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[grieferbastard]

This is not intended to be a discussion about value (as in cost) but the impact of DLC on game products. You want to talk money, go to DLC should be free.

So as a game consumer, I like two things a lot: quality of the original game and longevity.

Quality in the original game

Obviously I'm a big fan of DA:O. Story quality, engine, variety in play. Let's take it a bit beyond that though. Older games, newer games, how about the Ultima V/Ultima VII games? System Shock? How about Oblivion/FO3, some newer titles? Production costs have soared into the millions and tens of millions and a growing number of years to produce. Who else remembers way back when Daikatana was being developed? It was this huge joke; that it took  3 years to produce. No game could take that long. It was silly. Now, 3 years? Pfft. Expected for a top-shelf game if you include pre-production.

Yet game costs are pretty steady. Now, consumer base has grown. Especially with the inclusion of consoles. Yet that adds to development costs and support costs, not to mention distribution expenses and licensing. Can you even imagine a time when releasing a game didn't involve having to hop into bed with Microsoft on one side and Sony on the other?

Any sort of product/service requires attracting investors to front you the money. In the game industry that seems to be driven by publishers. Given the absurdly narrow margins the gaming industry has that's something that fails more often than succeeds.

Result? Rising cost of production + longer development time + lower potential return = less probability of a game going into development. Consequence? High turnover in game development studios. No Bioforge 2. A decade between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3. A lot of awesome games dying before their time.

DLC presents a continuing revenue stream. Why is this important? Support of games costs money after release, but how long do they really generate revenue and sales? At a certain point, generally measured in a handful of months, games stop being produced for sale. In a couple of months they start dropping in shelf price. 

This changes the economic dynamic. If a publisher can expect a longer stretch of return and a real percentage increase in revenue over initial product sales than it adds a lot of weight to the pitch to get them to invest in it. Especially if it's a good, epic-length game with the sort of story that will draw/keep interest.

Bottom line: If DA:O is successful in producing and selling 2 years worth of DLC than it puts another option on the gaming market. Rich, deep, story-heavy games that attract and keep long-term customers potentially generate revenue for 24 months instead of 3. This will drive the market more towards the games I want to see more of.

Longevity

Ultima V: Lazarus. It's a remake of Ultima V (produced in 1988) using the Dungeon Siege engine. Ultima VII: The Reconstruction. It's a complete rebuild of Ultima VII. It's been 20 years since those games were on the market. You know what? I've played both. In fact I bought Dungeon Siege on Amazon, years after you couldn't get a store copy, just to play one of them. Morrowind was released in 2001, people are still modding it. Oblivion, released 4 years ago, still has a dozen new mods a day being created by fans.

We don't want them to stop. I know I don't. I like fan created mods. I have about 30 gig of mods for Oblivion/Morrowind on my PC. My beloved lady is a Sims fan. I swear I don't even want to know how many gigs of Hello Kitty and various pink crap she has on her computer and mine for Sims 1-3.

It drives the MMO community. The ability to create a character in a story and just keep going. That, and some people get hot and bothered over the leveling treadmill and collecting rares.

Books! Dragonlance, how about the Jedi series? Dozens. Piles of them. If the authors were up for it do you really think that Harry Potter, Twilight, these series couldn't sell 50 books in each series?

DLC is more like that. It's not just user created stuff.... it's canon. There are some amazing community made mods out there. New hair, eyes, remakes of your fellow NPCs that make them more like the videos. I've got almost 20 mods for DA:O at the moment. Yet official DLC has an implied truth. Veritas. No, better word. Dignitas. An authority to it. Something that ties unquestionably to the original story.

Yes, new games are great. I'm sure there will be a Dragon Age 2 at some point. I look forward to it. That does not mean that I want to abandon DA:O though. I'll be finding mods to recreate it in games written 20 years from now, just as I do for games I played 20 years ago. The idea of 2 years of continued DLC, getting to add to the story I keep re-creating with characters of my choice, adding to the body of resources that the community will create mods from. I want this. I suspect I am far from alone in this opinion.

Price, money, value, these are their own concepts. Let them be debated in another thread. Two years of DLC... look at what this means to the gaming community. I don't just mean armor for my horse. I mean 2 years of more story for the games I enjoy the most.

I want that. Give me that. BioWare, you manage to convince the gaming market to keep the best games alive and cooking up new goodness for 2 years steady instead of 3 months if I'm lucky and I'll send you fresh baked cookies and, I dunno. What do Canadians like. A hockey-based gift basket? I'd say beer but I'm in America. If I sent you good beer I'd have to buy it from Europe first.

Any downsides to this? How is DLC, long term invested DLC from the original developer in addition to a healthy modding community not awesome for the gaming community as a whole?

[DoctorPringles]

I think I'd prefer a system of Game Release > DLC > Expansion > DLC > Expansion.



One or two DLC's is fine, but I'd rather have the longevity and scale of a full expansion. It allows me to enjoy the expansion for a longer time than the DLC would.

[Fexelea]

I am working so I don't really have the time to expand on my input, but the main point would be:



Problem does not equal risk.



There might not be a "problem" now with DLC as it bases on added experiences, but there is the RISK that "episodic" content would become the norm, therefore our hobby would become rather expensive. If the core of gaming product lifespan planning changes, then the model does as well and inevitably profit-seeking investors will take over whatever passion there was within the industry.



It is a fact that the games industry is the ONLY entertainment industry that grew and continues to grow, as opposed to the collapsed music industry and the edging movie industry. Time and again it is proven that whenever an industry becomes exceedenly profitable, the roots are quickly dismissed and the business models changed to accomodate the new "cash cow". For those of us who love the origins (lol) and want to be able to play a game and finish it in one installment, without having to subscribe to a series of dlcs to actually see an ending, there is a risk in the model.



Hopefully, we will see the industry veterans, those known as the "dinasours" amongst the devs, see the confluence of modern and antique and find the right balance, where both the developers and the gamers gain from new/improved delivery methods.