An interview with Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, of CD Projekt Red has an interesting suggestion as a solution to the DLC issue: that DLC should be free - a service you pay for within the cost of the game.
As a gamer, of course, this is a very appealing idea. Yet, this being a capitalist society, we have to contend with the unfortunate truth that these sorts of things cost money to produce, so one must figure out a way to draw a line between the "included service" DLC, and the "extra effort" that is an expansion.
In this article, when I talk about DLC, I mean Tomaszkiewicz's theoretical "free service" type.
First, let me talk about World of Warcraft (the game that inspired this blog in the first place.) WoW is, obviously, not like all games. It is an MMO, and the biggest one of them by a wide margin. Also, WoW runs on a subscription. You pay $15 a month (slightly less if you subscribe in bigger chunks, as I do) and Blizzard does a couple things. Obviously, running servers that can host millions of people at a time takes a lot of maintenance, space, hardware, and engineering. But that's only part of it. Blizzard's development staff is constantly working on new content.
WoW's addition of content works in two different ways: patches and expansions.
Patches are automatically downloaded when Blizzard puts them up. Now, Patches themselves can be split between Major Content Patches and smaller ones. The smaller ones will fix bugs, and sometimes throw in a couple of gameplay tweaks (say Rogues are hitting way too hard with some ability, so they get nerfed down a bit.) Major Content Patches, though, are huge events. Entire zones can be created, and usually dungeons, raids, and sometimes battlegrounds are added. In fact, since the very first expansion, none of them have shipped with the final boss actually fightable in-game. The reason for this is that they want you to have time to work through the content. The entire raiding community, for instance, will be able to pool the shared knowledge of the latest raid, and it gives you the time to build up the stakes and experience the story at the pace Blizzard wants.
In many ways, these Major Content Patches are like the DLC Included Service Tomaszkiewicz describes (admittedly we still pay for it with our subscription, but the patches do not come at any additional charge.)
Expansions to WoW, on the other hand, are far more massive undertakings. New playable races or classes (or in Mists, both) appear, an entire continent is added (except Cataclysm, which sought to make the Old World new again,) and the level cap is raised while talents and abilities undergo huge changes.
Expansions are practically sequels, and really would be if it weren't for the desire and need for continuity of player characters.
I think what we need to do is find some threshold between "DLC," which would be the free-service type of content, and Expansions.
For an example, let's talk about Elder Scrolls Oblivion (as Skyrim is the latest, I think we can be confident Oblvion isn't getting any new add-ons.)
Bethesda raised an uproar over their first experiment with DLC, which was utterly useless, cosmetic horse armor (for those of you who haven't played, your horse is useful, I guess, but hardly a central part of the gameplay.) So there's clearly some stuff that should have been free.
I have the Super-Awesome Edition, which added two major bits of DLC to the game. The more prominent one, the Shivering Isles, is what I would put under the "expansion" category. The Shivering Isles is an entire new area - not quite as big as the original game-world of Cyrodil, but still quite substantial. This whole area was built from the ground up, with everything from new beasts, characters, and quests to even new plants on the ground. Your character from Oblivion was free to go back and forth between the worlds, but no one could argue that this was a minor addition.
Then there's the Knights of the Nine. This, I would say, is probably the toughest one to nail down. The Knights of the Nine adds a quest chain, a couple dungeons, and a new faction (complete with awesome armor that you can easily upgrade as you level up.) It's not a terribly long chain, but it gives you a faction to work through if you want to play the Holy Warrior Paladin type.
Still, unlike Shivering Isles, this is not a whole new world, just a single quest chain and a cool little priory that you basically get to use as your new home base. It's a good series of quests (and the bad guys have awesome looks to them,) but is this an expansion or DLC?
It's a good question. Unlike Horse Armor, which probably took only one concept artist. one modeler, and one guy to program it, this was something that probably required a bit more effort. Yet can we really call it an expansion? If this had been part of the original game, it probably would have felt like just one more part of the whole.
I don't know if this is the best definition, but I think an expansion - as in, additional content that we have to pay for to alter an existing game - requires it to really feel New. We've got to see a real change of story, gameplay, or location.
For example, take Javik from Mass Effect 3. (Full disclosure: I do not have this DLC, so what I know of him is from Youtube clips and the Mass Effect Wiki) Javik is the long-cryogenically-frozen Prothean - the last of his kind, who awakens to find a very different galaxy than he remembered, except for the whole "Oh crap, the Reapers again!" (Probably wishes he'd been unfrozen a couple thousand years earlier, so he wouldn't just escape one apocalypse to find himself in the next.) Anyway, there's a quest to get him, but after that, he's just another squad member. Sure, he has his own dialogue and little scenes on the citadel (the Hanar are really freaking excited to see him, considering how the Protheans are their gods.) Yet is one more squad member (in a game where you can only take two at a time) really that big? Unlike Tali, Garrus, EDI, and the Virmire Survivor, there isn't a lot of inter-game backstory they need to worry about. I mean, he's very cool, don't get me wrong, but it's not like we have a whole quest chain where we reawaken a whole bunch of Prothean survivors (oh man. Now I'm disappointed that didn't happen.)
I'm also usually skeptical about Day One DLC. If you had this ready (and granted, they might have finished it after the discs were pressed - not sure how the manufacturing process works) why didn't you just include it with our already pretty damn expensive game?
So in the case of Javik, I think this should have been in the "Free Service DLC" form.
Now, on the other hand, if you added a whole new plotline where you traveled to new planets, recruiting... I don't know, the Thorian's species (which I totally think built the Catalyst in the first place) that would be an expansion.
Now, to praise Bioware where it is due (though this is really more fixing a problem that should not have been there in the first place,) the Extended Cut Ending DLC was offered for free. By the time I beat the game, this was already available, so when I finished, I was a little sad at the bittersweet finale (Armin Shepherd, Savior of the Krogan, Peacemaker of Rannoch, Defender of Earth, Unifier of Organic and Synthetic Life, RIP) it was still a very satisfying conclusion to the 3-game epic. But the fixes required - like making it clear what the hell I was doing, or making it so I didn't have to play online multiplayer or some iOS game to actually get the best ending, despite being the savior of the Krogan, making peace between the Quarians and the Geth, and just generally being awesome - were the sort of thing it would be criminal to charge for, and Bioware was wise to offer this upgrade for free.
In conclusion:
The Omnipresent Internet Age has meant very big changes for Computer/Video Games. Games are a fantastic art form, but the sad fact of our society and our world is that, in order for them to be made*, someone needs to find a way to monetize them. The Game Industry is experimenting, and will continue to experiment, in how to handle the idea of a game that is not an exclusive unit, but a changing organism, and what parts they should charge for. As much as I wish I could play every game for free, I do want the artists and engineers that make these wonderful things to be compensated for their efforts. Let us encourage the creativity of those who wish to enhance existing games with expansions (ie Wrath of the Lich King,) but shun that which is cynically designed to maximize profit with the barest level of effort (ie Sparkle Ponies.)
*Yes, there are plenty of people making games for free, and I salute these artists who care not for material compensation. In a way, I am your kin, with my totally free fiction up on Dispatches from Otherworld. But just as Dispatches are short, quick bursts of story, many of these free games lack the epic sweep and grand scale of the games that require a studio full of people.
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