A Week In Comments

Travelling in a fried-out kombi

I would be gaming, but I can’t kill zombies

If the game’s M rated, it makes them nervous

They’ll take the game and ban it on purpose

And I said,

Do you come from a land down under?

Where gaming laws just make you wonder

To play a game you have to go undercover

Cause the Government is acting like your Mother.

Playing games with a man from Botany Bay

We were looking for a new game to play

I said, “Do you have L4Dead 2 in your land?”

He just frowned and said “Sorry mate it’s been banned.”

Do you come from a land down under?

Where gaming laws just make you wonder

To play games you have to go undercover

Cause the Government is acting like your Mother.

Gaming in a cafe in the Outback

With a copy of Risen disguised as a soundtrack

I said to the man “Do you have a firewall?

Because it’s against the law to install.”

And he said,

“Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)

Where gaming laws just make you wonder

To play a game you have to go undercover

Cause the Government is acting like your Mother.

By contrast, all movies share a common core of film techniques.

The game was so beautiful, a lot of people made the assertion then and there that video games had become a true art form, and should be respected as such.

Funny thing is, apparently now something like that is ugly and nobody wants to have nothing of it. If something isn’t keeping up with “modern technology” then it cannot look good, it automatically has to look horrible, and should be scorned. This tells me, and other people two things.

One, gamers do not appreciate the games they play for art. It’s all a momentary thing. They are amazed by something one day, then the next it looks like crap because something with a better fill rate becomes along. Did artist all ditch painting tools with the advent of photoshop, and was all previously made art burned for its horribleness?

Two, games, no matter how much I would like to believe so, will most likely never become art. Art is timeless, and appreciated that way. I personally can go back and see the beauty in old games made, and new ones. But most people think that, and it’s proven by a large consensus of commenters on this article, that as soon as something new comes along, everything else that is technically inferior should go die, and is unappealing to look at. With this type of user base behind it, games will never be able to become a respected art medium, because “SHIT IS GAY NEEDS BETTER PROCESSING POWER TO DO MORE TERAFLOPS OF CALCULATIONS SO THE EYE LOOKS MORE REAL”

Another way to think of it would be that the dev team had a limited budget and a limited amount of time and they had to decide whether that budget/time would be better spent on improving the content they already have/that ends up on the disk or if they should spend the time/money on more secondary/tertiary content ie content that ends up as DLC. So another way to look at it is that they make a better final product instead of trying to cram every idea they have into the retail product in the same amount of time with the same budget. Or you can change the thinking to being an infinite amount of time and an infinite development budget but one that would increase the time you’d be waiting for the game and increase the retail price of said game to compensate.

Regardless, the developer made a decision, what comes on the disk IS what “should have been in the box” and either it’s worth the price to you or not. It’s ok if it’s not, but stop acting like content they didnt put in the game is content you are somehow entitled to. That’s like saying that you were ripped off when you went to see the LOTR movies in the theater because the DVDs you bought have deleted scenens in them and that you will now only watch movies once they’ve come to DVD with the deleted scenens added. It’s extra content that is not part of the product you are being sold, you have no right to content that is not in the box when you purchase it, especially if they havent even made it yet.

You can buy it later but they didnt cheat you or rip you off in any way. If they’d waited to tell you about this DLC for a month that wouldnt have changed the way they produced it, it would just change how you percieve it. As far as waiting till the price drops, that’s fine, it’s your right to make that decision as a consumer. The higher price I pay is for the priviledge of playing that content, both the retail game and the DLC, sooner. That’s always true of games, the price always goes down over time so you can always choose to wait on the experiance and save money. Most people decide they’d rather have it now than some time in the future.

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