Obsidian Boss: Online Pass Is Not The Solution, Good Games Are


In an attempt to put the brakes on the pre-owned market, there seems to be an increasing trend towards concepts like the online pass, or game content that’s only accessible via new purchases. Makes sense for publishers, but not necessarily for consumers. Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart believes there’s another way — makes games so compelling that they want to keep a hold of them, instead of trading them in. Crazy, right?

“[O]ne of the recent issues is not putting the full game in the package and requiring downloadable content to move on,” said Urquhart. “Also, including DLC in the package that will have to be repurchased for secondhand buyers. I think you have to go in and forget those gimmicks, and say, ‘How do I make them want to keep the game on the shelf?’ I think each genre has a way to do it. Battlefield and Call of Duty have it in multiplayer with maps, rankings, leveling up, and unlocks. There are different things, but the idea is making people feel, ‘I want to keep on playing it.’”

Urquhart believes that DLC has a place, but not necessarily as an unlock that’s already on the disc you just purchased.

“If I play Fallout: New Vegas for 50 hours, but there are all these other quests, and there’s this whole other area I didn’t go to, and online there are people talking about all these things that you could have done all these different ways, I’ll feel like ‘Wow, I could play this game again,’ because there is all this stuff I didn’t get,” he explains. “And knowing that, publishers announce DLC plans the day the game comes out. And now, as a player who hasn’t experienced everything yet, I know there are these new stories, and I’m going to be able to level up my character and get better stuff, be more of a hero. The game is going to go back on my shelf, not back to GameStop.”

Obsidian on the right way to fight used game sales [Gamespot]


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