SquadCast Special Mission: Katawa Shoujo

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The Squad take on the freebie visual novel/dating sim/eroge/loli cripple porn Katawa Shoujo from 4 Leaf Studios and find themselves with a bad case of The Feels. Featuring Pete Davison, Mark Whiting, Calin Grajko, Alex Fisher and Mike Minotti.

Music in this episode:
Damage — Blue123 & delta
Jitter — Nicol Armarfi
Teatime, Fast Forward — Nicol Armarfi
Romance in Andante — Nicol Armarfi

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Got any thoughts on Katawa Shoujo? Post a comment on this entry and share ‘em with the world.

Wahaha~

@beige Awesome You’re a gentleman and a scholar, please convey my heartfelt appreciations to Dude who Made Things. High levels of admiration and respect, especially since he was inspired to make a thing, double points because it’s something I also appreciate. Connections between humans, hearts and minds ‘for the win!’ as… the… kids…. say…

HEY SQUAD! A RANDOM THING!

I introduced someone I know a while back to Katawa Shoujo and he’s seen fit to put together a musical trance mix (?) (!) loosely inspired by the journey of the player through the game.

While preferring to remain anonymous on this here squawkbox, he nonetheless wanted me to convey the following information. I know that there is love for trance and electronica here on the Squad so I figured people into that kind of stuff would be into listening to it.

I know he’s a Squawkbox lurker so if anybody posts stuff to the board here, he’s sure to read it. If you have comments that is.

MP3 is here: DOWNLOAD AWAY

Referenced image is here.

Liner notes (?) from the DJ below. Enjoy!

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DO IT FOR HER: a Katawa Shoujo mix

Notes

This is a (very slightly) edited excerpt from episode 333 of Armin Van Buuren’s “A State of Trance”, a weekly trance music show. It is offered with the intent of evoking a sense of the happiest possible outcomes for the characters in Katawa Shoujo, a visual novel featuring love stories about high school kids with moderate to severe physical disabilities.

Like all trance music, it is meant to be experienced through movement as well as sound. The best way to connect with it is to dance to it, but any kind of rhythmic movement can help, even if you’re just swaying in your chair or tapping your foot. It is also intended to be played as loud as possible, short of discomfort.

There is a silly station identification announcement at around 17:30 for which I apologize. There was no easy way to remove it.

The following notes are provided for anyone interested, but some may prefer to listen without the prejudice the notes might convey. There are no spoilers for KS.

—————————

You can find the actual tracklist (and the entire episode) with a quick google search, but for the purposes of this mix, the tracks have been given different names.

1. School for Katawa (Hisao)
(0:00 – 2:00)
“Katawa” is a cruel and insensitive epithet, like “cripple”. When Hisao arrived, he saw himself as such, and it was a struggle to adjust.

2. It’ll Be Okay (Hanako)
(2:00 – 6:30)
The melody of Hanako’s song, although tinged with hope, has a sad feeling about it that runs counter to the hopeful lyrics. It’s really not okay… but it will be.

3. Just Be With Me (Rin)
(6:30 – 12:00)
Rin’s song, in order to attain her mindset of an eternal present, needed to be mind-numbingly repetitive. Like Rin, it’s not easy to get to know, but it’s worth the effort.

4. Running (Emi)
(12:00 – 18:00)
Emi’s speed, energy and “genki” attitude are not fake, but she does use them to run away from a deeper longing that is just as essential to her nature.

5. Safe and Warm (Lilly)
(18:00 – 24:00)
“Generic” is an ugly, unfair word, but Lilly’s simple, unaffected grace is difficult to convey. Still, this is easily the warmest, gentlest song in the mix.

6. Step Up (Shizune)
(24:00 – 28:00)
Of course Shizune’s track is the most percussive and least melodic of the lot. Played through very large speakers, even she could physically feel and enjoy its aggressive rhythms.

7. Curtain Call / The Real Challenge (Entire cast / the player)
(28:00 – 33:00)
The name of this mix was inspired by the attached image, and is intended to be ironic. The true challenge that this game places before the player is to achieve a greater degree of empathy for other people in the real world, and to become a better person.

@impynickers OOOOOooooh shit. Man, that would have made for a good Squad annecdote!

@impynickers Thief IV?

…excuse me while I go do a happy dance that that exists.

OK, I love you guys BUT remember, there’s a value attached to your time. The time you all have spent belly-aching about the ME3 DLC farce equates to the retail cost of about 3 special editions. You guys are silly.

Mass Effect 3 is the one game this year that I’ll pay retail for with a smile on my face. That art book (and some figures) will also be owned. That’s all I have to say about that.

Yeah, I think it’s time we all flaunt @unmanneddrone-made avatars. It’s the Squad Sig v2.0.

@Redswirl I’ve played LoL for almost 3 years now and not paid a dime so I’ll hijack your question there. Way it works is there’s in game currency and real currency, a selection of 10 or so heroes of the 70+ heroes in there are free for a week or two week span, every match you play you get in game currency (Influence Points) based on how long the match took. Victories tend to net you about 100 losses about 50, First win of the day nets you about 300, then you can buy heroes you really like to play as permanent “can use regardless of what roster is free this week” members of your stable. prices range from 540 for more basic heroes to 6300 for more complicated heroes. Also, all new heroes are basically 6300,

Now if you have RP (Riot points, or real currency, it’s not 1 to 1) you can buy heroes for 140 (on sale) to 975 (I think is what it costs for a 6300 hero)

So they net money because if you want to get every new hero (and plenty of people do) you gotta supplement your normal IP with RP or you gotta play sunup to sundown. no adds no anything and you can get a sizable hero roster off of 540 and 1350 cost heroes.

Also they make skins which can only be bought with RP, so lets take for example… Annie…

One of the first mage heroes ever, little girl pyromancer with a giant flaming teddy bear summon named Tibbers, pretty rad all things considered… buuuuut, would you drop a few dollars for Reverse Annie?

I know I’ve been very close to doing that just so I can type silly things like “GAAAAAAOOO!!! >:E” into the /All chat when I’m on kill streaks. =P

Also: Credit to LoL for showing some monstergirl love too, they’ve got a ninetails (Ahri) and a Naga (Cassiopia) not bad! =)

No ads, no gimmicks, just a solid game, though to be fair, in their early days IP flowed a bit freer, so maybe I’d feel differently if I didn’t have a few full rune pages of different build options

*checks email for first time this week* *Sees that he missed the chance to playtest thief IV in montreal on his reading week* *is sad.*

@unmanneddrone You got mine right?

@angryjedi Yeah uh, how does League of Legends work again? You can either buy certain items in the game or take the time to unlock them yourself? How does the game get revenue from free players? Ads?

@beige I heard the blog owner traded up a grasp on basic arithmetic because he was too busy drawing talking, vein-ridden phalli in his maths notebook during school. What a goose.

Appreciated though! Gotta have something to show for the late hours.

—

One last reminder, my friends!

Get Out The Map

Submit two tracks via THIS FORM, supply links if you feel the need, send me MP3s IN ADDITION to your form submission with the appropriate details via email at unmanneddrone ( a t ) gmail (d o t) com IF tracks are really obscure.

Submissions close upon North America’s Sunday eve. In the words of noble Batiatus, that’s two days hence!

—

@bowlisimo Oh, my man. Real mecha or bust. All the way with you on that front.

Someone needs to make an indie game out of all that sweet mecha he draws.

@UMD I love mechs and space ships both equally. More Timber Wolf, less Gundam, though.

Did MJ just get a sweet Alex Connolley avatar?

Aside: Nobody pimped this on the squad, so I will. Have you seen UMD’s customized top ten awards list complete with illustrations over at his blog? There’s honest-to-god handdrawn icons for every major category. Just saying.

http://ngaat.wordpress.com/

@feenwager Haha. Good luck with that. I review Facebook games for a living, so I’m immune to most forms of persuasion.

@angryjedi you have given me a new goal in life: Make Mass Effect 3 seem so compelling and rich that you are willing to hate yourself in the morning just to play it.

I’m a sad person.

@feenwager I don’t feel bad about missing out on those hours of fun that I’d undoubtedly have because there is a buttload of other stuff that I also want to play that doesn’t cost me those all-important integrity and PITA dollars. Simple as that. I can stand up for what I believe and not feel like I’m missing out at the same time.

@angryjedi I guess the part of that equation I don’t get is how you don’t get to play a game you’d have hours of fun with just to prove a point, which we know is a pyrrhic victory at best.

@unmanneddrone Exactly. To dismiss F2P these days as exploitative is to miss out on some great games. The vast majority of smart F2P operators these days (Facebook games aside, which are still greed machines for the most part) know that players don’t like games that feature the ability to “buy power”, because it imbalances the game in favour of the paying players.

Instead, offer additional benefits to those willing to pony up. Bigger inventories, More bank slots. Premium content. Additional customisation options that allow you to make your character distinctive.

The key thing, though, is that the game should provide a satisfying, complete experience for all players, regardless of whether or not they’re paying anything. The titles I mentioned below achieve this admirably, and there are plenty of others out there now.

@feenwager is right — Hero Academy is an excellent example of a F2P game done right. Plays well for free, offers more possibilities and fun if you like it enough to pay.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to review Zynga Bingo today. MY SOUL, IT BURNS

My most positive experience with F2P so far has actually been Hero Academy. I’m happy to plunk down $2 for Dwarves as much for the new race as to support what the developer is doing.

Interesting read vaguely related to our Mass Effect discussions over on Gamasutra. It suggests that there are, in fact, four “currencies” in play when you buy a game: time, money, integrity and “pain in the ass dollars”, and that when purchasing a game it’s worth taking the total cost of all these four factors into account.

For me, I think, the cost of buying Mass Effect 3 will be too high, particularly because of the latter two. I’m not saying people who do buy it don’t have “integrity”, I’m saying that buying it would make me feel dirty — like I don’t have any “integrity” — for supporting something I disagree with. So I won’t. Simple as that. Sorry, Shepard. You’ll have to save the Earth without me.

I suppose F2P did deserve its stigma earlier on, but now devs are moving towards being rather smart in their design processes and not creating player imbalance, we’re reaping fine rewards now. None of this pay-to-win business survives.

Love this F2P mech renaissance we’re about to enter. Ho boy. Don’t beat me or anything, but I’ll take a real mech revival over a spacefighter revival any day of the week. (@bowlisimo Forgive me, brother! Oh, and I added you on PSN)

@redswir1 DOTA2 will be F2P.

Have you not tried any of the F2P stuff on Steam? Rusty Hearts is good times — I know you like brawlers, and that game is essentially a cross between Castlevania and Streets of Rage. Kickass soundtrack, too.

Spiral Knights is decent fun, also. Very Zelda Four Swords-ish.

@unmanneddrone I haven’t tried anything F2P yet, but only because I haven’t seen anything under the model that I’m actually interested in playing. If DOTA 2 or Diablo III end up being F2P I’ll probably try them out. I’ll also probably check out Hawken when that hits.

It’ll be interesting to see the model eventually hit the genres we associated with consoles. I would definitely try out say, an F2P fighting game where I could buy stages and character skins. Actually, I just head that when Virtua Fighter 5 Final Shodown comes out on XBLA and PSN this year, it will actually have around 10,000 pieces of cosmetic DLC.

The best “deal” on ME3 I can find right now is to buy the regular on Amazon and rationalize to yourself that the 10 dollar store credit is paying for the DLC, even though you’ll still be out 70 dollars.

This better be EPIC.

@UMD Are we friended on PSN? If not add Bowlisimo.

@sinfony I think the ridiculous pricing includes dangerous and poisonous animal tax. We simply want play games and still be able to afford a kilo of shrimp to throw on the barbie.

@redswir1 That’s a great idea. F2P is only getting better, so to see it break into the console market is mighty fine.

@shingro May I add you, despite now using PSN via Vita? – unless I fight The Wiggles or Hi-5 and reclaim the PS3.

@redswir1 speaking of Sony, I tried to throw a PSN invite to you but I’m guessing you don’t go under Universal Nick, mine is Shingro_ as that someone snagged my first choice. If you want to play some games gimme a ring! =P

actually, anyone in the squad has an open invite to prod me on there =)

I leave a comment this morning, go to work and return an inbox filled up with the 25 posts that followed me today…. such great discussion as always from the Squad

On something tangentially related, Sony is trying something pretty interesting: letting you download KillZone 3′s multiplayer by itself for free with a level cap. $15 to unlock the level cap. Honestly I hope that approach proves successful.

UMD, pricing is definitely pretty wild down under. I don’t pretend to understand it.

@sinfony Since the devilish tale of “When the Antipode Sleeps” was running its course during this huge desk-thumping discussion, all I can say is I do believe we’ve seen a shift due to digital delivery from the days of the “Expansion pack” and what’s classed as “DLC” today. It’s a mindset today where you can monetize at will, whereas you had to make it worthwhile back in the day.

It’s easy to proclaim the situation easy from a North American’s point of view, but just try getting nickelled and dimed with Australian prices. Even in the age of digital distribution, my countrymen are getting worked in the wallet, paying often twice as much as you Yanks DESPITE the Australian dollar now worth more than the Greenback. You can imagine how that goes down. “Oh, congratulations! You’ve just paid near a hundred dollars for a non-special edition of a game. How about paying twenty for this DLC we’ve shunted out at the same time. Bet you wish you were wrapped in the Stars and Stripes!”

EA is especially bad with pricing down under. So, in regards to the expansion pack versus DLC, I certainly make a distinction, however nebulous and intangible it may seem.

@sinfony oh hey, northern EST squaddies unite o/\o

Feen, I believe that, as a native Chicagoan transplanted to New York, I am contractually obligated to despise the Yankees. But I did root for the Giants in the Super Bowl!

(interlude where, upon reading the Squawk, a Chris Remo-esque voice contentedly proclaims “Videogames!”. And also accepts the use of the letter ‘z’, the letter ‘s’, the insertion and dropping of the letter ‘u’ and putting ‘r’ before ‘e’ in things like ‘Calibre’.)

@sinfony No worries, I had money on it being wording since I already know you’re a straight up sorta guy =P Part of the responsibilities of friendship is keeping people grounded, and chances are, you’ll have to do it to me sooner then we both think.

@sinony see, now! I was with you all day and you had to go and do that. Sigh.

Full disclosure: I ordered the ME3 Collectors Edition and didn’t even read the description of what I get, I just really like Mass Effect.

Shingro, perhaps inartfully worded on my part. I meant that merely to explain that part of the reason I’m bothered by some people who want everything the devs worked on to be included in the price stems from my subjective impressions of that group of people. I am aware that those impressions are anecdotal at best, and I will admit that they are influenced negatively, if illogically, by other vociferously awful gamer behavior (most recently, the disgusting attacks on Jennifer Hepler; more generally, any time I forget to mute voicechat in FPS multiplayer). Although you would not know it by my many posts today, I simply don’t have time in my life to run down the factual particulars of these kinds of things, and even if I did, I don’t care anywhere close to enough to bother.

To be abundantly clear, I don’t think that people who disagree with me are terrorists, pirates, communists, or Yankees fans.

Jesus Christ look at what rolled around here today.

I couldn’t read all of this DLC talk but I agree with what I read from @angryjedi about how companies should rewards players who buy new instead of punishing people who buy used. The problem with “Project $10″ is that people have come to expect multiplayer as a part of the base game, and when it’s behind a paywall they know it’s bullshit. They need to feel like content is being added, not taken away. Things like skins, documentaries, artwork, soundtracks, and just cool cosmetic shit I think is perfect for new purchase incentives.

People are buying these games used because they don’t see the added value in buying new. Same thing with piracy.

I think great examples have actually been coming from a lot of niche publishers of all people. If you buy a game like Persona or Devil Survivor or something from Atlus, typically the standard edition will come with a sound track, a snazzy box, and a mini art book. Look at The Witcher 2 (or every game on GOG). When that comes out on 360 in April, every new copy will come with almost as much extra stuff as BioWare is packing into the Mass Effect 3 special edition.

As for DLC itself, I’m still disappointed that it never evolved into the expansion pack environment that you have on PC.

I can agree that the game’s quality trumps all other considerations, but I’d note that at least as far as discussion goes and our own metrics here, ‘the majority of people who are annoyed are pirating things anyway’ is problematic for a couple reasons.

A. too inclusive, no data or statistics, wide reaching judgment.
B. according to our small anecdotal evidence in the squad, we have at least 3 people who are irritated but don’t pirate things.
C. and most important, Day 1 DLC is pirated right along with the main copy, no pirate missed out on using Shale, nor will they miss out on Catwoman. Anything already on the disk pirates can get to like snapping fingers, and even things that aren’t like the DA DLCs are often cracked. So if you see someone legitimately pissed about content on the disk you are actually pretty much assured they *aren’t* pirating it. (I suppose they could be just REALLY BAD at piracy, but that’s not large enough a percentage to factor, and outside the argument)

(Besides, depending on how you read it you could imply ‘most people who disagree with x are terrorists pirates’ You’re not that sort of dude, but it’s a bad habit to get in to, so I only mention it out of love)

I will also back you in this conversation for as divisive as it is, is shockingly civil, credit to all parties involved! You are all awesome and lovable <3

Pete, I’m not taking the side of big business. I’m taking the side of judge the game, not its price and delivery mechanism. My participation here is part of my (likely futile) attempt to redirect discussion to the game itself and not to issues that are, frankly, ancillary at most. When all the rest of you buy ME3 on launch, I want to hear (in minimal-spoilers fashion) about how the game is. I’m afraid that all this handwringing about DLC could poison that discussion.

To the rest of your point, I expect that people stopped “taking the side of the consumer” when the consumer became a frothing, incoherent, overentitled asshole–which, of course, is not what anybody here is, but take a detour through your local gaming forum and you’ll understand. I’m personally bothered by it because I’m quite certain that the majority of the “everything the devs did before they started stamping discs IS MINE” is the same crowd that pirates music/movies and then ruthlessly attacks anybody who says they’re wrong to do so. I have no patience for such people, nor for people who cannot muster a reasonable argument for their position. And again, I’m speaking exclusively about people on the internet at large, not ’round these parts. Everybody here has been alarmingly sensible, with the exception of Pete’s documented hatred of the letter Z.

Rampant, as for licensing, I’m quite sure we’ve both breached the terms of some EULA just by having this conversation. Professional responsibility causes me to bite my tongue on the subject, but let’s just say that we probably agree on the larger issue.

As @rampant hit on, consumer perception is everything. It doesn’t matter why customers feel screwed. If that’s how they feel, then EA and BioWare are doing something wrong (either in their strategy or how they present their strategy), and they need to fix it.

Addendum: I think the thing I find baffling over all this is the about-face the community seems to have done. I’m sure I remember people thinking that project $10 and day one DLC were bad, unacceptable things. I still feel that way, as you may have gathered. Now, though, we see Penny Arcade mocking people who stand up and say “hold on, I don’t like this”.

What happened? When did we start taking the side of the big business over that of the consumer?

@feenwager While I don’t like online passes or whatnot, that’s not what this debate was (initially) over — it’s over the withholding of story content as day one DLC or limited edition content. Not quite the same thing — and while I don’t like either approach, one is more “understandable” to me than the other.

Like I say, give me cool stuff as a bonus with my limited editions, but don’t chop story stuff out of the standard edition in order to do that.

for myself I feel uncomfortable when people give up counterbalancing power. So games are expensive, but if they get too expensive more and more people will go to used sales. There’s more options then ‘give up your main hobby’ for the consumer, keeps the less trustworthy publishers from raking the consumer over the coals

I support the devs, but there is a difference between doing that and giving them and the publisher a free pass to do anything they like.

I mean, would anyone argue that Steam sale games don’t fear Gamestop selling used copies all that much… Hell, speaking of borderlands, (or Borderlands 2 <3) I notice that the PC preorder game is 10$ cheaper then both console versions, I'd hazard a guess we have Steam's competition to thank for that. So in a way I thank Gamestop’s competition, THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID IT.

(even though I’ve been almost exclusively buying new and on steam for years now c_c)

Edit: I will agree that licensing for the same content you used to buy is garbage c_c I did not ‘license’ my PS3, if I disagree with an EULA I shouldn’t lose features off it.

I think for a lot of us it just comes down to our perceptions of what the company is saying to us as a result of their policy.

“Thanks for buying the Ultra Crystal Dragon Edition! Here’s a code to download some bonus content” is usually fine with me.

“Thanks for buying our game new! Here’s a code; please verify that you did so” is eye-rolling but basically fine with me. I’m usually buying new, so whatever.

“Hey, guys, here’s some new stuff we’ve been working on since the game released” is also fine with me. (But kinda annoying since it usually comes way after we’re done actually playing.)

Where it becomes really just exasperating is where it feels like the company is saying to the end user “Thanks for the $60. Now if you pay us an additional $10, you can actually play with all the stuff we had ready for this game’s release.” Just price the damn thing at $70 to start with and give me everything. The $10 isn’t enough to make the barrier of entry THAT much higher once you’re already pricing stuff at $60. The price barrier for people who are cash-strapped enough to be worried about buying a game or not for monetary reasons is lower than that, IMO.

The issue of licensing vs. ownership is indeed much bigger than any of this, and falls into “Land war in Asia” territory in terms of the wisdom of getting into arguments over it. I will say simply that as someone who has trained to be a librarian, I find licensing practices these days to be deeply, deeply loathsome, and leave it at that.

I guess what I’m saying is “If your game is legitimately worth $70, don’t call it $60 and then ding me for ten bones. Put it on the shelf for $70″

Nobody likes it when their cellphone bill ends up being twice what the ad said, or their airfare suddenly goes up another 100 bucks because of a “baggage fee”

@feenwager I’m with ya 90% of the way, but a 10 dollar surcharge on “must buy special edition or do not get this character/part of the story” falls outside the “Enter a code you got when you paid a normal vidyagame price” argument. Here in Canada the difference would be straight up 65 bucks vs 75 bucks. I’m OK with the Catwoman code (paid full price, got it) not OK with “Would you like to super size your combo with an HK-47?”

As Sinfony said, you could think of it as being “alternately complete” with or without the extra bonus track either way and maybe that works for the music analogy, but when it comes to something like story resolution or narrative completion it’s very easy to feel like the participants here are just being dungholed.

That said, lots of edits end up being better than the director’s cut versions. I’M LOOKING AT YOU PETER JACKSON.

You heard it here first. Mass Effect: Ensign Whatshername’s Big Adventure.

Here’s the part where I don’t get the hand-wringing: you’re not paying extra for anything. You’re just being asked to buy the game at full price, new. The content is there, at worst you have to enter a code to get it. You still get 100% of the game. I think we’ve veered off from Day One DLC and into our feelings on DLC in general, of which I’m sure there are many.

Day One DLC is to punish people who buy used games. The end. It’s not a reward, it’s not sneaky, and it’s not anything other than an attempt to get people to buy games new and pay full price.

I’m really not sure why this issue gets everyone worked up. (in the regular internet, not here, where everyone is civil and polite. Except Pete, who spells everything wrong and hates the letter Z)

That or I’m behind a calculus book and a keyboard and one is waaay easier to pay attention to then the other ¬_¬

This? This is what gets everybody up out of their seats on a Thursday afternoon?

I think the distinction is on whether the content for the game was finished at the time the disks were being pressed, which is a fair period before the game releases considering how much testing has to go into character/maps/etc. You can be pretty sure that if it’s already on the disk it’s been done well inside the development envelope. Shale, his dialogue, triggers, quests + testing wasn’t a last minute thing done by Joe and Sam on Sundays.

Sometimes it’s just how you feel about it, say you bought Final Fantasy VII and between each disk they asked you for another $15, might be a fine, even superior model if the original content was cheaper.

but it’s not =P games are still $60 and getting the bells and whistles are pushing us towards $100 yet games and publishers are still surviving even with huge content games on 60, so what’s the extra $10-30 funding? As was previously noted, I can’t think of many DLC-enabled games that get even close to a 1/4th+ extra content mark, and that’s on top of the engine already being developed. This signals to me that the time going into DLC is not keeping up with the extra money going into the publisher.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s reasonable to be worried, or uncomfortable about it. Again, gearbox has proven to do it well, and I trust them with DLC So there is no ‘one true answer’ for what is best.

In the end, consumers will decide what they want, steam will make record profits on extended sales rather then week 1 blowouts, explotive DLC won’t sell forever, and we’ll get something rational that we’re happy with, it just might take more or less time depending on how vigilant we are.

Pete, your view of day-one story DLC as a punishment rather than a reward is predicated on the assumption that, even without the additional money generated by selling it as additional DLC, that content would nevertheless be created. I don’t think that’s necessarily so. I don’t particularly care about DLC versus traditional expansion packs; to my way of thinking, they’re basically the same thing.

Rampant, unlocking content on the disc versus downloading it is another distinction without a difference. Content is not worth more or less depending on where it’s initially stored. It’s ten bucks and the same content either way. One might as well object to DLC that’s served up by a server running IIS rather than Apache. I would compare it to being required to sign up for an EA Online account to be able to access particular multiplayer features of a given game–content that’s on the disc is withheld until you give them something of value, in this case, valuable demographic information. This process would be no more or less objectionable if you downloaded the multiplayer component separately.

To the extent that your objection is simply to the notion of owning the plastic but not being allowed to access all the data on it, I think that’s a small part of the larger issue of licensing versus ownership, and far from the most pressing concern posed by the phenomenon of licensing everything we play.

@rampant No worries, that’s fine for me =) If given two options, I’ll always take quality over time, missed your presence on the squadcast though, you have a history of being on some seriously good ones. (Besides, sometimes it’s hard to keep perspective when the discussion is a total sausage-fest, especially in VN/Eroge land c_c legend has it we did okay, but I’m always ready to worry some more! =P)

A misc scattering of points for the DLC argument just to keep the pot nice and hot =)

I think this is more of a perspective thing then anything, DLC can be removed from a pre-existing design to be sold as day 1 dlc or it might be crafted by an idle team while the game has already gone gold or is going through cert. There’s also probably gradients in between where large developers with extended franchise contracts might have otherwise been doing prep work on the next iteration rather then twiddling their thumbs waiting for the next contract. Alternately maybe a large dev is pulling help from elsewhere that wouldn’t be on the project in the first place. They real question is ‘how much do you trust the publisher’

(Aside: If it’s on the disk, there’s almost no way that it was ‘extra’ as I understand development, so that’s gotta stop.)

Now this is where things are going to get sticky because I’ll say that for myself, I’m starting to worry about Bioware. This comes from a guy who went through every part he could of Baulder’s Gate and loved Dragon Age and suchlike.

Trouble is, for better or for worse they have changed.

I don’t know exactly how deeply or to what extent, maybe the personalities haven’t changed and they’re just further removed from the process, their writing staff is still top notch as always. Still, Baulder’s gate -> Baulder’s gate 2 felt far more substantial and complete then DA -> DA2. It feels as if the yearly iterations in modern games are starting to stress their development capabilities. Not unusual, this happens to many developers at some point. Studios, teams, and assets are taking more time and money.

The thing that makes me worry is that instead of delaying or reorganizing to ensure that the content was all there and all good, they pushed DA2 out the door with a lot of copy-paste areas, this was probably the first and most serious blow to my trust in them. Then their games are quickly becoming the most ‘sharded’ experiences out there. I don’t think I’ll ever like having an NPC sitting in my camp asking me if I want to get my credit card out to go on his quest.

On top of that, ME3 is looking kinda ‘dead-spacy’ action elements appear to be becoming the focus of gameplay, the fans have asked, and we’ve been assured it’s being ‘re-rpg-ified’ compared to 2, but Bioware’s name is on the new Command and Conquer…(?!?) I dunno… I worry for them, like a buddy you’ve known a long time but you suspect have fallen in with the wrong crowd I feel like however the shots are getting called, they’re getting called with an eye on my wallet not on my eyes.

I really hope beyond hope I’m wrong, I’ll be thrilled if they have honestly been able to push back against the yearly iteration bit and are taking the time to make sure everything is top notch, but it feels like someone said “Sure, you can have more time, but you gotta generate additional income to make up for it.”

Anyway, back on point I guess, I think we can all rally against ‘we were going to leave this on the disk, but this character is so popular that we can increase our profits 20% if we make it a trade-in code, regardless of the problems this will cause for consumers’ and we can mostly get behind “hey, this team wouldn’t be doing anything anyway, a sequel isn’t guaranteed, so they made this extra adventure area for you, mind tossing us a few bucks for it?”

The question is ‘which is it?’ I don’t think DLC is all breaking one way or the other, so in the end, it comes down to trust (and to a lesser extent, pricing =P)