The problem with Season Passes
Season passes are a relatively new development for us console owners and it appears publishers and developers are still trying to get the formula right. Some have nailed it providing great value to players who will stick with a title throughout it’s post release schedule often enjoying large top quality DLC.
Now, I’m not the biggest Fallout fan in the world but i couldn’t help but be a little put off by the developers not even knowing how much and what type of DLC they will be releasing. This hasn’t stopped them selling the season pass for $30 though. In a recent blog post the developer confirms post launch DLC which will be free for small updates and fixes but the larger DLC will be and i quote “based on what we did for Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, we know that it will be worth at least $40, and if we do more, you’ll get it all with the Season Pass.”
Now forget this is a game and imagine heading to say Amazon and pre-ordering a Blu-Ray box set of your favourite Series that is due for release in a few months time. Instead of a run down of what is in the box you get a vague description that reads “At least 1 disk containing the complete Season 1 of Firefly and possibly some extra content that we haven’t got round to planning yet. To get this additional content please pay us an additional $30 and we’ll send it to you when it’s ready”. A slightly poor analogy but you get my point.
It seems pretty odd that they can announce the season pass yet give no idea of what they are working on. Even going by there pretty excellent track record you’re still gambling a wedge of cash on some decent DLC coming out. They must have plans for what they want to release to even give gamers an idea so they can accurately gauge this “value for money” which itself is a very subjective term.
Multiplayer Shooters have typically had a well prepared post launch schedule of additional map packs and this work well for that particular Genre but games like Fallout and even Bioshock are much larger undertakings that can either result in excellent additional content or poor quality overpriced rubbish.
Pay your money and roll the dice, what could possibly go wrong?
