When Did "Season Pass" Come to mean "We'll give you the DLC"?

[LibraryOgre]

Kinda what it says on the tin. When did that start? Why did that start?

[Antonok]

The concept of a season pass/ticket has been around for long time (since the late 1800s/early 1900s) in many, many different fields. In video games, they've been around for almost a decade now? I remember one of the Mortal Kombat games having it on the 360 back in 2010/2011.

As for the why? Probably the same reason for all the other variations and forms of it. Get money up front for a vague promise of a future payout.

[warty goblin]

What is, I think, at least somewhat newer is games getting more than one "season" of DLC. Probably part of games' continuing digestion by the live services model.

[KillianHawkeye]

I think I first encountered "Season Pass" for games back with Telltale Games' The Walking Dead series on the Xbox 360. They gave out the first episode for free, but the remaining four episodes cost money and came out on a specified schedule. For reference, that game came out in 2012.

That's pretty much the requirement for Season Pass DLCs, btw. That terminology is reserved for whenever a company wants people to know that it has several DLCs planned out for release over a gradual period of time. The other requirement is that it's announced in advance rather than being done after the fact. A season pass is a promise of extra content to come, not merely a deal on packaging the DLCs that have come out for a game. And it doesn't necessarily include all of a game's DLC. But as a benefit for acting early, it's typically cheaper than buying everything individually.

Civilization VI never had a season pass until this year because 2K Games never committed to announcing several DLCs over a long period of time before now. It's likely because they had some ideas for minor DLCs to release, but they're probably done doing big game expansions at this point.

[GloatingSwine]

As far as I recall, that is always what it has meant in gaming.

IIRC the first game to use the phrase "season pass" was LA Noire, because it was a singleplayer only game and couldn't do the trick all the others were doing at the time which was to charge $10 extra if you bought the game second hand.

[Inarius]

Part of the reason for adding season passes is to get more people to buy DLC they probably never would buy in the first place. DLC typically sells best within the first 3 months of release and there's a pretty huge backlash over day 1 dlc so they release the season pass at launch to capitalize on the post launch excitement even though players will probably never play it long enough for the dlc to matter.

[Renegade Paladin]

The only one I've ever paid for is the Halo Master Chief Collection, and I fully intend to play all of them.

[The_Jackal]

Kinda what it says on the tin. When did that start? Why did that start?

2011. As for why, because it's the middle ground between subscription fees (which are unpopular) and maximizing revenue (which is popular if you're a game publisher). As game production values get higher and higher, the developers are investing more and more money into making them, which means they need ways to squeeze more and more money out of the investment in order to remain competitive (when I say competitive, I mean competitive for being a attractive investment for the capital of a publisher). So, where an old-school game might have a base game and a couple of expansion packs in which the customer gets everything, now you'll get the base game, a couple of expansion packs, and a season pass, and then a bunch of cosmetic content which even the season pass owners are unlikely to obtain without deep investment into the game, time wise, or shelling out cash. Either outcome works for the publisher, an underpopulated game will quickly fold, and the effort spent obtaining stuff in game will make you more likely to shell out for future paid content.

[Rodin]

2011. As for why, because it's the middle ground between subscription fees (which are unpopular) and maximizing revenue (which is popular if you're a game publisher). As game production values get higher and higher, the developers are investing more and more money into making them, which means they need ways to squeeze more and more money out of the investment in order to remain competitive (when I say competitive, I mean competitive for being a attractive investment for the capital of a publisher). So, where an old-school game might have a base game and a couple of expansion packs in which the customer gets everything, now you'll get the base game, a couple of expansion packs, and a season pass, and then a bunch of cosmetic content which even the season pass owners are unlikely to obtain without deep investment into the game, time wise, or shelling out cash. Either outcome works for the publisher, an underpopulated game will quickly fold, and the effort spent obtaining stuff in game will make you more likely to shell out for future paid content.

My recent spate of retro-gaming as given me new perspective on the old "expansion pack" model. The shift to DLC may well be a more positive experience.

Diablo's expansion pack Hellfire was undertaken by a 3rd party developer. One new character, two new areas. No new story to speak of. $30 for that.

Warcraft II had 2 new campaigns, but it had no new units or gameplay changes. Again, $30.

The same is true of Command & Conquer - new campaign, but no new units.

When you look at the value provided by modern DLC, it's actually much higher in most cases. Especially since you can pick and choose what you want.

[The_Jackal]

My recent spate of retro-gaming as given me new perspective on the old "expansion pack" model. The shift to DLC may well be a more positive experience.

Diablo's expansion pack Hellfire was undertaken by a 3rd party developer. One new character, two new areas. No new story to speak of. $30 for that.

Warcraft II had 2 new campaigns, but it had no new units or gameplay changes. Again, $30.

The same is true of Command & Conquer - new campaign, but no new units.

When you look at the value provided by modern DLC, it's actually much higher in most cases. Especially since you can pick and choose what you want.

Yes, I don't have a problem with the DLC model, like Season passes and the like. Most are actually pretty decent, and if a game is going to have high production values, they need money to pay for it. I'm actually much more conflicted about F2P, which effectively favors people with no money and lots of time and people with lots of money and little sense, and comes at the expense of the designers injecting some variety of drudgery or rate-limiting of rewards to drive people to crack open their wallets. These features aren't inalienable to the mechanism of a F2P game, but I think far too many games are unable to combine compelling, fun content with a cash shop.

My favorite example is Star Trek Online, which is a F2P game with an intensely tedious progression system, which is converted into lockbox keys. I once computed the rough cash value of a particular rare ship I wanted to obtain, and it would have cost nearly $400 to get a better than even chance to get the drop I wanted, and to obtain the equivalent funds through their in-game market would have taken months if not years to collect adequate resources to buy it, most of which wouldn't be yielded from gameplay like fighting NPCs in space or planetside, but just babysitting their crew management "mini-game" or asteroid mining "mini-game". Sign in, obtain dilithium through literal tedium, push the time-gated 'refine' button, sign off. For months and years. At that point, it's clearly not even a game, it's just an online slot machine when you're granted a dollars' worth of free credits for signing in every day.

[Psyren]

I don't mind DLC when it's tied to new content (new stories, characters, even cosmetics etc.) But when it's tied to progression systems is where I start to get sour. In particular, DLC that lets you "skip the grind" like XP boosters, rare crafting resources, pay-for-power/pay-to-win etc is a sham - you're skipping a grind that they purposefully built into the game in the first place to make paying real money to get around it more attractive. They figured out a design for their game where leveling or unlocking content through play would feel rewarding, then carved that out to put behind a paywall and knowingly put an inferior system in its place.

Usually season passes are not that more predatory kind of DLC - but some are, or at least include them.

[The_Jackal]

I don't mind DLC when it's tied to new content (new stories, characters, even cosmetics etc.) But when it's tied to progression systems is where I start to get sour. In particular, DLC that lets you "skip the grind" like XP boosters, rare crafting resources, pay-for-power/pay-to-win etc is a sham - you're skipping a grind that they purposefully built into the game in the first place to make paying real money to get around it more attractive. They figured out a design for their game where leveling or unlocking content through play would feel rewarding, then carved that out to put behind a paywall and knowingly put an inferior system in its place.

Usually season passes are not that more predatory kind of DLC - but some are, or at least include them.

I totally agree, and I don't buy those types of DLC, because, yeah, what you're telling me, your customer, is that your game is so bad, that you think I'll pay you to not play it. The sad part isn't that publishers implement these systems, it's that for some reason they still sell. But when you've got a way to stop people from buying stupid stuff, there's a lot more things I'll be using that technology to fix before I get around to video games.

[Rodin]

I totally agree, and I don't buy those types of DLC, because, yeah, what you're telling me, your customer, is that your game is so bad, that you think I'll pay you to not play it. The sad part isn't that publishers implement these systems, it's that for some reason they still sell. But when you've got a way to stop people from buying stupid stuff, there's a lot more things I'll be using that technology to fix before I get around to video games.

It's a bit more sinister than that. If the game were truly bad people wouldn't pay for the DLC, because why pay to play a bad game?

Instead, they make the game just good enough to make you want to see more of it...and then gate that content behind an excessively long grind. Or they don't gate your gameplay, but cripple you in some way. I quit Guild Wars 2 when I found out that additional bank slots cost real money, because after a certain point it became basically impossible to use the game's crafting with only the base bank slots.

Some of the more egregious ones boil down to "paid cheat codes". Want to effectively have god mode on? $10 will get you a key to an epic loot chest that gets a weapon that one shots everything your level....

I have a really hard time playing any kind of game that advertises in-game. You want to sell super-OP weaponry alongside the other DLC? Fine. I won't use it, but there are people who want gratification NOW NOW NOW. No skin off my nose.

Give me a free key to an epic loot chest, and then when I use it open the real money store advertising more keys? Die in a fire.

[Psyren]

Things like bank slots or character slots I don't actually lump under the "bad practices" umbrella. Those things are a convenience, and actually getting as high as you can without those conveniences can be a challenge. But Guild Wars 2 does sell XP boosters (as most Nexon MMOs do) and that turned me off more than the limited slots.

[LibraryOgre]

Things like bank slots or character slots I don't actually lump under the "bad practices" umbrella. Those things are a convenience, and actually getting as high as you can without those conveniences can be a challenge. But Guild Wars 2 does sell XP boosters (as most Nexon MMOs do) and that turned me off more than the limited slots.

I remember SW:TOR giving me so many XP boosters I could never use them all.

[snowblizz]

I'm not sure "Season pass" means anything anymore.

I bought a couple of those for game now, but highly discounted way after their "season" has passed. And effectively it has meant get both DLCs at a discount.

I would never even dream of buying one in advance.

[Psyren]

I remember SW:TOR giving me so many XP boosters I could never use them all.

At which point they just become an XP progression - so at best everyone is getting them and they're pointless (the devs should just adjust the XP values needed to level directly instead of raining boosters on everyone) - or at worst, some portion of the population is NOT getting them (whether due to a paywall, poor messaging to inexperienced players etc). In which case those players are getting a worse experience and may not even realize there's an option for a better one.

[The_Jackal]

At which point they just become an XP progression - so at best everyone is getting them and they're pointless (the devs should just adjust the XP values needed to level directly instead of raining boosters on everyone) - or at worst, some portion of the population is NOT getting them (whether due to a paywall, poor messaging to inexperienced players etc). In which case those players are getting a worse experience and may not even realize there's an option for a better one.

Seconded, and this is what happens to F2P games at their worst: When you start making game design decisions which make no sense at all, save only to induce players to open their wallets. I don't have a problem with a free-to-play model if your core game is still fun and rewarding for a player who spends a moderate amount of money on the platform (which is, in that respect, little different from an old-school demo). But when your game can't practically be played without grinding hours or forking over lots of cash, it's a problem.