This past Wednesday was a busy day for Masahiro Sakurai, creator and director of the Super Smash Bros. series. He had a chat with Brett Phipps of Video Gamer, as well as an email interview with Brian Albert of IGN. These two interviews were centered around the prospect of future DLC – no doubt sparked by the recent announcement that Mewtwo would eventually become available for download by those who bought both versions of the game. Sakurai did not confirm or deny whether Mewtwo would become purchasable DLC, or whether more characters would be available further down the road. He did, however, shed some light on his philosophy about DLC.

Sakurai gave an interesting explanation to Albert for the reappearance of Mewtwo. Additionally, while he didn’t confirm or deny the possibility of a paid DLC including Mewtwo in the future, his language implies that it could very well be on the table.

As for why Mewtwo isn’t paid content from the start, releasing that character is an experiment meant to act as a foothold in content distribution; thus it’s simply meant as part of the service we’re providing to gamers.

Above all, Sakurai’s message was that planning for DLC during the creation of a game can often lead to the cheapening of the game’s core content. Many modern game developers rely too heavily on DLC, sometimes using it as a crutch. New games are often released prematurely, with content that is sparse or even blatantly unfinished, for the sake of meeting a deadline or launching ahead of a competing game. This is a particular problem among PC titles, and can be attributed to the failure of games like Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, which was subject to an accelerated timetable in 2008 to beat World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King out of the box. In doing so, it left out four whole careers intended for the core game, which had to be released in a patch at a later date. Worse yet, some developers choose to omit content from the core game, so that it can be released later as paid DLC to evade the $60 ticket price and milk even more money out of the game.

Sakurai took a stance adamantly against these strategies. He acknowledged that DLC can enrich a game and that there is a high demand for it, but he was extremely wary of the prospect of cheapening his product. The following is an excerpt from his interview with Phipps (which overlaps quite a bit with his response to Albert):

I think there might be criticism that we are cutting up content to sell characters one by one, or that we are adding things later that should have been there from the start…Creating a single fighter involves a huge investment, and we’ve already been giving it our all and investing a lot of work in the characters currently available in the game and, I think it’s an incredible package in terms of the sheer amount of content in the game. But it might be that people may not understand and may think that I am not offering enough by just looking at DLC itself.

This is all very noble of Sakurai. He clearly wants to establish a sense of integrity in his game, and assure fans that they will get what they deserve without any strings attached. The world of modern gaming is certainly full of troublesome strings.

However, this does seem to illustrate a disconnect between Sakurai’s view of DLC versus the players’ view of it. Of course we want a completed game. I think many of us are happy with the lineup that this round of Super Smash Bros. has to offer. It is playable entirely without DLC, as it always has been and always should be. If there is DLC, it should of course be entirely optional and the game should not suffer without it. But should there be DLC at all? YES. Absolutely. Super Smash Bros. stands to benefit from DLC as much if not more than any other game on the market.

This series functions as a virtual “Hall of Fame” for Nintendo games. It has so much ground to cover, and realistically we all know that it would be unwieldy if it actually tried to thoroughly cover everything. The characters who occupy slots in a Super Smash Bros. game have a responsibility to represent every aspect of their home franchise as best as possible, and in most cases they succeed, but the more obscure and potentially more interesting characters tend to fall through the cracks. We can all think of other characters from our favorite games that we would love to see playable, and yet we quietly acknowledge that if they added one, they’d have to add more to round things out. Before you know it, the game would be so overloaded with characters that it would feel very bogged down.

This is where DLC should come in. Many games have successfully used DLC to allow players to customize their version of a game to their liking, without stepping on the toes of the wider player base. Take the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises for example. Both have assembled recognizable all-star soundtracks for their core content, but have then amassed a library of downloadable songs so that people who really like a particular band or who happen to have more obscure tastes can incorporate much more of the music they personally love into the game. At the same time, those who are happy with the core lineup of songs lose nothing by ignoring the DLC.

That is precisely what players are hoping to see here – a customizable personal experience. If you’re like me and you have an unhealthy obsession with, say, Fire Emblem, you could add characters like Lyn, Hector, Ephraim and Micaiah, who will never appear as playable in a core Super Smash Bros. game (and rightly so), or see Roy make his triumphant return. If you hate Fire Emblem with a rage that could feed a thousand trolls and are still mad that Lucina takes up a slot, you never have to so much as look at them (Note: I fully admit that Lucina should just be a female skin for Marth).

Of course, there is the issue of game balance to consider – a fickle mistress indeed. Each new character should be developed and tested carefully so that it fits into the delicate game balance that the core game (hopefully) has, and even then, they probably shouldn’t be allowed in tournaments just to be safe. There’s little worse for a game’s multiplayer longevity than the option to just “buy” power via DLC. Sakurai seems very aware of this hurdle though, as he has already had to explain why Mewtwo won’t be available until next spring due to the involved development process.

There’s also the likelihood that any new characters that are introduced will be some form of clone, but frankly, I am comfortable with this. As long as the core game isn’t full of clones, I don’t mind being able to choose to download a clone here and there if it has enough nostalgic value to me.

Regardless, Sakurai has made it very clear in both interviews that as of right now, no new DLC is in the works. As he told Phipps:

However, what I can say now about paid DLC is that we aren’t working on anything at the moment. We’ve put all our efforts into making the actual game. Creating DLC would involve large additional costs and require the involvement of a lot of people. I can’t yet give you an answer about whether the price would justify the costs and criticisms mentioned above.

Take your time, Sakurai. We share your desire for any future content to measure up to the standards set by the core game. However, please don’t rule out substantial DLC entirely. I am sure you know by now that the truest fans will wait until the end of time (I’m looking at you, Xenoblade fans).

VideoGamer

IGN