GTA’s Parent Company Boss Speaks About DLC

This week the 43rd Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference occurred in New York, and speaking at the conference was Strauss Zelnick, CEO and president of Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two publishes several big hit AAA games like the Grand Theft Auto series, and Zelnick explained his philosophy toward the DLC approach his company has used on those games.

As reported by Gamespot, Zelnick believes that DLC fashioned with the sole purpose of milking for money is doomed to fail, and that customer satisfaction is the most important element. “You never want to the consumer to feel as though you’ve picked their pocket. You want a consumer to feel like you gave them a great experience. You want them to be happy that they spent money on the experience.”

Zelnick accused some companies of rotten DLC tactics, but….uh, not any of his friends. He pointed the finger at the free-to-play industry. “I think some interactive entertainment companies, typically not the console companies, but some of the free-to-play companies, have focused entirely on monetization, and creativity as a necessary but annoying pre-condition to monetization. And we just don’t look at it that way at all. Monetization stems organically from creativity. And so the more that we give consumers to do that they love doing, the more likely they are to spend money while they’re doing it.”

Good to know Zelnick has no plans to force aggressive DLC on the GTA series. However, his same company produces the NBA 2K series, which has a feature that comes very close to the FTP schemebook. NBA 2K contains an in-game currency system that you must either grind for, or spend real money in exchange for. It’s not necessary to complete the game, but it’s still close enough.