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Day One DLC…more like Day None!

OK, so it’s a lame pun. The point is I’ve seen a lot of talk about DLC content being available on launch day lately, most recently with Mass Effect 3. The reaction to this can be summed up as follows:

To be perfectly honest I think some of that is justified. I can’t say that EA or Bioware has done a terribly good job of handling the PR surrounding this. Its easy to look in from the outside and say that they took time away from making the game to make DLC that they could charge for before the game was even released. The reality, though, is that it’s not that simple.

Looking at it from the dev cycle side of things, by the time the game is largely finished the content generation team is about done. They might help fix bugs as the testing team finds them or correct small things here and there. But their primary function is over. Then, once the game is fully tested, you have to send it off to production. The point is, there is a fair amount of potential wasted time. Why not keep the content generation team generating content after they’ve finished the game? It seems very reasonable and more efficient in terms of resource use.

However, if you take issue with DLC in general then I see your argument as being completely valid. The industry is largely changing direction towards a micro payment system and not everyone is on board with that. Still, EA and Bioware should be given some slack. It may not be hats, but at least they are trying to provide content.

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