Unlockable video game content can be a wonderful thing. It can be a Pavlovian joy to have more stuff unlocked and to have your game play actions positively rewarded like a laboratory rat mouse working through the maze in a college psychology course. However there can be some darker B.F. Skinner type approach to unlockable game content that I must frown on. As time passes it seems like I have less and less time to play video games as I used to and it is really frustrating when a game developer will take most of the content in a game and only dish out a pittance at the beginning and then the game will demand hours after hours while dishing out a few new items and cars once and a while.

If a game designer does their job well, then all the hidden content should be with in the reach of the average gamer after a week or two of normal game play. That is only spending one to three hours a day on videogame playing. By restricting unlockable content to those who spend way to much time it cheapens the game experience or it forces the gamer to look at codes and cheats. I understand that unlockable content extends the time that a gamer will spend playing a particular title, but it is a bit of a cop-out if it requires 40-hours a week just to unlock all the levels and fighters and random good stuff. The games that stand out in my mind is Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Gran Turismo 3 and, of course, SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium. I mean, I play games because they are fun and do not want to have to invest as much time as a second job in order to get my freaking money’s worth.

Take SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium on NeoGeo Pocket. Here is hoping that perhaps I will finally luck out and get the last damn tile I need to unlock B.B. Hood. You see once you beat the last boss there is a tic-tac-toe board with a hidden character. Some spots are randomly chosen and are removed but you need to play the game several times in order to unlock a single freaking character. Some times you get closer to unlocking a new fighter but most of the time you luck out and the time you spent beating the game is gone forever for no constructive reason. If I had one of the rare NeoGeo Pocket to Sega Dreamcast link cables I could transfer my unlocked credits from Capcom VS SNK and open all the nice hidden stuff.

I do like some unlockable content that is released after you have been playing the game, but I think some game designers go to far and make it to damn hard to unlock content. The way that I think about it is that I already paid for this game and I should be able to enjoy 100% of it without having to spend months of playing in order to gain access to all of it. When you buy a car you do not have it be locked at 30 miles an hour only to have more speed unlocked after you have been driving after a week.

There has to be some balance in a progression of unlockable videogame content or it will lose the re-playability factor and start to suck. The devil is in the details and game developers need to strike a good balance between having the game being easily absorbed in a single night or requiring several months of constant playing in order to unlock everything. Games are all about having fun and they should not require a commitment of countless hours of mind-crushing labor in order to get the game content that you paid for when you bought the game. I don’t want games to be over so quick but come on!

Do you remember when you finally breed the golden Chocobo in Final Fantasy VII? That is weeks out of my life that I will never get back and all for one very cool very powerful summons spell.

- Jacob Metcalf