“You can have this game for fifty bucks, but for sixty, I’ll
make it slightly less enjoyable”.
That’s not a good deal, but that’s what has been offered to gamers with
many titles released in the last year or so. The used game market has caused a lot of damage to game
developers; why buy a new copy when a used one is ten bucks cheaper? That’s a
great deal for retailers who get to sell the same disk multiple times without
having to pay the publisher. This
led to publishers giving away download codes for free in-game goodies with new
copies of their games. The code
can only be used once, and used copies have already had their codes redeemed by the
original owner.
Even when customers buy new games, retailers have a hard
time getting savvy shoppers to pay launch day prices. Why pay sixty dollars when it will be on sale after two months? These
issues are behind the recent trend of pre-order bonuses which give players
in-game stuff in exchange for paying full price for games. But are these "Bonuses" actually reducing
the amount of enjoyment players get from the game by unbalancing the difficulty
with arsenals of extra firepower?
Take for example Dead Space 2; a damn fine game and a
personal recommendation of mine.
However if a player pre-ordered the Collectors Edition at Gamestop, the
bonuses included several exclusive weapons and armor that were available for
free. And when I say “Free” I mean
the player didn’t have to spend any in-game money for them. Normally in the game, the hero Isaac Clark has to spend
space credits to acquire more firepower, and starting the game with several
free guns makes those early levels significantly easier. Too easy in fact.
Sure most games these days have multiple difficulty levels,
but developers usually put a lot of effort into finding the right balance of
difficulty, so that Easy, Normal and Hard mean just that. The average player will need to develop
their skills in Normal mode before being ready to take on Hard mode. However; with the un-earned firepower
attained though the pre-order bonuses, Normal mode was more like
Not-Quite-As-Easy Mode. On the
other hand, Hard was A-Little-Too-Hard Mode on your first playthrough because players hadn’t quite developed
the skills needed to tackle the higher difficulty.
You had to choose between the unchallenging and the
frustrating.
Not to pick on EA, but the same sort of shenanigans were
afoot in Dragon Age 2, but on a much grander scale. Pre-order the “Signature Edition” from the right retailer
and you got a pile of extra weapons, armor, allies, and even a bonus set of
armor just for owning Dead Space 2!
Add in extra items from the tie-in Facebook minigame and your party was
ready to trounce the hapless Darkspawn in the game’s first mission. Then there
was the most game-breaking bonus feature; a warhound that could be summoned at
will, which would essentially raise the maximum number of companions you could
take with you on missions. With a
faithful dog at your side, dressed in your fancy armored pants, followed by a party
armed to the teeth with extra equipment, the Normal difficulty level had players slaughtering enemies with ease. Yet
again, the Hard mode was just a pinch too difficult.
EA isn’t the only culprit; Bethesda tossed gamers some
goodies for pre-ordering Fallout New Vegas, and plenty of shooters will pass
out upgrades in online shooters to players who buy early or
new. There’s no shortage of game
publishers who go about this the wrong way.
So who’s doing things right? Remedy and Microsoft showed the industry how to get gamers
to buy Alan Wake new. They
included a code that would get gamers a free copy of first DLC for that game;
an epilog that added to the story, but didn’t provide any-sort of in-game
weaponry. Microsoft has also shown
some good insight by includig Halo 3 maps with new copies of Halo spin-ooffs
like ODST and Halo Wars. Giving
players extra missions, maps and stories is the way to go about this sort of
motivation. Of course creating a
new mission takes many more man-hours than just re-skinning a gun and bumping
up its damage variable. That’s why
gamers will have to realize that sometimes the bonuses are really just the
publisher demanding a fee to screw up the game.