Thursday, March 31, 2011

Tiger Woods 12

Over the last few years, I've written about how the state of gaming has discouraged me. It seems like we get less and less, but we pay more and more.

I'm not talking about indie games. Those are still stellar. High-profile, big publisher games, though, seem to have their hand out every fifteen seconds, wanting more money from us.

I've also written in the past about the decision by EA to gut the course creator tool in the Tiger Woods series, a tool which had enabled fans of the game to create their own courses, some of which were more well-designed and faithful to the original than the stock courses.

Gutted, of course, because if the players created their own courses, EA wouldn't have anything more to sell once the game was purchased.

This is how far we've come. Tiger Woods 12 for the 360 ships with 16 courses. $59 for 16 courses. In addition, there are an additional 18 courses (in two separate packs) available for purchase as DLC.

Total cost of the two packs? $50. Total cost of Tiger Woods 12 with all 34 courses? $110.

Seriously, on what planet is that supposed to make sense?

Yes, I know--licensing costs money, course creation costs money, blah blah blah. Of course it does, and that's why you release a version of the course creation tool used by the developers so that dedicated hobbyists can create their own courses.

Problem solved!

So instead of EA making $60 from me, I'm going to get the game from Gamefly, take a look, see that the putting stroke isn't fixed (seriously--how many years have the CPU players been talking a backswing almost up to their waist for a one-foot putt?), and send it back.

I'd happily pay $5 for DLC that would fix that shit.

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