Defiance, transmedia and DLC

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post title Defiance and I are having our first fight. You can go read it if you’re got time to kill but the gist of it was that I was concerned about their announcement of DLC for the game, and here’s why:

My logic was that if a big part of Defiance is the ‘transmedia’ aspects (in which events in the game and events in the tv show will intermingle in some way) then, assuming the transmedia ‘updates’ were packed into the DLC, we’d all need the DLC to get the full game experience, and so if that’s the case why not just charge a sub fee and be done with it.

Anyway, I reached out to Trion to get the straight dope on what’s going on here. It took a few weeks for them to get back to me, and the news is brief, but good. Here’s a quote of everything they were willing to share:

“Crossover stuff is NOT part of paid DLC. As a matter of fact there is a good amount of content updates that are not paid DLC dependent.”

So there you have it. You can buy the game, watch the show, enjoy the transmedia aspects, and not feel pressured to buy the DLC.

Personally I’m thinking I’ll buy it anyway since I enjoy the game so much, but it’s nice not to feel like I ‘have’ to buy it in order to get the full experience.