Whenever somebody from a well-known developer or publisher talks to the gaming press about DLC, you can bally well bet your trousers on the fact that the basic message will be “This is the future – get used to it, stinking proletariat”. Well, ordinarily that’s the case; but head of Avalanche Studios Christofer Sundberg has bucked this trend in a stupendously attractive manner while talking to Eurogamer.
“We create a game allowing players to properly explore and have fun and not focusing so much on the actual end goal of the game.” said Sundberg. “As most publishers and developers have run around as headless chickens the last three years looking for a way to make money DLC was definitively a tool to try to keep players engaged, but how many games have been truly successful with DLC? Not that many.”
He says that Avalanche’s Just Cause 2 has managed to sustain interest since release because it’s great fun to play. Hear that, developers? As he points out: “The big thing now is to force multiplayer into games that are really single-player games just to combat second hand sales and that makes absolutely no sense as it just consumes budget and does not add any value except on the back of the box.” In fact, Sundberg says that the Just Cause 2 DLC hasn’t played much of a part in keeping players interested at all.
More wise words when it comes to the future of the industry: “We’ve got the stubborn console game developers, the F2P developers, the Facebook game developers, the iOS developers – all holding the key to the industry’s future, but you know what? They don’t know s*** and neither do I. […] I do not believe in the death of consoles and the bright future of F2P. I believe in creating highly entertaining experiences for the consumer and that requires multiple paths to success”.
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