Unlockable Content In Games, good or bad?

[Stomski]

I was going to rant about this in the backloggery thread, but decided to spin it off... And something that Dara Ó Briain commented on during Gameswipe kinda made me think about it too.

I'm an old skoole gamer. I enjoy playing for playing. Give me a game like Sonic The Hedgehog that I can complete in one session and play over again another day and I'm happy.

But during the Playstation era, something happened to games, something that allegedly added replay value. Unlockables.

Unlockables that improve/extend game play are the worst thing to happen to gaming since, well, ever.

Take Tekken for example, a game designed to be a 2 player arcade game forces me to play the 1 player mode against crap AI in order to unlock the characters that I want to use in 2 player vs mode

Since when was simply playing the game reward enough? Why do modern gamers need to be given a reason to play through again? Is the game not fun enough that you want to play mroe of it without an extra motivation other than the fun to be had?

Maybe it's the fact that games are longer now and gamers libraries are so much bigger now that designers/publishists need to add such things to keep people's interest?

Portal was a step in the right direction. OK, it has achievements to be got, but they don't unlock anything. And anyone who plays through Portal a second time simply to destroy all the cameras has a screw loose and has missed the point of the game.

[Cullen]

I used to love them and still do to a certain extent. I like any excuse to continue to play an already great game. The problem really comes when they are used to pad out a very short or poor games. I think this is to do with a deep-seated problem with retail console and pc games markets. You see retail game all cost about the same (around the £30-£40 mark). There is practically no variation pricing (aside from budget ranges which only consist of old games) - if you want cheaper games you have to rely on sales or second-hand games.

As a consequence of all games costing about the same there is a perception that they must all provide the same level of enjoyment. This is most of often measured in the number of hours gameplay you get out of it regardless of the quality. Anything that bumps up the number of hours you can spend with a game pushes it towards being 'worth' £30.

The massive problem here is everyone accepts the pricing levels. When I was a kid I only got about 4 SNES games a year so I was disappointed with any short games. Game journalists will score games down if they are short. If games had a variety of price points then this problem would go away - games wouldn't need fluff and padding they could just be priced lower than longer games.

However the other big problems with pricing down is that their is currently negative connotations associated with lower price points. The cheap titles there are, are considered trimmed down, dumbed down, shovelware, budget: generally just not worth it.

These days the cost of games isn't a barrier to me not playing more games - I can afford pretty much what I want. What is a barrier is game length. I'd much prefer a short game that was fun throughout than a long game that outstayed its welcome. I loved Shadow of the Colossus because I thought its 10 hours of gameplay perfectly fit the amount of fun that was there. I ended up hating Okami because it only have about 10 hours of fun in 45 hour long game. Both cost the same when they were originally released and I heard a lot of criticism of SoTC because it was short. If I was a kid again I could understand this but if it was cheaper to begin with then the problem goes away.

So long as consumers and publishers continue to accept the status quo we'll have to put up with this bullshit. However there are signs things are changing with the explosion of digital games available. All the home and handheld consoles have a variety of prices for their digital content, likewise on the PC. iPhone games are the most competitively priced of all with some costing less than a pound (like the good old ZX Spectrum days!). If anything Apple now have the opposite problem of retail console game in that people don't seem to want to pay more than a couple of quid for a game, making longer, deeper titles a challenge to sell.

[Benn]

Not a fan of unlockables myself. especially when the condidtions set are needlessly complicated or difficult... and for what? Ooh a piece of 'concept art'...
Short version: If I like a game, I'll play it again. If I don't, I won't, and no amount of unlockable gubbins will change that.

[Cullen]

Oct 15, 2009 8:51:43 GMT Stomski said:

Take Tekken for example, a game designed to be a 2 player arcade game forces me to play the 1 player mode against crap AI in order to unlock the characters that I want to use in 2 player vs mode

Oh yeah I hate that too. I stopped playing Mario Kart Wii as I couldn't be arsed to play through the awful single player game to get the karts for multi-player. Honestly it just takes no effort to add in two ways to unlock characters, one single or one multi. Smash Brothers did this and it was good. Of course just having all the stuff unlocked for multiplayer is better. Mario Strikers Charged did this - online you had access to anything, in single-player you had to unlock stuff. Of course this meant I never had a reason to even touch single player

[Cullen]

While I'm in rant mode let's look at used game sales too. Publishers cry out that the used game business destroys the new game market: ultimately destroying the whole industry. However this is a massive lie. The purpose of any secondary (i.e. second-hand) market is to support the primary market. While its true that publishers don't see a penny of a used sale, this is true in any market. Buying shares on the stock market doesn't net the company you are buying shares for any more money - only the original issue does. Buying a 'second-hand' house doesn't give the builder any more money. Are company owners and house builders unhappy about this? Of course bloody not! No-one would buy shares or houses in the first place if they couldn't sell them on. The potential for resale adds to the value of the original purchase.

Games publishers can't see that the high prices of games creates a big secondary market. People are more willing pay £40 for a new game if there's a possibilty of selling it in the future. They don't even have to sell it ever - the game still has this perceived extra value. If retail games suddenly became non-transferable between owners (like digital content) overnight but didn't have a corresponding drop in price to accomodate the loss in resale value (like most digital content has) then I absolutely guarantee the games industry would collapse overnight. Publishers are reaping the seeds they have sown.

[Dave]

I'm not a fan of unlockables. If I like a game, I like a game but to make me replay to get access to certain parts annoys me greatly and can make a game less enjoyable.

OK, I am a bit inconsistent on this as generally I'm OK with different endings based on performance or difficulty setting.

But I was playing the KOF collection a while back and there's a bit where there are a series of challenges for you to attempt: limited time, can only attack at certain moments, can only use one button... that sort of thing. And yes it can be interesting to see if I can pass these challenges, but if I can't why should I be denied the bonus content? You don't get a DVD and have to watch the extended cut without going to the toilet before you can watch the Making of...

And yes, unlockable fighters in beat 'em ups, very annoying. Worse one I can think of is SNK v Capcom on the Neo Geo Pocket. Upon beating the game a random square is picked from a grid and that's then uncovered to reveal a part of a picture. Play through again and another square is picked. However because it's random it could be the same square as before so you may play through and not reveal any more of the picture. Once the picture is finally revealed you gain that character and a new picture is there for you to uncover.
I forget how many unlockable characters there are but it is quite time consuming to get them all and I know there's still a character I haven't unlocked on my copy of the game.

[Deleted]

I actually like unlockables in games but contrary to what Stomski said it didn't start in the Playstation era. As far back as the days of the NES and the SNES there were unlockables in the Zelda games like pieces of heart to find and also upgrades to your weapons. In Super Mario World on the SNES there were a few secret worlds that you could only unlock if you found a secret exit in another world that you had already completed. The unlockables in Super Smash Brothers Brawl on the Wii are the best I've seen yet - even better than the ones in Super Smash Bros. Melee. The majority of the unlockables in the Smash Bros. games are just trophies but they are trophies depicting characters from a vast range of Nintendo games over the past thirty years and a short description of the character is also included which makes interesting reading (for me at least).

The worst unlockable however I have seen in a game was the last thing you could buy in the PS2 Looney Tunes kart racing game (I can't remember the name of it at the moment). In the shop there was something that was described as a 'mystery movie' and the price of it was extortionate. You could only buy it after you had completed the final race in the game and when it was brought it turned out to be the end credits for the game!

[Cullen]

Zelda and Mario World don't count. That's just optional stuff in the game but part of the main game none the less. I think we can all agree that's world away from extra modes, picture galleries, sound tests etc.

[Stomski]

Pieces of heart are not unlockables ¬_¬ They're power ups and pretty crucial for you to find to comlpete the game. Imagine doing a Zelda game with only 3 hearts at the end!
Hidden levels in Mario are not extras thrown in by the developers, they often lead to shortcuts to get to the end.
By your rational you could claim that any stage of a game that you couldn't access at the start was bonus content.

However, let us consider earliest unlockables...

1991 - Sonic The Hedgehog, if you complete it with all the chaos emeralds you get an extra animation of Sonic running through Greenhill Zone type stage with lots of animals.

Racking my brain to think of one earlier, but dammit.

[Hero]

I like unlockables whether they are additions to the game or bonus keepsake material outside the game.

My favourite unlockables are normally in wrestling games where you can earn new stuff like extra playable wrestlers, new areanas, new stuff to fight with, new create a wrestler props etc. Basically like No Mercy on the N64.

I'm currentley looking to purchase TMNT: Smash-Up soon which has some pretty decent unlockables from what I understand. Not just fighters stuff but bonus 25th anniversary material and Mirage TMNT stuff from the past unveiled exclusively to this game.

As for earliest unlockable material I can think of is Seamus in an alternate costume in Metroid, Rodimus Prime being playable in the NES TF game once completed.

===KEN

[Stomski]

Urgh... I don't want to play through single player in a wrestling game just so I get to play as The Rock vs my mates.

One absurd unlockable was on Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on Gamecube. To get the 3d version of the original Megadrive Greenhill Zone You had to get 180 emblems or something, some of which were for breeding Chao and entering them in races and s**t. I didn't buy a Sonic game to race Chao at 2mph, I bought it to go at 200mph! Add in to this that most of the emblems were for playing each level 5 times each with a different objective. Bravo Sega, bravo.

So I used cheat tool to give me all the emblems and then the level wasn't even that good.

[Hero]

In most wrestling games the Rock is already playable , but like with Tekken, I see what you mean.

===KEN

[jameso]

On the whole, I'm on board with unlockables, as I feel that anything that encourages me to get £40 worth of enjoyment out of a game is a good thing. I take the point that a good game that takes 10 hours to finish is as worthy as an average game with 100 hours of content, only 10 of which is any good, but whenever I've gone the extra mile with a game I've had a real value for money feeling.
I suppose the guitar rhythm games are my personal best example of having to wade through rubbish to get to the good stuff (and they talk about this in Gameswipe), but again, if I could play the best song in Rock Band straight away I'd maybe be paying £40 for one song I'd play one or twice. At least if they bury it at the end I have an incentive to keep playing. Having that Mario football game and only ever playing online wouldn't be value for money for me.
I'm not interested in playing a game over and over to get videos or images galleries though, but I will do it for achievements which are even less tangible, oddly enough.

[Deleted]

I like games that have a huge amount of content in them. There have been games I've played that have fell apart after such a shockingly short amount of time. There was a House of the Dead game released on the Xbox a few years ago and it was nothing more than a short arcade blast-em-up. You had to play the game from start to finish in one sitting because there were no save points at all - not that the game needed any anyway because the game lasted no longer than twenty minutes. Games which have a long play time to them and also have a massive amount of replay value are certainly worth picking up.

[Cullen]

I was just going to mention unlockables in music games. I really don't see the point - a friend brought Rock Band round for a party and it was frustrating we were restricted to the default songs when there were tons more on the disk. Seems like the devs have listened though as I believe the later Guitar Hero and Rock Band games have everything unlocked from the start.

[Deleted]

Half of the unlockables in the Guitar Hero games just seem pointless to me. Most of them are just new clothing and guitars for your characters and whenever I play the game I'm always concentrating on the bars which the buttons come down on and have no time to glance at what my character is wearing or even playing.

[Stomski]

I guess something that doesn't change the actual gameplay, such as costumes, isn't so bad... They don't change the overall experience per sae.

[jameso]

Guitar Hero 5 incidentally, seems to have pretty much all of the game (and if not, a good 95%) unlocked in freeplay mode off the bat. Which ironically enough made me wonder why I was bothering with career...

[Jaymz]

Nov 5, 2009 13:32:45 GMT jameso said:

Which ironically enough made me wonder why I was bothering with career...

For the achievements.

[Stomski]

XBox achievement points are retarded. They're even worse than unlockable content.

There, I said it. I feel better that it's off my chest now.

[jameso]

Nov 6, 2009 1:44:25 GMT Jaymz said:

Nov 5, 2009 13:32:45 GMT jameso said:

Which ironically enough made me wonder why I was bothering with career...

For the achievements.

Yeah...

[jameso]

Nov 6, 2009 9:53:08 GMT Stomski said:

XBox achievement points are retarded. They're even worse than unlockable content.

There, I said it. I feel better that it's off my chest now.

I really like them for some inexplicable reason, but they have really encouraged me to get money's worth from a game. With lots of my Gamecube games I'd buy them, barely play them, sometimes even find myself selling them on without having even removed them from the packaging. Very rarely done that on the 360.

[Stomski]

Then I think you have a problem with your attitude towards gaming!

Seriously though, I guess achievements are like a modern day high score table for some people. Instead of trying to beat their score, they now try to get all the acheivements, which in some cases can be more interesting/enjoyable than just going for most points.

Example - In Spyborgs there's an acheivement for playing the first level without breaking a banister. Crazy!

[Stomski]

Hrm, seems Bandai-Namco has been listening to me... In Tekken 6 all characters are unlocked by default!

[legios]

Nov 16, 2009 9:36:17 GMT Stomski said:

Hrm, seems Bandai-Namco has been listening to me... In Tekken 6 all characters are unlocked by default!

And the unlock criteria for the ending movies seems a bit random too. I have got the ending movie for Miguel now despite never actually using him as yet.....

Karl

[Stomski]

Muhaha. OK, now that I've had a few weeks with my PS3 I've realised that achievements/trophies are a much better idea than unlockables. They keep users playing if they have the motivation, but without blocking content for those of us who don't.

Bravo video game industry! You've done something good.

[Cullen]

Yeah I like them now. The only thing you have to avoid is doing the grindy ones that aren't fun. Sometimes my OCD kicks in though and forces me to get everything. But, yeah, they don't unlock anything by themselves but can motivate you to play the game more.

[jameso]

Nov 24, 2009 15:17:09 GMT Stomski said:

Muhaha. OK, now that I've had a few weeks with my PS3 I've realised that achievements/trophies are a much better idea than unlockables. They keep users playing if they have the motivation, but without blocking content for those of us who don't.

Bravo video game industry! You've done something good.

A few weeks ago you called them retarded!

I have found it's pretty much impossible to explain to people why I like achievements if they don't or if they haven't any experience of them. And I've had one or two incidents of someone completely showing disregard for them and then months later going on about how they spent ages trying to get one particular achievement.

[Stomski]

You misunderstand me.

For me personally they still don't add anything, but I appreciate the fact that they're used as a way to increase the longevity of a game without blocking content for those of us that don't give a crap.

[Cullen]

I think this is our surrogate achievement thread, so I'd like to talk about a great site I found recently called trueachievements.com. It shows your Xbox 360 achievements but weights each one in proportion to the number of players who actually have that achievement. So easy achievements that everyone has are just scored the same as their gamerscore, but hard achievements have a multiplier which is essentially the number of people who own the game divided by the number of people who have the achievement.

It also has lots of stats, useful functions and links to guides for each achievement. Add me as a friend if you sign up.