Editorial - The Conundrum of Downloadable Content
An editorial by
Sam Altersitz published on 6.2.2005
Well, it’s been a good few years now since the first games with downloadable content appeared on the PC. And some games on the Xbox have had downloadable content for over a year now as well. But, there is a disparity between PC downloadable content and Xbox downloadable content, and one we’re seeing more and more every day.
Hence this leads to the conundrum of downloadable content. How much is expected? How much should it cost, if anything at all? How often should it be released? What is appropriate content to download (not saying appropriate for people of differing ages, but appropriate considering the game type and what is done with the content)?
Since people made their own versions of mod software, and, later, games started offering things like map making software, skin making software, and other tools (as well as, in some cases, opening up the source code for mod community), people have been used to various versions of downloadable content. Granted, some of this downloadable content can be considered somewhat of a grey area of various copyright and trademark laws, such as certain
Quake 3 Arena skins that are of
Sonic the Hedgehog, one of the Evas from Neon Genesis Evangellion; or remade
Halo maps and
Halo character models (Master Chief, Elites, Grunts, Jackals) for
Unreal Tournament 2004; and lots of others. Still, since these are normally end user made and distributed for no cost, there haven’t been tons of lawsuits about the potential illegality, nor even any sort of word from the companies, if they care about the potentially litigious content.
After all, it can be argued that the making of content into other games by users is just showing their liking of the other games and their wanting to be able to have the parts of the game/other content in other things they play. Of course, this would mean that the modders would have to make all of their modifications from scratch using the modding tools available for the game they are modding, and not ripping out the content from other sources and just inserting it into another game in a format that game uses, which has happened in the past.
But, again, the fact remains that there is content galore out there; both official and unofficial content for many, many games on the PC. Much of the content available for download is user made and maintained; some of it is official content from game developers. But the breadth of content is there for users to choose.
So how much content should people expect to see for their favorite games? Well, the truthful answer is none, really. This is especially true for games which have no way of having content added to them, like most console games. However, if a game has the ability to have content added, people expect some content down the road. Now, whether this is official content or user made depends on what is available.
Many first person shooter games out now, as well as many real time strategy games, come with some sort of map editor with the package; games like
Unreal Tournament, or
StarCraft, for example. Others have downloadable software that allows people to make maps and other things for the games. And others have nothing available to anyone but the game designers.
So we should expect no content? Well, yes, and no. We shouldn’t expect the content to come down the pipe from the game developers, especially if they have provided tools for modders with the games. We really shouldn’t expect the content from the modders, either; (but we all pretty much know we’ll get the content from them at some point). Modders mod the games because they enjoy doing it, or they want to see something in it that isn’t in the main game. Or, they want to take the engine and see what they can do with it. Many modders tend to release their modifications to see who else out there also enjoys their new creations.
For example: the biggest online FPS game, ever, was really just a mod to an existing game. That existing game was
Half-Life and the mod was called
Counter-Strike. A small group of people decided to see what would happen if they mucked around with the
Half-Life multiplayer aspect, and created a new game that used
Half-Life’s engine, and needed
Half-Life to run.
Counter-Strike took off, leaving the official
Half-Life online modes,
Half-Life online and
Team Fortress Classic, in the dust.
Valve, after seeing
Counter-Strike becoming more popular than
Team Fortress Classic or
Half-Life’s regular online multiplayer mode, got smart, and hired on the
CS programmers. This way, Valve was able to take a successful mod of their game, turn around, and sell a stand alone version of the
CS mod for those people who just wanted to play
CS, but didn’t want to have
Half-Life. The stand alone disk had the necessary
Half-Life engine to run
CS, but contained none of the game play elements of
Half-Life, beyond
Counter-Strike.
Similarly, other mods have grown into huge things in their own right. Another mod for
Half-Life, the World War II-themed
Day of Defeat mod has been fairly popular since its release. There is a mod for
Unreal Tournament 2004 that uses the
Unreal 2 Engine but places the characters in the role of Star Wars Stormtroopers; the mod is called Troopers. And there are other mods that have also taken off, like the Aliens movie-inspired
UT2004 mod called Alien Swarm.
Again, these mods, some of which are considered total conversion mods, like Alien Swarm, are possible because some developers understand the added boost the mod community can bring to their games. In many ways, the popularity of the games that get modded comes from the mods that later get released for them.
As an example:
Half-Life.
Half-Life was pretty popular, but nothing overly spectacular, until
Counter-Strike started making waves in chat rooms, and message boards, gaming publications, and in other areas. Sure,
Half-Life sold, but it wasn’t until
Counter-Strike was released, which really made
Half-Life sell, that it became the phenomenon it turned into. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if it weren’t for the popularity of
CS to spur sales of
Half-Life (and keep people playing it for five years), I doubt all that many people, besides diehard
Half-Life fans, would have cared when Valve anounced they were working on
Half-Life 2 oh those years ago. After all, before
CS, it’s not like the number of people playing
Half-Life online or
Team Fortress Classic was mind-numbing. After
CS, though, the number of people playing
CS, and buying Half-Life, had become mind numbing.
So while there really is no expectation for content to come, in reality, people know someone out there is going to mod a game, or that they’ll mod it themselves if the tools are available. It is an expectation from gamers, especially when the developers in question outright approve of and support the mod community.
This brings us to how often to expect new content for games that support the ability to easily mod them. Again, the answer is not very often in most cases. Modding a game can take some time, and if it is just one person trying to do it, it can take what seems like an eternity to do. Even though many modders form small teams to make their mods, there are some who still go at it alone; such as map makers and skin or model makers.
Now, making maps is not as hard as outright modding a game. It takes some time to design and build and test, but nothing truly outrageous compared to completely overhauling a game’s graphical look or play mechanics. And depending on the tools available, sometimes map making can seem to be very simple. An example is the
Unreal Tournament map editor/creator. This map software is the exact same map software that the guys at Epic use to make their maps for the
UT games. It uses a graphical user interface, and supports many features that some map software made available for end user use does not. A good map maker can normally make a map in a few weeks during his spare time, depending on how graphically intensive he or she decides to make it.
The same goes for skin makers, as making a skin is not that hard, either. It is basically just changing some textures in most cases, which is much easier than building a new character model; although there is a large character model development scene out there as well.
But, all in all, most of the people making content on their computers for others to use are doing it in their spare time. This can sometimes mean months from idea to the final version of the initial idea. Other times, we can see some things get released very quickly, such as maps and player skins. In fact, shortly after
Unreal Tournament 2004’s release, the Community Bonus Pack was released, which contained 41 maps, some new player skins, and a few game types that integrated seamlessly into
UT2004. Of course, part of this has to do with Epic’s support of the mod community, and giving them more than adequate software to use to make their content. But not all games have this kind of support from the developers.
So people shouldn’t expect any content that does come out to come out extremely quickly, if at all. In some cases it can, in others, it simply can’t.
But what is appropriate content for downloading for a game? Well, that depends on the game, really. Someone making an M-16 mod for
NeverWinter Nights, for example, may be funny, but probably isn’t all that appropriate for the game. That said, in some case, the content can vary widely and still work. That’s where total conversion mods can come into play.
Last year’s
Epic Games and
NVIDIA sponsored the Make Something
Unreal contest shows this. The contest was about making total conversion mods, sound packs, skins, whatever, and making it work with the
Unreal 2 Engine used in
UT2004. It is from here that we got to see such things as Troopers, the Star Wars setting using
UT2004’s engine; Alien Swarm, which converted the first person single player action of
Unreal into a top down third person squad based shooter; Clone Bandits, which changed
UT into a post-apocalyptic future where the gene pool has been corrupted due to nuclear war and the only way to reproduce is through genetically pure clone babies; Unwheel, which turned the FPS game into a destruction derby-esque racing game; and a multitude of other mods, plus movies using the built in movie maker in
UT2004, and other things made by users.
There were a total of $1,000,000 in prizes to be won in the contest. The winners of the contest turned out to be the Word War II Eastern Front (Soviet Union vs. Germany)-themed total conversion mod, Red Orchestra, and a movie entitled Journey. The winners can be viewed
here.
So the issue about appropriateness of content can be fairly subjective. Total conversion mods often completely change the game, and sometimes mods don’t change much. So when looking for content, it’s nice to find places that have screen shots and write ups for the content for reference. I don’t know, maybe you might like a BFG 9000 mod for a
D&D based game, maybe you won’t.
This brings us to the big issue, potential cost. This varies, depending on your game of choice and where you play it. Many mods, maps, skins, and other such on the PC are free, and most modders hardly any ever charge for their work on the content; including the game developers themselves.
Of course, there is the issue of copyright and other such which precludes the ability of mod makers from charging for their work. Sure, they made the new content, however, the engine the new content is built on belongs to the developer of the game (or is licensed from another developer), thus making the user made content derivative works. Being a derivative work means the maker of the derivative is not able to sell the new product for money without the permission of the original copyright holder.
Also, there has to be the realization that modding a game is not the same as creating a game. While modding can be tough, there is no contest when you compare modding a game to writing a game engine, writing a game’s story (if it has one), programming AI, etc. Since many of the tools modders have available to them from various sources already allow for things like AI creation (for single player modifications), they don’t have to do as much work as the creators of the game did.
The cost issue though is a big difference between the PC content worlds and the console content scene. On the PC side, most new content is free to download. Much of what is there is also user created, meaning it can’t charge money, but even many new content releases from the developers tend to be free. And I’m not talking about patches; patches have to be free, or people will stop buying the games from those publishers and developers. On the console side, there is a split between free downloadable content, and paid for downloadable content. The split is not 50/50, though, as more content seems to be free than the content that is paid for. Then again, it’s not like the console side is bursting at the seams with content to download; most games simply don’t support it beyond the occasional patch on Xbox Live for certain games.
However, there are various reasons for this; the main reason being that there is no way for console gamers to create new content on most games. With no one but the developer able to make content, this allows the publishers and developers to decide if they want to charge money for the new content. This is their right, however, as they are the ones who put the money out for making the games, and thus can decide if they want to make more money on additional content. After all, without a mod community out there making content for free for people to use, the developers have to put aside people to make new content, if they decide to make it. This means man hour labor costs go into making game content for download. That does cost money.
Some people, coming from the PC side, pretty much expect all content to be free to download on consoles, like most content on the PC already is. Others feel they should pay something if the developer and publisher ask for something for the content. I fall somewhere in the middle. I have never paid for maps or skins or models on my games for the PC/Mac side of things, and I never will. I have paid for expansions that add to the single player campaign, especially if the price is small and the amount of single player time is increased by a good few hours.
These views also change depending on developer to developer, for instance. When Epic released
Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor’s Choice Edition, it came with three new vehicles, four new Onslaught maps and modified older Onslaught maps to use the new vehicles with the older maps, and six new characters. The retail version also came with a few mods chosen by the guys at Epic from the Make Something
Unreal contest. Epic also told their fans not to worry, though, for Epic was releasing all the new content for free download by those who already had purchased
UT2004. The mods were already free for download, so they weren’t included in the content Epic released, but the new vehicles, maps, and characters were in the content release.
Microsoft and
Bungie, however, have decided to charge for their new content for
Halo 2. There will be two ways to get the new maps for
Halo 2, either by a retail disk on June 28, for $19.99 US (mainly for people without Xbox Live), or by downloading the maps over Xbox Live. If you chose to go the download route, then two maps are going to be free, off the bat, with two others costing $5.99 to download (they become free on June 28). Then on June 28, five more maps will become available for download for a price of $11.99-- the total cost for the downloads, if they are purchased is $17.98. The retail disk will have all nine maps, as well as any and all patches released for
Halo 2 over XBL, a documentary on map making and a cinematic made about
Halo 2 using the game’s engine.
This is not the first time someone has charged for content over Xbox Live, though.
Ubi Soft has charged for
Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow maps. Microsoft has charged for some
MechAssault downloads, as well as some
Links 2004 golf courses. And
Konami charges for the
Dance Dance Revolution song packs as well. There are probably other publishers that have also charged for downloadable XBL content, as well, but these are the ones that I remember off the top of my head.
With the charging for
Halo 2 maps, some people have begun to wonder if the charging is gouging, or justified due to development costs. The
Pandora Tomorrow maps averaged around $2.50 per map. The
MechAssault content had three new maps and two new game types, averaging $1 per included item. The two
Links 2004 pay courses were full 18 hole courses, each for $5… so that can be broken down into either a per hole basis ($0.27 per hole) or as just $5 for an entire course. The
DDR song packs cost $5 for five songs, or $1 per song (about on par with the iTunes Music Store, Napster, Rhapsody, and other online music stores).
The
Halo 2 maps, though, break down differently. If they are bought on the disk, the average cost per content item on the disk is $1.81 (nine maps, one documentary, and one cinematic). If the maps are downloaded by Xbox Live, however, they average out to $2.85 per paid for map (seven pay maps, no cinematic, no documentary).
People, though, are wondering the angle being taken here. Sure, nine maps is the most ever released for a single game on Xbox Live, but a savings of only $2.01 over the game disk when there is no physical media to press, package and distribute? And you lose out on the extras that the disk has? Then there’s the kicker that by “late summer” all the maps will be made available for free download over Xbox Live. There are people asking “Why are they asking for money at first, if they just plan on making them free later on?” The answer, however, has stirred up a bit of controversy all over the Net, including Bungie’s own forums.
The official answer is that because it cost money to pay the people to make the maps for
Halo 2, and for the bandwidth to distribute them, which they say forces them to try and recoup some of this money. Now, with this official line, I fall onto the side of the people who say “Bullshit, Bungie.” Those people who feel like I do are in the know that Microsoft and Bungie (since they are part of Microsoft now) have made back well more than what it cost to develop, advertise, package, press, and distribute
Halo 2, probably by a magnitude of close to 17 times the money in profit vs. the costs associated with making and shipping the game. With the current six million plus units of
Halo 2 sold, Microsoft has brought in well over $100 million in profits for
Halo 2 vs. the cost to make
Halo 2.
This $100 million plus in profit (not to mention the enormous profits the company generates as a whole each year) easily covers the cost of making new maps for
Halo 2 as well as distributing them over Xbox Live and on a Xbox game DVD. And there will still be tons of money left over, as well as more coming in daily, since
Halo 2 is still selling well.
There are those that defend this position of, “it cost Bungie to make the maps, so we should pay them for the maps,” but most of those people are dumbasses. If it cost such an extraordinary amount of money to make maps, we wouldn’t see the map making scene we see on the PC world; because, quite frankly, I don’t know any map makers that have millions of dollars to spend on labor costs to make their maps. The aforementioned
UT2004 Community Bonus Pack contained 41 maps, as well as the other things mentioned… and it was free. If we were to follow the logic that it costs money to make maps, then we would have had to pay over five times what Microsoft is charging for the nine
Halo 2 maps for all the content in the
UT2004 Community Bonus Pack.
This also begs the question: “Why didn’t Epic charge for their new maps, characters, and vehicles in the free update to get the Editor’s Choice Edition content for owners of
Unreal Tournament 2004?” Epic made the new characters, the new vehicles, and the new maps (and modified older Onslaught maps to use the new vehicles). Why didn’t they pass the labor costs onto the end user? Certainly, going by the “it cost money to make” argument, they should have.
The answer is twofold. The first part is that Microsoft knows
Halo 2 is a huge success (and anyone who doesn’t know this needs to come out of their cave), and they know that there are enough people who will be willing to pay to play on these new maps to make a substantial profit over any costs associated with the making and distribution of the maps. The second is that Microsoft is trying to push for a micro payment system for content in the Xbox 360’s Live use, and if they can show publishers that successful games can generate a lot of extra profit, they can get those publishers on board for the micro payment idea (ironically, an idea
Sony also talked about at E3 last year).
Truthfully, these maps for
Halo 2 did not cost a ton of money to make; a few thousand dollars at most in labor costs for the actual creation of the maps. The distribution isn’t going to cost tons and tons of money, either, especially over Xbox Live; the bandwidth cost will be miniscule as will the cost to press, package, and ship game disks. Yet, the potential profits generated from the sale these nine maps on game disk or seven maps on Xbox Live are astronomical. We’re talking tens of millions to over $100 million in revenue for a few thousand dollars in costs. That’s a ton of profit.
Now, would I be saying “Bullshit Bungie” if they had just come out and said “Well, we know there’s enough of you out there who will pay for them, so we’re going to milk it for all it’s worth”? Nope. Would I purchase the maps even if they said it that way? Nope. As I said, I don’t pay for maps. But I’d have more respect for them if they’d have the balls to just come out and state the truth.
But, this brings us to another part of the puzzle; and that is, asking "will these sorts of charges for content will become the norm in the future?" It’s possible. Really successful console game publishers that support downloadable content in some of their more popular games might start saying that if
Halo 2 can do it successfully, then so can they.
Electornic Arts might start charging for downloadable roster updates for
Madden, knowing that there’re might be enough people out there who might pay as high as $10 per roster update, for example.
The other thing it brings us to is wondering if there will ever be widespread end user tools for creating content on consoles. After all, if there’s enough user created content out there for free, it’s not like the publishers can compete with that price. By keeping the consoles from being able to create content for games, though, the publishers and developers will be able to keep a stranglehold on downloadable content, and we may even come to a time when there will be no such thing as non-premium content on Xbox Live, or Sony’s online service, or Nintendo’s online service. After all, why give something away for free, when you can make more money on a successful game from selling content on it, even if that game has generated enough profit to more than pay for itself (and any content made for it later) ten times over by the time the content comes out?
And there’s the thought that this sort of thinking might cross over into the PC world, where the mod community is full blown. Should the tools for the mod community disappear, then the publishers and developers can have a stranglehold on the content there as well. From a business standpoint, this would be the way to go, because it keeps revenues flowing. However, the community is what keeps the revenues flowing as well, and if the publishers alienate enough of the community, the money will stop flowing.
Am I saying it is wrong to charge for downloadable content? No, it is the right of the publisher and developer to do so for content they design. Do I think all content should be charged for when downloaded? Absolutely not! I think that publishers would do well to look at what they are offering for downloadable content before deciding that they can or should just outright charge people for it.
It’s why I think the idea of micro payments for content is horrid, and I hope it fails miserably. Why should I pay real money for a set of virtual rims on a racing car that took an artist a few hours at most to make and costs the publisher almost nothing in bandwidth costs, for example? Why should I pay for a new sword for my character in a RPG? Even multiplayer maps, skins, and player models, I think should remain free, since the time to make them is miniscule compared to the time needed to create an entire game.
But, I will pay for things like another 10 hours of single player mode to download, and all the new areas associated with that, provided it wasn’t purposefully left out to charge people for later on. I’ll pay for that, provided the time is long enough and the cost isn’t too outrageous, and there’s whole new areas and items to go through and collect. In fact, I think episodic gaming could be a big way to go in the future, with a low initial payment, and each downloadable installment (or separate disk for those who can’t download them) costing a few dollars per episode, for example.
The whole problem with the micro payment system is that it actually encourages publishers to leave things out of games and then make people pay for them at a later date. Things like weapons in games that use them; or rims in racing games or paint jobs for the cars; or hair styles and clothes in games like
The Sims; or even possibly items needed to complete a game’s main story as a way for an unscrupulous publisher to make extra money on a game after it has already been sold are all examples of potential abuse by publishers if the micro payment system is successful.
I’m not willing to spend $50 (or more if you listen to EA and
Activision) on each game, only to then have to pay more later on to continue on when the time is right for the publisher because they purposefully left something out of the game to make you buy it later just to continue on in the game. The potential for abuse with the micro payment system is huge, and I’m sure the publishers are well aware of this. In fact, I know they’d rather have the abuse happen, it helps the bottom line.
However, I have been told by some developer friends that Microsoft is not allowing this, as of yet, for micro transaction content. According to them, the game must be able to be completed with all the content the game ships with, and anything charged for later (except in episodic gaming) must be extra stuff, not necessary to complete the game. We'll see how long that lasts, though.
Look at what’s happening with the RIAA and the online music stores, now; the RIAA members are seeing the potential for revenue, and they’re demanding Apple, Napster, Real, and the others increase the price of songs so they can make even more money.
Now, imagine this with downloadable content. Sure, your micro payment might be $1 for something at first, but if the game becomes popular, and enough people pay $1, then the next one might cost you $2, for no other reason besides the fact that it increases the profit potential for the game. If enough people pay the $2 charge, then maybe it goes up to $3. It’ll keep going up until enough people stop paying any more, then the companies will know the maximum they can charge, and know that almost all of it from each sale is pure profit, even early on; especially if the things you are paying for were purposefully left out of the game at release just to make you pay for them later.
This, of course, is the conundrum of downloadable content. Can free content and pay for content work together? The truth is, that free and pay for content can, and currently do both coexist and thrive. Unfortunately, not enough people in the gaming industry can see this, especially game publishers. Content drives sales. It can be argued that free content, ala
Counter-Strike, can drive sales even more.
I personally feel that the charging of maps for
Halo 2 (or any other game) is ridiculous, the game has made enough money already that any extra costs associated with the making of new maps is so easily absorbed, that it is basically a non-issue. The potential is for another $118 million or so in revenues on just these nine maps. It probably won’t get that high, but you can bet your bottom dollar the MS accountants saw the same number I did in the math and Microsoft will see just how close they can get to that. After all, after the first few thousand dollars worth of sales, they’ve already made the labor costs back for the map makers at Bungie. A few thousand more dollars after that, and they’ve paid their “distribution” costs (whether through Live or physical media). After that, it’s all profit. And they know it.
And they’re hoping this model works for them in the future with their proposed micro payment system for the Xbox 360. Sony, I’m sure, as well as
Nintendo, are looking closely at this as well, to see if they could implement something similar. In fact, Sony is already working on plans for such an idea right now, after seeing the success of the iTunes Music Store; they said so at E3 last year.
Let’s just hope, for all of our sakes, that the micro payment plan fails, or at least falls well short of expectations, so we can still have a good mix of free and pay for content. Let us choose the content we want, and let us choose if we’re going to pay for it or not (IE getting the pay for content, or being fine by not having it). Let’s not live in a world where all the content becomes a pay or don’t get world, or I think downloadable content in gaming will die out faster than people realize.
