Gamer's Outpost LLC

The audacity of charging full price for half a game

by L.W. Barker aka ‘Sarge’

Star Wars: Battlefront is a major disappointment. Yes, the game has fantastic graphics, and its sound is on par with some of the best in the first person shooter (FPS) genre, but even with those features, the game is half baked at best and is not worth its $60 asking price.

Why Electronic Arts and DICE decided on releasing Battlefront without a single player campaign is known only to them, but I can summise that their decision was based on the achievements of past games, such as EA’s own ‘Titanfall’ which was developed by Respawn Entertainment, and ‘Evolve’ by Turtle Rock Studios and 2K Games.

Titanfall was release on March 10, 2014, and like Battlefront it was highly anticipated by a vast majority of gamers. Much of this anticipation was a result of clever marketing and promotion techniques that convinced our Industry that Titanfall was “THE Call of Duty killer”. The reality though it is wasn’t, for when it was released, gamers quickly realized that unlike Call of Duty, Titanfall was missing a true single player campaign which is basically the heart and soul of a FPS. Thus, its popularity quicky dropped which resulted in the game currently being played by only a handful of hopeful gamers who are “hanging in there” for Titanfall’s promised 2017 second coming.

On February 10, 2015, Evolve was released to much critical acclaim from the industry which led to it being nominated for six different Game Critics Awards. And unlike Battlefront and Titanfall, it was widely known that the game was to be a multiplayer only fare prior to it being released. However, developer, Turtle Rock Studios received heat from gamers who felt that the developer was deliberately withholding Downloadable Content (DLC) from Evolve to be sold separately as a market strategy to make more money from the game. This controversy caused Evolve to received mixed reviews from critics which brought it an overall Metacritic score of 78% on all platforms.

So now, Star Wars: Battlefront is yet another game released with high gamer expectation that was quickly dashed when it was realized that the game did not have a single player campaign, little replay value, and not worth its $60 price tag. At best, without a single player campaign, Battlefront and all other games like it, to include Ubisoft’s recently released ‘Tom Clancy’s Rainbox Six: Siege’ should cost half their asking price with DLC making up the other half. No multiplayer only game should be full price with DLC costing upwards of $20 for each additional piece of content.

Thus, this Industry’s publishers and developers need to realize that the success of a game is based on appeasing ALL gamers and not just the ones who enjoy multiplayer. I enjoy my single player campaigns, and would have bought Battlefront if it contained one. But this game without single player is half baked and NOT worth its $60 asking price.

Finally, we as gamers have the power to change our Industry’s audacious perception that we are “suckers” who are easily taken advantage of with continual DLC. And the best way to do that is to keep our hard earned money away from games made for “suckers” and use it on ones designed for who we are…gamers.

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