Paige FTW: My Kingdom For Some DLC
Heralded strategy franchise Civilization will see a big expansion in February in Civilization VI: Rise and Fall, which promises new additions like governors, city loyalty, Dark Ages, stronger alliances, world emergencies and more. It all sounds very fun and complex and kind of overwhelming.
Well, to hype myself up, I revisited Civ VI and, well, I seem to have forgotten in the intervening months that I am absolute garbage at this game.
I couldn’t keep my cities happy. I could barely produce enough workers to keep the capital fed whilst other nations, bursting with cities, started besieging me to death (Gordo is a bad neighbor, man). I even started lagging in science.
So I did what any logical person would, after my third failed attempt to get a civilization off the ground: I went back to Civilization V.
Two expansions since I had last played the title — Gods & Kings and Brave New World — meant that the game I was returning to wasn’t the one I had left. It’s been marvelous to be back, but I’ll admit I’m a little frustrated with this expansion model of game release.
It’s one thing to pay for additional story content, or extra costumes or weapons or something. But it always feels fishy to me to pay for DLC that fundamentally changes how the game’s very systems work. With Civilization’s expansions, I’m not just buying additional world leaders or specific scenarios (as the company also sells), but heavy-handed revisions of the gameplay itself.
I waited until Civ V’s expansions were on sale to buy them, but I otherwise would have been expected to spend something like $100 to get them full price. And that just feels weird and exploitative to me, even if I also acknowledge that I have very happily spent 108 hours playing Civ V thus far and would have gotten my full money’s worth either way.
Where do we draw the line? Should the base price of a game be more expensive? Should we accept that DLC is just the way forward?
We’ll be discussing the DLC question a lot in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
