Economics of Hitman games in the modern day

[GTAJJ]

@wincenworks

Because, unlike a can of beans, there isn’t a price to produce option - there is a massive capital investment and then running fees.

Games have development costs which factors in longevity of servers runtimes since they’ve ever started… way before these drip feed margin scheme came into play. It’s a product that costs money to make.

@wincenworks

Well let’s see, some basic commercial factors - covered above - that you apparently ignored because you’re obsessed with this idea you can determine “true value” through nothing in particular.

You just reiterated what I said lol. It’s how they guesstimate margins. It’s why current established games who have used these systems for a longer period have more concrete analytics on how many buy what and at what price and the dropoffs. These are min/maxing these systems because they’ve gotten a good estimation over the years.

As for licensing, if your game revolves around IRL items, then evidently you’d need to wager in those costs. Today, we rarely see games with weapons having their true names. Train Simulator is an outlier to the DLC, meme-worthy I’d argue in the amount of DLC it contains. However if we wager in the potential costs of the licensing and actually making the 3D model, is it inflated? The main reason Train Sim has a high DLC price is due to the sheer amount of DLC they create.

Here is a selection of DLC in TS2021. What we can only guess is the varying prices could factor in amount of quality/quantity of each pack and various upfront costs such as licencing. There’s too many variables unknown. What we can see is what the DLC contains and how much it physically adds to the game. We can consider the costs behind these. Fortnite shares similar issues with crossovers and licenced IPs. Call of Duty uses licenced music and pays for “celebs” in warzone trailers. The skins aren’t of another IP unlike Fortnite so we know they aren’t factored in.

@wincenworks

Citation required since the alternative is: They’re trying to go broke.

Here is an article from destructoid of Ubisoft creating the original next Rainbow Six with Campaign and the online Mode called Siege.

Ubisoft ditched it for a “multiplayer first” only game, in 2013 / 2014. During the Season Pass systems era.

After a year or so, it was recognised as an esport. Paving the way for events, sponsorships etc. And on top they can sell extra merch. And more to the topic, fans can buy in game skins to show support.

Let’s take a look at the systems R6 is using - Season Passes. A roadmap directly to explain what you would get. What’s also great is that you can see exactly what they’re slowly taking away for margins. All passes 1 to 5 are the same price at time of launch:

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

This shows over the years, content in the season passes was enough to keep it running fine. Notice Year 5 having less operators and maps despite charging the same. That was in 2020, when the system to milk more is now suddenly accaptable. Year 6 roadmap is now free; inline with all current trends where the gameplay content is now second and cosmetics are driving the sales.

Also notice because of these changes, the content has dwindled more, now defended behind the “free” barrier. What has become of Rainbow Six in the process? Not to mention, this was originally a game with a campaign, coop and online. And how it all started from cutting up a game that was originally a tactical FPS/TPS but they just sold the online gamemode as a AAA product. And it’s working well.

So well they’re doing it again.

@wincenworks

That is known as very clumsily attempting to see what works or assuming what worked for x will work for y and z.

Absolutely. The margins are so lucrative that clearly it must be worth the risk to take for these companies. Throwing crap at a wall and all that. The thing with live services, they can cut their losses if it’s not working out. So for those who did enjoy it, get screwed to the system if there’s not group effort; quite like online game playerbases really.

@wincenworks

Furthermore, if you’re an old fart like me - Rainbow Six has been dead since 2006 when the mission planning went out the window and it became Counterstrike but with different skins and names.

Don’t worry I’m with you on that and today, that’s because of these systems at play. It doesn’t matter what it was originally, doesn’t matter if there’s a long time fanbase, doesn’t matter if it gets a new genre. If the system can be shoehorned in, and get those profits, they’ll gamble with those factors. Although Vegas does have a soft spot for me.

Some games are actively losing their identity due to these systems. And generations today have no long time connections with the original IP or may enjoy its new face. (I read a comment on Reddit from a kid who was talking to someone as an “long time COD player” but announced he started on Blops 2 as his grounds for it).

It possibly could just be me, I’m in the middle where you got a complete game and to get everything, you work for it. You earn it in the game by doing well, not paying up. Outside CS:GO, Fortnite revolutionised (for a lack of a better word) the paywalls. During a time of the lootbox saga, Fortnite showed other companies that they can not only survive but profit tons from cosmetics and battle passes. The mentality of the generation are fine with this. Of course everyone else jumped on the train.

@wincenworks

Pretty sure stadiums have been selling season/annual tickets for particular sports/leagues since before either of us was born.

Of course, I’m talking for games monetary schemes. It went from tiny priced DLCs to medium to full priced season passes to now inflated content.

@wincenworks

Actually it’s about the same level of margin since you still have to pay all the same people to do all the work,

For less time though. Creating a whole new map from scratch will take longer and cost more in wages. Why would CoD dump creating maps for skins if the former has " long lasting appeal"? It’s more of the having quantity over quality with these skins so there are a higher chance somebody will pick one up, and at those prices, pay for a lot in return.

@wincenworks

It’s been increasingly expensive to make the same content

Yet the companies are achieving more YoY. If your point was the case, they would be spending more than they’re earning. Unless your point is that the overall cost affects these inflation prices to which are giving a big return.

@wincenworks

GTA V has been having massive spikes in sales because of the pandemic

My figures were pre-pandemic. TT haven’t posted annual report of 2021 yet. My point here was the cost of developing a single 3D asset is valued at the same as 2 GTAIV full expansions.

@wincenworks

you hurt the small studio and help Rockstar and Blizzard by normalizing what they do and sabotaging their competition.

No one is gatekeeping who should or shouldn’t use these exploitive systems. All companies should be held in the same regard for what decisions they make. They are trying to normalise this with the generations below me who barely get to experience a game that doesn’t get cut up into a million pieces. This is gaming to them. Expect to never get everything in a game.

@wincenworks

Is it the hours of creation time spent on making the model, the skin, the rigging, etc?
If so, does that include the time spent on making the basic car mechanics and effects (like glossy surfaces) in the game?

In which is a one time job, then sold an infinite amount of times. Unlike IRL products hence why LG are building as ordered for their 100k Rollable TVs.

@wincenworks

Nobody uses it when weighing up if they think a DLC is worth the asking price or not, especially not the executives who set the price.

Well considering we do know Take-Two earned $313.78 million from in-game spending in Q1 2020 net. So after all the costs, it earns over a quarter billion in 3 months. No one can give a specific number, but obviously it’s doing well.

@wincenworks

you have to factor in things like ongoing sales of previous games, loss of staff, etc. There is also the above mentioned issue of profit is not always profit.

And that’s the risk you take in business. But then you have companies such as Activision who lay off staff while getting billions in net and Bobby Kotick a big bonus. If investors pull out, that means you’re lacking trust in the business plan (or they just want profit of course.) From the consumer side, different versions tell the player what you’re still getting. IO are now adopting lootbox style content drops that can be anything they want to be, which could be impacted by the amount of initial income. That risk is now being placed on the consumers.

@wincenworks

The skin is the leader because it is the most distinct and had the most creative effort applied to, but is not the rarest, so the value is extremely murky (which is the point).

Treyarch’s naming conventions are all over the place. There isn’t an Ultra skin to date, just weapon camos which are “reactive” (changes with each kill). You’re playing word semantics there, you can even wager in the rest of the items too, to which I was also.

You have a choice:

1. • An AAA game
2. • 3 CoD bundles

There are over 200 bundles thus far on Cold War. On the launch of Season 2, roughly $540 of bundles were added. And still going weekly. I can buy a PS5 and Cold War for less than even getting a single seasons cosmetics.

@wincenworks

When I buy the Seven Deadly Sins pack I don’t get to run around on the deathmatch map in the gold suit to show off that I am more affluent than fourteen year olds who aren’t allowed to buy DLC, and the CoD bundle comes with zero Hitman escalations.

It’s the same system, different items. However we aren’t guaranteed much content with Hitman outside the constraints of 1 contract mission, unlocks and it’s worth £4.99. Too much flexibility to remove/swap content. The only good side to these inflated bundles is that you get exactly whats in there. The only way we will know what’s in 7 Sins is by waiting because we can… for the moment. IO can eventually pull a timed FOMO DLC just like others do which forces people into gambling for content they may or may not even enjoy.

@wincenworks

The burger analogy is completely unworkable and makes no sense in any way,

Explain the flaw? The burger is just a product, I chose burger as an example. We can swap it out for something else if you want? The point is that the system relies on enough people to buy into it as the prices they feel is personal value. But since the system is a group effort are factors to weigh in:

• People find paying 33% of an AAA game acceptable.
• People accept never completing their games.
• People who want to circumvent hurdles.
• People who follow the trend.

If you can find enough people with this mentality, you can disregard the rest of the people. All while trying to normalise this behaviour by releasing new bundles frequently and keep up with the Jones’.

@wincenworks

That system that was such amazingly good value that the company offering it went bankrupt?

It’s still viable.

During the Season Pass era, what game companies went bankrupt?

@wincenworks

Dude the markup at movies is way more than 1.7x

What? I’m not talking about movie prices, I’m talking about the system (I was using CoD as the reference for 1.7x).

@wincenworks

and studios want to torque down the risk as far as they can and find as many revenue streams as they can in order to mitigate their risk and prolong their returns.

Yes they do and are now placing that risk in the consumers court. Mystery content is safer than roadmaps, or you can draw parallels as I did with Rainbow Six Roadmaps. They want your money for no guarantee.

@wincenworks

Yes that’s exactly what your system means. They can either not make better profits (as you are demanding as IO Interactive) or change their products to get wider sales (which you are demanding they not do after Rainbow Six).

Or the third option, make decent quality content that appeals to the target audience to generate profit. And doesn’t look like it’s cut and paywalled. IO did it before - twice.

@wincenworks

This is also Business 101: Rockstar concludes that the presence of the songs no longer generates enough revenue to account for the expenses, so they stop paying the licenses and remove the music.

And this is why games are losing their identities in the process of these systems. Music in GTA is one of the core features that makes them unique amongst other things. Just like willing to gamble with playerbases for margin, they’re happy to rip out core characteristics if it means margins despite how much net they have.

@wincenworks

No, no, it’s in the trailer.

All 7? I only see 1 content pack advertised, the other part you’re paying for (if you buy the pack) is unknown. What we do know is reskins and an escalation. Hitman 1 and 2 give an outline of what’s in the 3rd too.

@wincenworks

See this is just outright fabrication and nonsense

How? Do you know exactly what you’ve paid for? You can give them money before the content is even disclosed. Which allows IO to tweak the content (more importantly the margins) to their desire before even announcing it, as opposed to a roadmap, promising that amount of content for X amount despite the P&L.

As for your bullet points, it all depends on if they’ve disclosed the content. Full games are typically reviewed and you can get an understanding on the contents and how long before purchase. It’s also why I don’t do streaming media subs either. RNG.

@wincenworks

It literally hinges on the idea of a system where you can spend infinitely on a game without ever accessing all the content and that you have a system of slow diminishing returns so you can get the most money out of customers via exploiting brain chemistry.

A common misunderstanding.

Content

• Maps
• Guns
• Cosmetics
• Gamemodes

Method of selling

• Yearly passes or standalone DLC
• Lootboxes
• Store bundles

Scummy tactics they add on independently

• Separation of the playerbase
• Ability to not earn the item
• Tweak rates (RNG, XP etc)
• Duplication of boxes
• Conversion rates
• P2W items
• FOMO/Time

These can all be interchangeable, nothing is stuck attached with each other (exception duplication and boxes). You’re attaching lootboxes with the negative connotations of P2W and gambling, when in fact they are separate tactics they added to the boxes for no reason but grind and profit and could easily be added to the bundles too. On the flip side, you had a route to earn items. Look at Ghost Recon Wildlands for a better example of boxes.

You can have free, earnable supply boxes that drop every 45 mins, giving no P2W but cosmetic items with no duplicates. It was just that companies chucked in all the cards which has tarnished the whole system to peoples minds and when they hear “supply drops” they think of P2W.

@wincenworks

You did in fact say that. You just called a set content DLC a lootbox.

Because it’s pretty random and vague outside the constraints of the 1 contract and unlocks. I posted the various schemes above. The lack of transparency on 7 Sins is more similar to a lootbox in terms of possible manipulation.

@wincenworks

These kind of oversimplifications and trying to demand people change their thinking to be fit within a simplified equation are not only harmful to conversation, and yourself (nothing creates social isolation quite like yelling “no, you’re wrong! I said so!” at people) but also to society in general since they open opportunities for exploitation.

@wincenworks

It’s not good for anyone. Life is more complicated than eighth grade math led you to believe.

What? Nobody is demanding anyone to change their thinking? What are you on about man? I’m trying to have a nice decent discussion with you about something that I’m passionate about and is a very good topic in todays gaming world and now you’re randomly accusing me for being “harmful to the discussion” while trying to be rude to me. Why? I fear you’re going to pull the same trick again as the last time we had a long discussion over games so this’ll be my last reply. Have a good day and God bless.

@ingrobny

I think they did when the first of Seven Deadly Sins Packs was released, I’m pretty sure it will be 7 Escalations, but I’m not so sure about this than I was about Hitman 3 compared to Hitman 1 and 2 though.

Haha yeah I had a relook and it’s definitely just the first map, unless I missed another trailer. It’s this one right?

HITMAN 3: Seven Deadly Sins - Announcement Trailer (New DLC)

[ingrobny]

@GTAJJ

Haha yeah I had a relook and it’s definitely just the first map, unless I missed another trailer. It’s this one right?

Correct, they have only been showing us the first one of the 7 Sins (packs), so it’s everybody’s guess how the 6 remaining packs would be like, but from the first, it’s pretty safe to say the rest will be the same content-wise, or is is it? The best would be telling us what the content was up front, so each one of us really had the chance to decide if it was worth the money or not, without spoiling the story (Edit) and unlocks of course .

Maybe we will learn more tomorrow (I expect it tomorrow since it’s thursday, previous Road Maps have been released on thursday’s so far this year.) when the April Road Map is out?

[GTAJJ]

@ingrobny

The best would be telling us what the content was up front, so each one of us really had the chance to decide if it was worth the money or not, without spoiling the story of course.

Absolutely, we can’t make informed decisions with our purchases with this system. Our saving grace is that we still have the ability to wait until it’s out before we purchase, but they could take that option away making us gamble. It used to be the companies pitching and proving to investors to make the gamble for the return by making good content and now it’s a system that promises nothing so companies can go “we’ll we’re going to have X amount but since we only got this amount of income, now we’ll only give them Y amount to cover.”

Transparency is key.

[wincenworks]

@GTAJJ

It’s a product that costs money to make.

If you want to engage in any sort of meaningful analysis of that - you need to look at the specifics of that and not just try to reduce everything down so it fits in your “true value” formula.

This is why people do advanced degrees in business.

@GTAJJ

It’s how they guesstimate margins.

No for margins they use running cost vs revenue averaged over periods of time.
They don’t use it for pricing products because it would be unhelpful for all the reasons outlined that you skipped over.

@GTAJJ

Here is a selection of DLC in TS2021. What we can only guess is the varying prices could factor in amount of quality/quantity of each pack and various upfront costs such as licencing.

Another reason you should never have started on this “true value” crusade.

@GTAJJ

This shows over the years, content in the season passes was enough to keep it running fine.

No it doesn’t. Those aren’t internal figures from Ubisoft. Ubisoft is a massive conglomerate with a huge portfolio of products and revenue streams.

All this shows is you don’t have your citation and you don’t think you need one because you’re convinced that you know more about business than anyone else in the world, yet you’re on this forum arguing about it instead of going out and becoming a trillionaire.

If nothing else, citing Ubisoft as evidence of the entire industry is like walking into your local take out place and accusing them of making their delivery drivers pee in bottles because of what you read about Amazon. See all that stuff I had up above about market forces, capital, etc

@GTAJJ

The thing with live services, they can cut their losses if it’s not working out.

You can do that with physical products too - that’s why there’s always a shortage whenever Nintendo makes a new gaming devices or merch that takes off it tends to create a backlog, they mitigate their risk by manufacture costs. Similarly there are countless unfinished series of games which have done the same thing by abandoning the next episode - so mitigating risk is a standard practice in business…

@GTAJJ

Don’t worry I’m with you on that

@GTAJJ

Although Vegas does have a soft spot for me.

Well either you like what they did with Vegas or it spelled the end of the Rainbow Six brand as it was established at the time - either way is fine, because at the end its just an opinion. There was never any real artistic merit to Rainbow Six - it was always propaganda puffery - just originally on a fairly unique gaming framework that fell out of popularity.

@GTAJJ

Some games are actively losing their identity due to these systems.

All games must evolve or perish. Wolfenstein 3D defined the popular perception of the brand, but it was the Vegas of the Wolfenstein series at the time. It’s identity has morphed and changed, for a while it was barely about killing Nazis (so much weird supernatural shit mixed in).

@GTAJJ

It went from tiny priced DLCs to medium to full priced season passes to now inflated content.

No. It actually started with high priced “expansion packs” that we old people used to have to buy in the “video game store”. The came in a “cardboard box” with a “disc” in them. Often you could buy “collectors editions” which included the expansion pack, and some free crap like stationary, art prints, etc.

The main reason they didn’t use the “season pass” model was they couldn’t set up a reliable method of distribution to people.

@GTAJJ

For less time though. Creating a whole new map from scratch will take longer and cost more in wages. Why would CoD dump creating maps for skins if the former has " long lasting appeal"?

Because it’s really hard to make map that has long lasting appeal, and once you reach saturation point its even harder to break in because people have exponentially higher investment in the existing maps.

@GTAJJ

It’s more of the having quantity over quality with these skins so there are a higher chance somebody will pick one up, and at those prices, pay for a lot in return.

It’s more skins are a form of social capital and expression of self in multi-player games, ergo there will always fluctuating market for skins as they can change with the fashion, the times, be topical, etc and all these things that a map cannot be.

@GTAJJ

Yet the companies are achieving more YoY.

Some are. See the article about all the studios EA has shut.

@GTAJJ

If your point was the case, they would be spending more than they’re earning. Unless your point is that the overall cost affects these inflation prices to which are giving a big return.

I was pretty clear about my point and if you can’t follow how a standard way to mitigate increased costs is to get more revenue per customer and to expand revenue streams then I don’t think you’re in a position to talk about how business works.

@GTAJJ

My point here was the cost of developing a single 3D asset is valued at the same as 2 GTAIV full expansions.

And you never addressed how nebulous that cost is.

@GTAJJ

No one is gatekeeping who should or shouldn’t use these exploitive systems.

Actually they are. Not only are people doing it, we know the names of the people doing it: Bobby Kotik, Yves Guillemot, Tim Sweeny, Andrew Wilson…

But much as homeless people trash bathrooms at shelters as a misdirected proxy gesture against the people who ruined their lives, you are writing walls of text to try to blame people for systems they’re locked out of.

@GTAJJ

Expect to never get everything in a game.

I have been gaming for thirty years and never once received “everything” in a game. That’s how creative media works.

@GTAJJ

In which is a one time job, then sold an infinite amount of times

Well if your “sales” figure is infinite then the cost-per-unit-sold is always “negligble” because any figure divided by infinity is infintesimally small. Your model really does not hold up under anything.

And it is a one time job, but it is only a tiny part of the equation. If I made an even cooler card in Blender today, I could not monetize it in the same manner. I have no game to sell it in, no server to host the game, no employees to make the game, no office for the employees to work in, etc.

@GTAJJ

But then you have companies such as Activision who lay off staff while getting billions in net and Bobby Kotick a big bonus

You’re so close to a revelation here.

@GTAJJ

IO are now adopting lootbox style content drops that can be anything they want to be, which could be impacted by the amount of initial income.

This is factually incorrect to a ridiculous extent as already covered above. I reminder you the forum is for civilized conversation and your obligation in that is to make your posts improve the conversation, not recite the same incorrect information over and over in the hopes the other person gives up.

If your argument hinges upon a DLC where the content is advertised, the content is non-variable (ie every purchaser gets the same content) and there is performance pressure attached being a “loot box” then you have lost before you started and are wasting everyone’s time.

You cannot expect a market to improve if there is no rhyme or reason behind what is labelled as what. This is the kind of thing that weakens the overall conversation and allows the tyrants above to thrive.

@GTAJJ

You have a choice:

You in fact have a vast plethora of choices not covered there: indie games, streaming services, movies, onlyfans, etc. This is how money and the market works - there are things you want and money you have, for the vast majority of us we will always have to choose between things and our choices are part of our identity.

When I go shopping for clothes, I have a choice between a suit or bunch of casual clothes. When I buy dinner I have a choice of a restaurant, a local take away or McDonalds. The same money will buy wildly different things in each.

@GTAJJ

I can buy a PS5 and Cold War for less than even getting a single seasons cosmetics.

Yes, its like… the idea is to provide a massive variety so players can use these cosmetics to distinguish and express themselves - thus spending money on the ones they intend to use and not spending money on the ones they don’t want.

It’s like this is the core as to why the loot box system you endorse is so terrible.

@GTAJJ

It’s the same system, different items. However we aren’t guaranteed much content with Hitman outside the constraints of 1 contract mission, unlocks and it’s worth £4.99. Too much flexibility to remove/swap content. The only good side to these inflated bundles is that you get exactly whats in there. The only way we will know what’s in 7 Sins is by waiting because we can… for the moment. IO can eventually pull a timed FOMO DLC just like others do which forces people into gambling for content they may or may not even enjoy.

It is the exact opposite system, as covered in my previous reply. When I receive all seven packs I will own 100% of the content. In a lot box scenario, I would only own a randomly determined quantity.

If you consider this purchase to be “gambling” then you consider literally every purchase of a console, game or other product to be gambling. Does Sony guarantee they’ll keep making dope games for the PS5? No they do not. They could cancel it tomorrow and shut down the whole PSN.

Gambling. It’s apparently what we all do whenever we buy a can of soda.

@GTAJJ

Explain the flaw?

The chief flaw is that there are so many major differences between burgers and games to the point where there is no way to discuss the differences.

Burgers are a bulk tangible item manufactured to a recipe, in a restaurant where they are constantly assembled and served by workers.
Modern games are an intangible specific item where licenses are sold and each individual game must be novel and adjust to the expectations of the time, almost no game or genre sells consistently over decades.

@GTAJJ

People find paying 33% of an AAA game acceptable.

There is no definitive measure of a AAA game so there is not way to measure 33% of one. This step relies entirely on us trust you, a person who cannot distinguish between burgers an video games, DLC and lootboxes, when you say “trust me man, they took out two thirds of the game, I can prove it because someone else made money”

@GTAJJ

People accept never completing their games.

This is extremely ambigious but whicher reasding: has been a thing since games came out.

@GTAJJ

During the Season Pass era, what game companies went bankrupt?

Tons… studios shut down all the time, games get discontinued for support all the time, same as it ever was. Same as it ever was!

@GTAJJ

Yes they do and are now placing that risk in the consumers court. Mystery content is safer than roadmaps, or you can draw parallels as I did with Rainbow Six Roadmaps. They want your money for no guarantee.

Motherfucker back in my day we had to buy games based off box art. You get instant access to trailers, to developer statements, to reviews, etc.

The only guarantee in life is death, all else is risk assessment. You are happy to dismiss the risks others have to take, so you should know you’re obligated to some yourself.

@GTAJJ

And this is why games are losing their identities in the process of these systems.

Because the link their identities (as you see it) to licensed content they do not own, will have to pay ongoing licensing for and the perception thereof will change over time!? GTA V is not “all games” dude.

@GTAJJ

All 7?

Yup. All seven are going to be kitchy, silly content packs based around the Seven Deadly Sins and I am so here for it.

You’re not here for it? Don’t buy it.

In fact, you don’t even need to think about it. Go play your risk free, 100% identity integrity maintained games that totally exist and aren’t a think you’re making up to make a DLC you don’t want look bad.

Other people’s comfort with uncertainty is not your business. They don’t come to your house and tell you what you should and shouldn’t eat.

@GTAJJ

How? Do you know exactly what you’ve paid for? You can give them money before the content is even disclosed.

Because the advertising gave me a clear indication of the general nature of the content that I would be purchasing and, as a long term customer of IO Interactive they have “brand” and “good will” with me.

Brand is a promise, I know the kind of content that IO Interactive make and so their selling something like the 7 Deadly Sins pack is a promise unto itself.
Good Will is the strength behind the promise. IO Interactive have, over the years, continually impressed and surprised me with their approach and their commitment to quality.

Both of these have been considered essential elements of business since before the terms were coined. In many products, there is also value added by an element of uncertainty. I don’t know what Pride is going to look like exactly, and I’m excited. I have let IO Interactive know buy sending them money, and now I have additional excitement that as soon as it comes out I can dive in - no fussing on if I want to buy it or not. Just play.

Other examples where uncertainty is added value:

• Tickets to shows (theatre productions, fashion shows, etc)
• Commissioned artworks
• Sports events
• Markets (Stock, FX, commodities, etc)

Only death is certain.

And, let’s take this a step even further…

…by your argument, this forum is a loot box. I pay hosting fees every month and I have no idea what people will post. Are you now proposing that I should cancel this?

@GTAJJ

Or the third option, make decent quality content that appeals to the target audience to generate profit. And doesn’t look like it’s cut and paywalled. IO did it before - twice.

Staggeringly ignorant analysis, there is a vast plethora of information available in this thread alone about why this is a ridiculous statement but here are the key points:

• Content is a collaborative effort, some types are not viable when team members have other commitments - no new maps/missions if the key staff are in meetings with MGM
• “Quality” is no guarantee of popularity or profit, particularly in a saturated market or where strong preferences have set in.
• Even when you do that you have to deal with this kind of nonsense where people who have never read a business plan scream “trust me it has a skin involved so it’s a lootbox in disguise!”
• As prices have stagnated for thirty years, the volume of sales required as climbed so the likelihood of receiving fair payout for your work diminishes. This is not unlike many, many industries that have all evolved: movies, music, video services, transport, etc.

You would know all this if you paid attention rather than just reiterated “Trust me! Ubisoft’s burger is real!”

@GTAJJ

These can all be interchangeable

No they cannot. They are no more interchangeable than the iconic apples and horses. Your statements are worthless because they always rely upon people believing your extraordinary statements with no evidence and no consideration of things already put forward.

@GTAJJ

Look at Ghost Recon Wildlands for a better example of boxes.

Literally every time you have claimed you have an example, it has shown to not be an example. Start doing the heavy lifting for yourself and do research off whatever other forum or discord you’re getting these claims you can’t support from.

Repeatedly doing this is the gish gallop - ie you make a bunch of bold claims and statements to get likes and support with the intent, not of providing information or contributing to the conversation but creating obstacles for the other person to overcome.

So no, I will not go look into why your idea about how lootboxes can be good because you haven’t addressed any of the issues and you are now falsely referring to anything you don’t want to buy as a lootbox. Nor should anyone.

@GTAJJ

What? Nobody is demanding anyone to change their thinking?

Literally all your posts in this thread are doing that. They’re restating your stance, declaring things that are easily debunked and using vague claims like “most people will say” and “my example is good, prove there’s a flaw” (after a post already proving the flaw) and glossing over your assumption that AAA games are easy to make money with (while you continue to ignore the rate at which game studios close).

@GTAJJ

I’m trying to have a nice decent discussion with you about something that I’m passionate about and is a very good topic in todays gaming world and now you’re randomly accusing me for being “harmful to the discussion” while trying to be rude to me. Why?

Because you’re not trying, you’re repeatedly stating the same things over and over. Passionate about your opinion is not the same as passionate about the topic the opinion relates to. Westbro Bapist Church was famously passionate about their stance on homosexuality but not passionate about homosexuality or any discourse surrounding it.

You should first familiarise yourself with some of the basics of business and arguing.

Based on your posts it seems likely that you are confusing cost per unit vs rate of return. Rate of return is an even more nebulous concept with video games because your initial investment can continue paying off for years afterwards.

How to Survive in Gamedev for Eleven Years Without a Hit

This was a case with HITMAN (2016) where the initial sales were disappointing but then sales picked up and their ongoing sales were enough to convince IO Interactive it was a sound investment (and would finally pay off with Hitman 3).

On top of that, the mega studios that you keep referring to and people refer to when they use a lot of other strategies to raise their return on investment. Blizzard/Activision engages is A level tax evasion.

How American Game Companies Avoid Paying Income Tax

Epic Games, Valve, EA, Ubisoft and CD Projekt Red get bigger cuts of sales of their own games on their own platforms, three of those also make hefty amounts of money by selling other people’s games… the others have such a huge portfolio going back so far they are are essentially in a similar position. They also make staggering amounts of money on merchandise,

In regards to loot boxes, aside from your absurd notion that any product you don’t want to buy is a loot box, there is the disregard for the strategies involved, you also are basing your arguments as what you and your social circle complain about rather than any sort of analysis based in research or understanding.

The Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts dedicated 47 pages to explore the many implications and things necessary to understand the concept. You’ll note that they agree with me with what a lootbox is, and that they researched and referenced meticulously. This is because the purpose of that kind of statement is to show a good basis for the claims, and provide something that contributes to everyone not just you and the people in the Discord who complain about Pay-To-Win.

Looking around you’ll find the people who research don’t talk about “watering down the game”, “losing the identity” or “pay to win” because they’re not relevant. The first two are opinions that are too nebulous to engage in conversation with since games are a creative product. The third is motivational pressure but not a particularly unique or important or sustainable one.

Your instance that there’s good loot box models doesn’t cover anything of value because its not informed by actual study of this topic, but of your own personal preference. If a lootbox system feels comfortable, that generally means you’re not noticing how they’re taking your money off you.

I covered above how cosmetics is the mostly highly exploitative market for multiplayer - you didn’t want to believe it so you ignored it and now you’re crying about how its not fair that you’re not being considered a great contributor for repeating “P2W” over and over.

The whale hunting approach, complete with the term “whale” is taken from gambling - and common strategies in gambling include:

• Fabrication of community to create social pressure on expectations
• Creating the impression everything can be obtained through playing (literally everything, you could be set for life)
• Maintaining rates to create a false sense of security (and advertising fluctuating rates)
• Creating massive catalogs to create the false impression of novelty and different outcomes (having 500 possible prizes means you have to play longer to get that 1 prize)
• Using prizes to create a social hierarchy that creates massive social pressures to spend endlessly to try to climb the ladder (every poker room that has tournaments to allow entry to WSOP and diet versions of WSOP)
• Unlimited opportunity to participate/time (24/7 slots, so there’s never a time you can’t go gamble)

They also use strategies like allowing players to have “play” chips - which gets players into the habit of playing and remembering their victories and forgetting their losses so they then overestimate their ability when they play with real money (or in the case of poker, don’t realize the dynamics change massively when its real money).

You think Maps and Cosmetics are interchangeable somehow, but only in this weird way where you realize that maps are a lot more work, and that means that they cost a lot more money so have higher “true value” but that somehow they can just be offered interchangeably. It doesn’t hold up under any scrutiny and isn’t even logically consistent.

In economics, there is a fictional being known as the rational consumer who is someone who always does their research and always purchases the best value. It’s accepted that this person is fictional and that some elements of society go against it - giving money to a homeless person for instance. Even if we accepted every element that you spit out as fact, the irrational nature of consumers is as old as the concept of consumers.

So there was never a golden age where games were just good value, and they succeeded just by being good value - marketing and alternative strategies have always played a huge part in it. Wolfenstein 3D used shareware and expansion packs. Many school games were deliberately obtuse used “hint hotlines” to get people to pay $4.50 a minute to find out the nonsensical answers and strategies they needed. There was along period where every game had an accompanying “official strategy guide” that replaced this when games became too complex to use a tip line. Games would often partner with magazines to do special promos.

Largely the bigger difference is more companies used to be involved in these things out of necessity, and many of these avenues of increasing profits have been eliminated by the Internet providing things like free wikis, let’s play videos, etc. They are also now more a thing that props up brick and mortor stores rather than studios.

One of the first games I fell in love with on my Commodore 64 was deliberately designed to incentivise you to buy the previous two games in the series (allowing you to transfer characters across games, Bioware style). That was back in 1989.

None of your arguments make any sense unless we ignore reality and just trust that you are the only person who has observed the games industry at any point, and then we also have to assume that medium studios have the same control of market forces as mega studios with their own storefronts, massive marketing budgets and pre-determined audiences because of it.

When you post nonsense, it will be called out as nonsense because if it is not then people who do not have a background to recognize it as such are at too great a risk of mistaking it for reality, then becoming angry when reality disappoints them and (following your arguments) assign blame based off convenience.

When you continue to post nonsense, as last time you did this in a thread, you will get warnings and you will be at risk at forgoing your account here because nonsense of no value will never be more important than preventing toxicity on the forum.

If you’re actually passionate about the topic, invest some time in learning how to discuss it in a civilized manner rather than just insisting you’re right.

@ingrobny

The best would be telling us what the content was up front

If they did that then they wouldn’t be able to promote the pack until all content was complete, which would mean:

• They would forgo the advantage of being able to respond to their data mapping system they’ve invested heavily in and forgone sales to access.
• They would not be able to run it as a season with reveals, it’d have to be a bulk pack and so it’d be chaotic with no thematic marketing or focused community discussion
• They would lose massive sales from people losing interest in Hitman by the time the first new DLC is released
• They would lose the benefits of sustainable cashflow since it would be an unpredictable amount of cash a long time in the future
• They would be able to devote less time to showing the benefits of each pack and thus diminish the perceived value of each and the package

This proposal only makes sense in a world where IO Interactive is not constrained by reality and can just magically choose to defy reality whenever its convenient. This kind of thing is what leads to people getting upset when their unreasonable expectations are not met and then leads to toxic behavior when people blame their upset on the developers.

I must ask you to not endorse toxicity through using over simplifications to create unreasonable expectations.

[ingrobny]

@wincenworks

They would lose massive sales from people losing interest in Hitman by the time the first new DLC is released

I’m not so sure about that, people would have concrete content to be looking forward to, now nobody knows for sure what the next 6 will be and maybe are more reluctant (just learned this word , maybe more correct then using hesitated) to pay up front for all 7?

@wincenworks

They would not be able to run it as a season with reveals

They have sort of done that already, by telling us what all 7 sins is about and with that I have almost answered my own question.

We know the sins and we have somewhat a indication on what the gameplay will be like from the first sin, since it isn’t a bonus mission, we are kinda stuck with either Elusive targets, Escalations or Featured Contracts.

[wincenworks]

@ingrobny

I’m not so sure about that, people would have concrete content to be looking forward to, now nobody knows for sure what the next 6 will be and maybe are more reluctant (just learned this word, maybe more correct then using hesitated) to pay up front for all 7?

1. No they wouldn’t because the content couldn’t be announced until its complete
2. People not knowing what the other six are is what makes it possible for them to do a special release for each
3. If this were the case season passes would literally not exist since you have vastly more information than people buying season passes upon release have

@ingrobny

They have sort of done that already

No they have not.

@ingrobny

We know the sins and we have somewhat a indication on what the gameplay will be like from the first sin, since it isn’t a bonus mission, we are kinda stuck with either Elusive targets, Escalations or Featured Contracts.

We are definitely not getting Elusive targets because that wouldn’t fit and it would take about eight seconds of thinking about how you couldn’t charge extra for an elusive target in the same model as escalations. Likewise they are not going to be featured contracts because about eight seconds of thought would bring to your attention that contracts are player created contract and do not come with escalation type rewards.

The specifics we are waiting on:

• The specific imagery/aesthetics of each
• The specifics of the rewards/features to be added
• The specifics of dialog, mission planning, etc

I must point out that literally the first point on the forum guidelines is:

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

Pretending that there isn’t a giant topic full of information up above, and topics where people are speculating on themes, aesthetics, etc just to drop in a “they should have done this thing and it’d work out 'cause I feel it would” is the opposite fo that.

[Happy_Squirrel]

Apologies for the delay in replying, life got busy and I forgot about this discussion for a while

@wincenworks

Your hypothetical was meant to illustrate the value of “quantity” but the biggest issues to value in it come from damage to the quality.

Incorrect. My hypothetical was introduced for a very specific reason: to establish a baseline upon which we could built some common ground. It was initially just a couple of sentences. I thought it would be an uncontroversial point, alas I was too optimistic. Allow me to clarify my position once again…

A huge variety of factors feed into the ‘quality’ of a game and the ‘value’ it provides to players. This is, of course, nuanced and highly subjective. From the very start of my involvement in this thread, I agreed with you that we cannot objectively determine what someone else called the “true value” of a game.

Quantity is just one of a huge number of factors which feed into an overall assessment of a game. I am absolutely not seeking to “illustrate the value of quantity”. I am not attaching any special significance to quantity as a metric. I am merely saying that, when we consider quantity in total isolation, there are observable measurements we can make and agree upon.

My hypothetical compared the real version of Hitman 3 with a hypothetical version of Hitman 3 released without the Dartmoor and Berlin locations. It sought to establish that, just within the narrow prism of a discussion about quantity, we can say that one game would contain less content that the other.

It might be helpful to introduce another example. For instance, imagine you are given the choice of 3 scoops of ice cream or 5 scoops of ice cream (with identical ingredients). I am sure you would agree that 5 scoops would represent a greater volume of ice cream than 3 scoops. However, you might very wisely point out that 5 scoops is actually far too much ice cream, and 3 scoops is the perfect amount for an enjoyable dessert. That’s absolutely fine. In fact, I would agree. We can say that 5 is objectively more than 3, whilst also acknowledging that ‘more’ does not necessarily equal ‘better’.

If you really are unable to bite the bullet on this, we can move on. My point speaks for itself at this stage.

@wincenworks

Their financial situation being “better” does not mean “invincible” or “undeserving”.

This is a strawman. At no point did I argue this.

@wincenworks

The notion that because they achieved a lot of sales early in the product cycle, means that they should not capitalize on that and try to convert primary sales to secondary sales while enthusiasm is high

Another strawman. I have never said this.

@wincenworks

Now, you’re probably frantically typing that the 42% means they’re doing great because they made lots of money in that year, but they didn’t, they made less.

Wow, a pre-emptive strawman! Again, not my argument.

@wincenworks

The proposal that the company doesn’t need to continue to find ways to generate money is ridiculous and defies basic common sense and commerce.

Yet another strawman. You would save yourself an awful lot of time if you actually responded to the point being made, rather than an assortment of strawman arguments you have imagined.

I was specifically questioning the idea that it is “gibberish” to say that IO are in a better financial position after the release of Hitman 3 than they were before the release of Hitman 3. I have not made any further assertions about the full extent of their financial security.

@wincenworks

This is not a “power imbalance”

You have misunderstood. It is, quite literally, a power imbalance - as it should be. I am not arguing against this. As a single consumer, it is right and natural that I should only have a miniscule amount of power.

@wincenworks

They are free to ignore you because it is their business

Yes, presicely. You are repeating my own point back to me.

@wincenworks

If they were obligated to listen to you that would be a power inbalance

That’s exactly my point. As I already said, my feedback in isolation is meaningless. Only if a sizable proportion of their customers share my view does that viewpoint gain any weight.

@wincenworks

It takes a lot of careful decision making and calculated risks to survive more than six months in the gaming industry, it takes tremendous skill and insight to create a product that recoups its costs in the first few weeks

I fully agree. I am in awe of what IO have achieved, particularly given the rollercoaster of the past few years. As I said before, I have been singing IO’s praises for many years now. Almost everything I have ever said about their work is overwhelmingly positive. This is a rare exception.

@wincenworks

portray yourself as the victim

At no point have I made any claim of victimhood. Given your fondness to talk of ‘charitability’, you do seem to have an unfortunate habit of making incredibly uncharitable assumptions. This causes you to frequently misunderstand the point at hand, so you end up writing lengthy rebuttals of strawman arguments which have not actually been made.

[wincenworks]

@Happy_Squirrel

My hypothetical was introduced for a very specific reason: to establish a baseline upon which we could built some common ground.

This would be more credible if it had some sort of common ground compromise with it - rather than you create a hypothetical and then respond to all criticism of it with condescending snark. It doesn’t really help build a common ground.

What would be even more helpful is to talk about reality - rather than pre-loaded hypotheticals that, by eliminating all nuance and relevance, lead to only one possible outcome. Then posting accusations when its pointed out.

@Happy_Squirrel

My hypothetical compared the real version of Hitman 3 with a hypothetical version of Hitman 3 released without the Dartmoor and Berlin locations.

And it was pointed out this is non-functional because there are simply too many aspects of the two levels that play into the overall product. You are continuing to claim you understand this, but also that it isn’t real.

Likewise, the ice cream idea is so far removed it is impossible to parse in a meaningful terms. It also doesn’t do anything to address any of the issues of contention.

It is objectively true that, all other factors being equal, receiving 6 of something x price is twice as good value as receiving 3 for the same price. That however, has nothing to do with anything here because there is no standard unit. Hitman levels, escalations, special missions etc are not standardized and are not created in isolation - this is where it falls apart.

As I mentioned, this exact same type of comparison was rampant on the forum during Absolution where people wanted to insist it was bad because the average map size was small compared to Blood Money and Silent Assassin. Pointing out that a lot of those levels was simple empty space simply resulted in condescending insults. Sound familiar?

If you are confident enough you want to argue this with the kind of arrogance you have, you should be able to do so using the actual matters at hand and not unhelpful analogies.

@Happy_Squirrel

As I already said, my feedback in isolation is meaningless. Only if a sizable proportion of their customers share my view does that viewpoint gain any weight.

This is reliable upon mob mentality over reason - which is why it is not welcome on this forum.

Mobs of customers are rarely actually helpful because their feedback is not useful or actionable. Ten thousand reports of a known bug does not add any value, it just wastes the time of the person compiling the information.

Quality feedback, from singular, well informed users can be exceptionally valuable - which is why IO Interactive invited particular members to participate in the closed alpha of HITMAN 2016. It’s why video game companies hire consultants, and its why specialist positions exist - quality information is invaluable - absurd non-information has zero value and that means no matter how many times you multiple it - its still zero.

“This isn’t enough scoops of ice cream for what I’m paying.” isn’t reliable, or useful feedback to anyone.

Even worse is when combined with this fixation on “I don’t think they did much work…” and “…this means they’re not going to make quality…” which is all hinges on these assumptions that people are desperate to avoid having challenged. Rather this is all about creating an “us vs them” scenario with nebulous goals and nebulous means of achieving them behind “agree with me”.

@Happy_Squirrel

Given your fondness to talk of ‘charitability’, you do seem to have an unfortunate habit of making incredibly uncharitable assumptions.

That you do not understand the information and are falling into common misunderstandings is the charitable explanation - because they uncharitable reading is that you understand these factors and, knowing how unworkable it is, demand they comply with your demands for approval anyway.

The uncharitable approach leads to this being not a person refusing to learn how complicated the games market is because it’s hard - but a person actively misrepresenting as a means to make it a wedge issue in a community, and thus afford them social power by declaring the requirements to be in the “us” camp. Someone who feels that by way of liking a thing, they (not the people who worked on its creation) now own the thing and should be seen as the authority.

This is a tiresome routine that, on this forum, dates back at least as far the creation of the Wish List category pending the arrival of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, where a member who would later get banned of posting abuse and gifs of himself jerking off ranted about how he was a huge fan of the series but no good could come of people “offering their work for free” to IO Interactive. This was immediately followed by people insisting that it being available on console meant the game was ruined and would be a generic shooter in no time.

This kind of circular logic of begging the question, then immediately jumping to a narrative about how you have to be allowed to announce your premise as fact, is nothing new and is most obviously demonstrated in various conspiracy theory groups.

In Search Of A Flat Earth

Much like astrophysics and Euclidian geometry, games development and the games industry is complicated - so complicated and the lack of simple answers frustrates many people. This frustration has been widely exploited by people who yell on YouTube and much worse people - partially because the “our side first, facts maybe” approach is very compatible with all kinds of unpleasant ideologies.

So in order to mitigate the number of people who have weird reactionary meltdowns against me, the staff and the community, I am not interested in feeding them a narrative where they’re right and all the matters is they recruit more people to support them while insulting anyone who won’t join up.

So, I would strongly suggest that you stop operating on this idea of you don’t need to make your “feedback” meaningful because all that matters is support and focus on making it meaningful by the value of its content. Not only is it better for the community, its better for you to practice critical thinking, communicating and persuasiveness.

So, rather than trying to compare it to ice cream, consider the following summary response to your earlier “conclusions”.

@Happy_Squirrel

The real tragedy is that the (potential) success of lower-effort DLC such as Seven Deadly Sins will directly serve as an obstacle to the production of richer content. After all, why would they bother?

The DLC’s are consistent with previous DLC that provided costumes (and also in Absolution, where they wanted you to pay for cross promotion) largely because costume type DLC fits into the business model by allowing the people who create the DLC to justify their salaries while the key staff involved in creating new products work on preproduction and foundational work.

They are priced this way because they have much lower projected sales since the market for them excludes the majority of players - who have moved on to the next game or gone back to the MMO by the time the DLC is available, so they operate in a different pricing model due to the diminished market and the appeal of the content as a symbol of fandom.

The prices are also largely set by the video game market and IO Interactive’s experience with seeing how different types of DLC sell in proportion to the original product. So, as with the last issue that you were keen for people to be mad online about - there is a lot of information we just don’t have and its more complicated than we can know.

On top of all that, other types of DLC such as missions, or new maps is that since this is the last game in the series (for the foreseeable future) they will not get second or third chances to sell like they did with the first two games. That’s before you factor in the complications with the approach to “volume” or “work done” in a product like this (to say nothing of how the DLC may improve the value of the core product in other ways - like making a fun game of club people for money).

So much more relevant than the idea of chopping middle chapters out of a book or buying more ice cream than you need.

[scoobywizard]

@flightsin

by having each sin consist of just a single escalation set on an existing map with some random assets scattered around the gaff

IOI has already stated they won’t be creating new maps, and having random assets being scattered around the map is sort of the point, enforcing the “lazy” vibe of the level. Sloth as also introduced a new complication challenging many players on the game.

@flightsin

by presenting what is essentially an upscale featured contract and some item reskins in such a grandiose way and generally doing whatever the hell they want regardless of player feedback;

While most of the items for the past 2 sins have been reskins, the sloth sin provided 2 new items, one having a new feature, and a new SMG that has a new sound effect, can be used for contracts, and it now being used more than the Dax X2 Covert.

@flightsin

and of course, greedy , by charging us $30 for this uninspired dross.

30 dollars for soon-to-be basically bonus missions, new unlocks, suits is almost a steal.

[Urben]

You are free to question your decision to buy this DLC, but it is not a fitting reaction to call IO greedy and lazy just to add some puns to your post.

IO did not really state what this pack will include. And while I think there are valid reasons they did not, you cannot blame them for your own expectations they never confirmed.

If you want to continue to talk about the price of this DLC, I moved your post into this thread with many existing and worth-to-read replies. I suggest getting a good impression what already has been said and think if you can add something new to the discussion while not being hostile.

[flightsin]

I originally replied to the Sloth thread because I was reacting to the recently released content. Why I got punted into this 2 month old thread and then subsequently flagged as “inappropriate”, I’m not sure. Maybe my post adds no value to the discussion going on here, but then again I’m not the one who moved it…

And although it might be a somewhat blunt form of criticism, I’m also not sure which part of my post you consider “hostile”.

[Khakiasp]

@flightsin

When $12 would get you, say, Mumbai–an entire new map. See what the problem is?

first off, mumbai was in the base-game, second off, the dlc maps we did get in hitman 2 were significantly smaller then most hitman 2 maps (not a bad thing but dont make comparisons that hitman 2 dlc was mumbai sized when it was more equivalent to a paris or bangkok).

[Urben]

@flightsin

Why I got punted into this 2 month old thread

Because your post is not relevant to the Sloth DLC in specific. Instead you seem to have the need to express why the 7 Sins Pack is badly priced.

The intention for this thread is this one here:

HITMAN 3: Seven Deadly Sins (NEW DLC)

I have made a new thread for discussing the theoretical economics of DLC packs and video game studios, by pruning out a over 200 posts from this one. I strongly encourage anyone who wants to talk about the price and the buying of DLC in macro terms to post there (obviously your opinion on if you think you’re going to buy it etc can still stay in this thread).

---

@flightsin

then subsequently flagged as “inappropriate”

Yes, because:

@Urben

You are free to question your decision to buy this DLC, but it is not a fitting reaction to call IO greedy and lazy just to add some puns to your post.

---

@flightsin

And although it might be a somewhat blunt form of criticism, I’m also not sure which part of my post you consider “hostile”.

Please read my post again, especially the part I just quoted.

[flightsin]

@Khakiasp

first off, mumbai was in the base-game

No, it’s not, at least not on Steam. Each map is its own DLC, which you can buy separately or in a bundle called the “base game”.

@Khakiasp

the dlc maps we did get in hitman 2 were significantly smaller then most hitman 2 maps

Haven is pretty much a normal sized map, certainly not “significantly smaller”.

[Ibbe]

@flightsin

@Khakiasp

first off, mumbai was in the base-game

No, it’s not, at least not on Steam. Each map is its own DLC, which you can buy separately or in a bundle called the “base game”.

That’s incorrect. None of the locations from the Hitman 2 Standard Edition or Gold Edition can be purchased seperately.
Mumbai is therefore tied to the two editions, so it’s not a DLC that you can purchase outside of the main game.

[flightsin]

@Urben

Please read my post again, especially the part I just quoted.

Well, ok, but what if I feel that IOI is being lazy with this DLC? Am I not allowed to express that opinion here?

[Khakiasp]

@flightsin

Haven is pretty much a normal sized map, certainly not “significantly smaller”.

yea it has a very good way of masking itself from being small, but when you compare it to other maps, especially hitman 2 ones its on the smaller side right next to whittleton creek and half of colorado.

[Mini]

There is a difference with calling them lazy or greedy.

[flightsin]

@Ibbe

That’s incorrect. None of the locations from the Hitman 2 Standard Edition or Gold Edition can be purchased seperately.

Had to look it up but I stand corrected.

They’re listed as separate DLC with their own prices (here: Welcome to Steam), so I assumed you could buy them separately. But it looks like you can’t.

[Urben]

@flightsin

Well, ok, but what if I feel that IOI is being lazy with this DLC? Am I not allowed to express that opinion here?

You are allowed and encouraged to engage in civil discussions. This includes:

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people . Please avoid:

• Name-calling
• Ad hominem attacks
• Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
• Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.