Now to me personally the term unlockable means two very different things. First off you’ve got the kind for the obsessive player, where you complete some challenge or series of challenges to get a cool piece of armour or just some decorative item. This is pretty much how MMOs keep players coming back again and again, but it’s clearly present in almost every game. It’s a pretty basic progression mechanic to make you feel like your actually getting something for moving forwards in the game.
The other kind that we’ve only really seen in this generation of console gaming is paid unlockables. In general I’d say these are microtransactions, where you pay for a new car, gun or costume. These are quite clearly a very different beast to unlocks earned from simply playing the game, and one that are open to a lot more debate over whether or not they’re a good thing.
However there is, of course, a discussion to be had about whether unlocks through play are a good thing before we even get to paid unlocks. For me it depends how vital the unlock is. For example I loved going through all the Lairs of Romulus in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood to get the Brutus Armour, but you could easily finish the games main storyline without unlocking the armour.
In contrast to this you can look at unlockables like cars or courses where not being able to unlock them can be detrimental to your enjoyment of the game. In particular I would be extremely annoyed if I wanted to play St. Andrews golf course, but I wasn’t able to get far enough into the game to unlock the course then I’d probably feel pretty dissatisfied with the game. Being punished for my poor virtual golfing just isn’t fun.
Developers and publishers are now trying to resolve this by adding the paid unlock model to play unlocks. Of course I don’t feel that paying is the ideal solution, particularly given the days of cheat codes are hardly in the distant past.
However, whilst I’m not necessarily in favour of paying to unlock things that are already in the game, I’m perfectly for paying for unlocks of items on the disc but not in the game. Why? Well if something is worth paying for as DLC then I think it’s worth paying for as a simple unlock code. This is purely because when developers put it on the disc it’s budgeted for by assuming people will pay for it, in exactly the same way that the business case for downloadable content is made. If it costs the developer the same the make why should it matter the form of delivery?
With my thoughts on the matter out of the way, lets hear your opinion. Do you like games that give you unlocks? Is it ok to pay for content already in the game? What about unlocking new content on the disc?
Mr-Flame-Head
in super street fighter 4 all the characters are unlocked from the start and as such im not as into it as i thought i would be, purely because theres no sense of achievement when theres no characters to unlock though i guess thats why we have trophies these days
lenn117
unlocks to me are marmite…sometimes they can be good and sometimes they can be horrible
cam_manutd
Paying for offline unlockable stuff…fine…but for unlock all multiplayer stuff to create a huge imbalance? Developers reward players for ploughing more money into their games instead of hours which should be the whole point of multiplayer….
Dange
I am against paying for new costumes/skins/cars etc in a game. freebees are all well and good, also I will happily pay for DLC if it adds something substantial and is of good value.
With regards to unlock keys, I hate the idea of publishers intentionally holding content back from the users, I like a game to feel complete and it just feels wrong.
A £40 game should contain everything on the disc and available to the user.
And whatever happened to cheat codes! they were always free before this generation, now you have to buy skins/unlocks etc!….. no thanks! I vote with my money!!