Hitman Pieces the Game at their Customers? (Accidental Repost from September)

How do you guys buy games? Through Steam? Through the Xbox Live or PSN Market? In a store? Other means of digital download that are inferior to Steam? In any case, it's usually the same. You buy the game, pay once, and that's it. If you're getting it Day One it'll most likely be a $60 purchase, but you get whatever they give you in that price.

Well, can't really say the same for Hitman.

One of the strangest things I've ever seen, the new Hitman scheduled to release next year is planning a system where they piece-by-piece sell you the game. This chart will help you understand what I'm talking about.

Well for one thing, I can't believe I have to read up on how to buy a game, but anyways, this basically states you pay $35 as a "try before you buy" (even though you just dropped $35 on it... do these guys realize Cities: Skylines is only $30?) and you essentially have half the game right there, 3 geographical zones. The other three zones will come out later, one zone per month at a time for the next three months. Then you can drop another $30 on it to upgrade to the full version, or bypass all that and drop $60 at launch for the "full experience".

Now before I begin I'm gonna point out right here that the whole "let me try it out" reason to getting the intro pack is a terrible, thinly-veiled attempt at hiding an unfinished game. If the creators, or publishers, or whoever came up with this terrible system actually wanted us to do a sort-of try before you buy scenario, they would release a zone either for free or for a small fee like $5 for you to actually try the game and all of its mechanics. Dropping $35 is not a good price in the least bit for a "try before you buy" run. Even EA, voted worst company in America two years in a row, would let you try games like Battlefield and Titanfall for 48 hours completely free before asking if you wanted to buy them.

So now that we've established that the game is going to be unfinished at start, we need to look at what'll happen in both situations.

If you go with the $35 "let me try it out" package, you get your 3 zones at launch, and as time progresses and new content releases, you'll be locked out of that content until you drop an extra $30 on it. The zones are being released a month at a time, and there's no way to buy a zone at a time, it's either 3 zones for $35 or 6 zones for $65 ($60 if you go for the six right away). So essentially when a month's time has passed and a new zone comes out, you'll have to pay the price of three zones (the $30 upgrade package) to only access one zone while the others get ready to come out in the coming months. There's no increment system, it's either you get half the game or the full game. Then when the full game is released, you'll be stuck until you drop that money, and essentially customers will get a butchered experience of what the original vision of the game was by having content locked off behind this paywall.

If you go with the $60 full package, then you're essentially paying full price for half a game at launch, then just waiting around for things to come out as time goes by. That's not something you want to do to someone who just dropped a full price on your game, piece them the game as time goes by until three months afterward when they have the full content.

We also have no idea the sizing of these zones at all. While information about the 'base' $35 half game has been released, nothing, and I mean NO INFORMATION has been released about what will be in the other three zones. Are we actually going to get the other 50%? Or is 75% of the content in the original three zones and that the later three will have lacking content? We as the consumer have no idea at all what they're going to do. There could be a severe lack of content in these next three zones, and if the developers packed the first three with content, it would have the consumer assume that the same amount of content would exist in the upcoming content, which it easily can lack. It's a terrible system because they can bait the gamer with a good amount of content in the first three zones and then just give up once they get the gamer to upgrade on faith alone.

Whether you think this is an alright idea or a terrible idea, the entire situation reeks of pushing the game out the door before it's ready. Whether the developer studio wanted this to happen, or if the publisher of the game is making this decision, we probably won't know. The best bet is to just wait to see if the content will be worth the money or not. This kind of stupid iffy bullshit is the reason I don't preorder games, and if you were looking forward to this game, well, all I can say is I'm sorry companies care more about money and the business side than the actual piece of art they're creating.