The New-Age Nickel & Diming

[Rob Williams]

Over the course of the past couple of years, there's been a growing trend that's both frustrating and expensive to consumers. It also shows no sign of slowing down, and ironically, many of us contribute to it. As the title of this editorial suggests, this trend amounts to what I like to call new-age nickel and diming.

You can read the full editorial and then discuss it here!

 

[On_Wisconsin]

"The most recent example for a game I've played has been with Mafia II. It came out with a $10 piece of DLC a mere two weeks after the game's launch. Clearly, the content was already completed, so why not include it in the game and extend the gamer's ~10 hour game time?"

Exactly. It felt too short to me (12hours for me). Don't forget that you can't 'explore' the world (eg, like a practice session in a sim-racing game), have a little fun and just play around

 

[Rob Williams]

So... last week, Mafia II saw some "brand-new" DLC, and this time, I'd call it overboard. There are four separate packs that include clothes and cars, but one in particular that bugs me is the "Greaser Pack":

http://store.steampowered.com/app/67330/

Why? Because there is a car there that you actually drive in one of the missions. At the end, you are forced to give it back, which means you can really only drive it for a small portion for that particular mission. Want to drive it outside of that mission? No problem... just pay the $3.

:-|

 

[Rob Williams]

The love here just keeps coming, and this time it's again with Mafia II.

Last night, I benchmarked some GPUs with our usual suite, and when the time came for Mafia II, the game kept crashing, and crashing. I spent about 90 minutes on it, couldn't figure out a solution, and decided to see if there was a new patch released for the game in recent weeks. Sure enough, there was a patch released... a mere -eight hours- before I decided to benchmark with it.

This patch didn't break the game for just me, but a LOT of people, and if I had to guess, everyone. The company fixed it today, but even so, it was a huge kick in the ass to waste so much time on something I couldn't control, and also because I couldn't benchmark it when I needed to.

The REAL pain is realizing that this patch's sole purpose was to prepare the game for more paid DLC that's soon to come out. Ugh.