Be Excellent To Each Other

So, MX v ATV: Alive is out and it's £29.99 new (and £24.99 on various retail sites).

Seems a bit cheap, no? Well, that's because THQ are stripping out most of the content and selling it as DLC. There will be new DLC every two weeks and will include the modes that you used to get in these games.

Is it just me or a publishers taking the fucking fun of it all now?

It's an interesting model, I'll give you that. It probably needed to be a bit cheaper to start with, though (or download-only).

Why not just a free client with no content and the user just picks what they want?

It's up to them. It's up to you whether you want to buy it. Personally, I'd welcome the ability to buy only the chunks of a game I want to play.

Well that entirely depends. If, by the time you've added enough content to bring it up to what you might want from the average full-price game, it costs the same or less than a full-price game, then great. However, that's about as likely as rain on the moon.

I really don't see an upside to what they are doing. If it was eventually cheaper than or equal in price to a regular game then maybe but even then they are getting rid of any sell on value. Me selling my stuff is up to me after all.

I'd welcome a game that was so good that I'd want to play all of it anyway.

I suppose the answer is for you to give them a vote of no-confidence by not buying the game. There are plenty of others out there.

Is the right answer but I'd rather find out where they live and then shit in their hair.

Never mind the morality or financial implications, this is just too much bloody faff. I'm not paying for a half empty disk then filling my precious HD gigs.

Absolutely. I'd start buying games again if I could drop, say, the recharging health, auto-aim and cover system and then only have to pay half price.

Everybody wins!

You've just described EDF!

They even drop good animation and give you MILLIONS OF BADDIES. It's a worthwhile trade off.

Games, good games, games that have worth, should be acts of creation. Definitive things with borders and shape and design.

Mechanics that are polished and sing. A world complete and compelling.

The moment you cut that. The moment you offer a bonus to circumvent grind to those that preorder, or offer this bit to him and that bit to her, you undermine the thing you have made.

In a world where developers are battling not piracy, but trade ins, they've foolishly thought that making games appear disposable and ephemeral will somehow make more people hold onto them and not trade them in. And thats before you consider that the fear of bad choice leads to people making no choice.

Developers need to make one product and make it as well as they can, with pride in. Extra content should be free to supplement your world (a la Angry Birds) or stand alone on its own merits.

Also: Fragmenting your playerbase is not the best idea.