» Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:21 pm
I don't typically participate in a lot of forums, but I'm finally to a point where I feel the need to actually say something.
It's not necessarily the delay that has bothered me the most; it's been the dreadful lack of communication. I understand the need to maintain consumer confidence means that relevant information must not be disseminated to the general public sometimes. But in this digital age the tangible capacity exists for open channels of communication. The DLC released on the 26th of June, and it was more than a month before confused or concerned consumers were given a begrudging "yeah we really don't have anything to say right now." It was only after a storm of anger from their fan base that they attempted to openly communicate the reasons for some of the delay. Had that information been provided sooner, I honestly believe that many of the tried and true fans of this company would have been more than understanding. Code is nefariously difficult to debug in simply applications, let alone in something to the scope and scale of Skyrim, so "we need some more time to make this product at the level of quality that you deserve" is a completely excellent thing to tell your customers. There has been a similar lack of communication in the time since. Once 1.7 finally went live, PS3 users finally had SOMETHING to show for their weeks of patience, but there has not been so much as a murmur in weeks about anything...except that now there's a lot of speculation floating around that the company has already moved on to the next DLC. If this is, in fact, the case, then many PS3 users may well become incredibly discouraged and decide not to purchase more games from this studio.
Speaking personally, I pre-ordered Skyrim and the collector's edition strategy guide, and from November until sometime in April I played the game incessantly before finally switching to another game as my primary game-time entertainment. When I heard about Dawnguard in GameInformer, I actually squee'd out loud. That excitement built right until June 26th (three days after my birthday, incidentally, with my girlfriend out of town and two or three days off in a row) when I realized I wasn't getting it....and if I had, eight months prior, bought Skyrim for my girlfriend's XBox 360 instead of my PS3, I would have been able to play it. It's a little childish, but my feelings were hurt. I felt a little betrayed, I'll be honest. And I felt that from that moment on that I would never really be able to trust whether or not I could buy a Bethesda game for the system I own because I can't trust that they're going to show an equitable output. That said, I don't begrudge Bethesda nearly as much as most people I know for the bugs or the glitches or the things that don't work at first. I played MMOs for a few years and I've been playing Elder Scrolls since Morrowind, and I haven't found an ESS game that didn't warrant at least 300 hours of my time.
But I'm not excited about Dawnguard. I haven't been since sometime in July, to be honest, right about the time that the statement which caused all the fuss was made. When I think about it I just feel kind of sad, and I almost don't even want to buy it anymore. Now that I've had nearly two months for some people to play it and talk about it, and then weeks for other people to play it and talk about it, I don't really care anymore. I half-expect to hear it just isn't going to release on the PS3, or that by the time it does happen, the next DLC will be released for the 360 already and all the rest of the DLC for Skyrim, which will theoretically released "simultaneously" will just be things like the residence DLCs for Oblivion. By the way, I initially bought my 2nd Xbox 360 in two years after selling back my initial launch model XBox 360 so I could play Oblivion and played that machine literally to death. A few years later I bought my PS3. Just in case anyone wants to paint me as a butthurt PS3 purist.
I've seen a lot of angry people post demands for discounts on Dawnguard, or for some other consideration from Bethesda to compensate for the problems they've had with Skyrim as a whole, as well as this current situation with Dawnguard. I am neither that naive nor that optimistic, though I suppose it has the potential to be a logical argument, provided a specific set of circumstances are met. If a company believes that some form of exception or consideration is necessary to maintain consumer relations with a subset of their target market and therefore provides the greater potential for long-term gain, then certainly it IS a logical argument. If that consideration creates a problem with a different subset of the target market which would result in greater long-term losses than EITHER the long-term gain of the consideration OR the long-term loss of not granting the consideration, then the company's choice is far more likely to favor not granting the consideration. It is also important that the company be able to maintain a position of confidence and dependability while still maintaining its position as the supply side of an economic exchange.
To put it simply: if they think it will piss the XBox 360 and PC customers enough, they won't do any more than they absolutely must to mollify and console (no pun intended) the PS3 customers. And rightly so. To do anything else would fall under the category of "cutting off your nose to spite your face." If, however, the PS3 market is at least as important as the Xbox or PC markets are, then it may be in their best interest to provide some form of redress for a consumer base who have paid the same amount of money to receive a highly disparate result. And if that is the case, then there is very likely to be a person or persons whose job is to make those kinds of decisions. Had I been aware when I had Skyrim pre-ordered and paid for in July of 2011 that the XBox was set to receive the first two DLC with 30-day exclusivity (which is definitely less than the 60 days which have already passed plus however many more days before PS3 users get the chance to play it) I would have pre-ordered for the Xbox 360 and felt secure in my purchase. But I didn't. It didn't occur to me that I would have to play a meta-game of "which system do I have to buy this game for just to have access to what's available" when I pre-ordered a multi-platform release from a company I trust. And perhaps that's the lesson: don't pre-order games. Somehow I doubt it though. I would hope that the video game industry is not so far gone as to actually release half-assed products with the intention of patching them later to deal with fixes in a simple effort to rake in as much cash as possible. And I honestly believe that Bethesda is NOT doing these things. I don't think they're being lazy or greedy. I think Skyrim was an incredibly ambitious and well-done project, that the fan community is both capable and willing to fix things as they find them, and that kind of access and large-scale usage provides an amazing environment to find and work bugs, with systems that can download updates. I also understand that trying to translate from Microsoft friendly Xbox / PC code to Sony's code architecture is an obstacle that has to be dealt with as best it can.
This experience with Dawnguard is affecting other purchasing decisions as well. Whereas three or four months ago Dishonored was one of the three games I'm most excited for this year (AC3 and Borderlands 2, btw) I am unsure whether I will buy it when it comes out or wait six months to a year when I can buy it for cheaper used. And that's the part that makes me feel bad. Bethesda used to be a company that I was willing to pay new-game prices to have the game when it came out...and because of the way I have observed and perceived their activities regarding both the main game AND Dawnguard, I am slowly becoming more disenfranchised with them as a company. And in fairness, I'm not trying to demonize them in any way. and I'm not trying to play the blame game, but I am a customer and my perception of a company's business practices is a powerful determining factor in my decision to continue my patronage, and sometimes it is necessary for a customer to express their perception of something which seems inappropriate or out of place in the interest of maintaining a positive relationship.
So perhaps I am optimistic. I am hoping that the difficulties with Skyrim are not indicative of the performance of future releases, and that in the future Skyrim will just be known as a game with some interesting quirks. I am also hoping that Dawnguard will eventually prove to be worth the wait, and that following DLCs for Skyrim will NOT be afflicted with the same lack of communication or appearance of non-activity.
Talk to us gamesas, we love you. We just want to know that our patience and our faith in you are not in vain and will be rewarded, and it wouldn't hurt if it was in a timely fashion.
