The Impact Factor

DLCvolve: Evolve, Confusing & Pricy DLC, and Controversy

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Abstract: Evolve, an asymmetrical competitive first person shooter by Turtle Rock Studios, was one of my most anticipated titles for 2015 for over a year leading up to its release. My love for science fiction and monsters, coupled with an appreciation for Evolve’s innovative take on multiplayer initially had me hooked. Over time, as my gaming priorities changed so too did my interest in Evolve. A confusing content distribution scheme coupled with steep pricing ignited outrage in the video game community, and snuffed out any of my remaining interest in purchasing the game. As anger grew, misinformation spread. Evolve’s DLC controversy is representative of the large problems surrounding the video game industry, especially the need for controversy itself, and serves as a lesson for future releases.

For over a year I was excited to try out Evolve. Things changed. But first, a bit of background. Evolve is a competitive first person shooter made by Turtle Rock Studios—the same people who made Left for Dead 1 and 2. Evolve’s biggest selling point was its novel approach to multiplayer. Matches in Evolve are asymmetrical, featuring 4 players pitted against 1. Nearly every competitive game features an even number of combatants on either side. For instance, fighting games are usually 1v1 or 2v2, many competitive shooters are 6v6, and so on. In Evolve, you choose one of two sides: hunters or the monster. The hunters are a team of 4 people whose primary objective is to trap and kill the monsters roaming around planet Shear. The monster is 1 player, whose goal is to feed on the fauna of Shear to grow bigger and evolve, gaining the strength needed to defeat the team of hunters. Within the course of a standard game, the hunters will attempt to quickly find and kill the monster before he grows too powerful, and the monster will attempt to hide and feed until he reaches his final evolution (and then kill the players). Games therefore (should) end up as an action packed tug-of-war between the hunters and monster, resulting in brutal clashes, tense moments of combat, and satisfying victories. And I was excited.

Evolve sold me on its premise. For one thing, I am a total sucker for Sci-Fi settings and monsters of any kind. I grew up reading Heinlein, Asimov and Bradbury as a kid, and watching Star Trek and Babylon 5 on tv. I could not, and still cannot, get enough science fiction. And I think I like monsters even more. I naturally developed a passion for horror movies, and have spent a lot of time educating myself on the genre. Monsters can be amazing: they exude both terror and creativity, and are often a highlight of the media in which they are featured. Particular favorites are the Alien xenomorph, the creature from Cloverfield, and essentially everything from The Mist. Naturally, when I heard about Evolve’s premise: space hunters fighting against giant monsters/aliens, I was all in. I was also intrigued by the asymmetrical element of the multiplayer. Evolve was doing something new, at least to me, and I gave it the respect that its innovative approach demanded. I envisioned the tense battles in the jungles of Shear, sneaking around as the burly Goliath monster waiting to destroy my foes. The asymmetrical gameplay means Evolve is both a competitive and co-operative multiplayer, and each fight comes across like a boss battle. All of that sounded great, especially the last part. I’m a huge proponent of boss fights (when done well), but that is for another article at another time. Finally, I got caught up in the marketing hype for the game. Evolve was prominently featured at the biggest gaming events leading up to its release, from E3 to PAX and beyond. Touted as a seminal and revolutionary experience, Evolve gobbled up the headlines and took home many convention awards. To sum all of this up, Evolve was a big deal: to me, to the gaming press, and to the market.

Evolve's monsters look great and seem to be a blast to play.

Over time, though, my interest in Evolve began to wane. Initially, this loss of interest was not the fault of Evolve or its publisher, 2K. First, I gradually moved away from multiplayer experiences from the time I first heard about Evolve. Because I do not play with any friends, online experiences are often lonely and have the tendency to get dull quickly. Further, I often get overly concerned with the incremental progression that is characteristic of those games, which causes me to neglect playing other titles in hopes to rank up just one more time. Playing a reward-based multiplayer game without making much progress irks the completionist side of me, so I try to avoid that frustration. More importantly, though, I have been craving diversity in my gaming experiences. I can only play so many first person shooters in a given year without fatigue. I like to switch between games like the story-driven virtual novels Telltale makes, to pure platforming experiences in Rayman Legends, to the beat-‘em-up metroidvanias like Apotheon. As we moved further into 2015, more and more games popped up that I was interested in playing. I still want to pick up console games like Life is Strange, Super Mega Baseball and Hand of Fate, and have an ever-growing backlog of titles on other platforms like Kentucky Route Zero and Risk of Rain. And finally, many of the games I purchase these days are weeks or months after release, as a combination of wanting a cheaper price and finding the time to play. Online multiplayer centric games like Evolve pose a serious problem with this acquisition method, though. Evolve relies entirely upon an active online community to make the game playable & enjoyable. Many competitive online games only have a highly active community for a month or two following release—and the small pool of players that are leftover after that period are usually quite skilled, making it even tougher for a new player to jump in. A month of two before Evolve’s release, I was on the fence. And then the downloadable content (DLC) fiasco happened.

When you need a spreadsheet to figure out where to get
all the DLC, something is wrong.

My interest in Evolve hit is nadir when DLC talk for the game started making its way through gaming news outlets. Essentially all AAA big-budget releases these days have DLC, and are announced prior to release, so I was not shocked when Turtle Rock Studios started talking additional content. What stood out about Evolve’s DLC plans, however, was the sheer quantity that was announced. Everything from player skins, monster skins, new hunters and new monsters were announced to be in the works. All of this is fine, but with so much planned, questions arise about whether or not the content could have been released with the game at launch. To make matters worse, this content was not cheap. 2K/Turtle Rock Studios were charging $25 for a season pass, and $15 for a new monster. The big annoyance here was that a great deal of content was not covered in the season pass, demanding users pay even more money to get all the released content. If all that was not bad enough, how to obtain all the DLC was downright confusing. Exclusive DLC was spread between special editions, console specific versions, pre-orders, season passes, etc. Even as someone like myself who follows gaming news closely, I had no clue how to get each piece of content. To show you just how complicated it is, Reddit user AirPhorce compiled a list of all DLC and how to get it. Not so clear, right? This kind of DLC rubs me, and many others, the wrong way. It comes off as exploitative and underhanded. It left a lot of people confused, and even more pissed off. The backlash was so bad creative director Phil Robb did an interview attempting to defend the DLC plans. What resulted was controversy.

Pricing was the main issue fueling the Evolve DLC controversy. As more and more people and outlets began to weigh in on the issue, a pronounced proliferation of misinformation occurred. Outrage, in general, misconstrues facts. Several sites posted articles adding up how much it would cost to purchase all the Evolve DLC, and emphasizing how much of that was not covered by the season pass. Going through each and every piece of content you could purchase looked bad for Evolve, and naturally the vitriol towards the game only grew. Everyone wanted in on this juicy story—nearly every site I frequent had an article covering the subject. Controversial stories get a lot of clicks, and clicks mean money. Now, I don’t normally fault gaming sites for running stories like these. They are important, and you need money to keep a website afloat. What bothered me, though, was the pricing breakdown that made its ways across all the sites was wrong. The number that stuck was $136. For this amount, you could obtain all of Evolve’s downloadable extras. As many commenters pointed out, however, this number included overlapping DLC packages, including duplicate prices for the same piece of content. When broken down correctly, what you get is as follows (credit to Reddit):

“The $1.99 and $2.99 items are individual hunter weapon and monster skins, respectively. The $4.99 and $6.99 items are weapon skin packs, and monster skin packs (of the items you could also buy individually). So the actual cost to get all the skins is the total cost of the packs, or $60.89. Less than half the amount in the headline.”

As it stands now, none of the articles I read have corrected their false cost assessment. That is probably for a number of reasons, but one those is this industry’s need for controversy. Everyone loves to be mad; if nothing else, it gives people something to talk about. Week to week there is something new the gaming community at large is enraged about. The week of writing this, everyone was angry that The Order: 1886 was too short. This week, and nearly every week, some new outrage spreads throughout the Hearthstone community. Before that, everyone was up in arms about Evolve. And before that, controversy over framerates, release delays, exclusive titles for the consoles: the list goes on and on. Heated topics make for great articles too, and with each controversy comes an onslaught of opinions and reports, whether it is journalists or YouTube personalities. All of this hubbub comes at the expensive of facts. The stories get so aggrandized over time, like with Evolve DLC, that misinformation can spread rampantly. I take issue with this whole outrage cycle, but misconstruing the real story irks me even further. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any great solutions to stopping this phenomenon. I am not even sure anyone wants it to stop, to be honest. Gaming sites profit from the traffic and, for good or bad, certain games can gobble up entire news cycles. I would be curious to see if there are any statistics on how Evolve sold compared to expectations, and whether or not analysts attribute any impact to the DLC controversy. I can image it could have impacted the sales in either direction.

Reviews are good and players seem to be enjoying Evolve. Will there
be any lasting effects of the DLC controversy?

In the end, I probably will not be picking up Evolve. Unlike many, though, the main determinate is not the DLC fiasco, but a natural loss of interest. Evolve’s release represents so much that is happening in the gaming industry today though: delayed releases, launch DLC, “overpriced” content releases, the exponential growth of gaming controversies, and so much more. At the very least, Evolve gave me something to think and write about. For that, I am grateful.