Downloadable Content

[MrFancypants]

Originally Posted by Afterburner

I mean theres no particular reason that an expansion pack would be high quality and worth the money while DLC wouldn't.
.

Nowadays there isn't, but when you had only the option of selling your expansion packs in shops you had higher production costs and more of a risk. If a particular DLC isn't succesful noone cares as it costs almost nothing to produce, but if you printed 100000 CDs you have a bit of an incentive to make sure that people actually buy them.

[Afterburner]

Originally Posted by MrFancypants

Nowadays there isn't, but when you had only the option of selling your expansion packs in shops you had higher production costs and more of a risk. If a particular DLC isn't succesful noone cares as it costs almost nothing to produce, but if you printed 100000 CDs you have a bit of an incentive to make sure that people actually buy them.

There is still plenty of incentive, making money. If DLC is successful it brings in huge sums of money for the developer. And I think people might be underestimating the costs of producing DLC. You have to pay the map makers, model makers, texture painters, concept artists, and whoever else is working on it. A slice of the money also goes to the publisher, of course, which adds far too much to the cost. I'd imagine thats really what jacks up the price the most.

Theres nothing inherently bad about DLC, it just needs to be done right and given a good price. Fallout 3 is a good example of DLC done right, while Oblivion, from the same developer has both good and bad examples.

Dragon Age: Origins is an example of REALLY bad DLC. I don't know what is even in them, but the fact they were availbe at release for more money is just ridiculous.They should have been included in the game as standard.

[Junk angel]

To be honest in the end I don't think that DLC is a dev's dream, instead a publisher's one.
It allows publishers to ship smaller games than their predecessors, have already existing content that will then be marketed as extra and deluxe.

Though the biggest and absolutely aggravating problem of DLC I see, is the limitation of modding usually attached to DLC titles.

If a Dlc is merely a few textures, which could easily be put in by fans, you will attempt to limit their ability to do so, and we can observe exactly this happening.

Not always, but it's still pretty common to show a worry-some trend.

[eezstreet]

Being a game dev myself (an indy one, but a dev nonetheless), the whole point of DLC is to add on to the game with assets that you didn't have the budget to otherwise place into the game. So, we make a game, we don't think we have enough time to make this content, so what do we do? Expansion sets and DLC, by george!

I agree, small DLCs are utter garbage. If you're going to make DLC, it should be as great as the original game, if not better. A good example is the title me and my crew are working on now. It's a tactical shooter. It has a long singleplayer campaign (30+ hours, pretty long for an FPS, no?), and because of this, and the fact that multiplayer is just so simply huge, we're only going to work on multiplayer if we have enough budget/time to work on it. It's probably going to either be DLC, expansion set or sequel material, because it's so freaking huge. Now, all game companies should make expansion sets and DLC on the same par as the original game, where one DLC doubles the gameplay, two triples, three quadruples the original face game.

I have seen some pretty pathetic DLC/expansions in my day. Ones that are just a few missions, maybe a new weapon or two, perhaps a new multiplayer game mode (Jedi Academy is so bad at this, that it adds next to no improvements to JK2 other than Siege and all the bugs associated with it)

[Admiral Donutz]

Originally Posted by Afterburner

What's the difference between an expansion pack and DLC?.

Usually the size and price. You're not likely to find a 1 hour expantion pack in the store or something else pretty small. Not sure how much large DLC are out there (ea DLC of 1 gig and over, adding several hours of gameplay, a barrowload full of new content and such on).

So then one naturally looks at the price for the amount of content gained, charging one dollar for a single item or 5 bucks for a handfull of items is a bit of a rip off.

In theory thought the DLC and expansion packs could be of the same level and pretty much equal in every way (with the DLC allowing for more flexibility at the cost of being a bit more complicated). So in theory there ain't anything bad about them, but the risk of unfair prices, cashcows, seems very prominent to me.

But if we would have a game and the publisher/developer would have the choice of releasing a reasonably sized expantion/add-on on either a disc or as DLC, where the discs may sell for 30 bucks but have the atvantage of being supplied on a CD, in a package and with a game manual and the DLC being a bit more cheap (no costs for making CDs, packaging, a manual etc.) then yes it's all fair and square.

But reading about so much DLC that are an absolute rip off doesn't exactly put DLC's in a good light.

[Fyurii]

If it adds real content to a game, instead of just weapons or cosmetic additions, then I say pay away!

It's not new, it's been around for a long time, and it's not going away.

None of DA's DLC is mandatory.
One is free for new purchases of the game (any edition).
Other things can be gotten for free by playing the browser game Dragon Age: Journeys (items that are quite handy tbh).
DA:J has more being developed, and probably more items to go along with it, all free.

So far, of all the DLC that was available for release, only one thing has an extra cost after buying a new copy of the game.
What's more, it's cheaper than what is free for all new copies, if you buy a second-hand copy.