Free vs Freemium vs Upfront games (Gaming)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, March 06, 2018, 11:16 (2251 days ago) @ cheapLEY

That’s kind of a dumb question, man. Of course it wouldn’t have been as impactful, but if it had not been included, and the work and resources went elsewhere, nobody would have noticed that it was missing.

That’s sort of my point. Bungie felt those things were important enough to devote the time and resources to make them happen, so calling the extraneous or not part of the core experience just isn’t true. Those things are part of the core functionality of the product they delivered. Would Halo 3 have felt incomplete without them? Probably not, we wouldn’t have known any better. It would certainly be extremely different and a lesser experience in my mind. Hell, look at Destiny. It still feels incomplete to me without those features, because it’s a standard Bungie set for 3 games and then abandoned for Destiny. Destiny will always feel like a lesser experience because of it.

Right, that's the basis of my argument. Destiny doesn't have features that we want, and Bungie will not add them, since they have their resources focused elsewhere. Unlike the Halo games, where Bungie included them in the package.

But I'm sure many people would pay for even the most basic Theater or photo mode. If Bungie made one available for sale, and enough people bought it, they'd be more inclined to invest in it, and we could get more features for it. That's the future I hope for, and one that some devs have clearly shown could work.
And Bungie already tried it with the SRL record book that included an exclusive armor set. People bought that for $10!

And Photo Mode is just one example. Think about Shaders, Sparrow effects, and other cosmetics. Why hasn't Bungie made a true pink shader for D2 yet?

I think what happened with Warframe is great. I love seeing developers support the game. I’m not arguing that. I do think that seeing games turn into a-la-carte style things could be bad when devolopers and publishers start to take advantage of it. Look at Mass Effect 3’s on disc DLC. That game was incomplete without it, there was no reason for it to be locked away except for greed. Look at Metal Gear Survive charging money for an extra save slot. I can very easily see a future where that becomes the norm.

That said, I’d gladly pay for developers to put photo modes in games I liked. I’d pay $20 for a photo mode in Destiny in a heartbeat. I just worry about a world where photo mode is already in the game on the disc, but they just charge you $10 to unlock it.

Yeah, that's always been a risk (remember that Gears 3 also had an entire map pack on the disk), but I feel like people are more critical of shady stuff like that these days, and so folks would "vote with their wallet".