The gaming community as a whole isn't that stupid, but the inexperienced console gaming community would appear to be. These are the gamers that either grew up with consoles because they couldn't afford computers, so never experienced the free updates and patches PC games received, the young gamers who are growing up with it and thus don't know any better, or the young gamers who are the instant gratification types with short attention spans that will be completely oblivious to expansion pack releases because they'll have moved on by then. (No offense intended Savyg, I understand and respect your perspective because you don't completely fit under this category, but I suspect many of the 360 fanboys and fangirls may.) That isn't to say, of course, that all console gamers fit those descriptions, but it seems likely to me that at least quite a few do.

What I can't understand, are the PC gamers who know they can get certain content free in patches after a game's release or at the game's release, but continue to pay for it nonetheless. A prime example of this, in my opinion, is the Creepy and Cute Parts Pack that was sold for Spore, which I find utterly absurd. You might as well be selling clothing or furniture or whathaveyou for the Sims in such a pack, it would more or less equal the same thing. Give them time though..Assuming they haven't already.

I'm not against DLC, to an extent, and in fact, my perspective is most in line with Kodiak on this issue. I only purchase a game through Steam if I absolutely cannot find it anywhere locally, or I simply find it to be more convenient or cheaper than buying via Amazon or eBay. However, I think any and all downloadable content should be made free after the release of a sequel to the game. An example of this is to be found in Insomniac's game Resistance: Fall of Man, although I don't know if it was immediately after the sequel's release, the map packs released for it were made free of charge, whereas before you had to pay for them, from my understanding of it.

On the other hand, I think it would also be nice for alternate methods of obtaining DLC to become available to players. Have it available for a fee, fine, if I want it, maybe I'll get it, but if the whole point of the DLC is to keep your interest in the game sustained, I think the more hardcore fans should be able to get it through playing the game as well as having the option to simply buy it if they haven't the time to do whatever it is in-game to obtain the DLC. What I'm getting at is simply this, what on Earth are all those trophies and achievements wasting away for? Some of those can be fairly difficult to get for the casual player, so if the hardcore player gets them, they should get more of a reward than just the ability to show off that they did it. Given, that does have its satisfaction to it, but if you're going after those really difficult trophies/achievements, I think you deserve either a free version of the DLC or at the very least, a reduced price. As a matter of fact, and the Ratchet and Clank series has been doing that inadvertently for years with their skill point system. They don't tell you how to get the skill point, although they might give you a hint, and they do you give the amount the planet has on it, but other than that, you're on your own in getting those skill points. However, should you take the extra time to get them, you can unlock little special skins to play around in.

It's not much, but it's an example of what I'm suggesting.

..Er..I didn't intend on this being as long as it turned out to be. Apparently reading over an entire thread builds up into an overflow when you get to posting.

I wouldn't even own a console if it wasn't for winning Crackdown in a contest. 

I'm willing to bet that most of the sales will occur prior to such stages though, meaning it's effect isn't that noticeable. If a sequal is planned by the same developer+publisher on the same game, and within a moderate to short time scale after the first one, then it could have a beneficial impact on the second, but not only are those scenarios less usual for stand alone games (expansions could qualify, although the line between expansions and paid DLC is blurring now), but the effect would be hard to discern anyway.

To give a quick example, I found neverwinter nights to have great post-'out of the box' features/support with plenty of free DLC. However the sequal wasn't developed by the same company, and the company that did develop it moved on to different games and has since been taken over by EA, meaning that the effect on me of all that free DLC isn't so great in terms of future sales. I'd also already bought the game prior to most of the additional content.

I disagree - those who just bought the basic game with no DLC have likely got it for less than if there had been no paid for DLC. You need to look at the broader picture - the paid for DLC will likely require very little cost for the extra content depending on it's size (since you've already got the core game+engine) and therefore probably yield much better margins than the original game. This means from an investment perspective at the start of that game's development, it will be more attractive with the paid DLC than without. As a result more games will get  developed, and you'd expect to see a decrease in prices for games and/or an increase in quality/choice from that, compared with if no paid-DLC was used. It may not mean actual prices fall though, because if the costs of developing games (of ever increasing quality, e.g. graphics) are rising, then coupled with inflation you would expect prices to rise as a result, so it may just be that paid-DLC causes prices to not rise, or rise at a slower rate, for the out of the box game.

Think of it this way - with free DLC, everyone who buys the game is paying for both the initial game, and all that DLC, wrapped into one package, regardless of whether they want it or not. Now if you take out all the DLC, which is of value, and costs the company to produce (although the cost benefit of it would be in terms of aborting future content if not worthwhile at an early stage rather than say going for a full expansion with the risk that it all turns out to be a waste), you would expect the price of the product after that to fall, not to remain constant/rise, the same as with any other conventional product. So for example say you have a sports store that offers a tennis racquet and 10 balls in a package for $50. The next day they are just offering the racquet and the balls separately. Barring any sudden changes in other factors you'd expect the racquet on it's own to cost less (although the analogy isn't perfect since one's a fixed cost and the other a variable one).

Of course the people who do want all the DLC will likely end up paying more. However because of the other factors such as the greatly reduced costs of the DLC method (i.e. no retail distribution costs etc.) where the non-value adding costs have been greatly reduced the net overall effect is likely to be beneficial to consumers.

If all consumers agreed, then they wouldn't buy the DLC, and hence the company wouldn't make money for it (and would decrease the price and/or increase the quality). So although it may not be worth the price to you, it is still worth the price to other people who are buying it.

I disagree, and it's one of the reasons I like DLC - with all the various examples of paid DLC, you can see a wide variety in what you get for a particular price, and a wide variety in prices. With the traditional model however you had the '$50-$30 game-expansion' pricing where you had variable quality but not variable prices. Because the cases of DLC that we've had already have already shown a much greater variation in the price, it's therefore likely this would continue. This in turn should help increase the effect of competition in driving down prices, since companies will then be competing much more on price than on quality. There are also some cases of direct download of retail games being slightly cheaper, especially internationally, due to postage costs and exchange rate fluctuations, although a clear price difference between buying a game at retail and downloading is hard to find (suggesting that the price reducing effect of the decrease in costs from online distribution is potentially affecting the price of the game regardless of whether it's retail or via download; either that or since it's only really been taking off lately there could be a time lag and it'll take another couple of years to have a really noticeable impact). Also bear in mind that as paid for DLC increases, you would expect to also see a rise in use of online distribution for the game itself (although that doesn't mean it'd be a direct causal relationship), and hence the cost savings would become more significant. You'd also see an increase in developer power from that since they'd be less reliant on the retail distributers, which would likely benefit us as well.

In conclusion (since I also wrote a mini-novel ) because of the existence of some 'rip-off' DLC that charges lots for virtually nothing (horse armor is probably the one I've heard talked about the most) and coupled with the much more indiscernable nature of the benefits, I feel (paid for) DLC gets a far worse press than it deserves. Because the market is reasonably competitive (and much more so with the advent of online distribution) I believe that the cost savings from online distribution such as paid for DLC will result in a benefit to consumers overall.

On a side note, I wish people would shut the hell up about horse armor already.  It was among the first DLC ever released.  Of course it wasn't impressive.  It was a market that didn't even exist at the time.

I think more people are going to leave reading this thread thinking about horses than they are about the possible issues of DLC.

The only issue I have is that people are assuming DLC today is going to be what all DLC will be like, which given the fast rate of evolution is obviously not true.

True. However, unlike in real macroscopic evolution, there can most certainly be bad evolution for anything fabricated by the human hand. I think that's the main concern with those with one foot stepping down off the fence away from DLC, that it will go in the direction of nearly everything becoming paid for DLC. I think you actually may have mentioned the Sims 3 having you pay real money for articles of clothing or furniture, if I'm not mistaken, and that, to me, is a step in the wrong direction. It's your money, and your choice, but once it starts spreading outside of that game, (e.g. Spore, Playstation Home) it's a bit irritating and getting just a bit out of hand. Given, in the case of Playstation Home, I probably wouldn't even bother with any of it, as it isn't really a game at all, and more of a networking device, but it's a bit disconcerting that others will. Although, that's probably because they're more social than I, and use their PS3 less for games and more for interacting, for whatever reason.

It's their choice though, and since it isn't a game, it doesn't really bother me. In the case of games though, where customization holds more of a central purpose (Spore, Sims) then I think it becomes a problem. In the Sims, as I understood it when I played it so many years ago, part of the reason for playing was to get a job for your Sim, make money for your Sim through that job so that your Sim can eat and expand his or her home and possessions through the purchase of new clothing, new furniture, new electronic devices, etc. with the in-game currency. If that's replaced by paid-DLC, then..What becomes the point? Both methods of gaining the clothing or furniture would give you the option of whether or not to obtain it, so I don't see the paid-DLC as being an excuse for having the option to get it or not, as that would be integrated in the game.

The scenario is similar with Spore, the purpose is to evolve into a sentient, civilization creating species, and this is done by killing creatures with advantageous parts that can help your species survive. However, it doesn't mean you have to kill that creature, as the ability to customize your species means that many parts are viable. In this, it gives you that same option of whether or not to get that part if you want it. Don't want it? Don't get it. So the excuse of paid-DLC fails here as well. (And yes, I consider the Creepy and Cute Parts Pack DLC. Just because they stuck it in a case and cellophane wrapper doesn't change that. Just as is the case with Fallout 3's DLC being sold in that manner as well.)

Perhaps it will get better over time, but I sincerely hope game companies won't follow the foolhardy example of EA.

Spore and Sims are bad examples though.  They still follow the expansion model for everything relevant.  I have never bought a parts or clothes pack, and I probably never will.  Likewise, I don't expect to buy anything off the Sims 3 Store unless they start offering previously mentioned expansions direct through it.

I don't have anything against them trying to make some extra money off of that sort of thing, because the only people who are going to want them are going to be people who are absolutely obsessed with the game.

If they started offering DLC that added random gameplay features (or anything that really affected the gameplay,) that would annoy me because that's definately expansion territory.  But one would hope they've got enough brain cells to know that splintering the product like that would turn people off.

(Would probably be a testing nightmare anyway.)

@aeortar - I'd quote you but that would be a formatting nightmare, and I'm lazy.

I understand your points, but disagree with them, naturally. A game (developer+publisher) that earns my scrutiny is very likely to never see my money again. Games that have either of those companies in them, also earn part of that same scrutiny. The NWN series is a good example that you used, but I don't blindly buy games that have free DLC either. I make informed, intelligent (imo at least) decisions about the games I buy, and what I think the future of those games will be. If there are doubts, I'll wait until the game is bargain binned or buy it second hand, if at all. That means less money. There has to be some margian of people who think as I do, so that money can add up. I did buy NWN as well as NWN2 though, and enjoyed them both as seperate beasts.

As far as inflation and increased costs go, you've got the right idea, but it's not the case yet. Console games hit the $60 dollar mark with the last generation, and PC games would be have been easily upped then, or anytime past that point. The reason games aren't discounted online is because it will devalue them. If you start selling games online for $30 new, then when retail dies it will be harder to accept the eventual price increases. If they're $50 now, which is a price we've already accepted, they can just marginally increase them as prices do happen to increase, while reaping the benefits now. Smart business, and not even a complaint of mine truly. If the internal costs were such that they needed the online market to be $50, then games sold only at retail would be sold at a loss. Most games aren't sold online for some time until after release, when the continual payment for the production of boxes and discs provides diminishing returns for retail games. Online also offers an expanded player-base and availablility, but more sales shouldn't mean a need for higher prices either.

The future promise that the increased revenue of DLC will allow for more pre-funding of the game is strong though. For my money, I still see a greater return in an expansion though (for the consumer). I'm asking for a more reasonable price scheme for DLC. As of now, games with DLC aren't better than those without. I think the theory works good more on paper than in practice, as DLC sales will never be concrete until after the fact. A solid, well made game will always sell, regardless of DLC. I still stand that if put into perspective, most people wouldn't touch most DLC with a ten foot stick. No one pays more or less for games, new games are all $50 regardless of what it cost to make them. Then go to $40, $30, $20, and then maybe $10 for a jewel case version, not counting sale prices. A cost increase won't be negated by DLC, because not all games will have it, and low budget awesome games will sell just as well as high budget blockbuster games.

Consumers, as a rule, are sheep and will pay any amount for any product advertised correctly. I'm not meaning to say that the supporters of DLC are sheep, I'm just saying that people can be tricked into anything. I think that the trick in DLC, again, is that it's spread out so much. If it was bundled up and sold together for the same prices amalgamated, most people would laugh, but it's just a few dollars here and there so it's not worth much thought. To me, it's similar for me putting gas in my cars. I fill up once a week on my daily driver, minimum. I can drive a half mile further from the shell to the chevron and get gas for at least $.10-.20 cheaper. That's a meager $2-$4 dollars a time. But over a year thats around $80-$180. Over the past 5 years I've had my job and needed to fill up so often for the commute, that's $400-$900 that I've saved. That half a mile costs me some as well, but it's less than it would cost me to fill up at the shell, and that extra cash is essentially the cost of that new HDTV sitting a few feet away from me now. Granted, that's a bit of a stretch for a comparison, but I still believe that the overall point is valid.

As far as overall pricing goes, DLC will standardize even more than it has already as it progresses. It is already somewhat standardized. You're right though, the $50 new game price does not take into account quality of the new games. However, if we can use new DLC as an example, the fallout DLC doesn't take into account quality either. They are not equal in quality, but are the same price. I've played them all (sans Point Lookout), and while all enjoyable and as unbiasedly as possible, stand by that the quality of the first is a shadow in comparison to the quality of the newer.Of course it is, it's newer and they learned from their shortfalls!, I can hear most of you shout, but they weren't released very far apart, and the worse one is still the same price as the superior ones, so the point that quality does not follow price is also valid.  DLC price so far seems to variate on the size of what is added, not on the quality of what is added. More does not equal better.

EA games (Spore, Sims, etc) are on the bad end of DLC, but EA in general is on the bad end of everything gaming related, so no shock there. Again, I think the problem with DLC is the price. I understand the point of devalueing the product for later, as stated with the downloadable games, but hopefully DLC will increase much in quality, and be worth the prices they charge for it. People will buy it whether it ever does or not, but if people who think like me convince more people to think like us, then less people will buy DLC until its quality is closer to its worth. Less sales now mean a slower boom, but a quicker increase in quality as a whole.

Horse Armor is a bad example, and quite old, which is why I try to mention other DLC as much as possible. If you only read about the horse armor in this thread, you've missed the point entirely and should leave or reread it. Also, I'll apologize for my bad grammar, lead ins, and spelling. Firefox and this forum don't get along as most know, and it's late so my own checks of self ineptness are all but fruitfull.

You've missed the point. I'm not blaming the product, I'm saying that, as you put it, humanity is being lulled into paying the free market more than the product is worth. because its packaging and instant gratification is easier to be pulled into. My faith in those shouldn't be the question and is over-dramatic, I'm hoping that if more scrutiny is placed upon such content by the consumers we will see a faster equalization in price to quality ratio than currently.

I'm hoping for a better evolution. Even if the current rate is a speeding bullet, it's still over-priced. The quality has increased, but the prices have too a it, and the ratio still doesn't match, even if it is better.

@Kodiak888

If we are overpaying for games because of DLC history will show us this will just lead to more companies producing games, meaning more competition and then more investment in to the development of games.  Games companies may be getting fat off DLC, I don't think they are, I just think this is how they are affording ever increasing development costs, but either way, in the long run it will be good for the games industry because we will see better quality of games.

If you cannot be happy with that, and you think there is no kind of DLC that will ever be worth the money and basically you are saying you are annoyed other people are buying it because they are furthering the trend.  Well basically you are saying that you are annoyed you are in the minority and you wish more people thought/felt the way you did, and hey, I can sympathise with that

@Haree78

My point, and most definately my passion for it, are quite over stated and dramatized in this thread. I go on about it in this thread, defending my viewpoint, but am far less of a zealot than I come out to be for the anti-DLC cause. I have a lot of DLC, I just also have my opinion and decided to stay with this thread and try and explain it.

You're mostly correct though. I am annoyed that I am in the minority, and I see it taking a long time for DLC to equal out to what I think it could be unless there is more thought put into the process. That's why I keep trying to retain my points here. Regardless if only the occasionaly person chimes in to agree with me in part, or in whole.

I don't think that DLC will ever make game companies fat, as a whole, lead to more games being produced as a whole, or stem the rising productions costs. If that was the only way, then every game would need DLC and that isn't even almost the case currently. I don't think the effect is quite so large. The complaint is with bad DLC, and the trend. As Gmr Leon said put it very well in some of his posts, as in the Spore add-ons, and as mentioned previously, the Sims. TF2 has had many free updates, with more planned. Such updates were promised to L4D, but now Valve has announced a sequel instead of any of those updates. This blows the current Valve sequel trend out of the water. Even their Episodes for HL2 (which are DLC imo), while very well made, are short and not what you'd expect for the money. Not what I expected at least. I was left with a strong WTF feeling as each ended abruptly and so quickly. As time passes, and these trends continue, I find myself less interested in what seem to be partial games with paid-dlc addons. I see a trend of people paying $100 or more for a game with comparable content and quality to a game with $50 and no DLC, free or paid. It doesn't make much sense to me, and I think the reason it's so prominent is because it's overall cost isn't considered, or weighed very heavily.

I don't think that DLC will create a better quality game. I also don't that DLC will never be worth the money, it very easily could. I am saying that the trend of bad DLC will continue as long as people buy it as they are. It will slowly evolve into a happy medium of price/quality, but if more people think about their decisions it will change that much quicker. Saying I just want people to think like me is correct, but just an overly-simple observation. The same thing can be said of almost any other conflict in history. Wars that have cost the world millions of lives are all on people wanting to punish others for not thinking/feeling the same way about something than them. Boiling my point down to that devalues it, when I believe my reasons for thinking the way I do have merit and should be addressed instead of over generalizing the speaker.

Valve has announced they still intend to release more freebies for L4D, and said their plans will make more sense later.

Whether or not they will, I don't know.  I only paid $25 for my copy of L4D (ok, $50 for two copies) so I don't really care what they do.  It was worth $25 as is.

(I'd say the forum hates my internet, but so do I sometimes...need an antenna for my EVDO modem.  Scuse the double post.)

Valve are going into damage control mode. They expected the SDK to appease their fans with user made content for a game which will be completely replaced and un-needed in less than 12 months.