Ghoults
Lasse Luisu
The issue clearly has two dimensions. One is the addition of dlc itself. The other one is how to implement it.
Personally I don't think having dlc is bad. If done well it can be used to make the game more accessible for everybody. You can make it an inclusive so that the content is smartly used to allow more people to race together. Or you can be greedy and force people to pay for every single thing that is used. Which will end up fragmenting your community.
But I think there are other pitfalls as well for dlcs. One is the season pass. You are basically buying this expensive pack of content without having no idea how much stuff you are getting (because you pay for it before you know what is included). The most glaring example of this is automobilista. 40€ for something you have no idea what the contents are. For a 25€ game. Just for disclaimer I have that content and I'd imagine it is good quality. But the agreement is pretty clear in all gaming. Season passes are bad idea. I'd hope we don't see it in sim racing anymore.
One other issue dlc have is that the people who end up paying the most are your loyal fans. I think ac does something smart when they offer pre-order discounts for their dlc. I'm not sure whether iracing does it as well. I'd also say never pre-order anything. But at the same time pre-ordering a car pack is very different thing to pre-ordering a full game.
Other dlc related thing are the so called fake f2p games. Gladly these have not been succesful because economically these games get very expensive very quickly. Obviously I'm talking about raceroom and simraceway. And I'm saying fake f2p because there is nothing f2p in those games. It is 100% similar business model as live for speed. You get the demo for free and you can then buy dlc packs to get more content. In all three cases the content additions (which are paid dlc in each case) are pretty much identical. Either single pieces of content or packs. In lfs for example you can buy an "s3" package for 12£ which is one track. In raceroom you can buy vrp at discount which is then this and then you try to outsmart the system to get the best prices and then calculate your vrp hoping you got it right and sneak towards the checkout and then come gloat on the forums how you got best ever deal despite being hundreds of euros into the game already. But it is cheap you keep chanting. Knowing the more you say the more true it becomes. But anyways both game studios have been through bankcruptsy at least once. Clearly not a good business model...
I'm getting carried away. Figuratively.
I'm also going to mention iracing quickly. Reading all what I wrote before you are probably thinking I'm going to point and laugh at iracing. Not at all. Iracing is expensive. I know it, you know it, they know it. And everyone acknowledges it. The best thing about iracing is that at least they are honest about it. They are not trying to trick their players to think the game is cheaper than it is with double money-game currency systems and complex discounts like raceroom. They are not offering pre-order packages for content you have no idea if it will come out or what it is (ams). And they even took the steps to make their system work with people who don't own all content in a sim session. Took steps to actually prevent fragmentation.
I think iracing are honest about their cost and the prices they have are in line with the kind of service they offer. They don't have big playerbase so they need to ask more money per customer. So they have monthly subscription and offer monthly service for it. Not just cars and tracks but competitions as well. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about their business model. I hope other sims don't really follow it because I don't want to pay that much money for a sim.
One thing I mentioned earlier was f2p. A true fp2 could be interesting business model to test in sim racing environment. Basically the game would give you free access to 95% of the content (the 5% being special one off cars for example). You'd need to grind it to get the top level cars. Or they'd make their money from selling purely visual stuff like liveries, decal sets, pit babe outfits, mechanic suits, driver suits, helmets... etc.
All that could work if it wasn't for one thing. The matchmaker. A f2p game needs a lot of players so that a matchmaker can work and put people with similar cars into races. Unless you are happy grinding against the ai. Nope. I don't think anyone would pay for that. Other issue for matchmaker is that if you put 20 people on a track they not yet driven on the you get chaos because people don't know the track. Maybe a scheduled racing style of thing like racing could work? Anyways a matchmaker with lots of people works great for fps shooters and world of tanks. But for a racing sim? I have big doubts. And paradoxically f2p games tend to be expensive as well. You are easily looking at raceroom levels of expenses if the game sells anything more than visual addons. = expensive.
In the end I think the best business model is to release a game then release dlc for it every once in a while while adding features to the base game. Make the dlc system smart so it doesn't segregate people. Don't do things like rf2 online subscriptions. That is a proven game killer. But if you are going to offer monthly subs then don't just slap it on it and hope "more monies flow into your offices from windows and doors" but design the game to support it and provide value for the players for that monthly sub. With dlc the value is simple. You pay for something and you get something. You know what you are paying for and you pay because you want it. Success.But for monthly fee you need monthly content. In racing sim that is going to be races.
Personally I don't think having dlc is bad. If done well it can be used to make the game more accessible for everybody. You can make it an inclusive so that the content is smartly used to allow more people to race together. Or you can be greedy and force people to pay for every single thing that is used. Which will end up fragmenting your community.
But I think there are other pitfalls as well for dlcs. One is the season pass. You are basically buying this expensive pack of content without having no idea how much stuff you are getting (because you pay for it before you know what is included). The most glaring example of this is automobilista. 40€ for something you have no idea what the contents are. For a 25€ game. Just for disclaimer I have that content and I'd imagine it is good quality. But the agreement is pretty clear in all gaming. Season passes are bad idea. I'd hope we don't see it in sim racing anymore.
One other issue dlc have is that the people who end up paying the most are your loyal fans. I think ac does something smart when they offer pre-order discounts for their dlc. I'm not sure whether iracing does it as well. I'd also say never pre-order anything. But at the same time pre-ordering a car pack is very different thing to pre-ordering a full game.
Other dlc related thing are the so called fake f2p games. Gladly these have not been succesful because economically these games get very expensive very quickly. Obviously I'm talking about raceroom and simraceway. And I'm saying fake f2p because there is nothing f2p in those games. It is 100% similar business model as live for speed. You get the demo for free and you can then buy dlc packs to get more content. In all three cases the content additions (which are paid dlc in each case) are pretty much identical. Either single pieces of content or packs. In lfs for example you can buy an "s3" package for 12£ which is one track. In raceroom you can buy vrp at discount which is then this and then you try to outsmart the system to get the best prices and then calculate your vrp hoping you got it right and sneak towards the checkout and then come gloat on the forums how you got best ever deal despite being hundreds of euros into the game already. But it is cheap you keep chanting. Knowing the more you say the more true it becomes. But anyways both game studios have been through bankcruptsy at least once. Clearly not a good business model...
I'm getting carried away. Figuratively.
I'm also going to mention iracing quickly. Reading all what I wrote before you are probably thinking I'm going to point and laugh at iracing. Not at all. Iracing is expensive. I know it, you know it, they know it. And everyone acknowledges it. The best thing about iracing is that at least they are honest about it. They are not trying to trick their players to think the game is cheaper than it is with double money-game currency systems and complex discounts like raceroom. They are not offering pre-order packages for content you have no idea if it will come out or what it is (ams). And they even took the steps to make their system work with people who don't own all content in a sim session. Took steps to actually prevent fragmentation.
I think iracing are honest about their cost and the prices they have are in line with the kind of service they offer. They don't have big playerbase so they need to ask more money per customer. So they have monthly subscription and offer monthly service for it. Not just cars and tracks but competitions as well. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about their business model. I hope other sims don't really follow it because I don't want to pay that much money for a sim.
One thing I mentioned earlier was f2p. A true fp2 could be interesting business model to test in sim racing environment. Basically the game would give you free access to 95% of the content (the 5% being special one off cars for example). You'd need to grind it to get the top level cars. Or they'd make their money from selling purely visual stuff like liveries, decal sets, pit babe outfits, mechanic suits, driver suits, helmets... etc.
All that could work if it wasn't for one thing. The matchmaker. A f2p game needs a lot of players so that a matchmaker can work and put people with similar cars into races. Unless you are happy grinding against the ai. Nope. I don't think anyone would pay for that. Other issue for matchmaker is that if you put 20 people on a track they not yet driven on the you get chaos because people don't know the track. Maybe a scheduled racing style of thing like racing could work? Anyways a matchmaker with lots of people works great for fps shooters and world of tanks. But for a racing sim? I have big doubts. And paradoxically f2p games tend to be expensive as well. You are easily looking at raceroom levels of expenses if the game sells anything more than visual addons. = expensive.
In the end I think the best business model is to release a game then release dlc for it every once in a while while adding features to the base game. Make the dlc system smart so it doesn't segregate people. Don't do things like rf2 online subscriptions. That is a proven game killer. But if you are going to offer monthly subs then don't just slap it on it and hope "more monies flow into your offices from windows and doors" but design the game to support it and provide value for the players for that monthly sub. With dlc the value is simple. You pay for something and you get something. You know what you are paying for and you pay because you want it. Success.But for monthly fee you need monthly content. In racing sim that is going to be races.
