The Future of Fighting Games and the Problems of DLC


            As a kid, I grew up playing fighting games. I grew up on games like Soulcalibur II, Super Smash Bros. Melee, the Dragon Ball Z Budokai series, the Naruto Ninja games, and the  arcade classic Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. There’s a ton of fighting games I played as a kid, these are only the tip of the iceberg of what I played. In each new installment in fighting franchises I always looked forward to seeing new rosters of characters and the surprises of who would be the unlockable characters in the games.

            Nowadays, fighting games hardly have unlockables, they hardly even have unlockable characters who aren’t gated by DLC. The new Super Smash Bros. that came out on the 3DS and the Wii U greatly pleased me that it had unlockables and unlockable characters, but then there came DLC characters. The difference with this was, Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the Smash Bros. series was explicitly against DLC, but caved into fan demands who wanted to see X character in the game. DLC characters were not planned during the development process of the game like most DLC characters are in current fighting games. They were built from the ground up after release due to demand. That’s how DLC characters in fighting games should be handled.
 
Masahiro Sakurai, Lead Developer of Super Smash Bros.

            Now, you have games that are months out and are already teasing DLC characters you can buy, before the game is even released. Injustice 2 is the culprit I will be talking about. I hopped on to the PSN store to check out the PSN Flash Sale, and this was what I found on the front page.




            Injustice 2 is slated to be released on May 16, of 2017, and currently has plenty of development time for the team to go ahead and put DLC characters into the core game as unlockables at launch. They could even push back the release date, but that won’t happen because it’s a business. They know people will buy the already existing Injustice 2 Ultimate Edition which comes with a glorified season pass saying you get 9 DLC characters, and if you pre-order you get Darkseid as an exclusive character for pre-ordering. Really? Like seriously, is this what fighting games have become? I want more characters in a game, but now I have to pay money to get them later on after release? That is so wrong. Remember the season pass for the original Injustice? Yeah, I don’t think anyone was asking for Scorpion when they paid for that pass.

            I’ll tell you what people wanted though, when they asked for DLC in Super Smash Bros.  They wanted Bayonetta. There even was a poll for people to vote what character they would like to see in the new Smash Bros. as a DLC character if it was possible though licensing. The results of the poll were, Bayonetta.



            Whether or not Nintendo originally wanted DLC characters in the game in the first place, it was all about how it was handled and presented to the audience and that was performed with much tact and respectfully done to please their audience. With Injustice 2 you are already being told that so many characters are going to be gate by DLC, 9 with Ultimate edition and 1 as a pre-order bonus. Bayonetta should be the future of how DLC characters in fighting games should be handled and implemented into the game.




            This is how the video game industry works now, and one of my favorite video game genres is one of the biggest problems with it. It is disgusting, and lacks the pure joy and feeling of accomplishment when you finally unlocked that one character you wanted. Whether it had been from pure accident or hard work there was always this satisfaction of finally accomplishing something in the game. Now, there’s a tedious dissatisfaction when you have to pull your wallet up for that one character you wished you could get in the game instead of having to pay more.

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