@Einherjar

I guess with the politics, I just pity the artists that don't allow their works to speak for themselves. It's not like Firewatch DOESN'T express most of the views the developer holds already. And does it in a more conversational and refined way than causing a scene online does.

The following is about DLC and ended up a little long. Bear with me.

With Mario Kart, I'm not as such upset about the amount of stuff you got for your money, with the DLC, but that a mandatory update advertised it from multiple menu screens. Taunting you with the fact that you hadn't yet purchased it. Removing the update caused the game no not even allow offline play, as the system now knew the update was available.

I wrote Nintendo a stern but polite email about this, which they promptly ignored, as I would expect.

The pre-order stuff drives me up the wall as well. And even this recent announcement of fighter packs and a full pass for them all for Smash Bros. is rubbing me the wrong way.

Suddenly, as the consumer, my job is not just to consider if I want to buy the game or not, which used to be easy with Nintendo, because big first party games usually don't drop in price. Now it's whether I want to buy it early, to get the Pirahna Plant, and whether I want to trust Sakurai & Co. to add five cool fighters hat I worth my money, or I want to check them out individually, or wait to everything is out, and THEN get it.

They're making it such a hassle. On purpose even. To get our mindshare. And make us consider and/or believe that at least one of the options has to be right for us. And having spend all that time thinking about the additional purchases, the initial purchase will unconciously have become a logical choice. Through mental sunk costs, I'm more likely to have already bought the game.

It's an insidious, manipulative practice, the way I see it, and I think DLC announced pre-launch ought to be included with the initial price of the game. If they want to charge extra for it, they can call me when it's done sometime next year, and say "Look what we've got for you now!".

...probably gonna buy it anyway. Grr.