A bitter criticism leveled at last year’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 was its disgraceful use of gougy content-walls poorly disguised as free-DLC upgrades. Players were required to grind in order to access courses...or take the option of paying EA for this content.

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This year, the new Tiger Woods game will return to a saner system of DLC, offering players the simple option to buy extra courses, or not.Speaking at an EA-organized event at the Pebble Beach golf resort yesterday, franchise director Mike DeVault told IGN, “We’ve taken that [Course Mastery] system out and are using a more traditional DLC approach.” He said the game would come with 20 courses as standard - up from 16 last year - with extra courses available to buy.In IGN’s review last year , Mitch Dyer described the ‘coins’ system as “a disgusting, well-disguised sham that makes past DLC traps look like charity”. Other reviewers were equally scathing. G4TV called it “a slap in the face to longtime players”.DeVault said the reaction from the press had prompted a rethink but added that hardcore players - those who were willing to put the time and effort into earning coins and unlocking extra content for free - had enjoyed the option.Perhaps the bigger problem wasn’t so much the system, but the aggressive sales techniques used to edge players towards making a purchase, constant on-screen reminders that, having spent $60 on the game, you could now spend some more. Maybe, last year will be seen as the low-point in EA’s microtransactional shenanigans. Although they remain a large part of EA’s strategy, the company has learned to take a step backwards in shoving them at players, while recognizing that some players are happy to pay for accelerated bonuses or extra content.But nobody believes that this is ever going to go away completely. Companies like EA are just getting better at balancing their need to extract as much revenue as possible from die-hard players, with the problem that overly-tiresome sales techniques are a huge turn-off. Last year I wrote about how large companies like EA are prone to making their worst errors at the expense of the consumer. It was always likely that EA would be unable to inch its way towards a sensible microtransaction policy, that it would overstep the mark significantly, and then retreat to a position acceptable to most consumers.That EA and companies like it have behaved badly on the issue of microtransactions is not at issue, and not particularly revelatory. What’s interesting is how the firm reacts to negative feedback and disappointing financial results.At the time when these aggressive marketing decisions were being made, Zynga’s horrid monetization-model was at its zenith. Meanwhile, boxed game sales were (and are) falling dramatically.EA had already taken the decision to focus its energy on increasing online revenues. Nothing beckons more enticingly than die-hard fans who are willing to pay extra for the games they love. Case in point, my own hideously expensive FIFA costs, and that game’s online revenues of more than $230 million. Decisions on micro-transactions are not made by game designers, they are foisted on game designers by stuffed-shirts with Powerpoint fixations. The decline of Zynga, the negative reaction to brazen gouging and a fast-learning curve on monetizing in-game items is leading to improvements. The stuffed-shirts are being bailed out by events beyond their control, by the consumer’s good sense and by the skills of game designers.EA has openly stated that its future probably lies in free-to-play. So here we are, working our way through a transitional phase in which some games are sold for $60, when really they ought to be free.Tiger Woods as a zero cost download with one course and a couple of clubs fits more neatly into the world we live in, than the current model, but a jump like that would be unthinkable for EA’s partners in the grubby sports-licensing business. Even if it wanted to make this jump, even if it made solid financial sense, EA would not be able to do so.EA Tiburon has a tough job, every year, trying to make Tiger Woods seem like a fresh game. In recent years the control system has been overhauled, to wide-acclaim. Kinect-control has also been introduced, which is an area that needs improvement. And EA has tapped into the historical magic of golf by teaming up with the Masters.In this year’s edition, players are able to skip back in time and play as some of the greats in years gone by, as Bobby Jones in knickerbockers and early 20th Century sepia, as Arnold Palmer in 1950s faded color and as the glorious Seve at the height of his technicolor powers in the 1970s. To watch these magnificent players and these giant personalities is to feel the pull of the game. It’s curious that FIFA and Madden are able to iterate every year based on newness, on the fan’s absolute need to have the right players in the right teams playing in the right strips or uniforms. Golf can’t do this, and so turns to history, reaching into the archives and the golden memories of golf fans, to the days before sex-scandals and gruesome multi-million dollar sponsorship deals.At Pebble Beach’s driving range yesterday, I joined a bunch of sports journos along with pro-golfer Hunter Mahan and some EA PRs for a demonstration of how golf clubs used to be, before they were engineered by computers. These guys stood around for ages rabbiting on about the merits of hickory. Apart from the golfers, I was the youngest dude there. (This is the first time I have been the youngest journo at a press event since the 1980s.)In the video game, players will be able to experience playing at Augusta with old-fashioned clubs and balls, with harder, sharper greens, with strange clothes. It’s all part of golf’s allure, the desire for authenticity, for detail, for the past, and no-one can seriously accuse EA Sports of a failure to take this stuff very, very seriously.The clubs, the courses, the balls, the clothes, the players were a lot different back in the day and that is reflected in the game itself. EA is making Tiger Woods about golf again, and not about crappy online monetization schemes.Colin Campbell is a feature-writer for IGN . A good way to get in touch and chat about games is via Twitter. Recently I've been writing about a gamer walking across the U.S , about Dead Space 3 and BioShock: Infinite as well s Quadrilateral Cowboy