Since we all agree that piecemeal DLC is straight-up con-artistry, what is the proper way for game developers to cope with increased development costs?
Cut the marketing budget. Suddenly, there are millions of dollars not being spent. Ta fucking Da.
>>320101425
The onus shouldn't be on the consumer to pay for manufacturing issues, management fuckups, budget shortfalls and acts of god. Not all games will make a 100 million bucks and chasing good money with bad by pumping out DLC won't help. So if a developer wants to cope with increasing costs to develop they need to work out smarter ways to run a business.
Stop wasting so much money on jiggle-physics.
>>320101425
Proper expansions of a game are fine
>>320101425
Stop wasting money on terrible voice acting that actually impairs the game. I'm looking at you Bethesda.
>>320101631
This really. Most games don't need it, there are gaming news sites that basically do it for free. All you need is some screen shots, a Youtube video or two and a press release.
Some games don't even need that. The next Fifa or CoD or Madden doesn't need a marketing campaign, they come out every fucking year. Just have a small campaign to remind people the next game is coming out soon perhaps but that's about it.
Or fuck it, do what Nintendo does. Do Directs. How much does it cost to make a Youtube video that promotes your next games as opposed to paying for banner ads and Youtube video ads that no one sees that everyone uses AdBlock?
>>320101425
DLC may be con-artistry but it's not nearly as bad as early access.
Maybe episodic games are the way to go? You can focus everything into smaller, more manageable chunks. You can take customer feed back and change things for the next episode. Plus, if episode 1 out of 4 goes bust then you didn't have to waste all the resources on making the other 3/4 of the game.
small as fuck teams
spend less on marketing
over 65% of budget SLASHED
>>320103035
DLC is worse than EA. EA is one moron taking a gamble on if some other morons will eventually shit anything out, and hoping for good quality. DLC is selling shit to morons and encourages leaving content out of games so your "season pass" will actually have content beyond some weapon skins.
>>320101425
It's simply, you cut costs
>less ebin cinematic setpieces that involve nearly every department
Replace those with more levels with better design.
>Render all your cutscenes with the ingame engine, saving time and money on high quality CGI assets
Devs already do this.
>Don't waste money marketing on normie channels
Sure, your games will sell less quickly and potentially less period, but you don't fall into the trap of catering to a market that will only buy a few installments and then stop, unless you're able to monopolize, i.e. CoD monopolizing the dudebro shooter.
There's honestly plenty that can be done if you just cut the fat that you have when trying to make the next CoD. Not to mention that this is how most games that /v/ enjoys are handled, appropriate marketing, little to no wasted money on non-game aspects. The major issue is that publishers don't like these games that turn a small profit and allow continued production, because they don't turn in a large profit for them to buy new gold plated offices with.
Still waiting for the debt repayment plan 4chan made for her.
>>320102835
>The next Fifa or CoD or Madden doesn't need a marketing campaign
Those are the only games that do need them. The really big titles that are aiming to sucker in as many casuals as possible are the ones that need to put their name out there. Smaller, niche titles shouldn't even bother since everyone who would buy them keeps up with them anyway.
Devs would save money if they didn't waste massive budgets and huge promo campaigns on making inferior clones of the handful of titles that have achieved that super popular status. Casuals aren't going to buy it because the thing it's ripping off was already their one purchase for the year and the core audience knows it's shit and probably don't play that type of game to begin with.
>>320103035
Yeah, asking people to pay for unfinished games that will only be completed if the current part sells well enough is completely different to early access con-artistry.
