Bethesda Should Be Benevolent Billionaires
April 21, 2006 7:30 AM | Simon Carless
Not really sure we've mentioned it before, but Bill Harris at Dubious Quality does some seriously smart game-related blogging at times.
The latest of these is a post named 'Mark Cuban Meets Bethesda', he discusses the Broadcast.com founder's recent play as owner of the Dallas Mavericks: "Last night, on Maverick's Fan Appreciation Night, he gave all 19,000 fans in attendance (and 1,000 watching on television) free ticket vouchers on American Airlines. It works out to about $3 million if everyone cashes them in."
Harris continues by commenting: "The reason I bring up Mark Cuban today is because Bethesda needs to learn from him. They've put out a brilliant, wonderful game [in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for PC and Xbox 360], and I'm not exaggerating... [but] you're not trying to get people to buy one or two add-ons. You're trying to create an environment where people will buy all of them. And you're blowing it. Because it doesn't matter if 100,000 people bought the horse armor. What matters is how many people buy the fiftieth download, and the hundredth, and you're headed in the wrong direction. Fast."
In other words - are Bethesda's current Xbox 360 pay downloadables for Oblivion not priced or scaled correctly? The horse armor was roundly pilloried, and The Orrery seems to have similar issues. What would you do right now, if you were Bethesda? Harris thinks he knows, but is he right?
Categories: Xbox 360
6 Comments
I'd say he's right, in fact I've suggested the same thing myself. Bethesda have really been extremely unprofessional about these downloads, and pretty much managed to piss everyone off. What they could have done was to make people even more fond of them by giving away free stuff (like other developers do), and then start charging for things. That would have made sense - they could have told people that, "look, we'd like to continue producing free downloads, but they cost time and money to make, so from here on and in, we're going to charge for them". And people would have thought "fair enough". They wouldn't have felt ripped off or accused Bethesda of leaving out content from the game in order to squeeze a few extra dollars out of them post-release.
fluffy bunny | April 21, 2006 1:06 AM
i agree also. i paid for the horse armor primarily because i thought it was cool novelty but i didn't think bethesda would start charging for every single little thing. new sidequests and the like should be free so players can continually enjoy the game without having to pay for each one. i highly doubt people will continue buying new items from them even if they're hardcore cuz this is money we're talking about. are they gonna also charge for patches in the future? i sure hope not.
LiK | April 21, 2006 5:30 AM
People are amazing. This game has a ton of content in it. No one has gotten ripped off and no one is getting at all hurt by having more content available at what is a trivial cost.
Do you think you really deserve to get more stuff for free after a game is released? When you buy a book do you get mad when the author doesn't send you a short story for free after the fact.
Post-release-for-pay content is what will create the infrastructure for formerly unpayed modders to actually be able to break in and get paid to make content. Everyone complains about how hard it is to get a game company up and running unless you are "in" already. This is how it is going to get done.
Stop being short-sighted and for the love of gahd stop complaining over $2.
matt | April 21, 2006 11:07 AM
The general opinion doesn't seem to be that this kind of content is a bad thing in itself, but that Bethesda handled it in a very unprofessional way. When there's a locked door to a completely empty room in the mage's guild, and then Bethesda fills it up post-release (for extra money), it's no wonder people get suspicious. And it's pretty hard to justify paying even $2.50 for the useless horse armour mod - it just isn't worth the money. Most people who buy it will be disappointed (look at how much 400 points will get you when Bizarre releases the Speed Pack for PGR3, and then tell me this horse armour pack isn't overpriced).
At the end of the day, $2 is still money, and if people don't think they got their money's worth when they bought that lousy horse armour or orrery quest, then they're entitled to think just that.
Now, you can argue that it's their own fault that they wasted their money on those mods (especially the horse armour mod), but that's besides the point. The point is that Bethesda have gotten themselves a bunch of dissatisfied customers here, and if they intend to continue making such mods, dissatisfied customers are a bad thing. And, as the article linked to in the blog points out, they could easily have avoided all the criticism by giving their customers some free stuff (like their competitors do) before starting to charge money.
Btw, after the release of Morrowind, Bethesda released a bunch of free mods, including a pretty big quest and some cool armour. They certainly saw the PR-value of doing so back then, and I wonder what made them change their mind.
fluffy bunny | April 21, 2006 3:03 PM
Bill Harris nailed it right. Make your customers happy then nail them.
Anonymous | April 21, 2006 4:05 PM
All I can say is finally I know why that door is locked in the Mages Guild and I can get my first good night of sleep since this game was released! Thanks!
pariahman | April 22, 2006 11:02 AM