What do I think when I hear these words? I'm SO glad you asked. I think: the bottom line is I don't care about these words Or any other words you want to use! If I am paying more money for a game I already bought. I better be getting more game! NOT a "skin," a "pack," a "box," You can keep your turd, and the toliet its sittin in! The more money I spend the more minutes, hours, days, are equally owed.

If you buy some groceries and the cashier says: "Hey I got a great deal! If you spend some more money on this food you just bought I can give you some more packaging, labels, and stickers off of the same food you just bought!" "Tell you what I'll even hold it up to your nose so you can get a gooooood smell!" What would you say? What words would you use? Alot of people would say arcades are all but dead. I have to disagree. They're bigger then ever. The difference now is they cost a whole lot more to start and playing, and a whole lot more to keep playing.

Oh, and in most cases, god forbid you can't play with your friend right next to you. That would be craaaaaazy. Everybody knows, You have to have both be miles apart. With your arcade games connected online so you can pay that internet fee and not communicate face to face with other humans like some disgusting chimps are something, but instead grunt into a mic and press keys on a plastic rectangle so you can make those words

Again, Im so glad you asked. This was a great question. Hope I answered it.

I dun think it's necessary 2 ans ur qn as there is no EXACT or right ans 2 that. But using some common sense, if DLCs r so many (read: over double digits & abv) that u cant count them or that u hv prob find the DLC u 1 unless u do a search then it'll prob be wise 2 hv them categorized.

This.
Something can be both DLC and an expansion .
It more a issue of Marketing then anything else.

Short answer:

We HAD what was called "expansion packs" before for bigger contents. Now with micro-transactions and greed we have something called "Downloadable Contents" ( or DLC ) which is basically the same content in an bigger expansion pack broken up into tiny little pieces so creators and distributors can charge more, and get rich faster.

As with food - smaller containers are more expensive than bigger containers per Kilograms (or Pound or what's the usual in each country)

TL;DR: DLC's are just an "Expansion pack" broken into pieces that costs more in total.

:-)

Thanks everyone for contributing to my research so far. Some excellent analogies were made.

I want to (probably) conclude my questions with a 3rd wave. We all "feel" that DLCs can be anything but are mostly tiny pieces compared to large expansions of old times. And they are pricey. This time, I want to open a discussion where the DLCs can be actually useful. Or not?

Consider that there is a Strategy and RPG game that you love. Those games want to expand with new civilizations and classes.

CASE1: DLC Price 20$

Strategy game (like total war or civilization) introduces 3 new civilizations that you can play with and wraps them up in one package and offer you for 1 price. Let's say that the package is called "Far Eastern Civilizations" and include India, China and Japan.

The RPG game introduces 3 new playable classes: 1 Mage, 1 fighter, 1 rogue class and again wraps them up in one package.

CASE2: DLC Price 10$ each

This time, the same companies unwrap those packages and offer each class/civilization individually.

Which 1 would you chose? Would you go only for the part that you are interested in or for the whole package?

For the sake of the simplicity, Please assume that:
1. You do not want to wait for the "Game of the year" Mega combined package.
2. You want to play "one of the" offered classes/civilizations NOW.
3. You are not exactly trilled for the "other two" classes/civilizations.

So you have to make the decision now. Of Course, you can say anything you wish but I want to see which one would you prefer if you were limited to those options.

Tnx.

To your new question, if I were going to buy an expansion and not wait, I'd buy the full expansion, not one piece of an expansion.

In reality though, I prefer to wait for the "goty" or complete edition that combines everything.

Out of the two I'd pick "Case1" (which has more or less already been done in Age of Empires). However, I'm not an impatient person and in the real world my first choice above all would be precisely to wait for the "Game of The Year" edition.

DLC have 3 letters, and Expansion Pack have 13, so the difference is about 10 letters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrm-rPSCIBw

Probably not the best example, since I don't play strategy games and while I like RPGs I only ever play through them once. But assuming I'd absolutely want to play one of the DLC classes in my one playthrough, of course I'd go for CASE2, since that would save me $10, with the same outcome.

(But in truth I probably would wait for the GOTY or for the DLCs to be discounted by 75%. Or not bother with buying them at all, since they don't seem to offer additional story content. For me to pay $10 for something like that, the DLC class would have to be super awesome, and the base game rather cheap.)

But wait, I got more differences!

DLC have the letters D and L, Expansion Pack does not.
(and therein lies the only true difference between DLC and Expansion Pack)

i just wanted an excuse to post that

I LOVE THAT SCENE!!!!!



You raised a very interesting question.

My general heuristic:

Expansion often includes new systems/gameplay/engine changes. The software changes in a big way. Hard to do by modding except extremely mod-friendly games.

DLCs are often things modders could have done with enough resources. Even if there's a lot to it, they're usually not expanding the gameplay much, if at all.

...And micro-transactions are things that a save game editor could do.