first place.
Now where's my PGR4 DLC?