I think this is getting really long winded here lets just sum up?

DLC, blessing or curse?

Well DLC is neither a blessing or a curse, that implies that there is good and evil involved and since it is an object. Objects have no sense of good or evil, objects just are the concept of good and evil right and wrong is entirely human in itself and thats a whole different conversation there which should be held in EoEo to prevent offense to anyone. It is the players who choose what DLC to download and what DLC not to download who see it's worth or if it is a good thing to them or a bad thing to them. That is ultimately like music, films and books what games base their sales on, a matter of personal opinion. If I were to ask all of you to post not your favourite game ever but "the best game in the world without question" in here regardless of whether you liked it more than your favourite or not I bet I'd have a long list by this evening and a huge argument as well.

To summarise, whether DLC is worth it or not is a matter of opinion, no one can surmise what is worth it to the player or not. Some might love Street Fighter IV so much they won't care about shelling out for everything, or AC06 which by far and away has the most dlc available on the 360 (allowing people to change the behaviour of the planes and the stats of them to any of the past AC titles) Others will dabble with a pack here or a pack there and some will say it isn't worth it at all.

I find it interesting that on the Bioware forums for DA: Origins (which I skim from time to time) there is a massive thread about this same subject or rather the subject is paying for the DLC for DA: Origins and why the dev's are charging for things the players thought should be free ect. The main thing I found interesting to note was a post by one of the Bioware Dev team behind DA:O saying how the data for the game was finalised in late 08 because they wished originally to ship the pc copy on the first quarter of 09 but held back in the end so that they could release all 3 formats at the same time. Because of the finalising of the games data they had apart from the console teams a good deal of time to work on expanding and adding to the game for post release development. (in fact, going on release dates of now I'd say they had a good 18 months to do this) This is why they had a lot of DLC ready to be released so soon after the release date of the game. Taking in to account the "un finalizing" of the game content would likely have jepoardized development all together as the funding publisher (EA) would have had a product they could say was almost ready to go out on the shelves and start making money to being nowhere near finished again something which can kill a game in development as a failed or aborted product, had EA pulled out of the publishing role who would have risked picking up the project? EA is one of the biggest names out there in the games industry, (heck EA even do normal board games I found out over christmas which surprised me a little but what the hey we're talking computer games here) If they drop a project as a failure other publishers tend to take note.

As for charging for DLC or not well as the dev who wrote the post on the bioware forums said and Yearg has said too in this thread "Some people have this false sense of a right of entitlement to dlc for free" which is true, just because they paid for the original product once does that mean these people can get refills for free forever? Lets put this in to another context, I buy a printer, I use it to print a lot of things and the ink runs dry and the paper that came with the printer runs out. Just because I originally brought a printer with paper and ink does not mean the company I brought it from has to give me paper and ink for free forever though the company will advertise and tell me when I buy the printer before I even use it that they sell the refills, the printer will tell me what refills it needs way before I get to the point where I feel the need to get them. The refills are much like DLC in this regard, it will not necessarily free and it will be advertised to me many times, when I purchase the game that it is there, this is called marketing we see it in every shop we go in from the lay out of a grocery store where as you go round you're enticed to buy more (and yeah it's true, ever wondered why preserves/jelly/peanut butter ect is next to the bakery section?) to the assistant at a computer store offering you microsoft office with your new laptop and a laptop bag in cases such as the DA:O DLC the advertising is subtle, it's there and they do it in a way that most people aren't going to care about because it doesn't glaringly stick out like a sore thumb it's the kind of subtle you see in grocery stores when they place offer items near the tills so people impulsively buy something even if they don't need to buy it. I respect good marketing seeing as I work in an industry built on it, marketing that makes me think "hey I wanna buy this" is rare and if Bioware found a marketing tech that worked on me well I commend them. In the end if people want to keep playing the same game because they like it but also wish to have new experiences in that game outside of player challenges ect then they too have to pay for the new experiences.

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