Ok, I have had 24 hours to ponder after reading the article and the responses concerning the goodness and badness of DLC. So here is my response, in two parts.
1. There are many kinds of monetization and there seem to be more always on the horizon. Crowd funding, Early access, standard retail 1-time (is anything sold this way any more?), expansions, DLC, FTP, rentals, microtransactions, subscriptions (hey I played Everquest in 1998 and many years after at 15 bucks a month. For me, an incredible steal --- > more than 60 hrs a month meant I was paying less than 2 bits an hour), etc. So people discuss endlessly about which is good or evil or when it is good or evil, etc. A topic people love to argue about. And I say... all this talk about this stuff is just about totally beside the point. Let me be clear...from the consumer's point of view, the gamer's point of view, it's essentially irrelevant to try to gauge the badness of this stuff in themselves. From the publisher/developer point of view, it is very consequential and they are welcome to their opinions. They have to make a living or we don't get any games.
What is the point? Whether or not an enjoyable experience is provided at a price that the gamer (as an individual) finds appropriate. Period. I am not saying the details of this stuff can't be interesting, just that it is beside the point. It's sort of like buying a car. I might be very interested in how an internal combustion engine functions --- that's fine. But what is critical is whether the car is reliable, comfortable, has a "total cost of ownership" that is practical, and so forth. How many cubic inches or how the fuel injection works is a sideshow. Maybe an interesting sideshow, but still a sideshow, from the buyer's point of view. I was just watching some stuff about computers on you tube and the subject was i3, i5, i7, etc. And the point was, knowing the cycle speed and cache size and what type of i chip it is is generally completely misleading, because the overall performance of a computer depends an awful lot, not just on how the i3 or i5 or i7 chip in a particular case is constructed but on the rest of the motherboard, the bus, yada yada yada. Same for graphics cards --- the only thing that is generally useful is comparison on a specific piece of software, i.e., game. The guy mentioned that he could show 2 graphics cards that had about the same specs, one for $100, and another for $1000. Same on board memory, etc. But the more expensive card blew the cheap card into the next galaxy...it isn't the basic numbers that tell the story.
OK, so let me give an example on a computer game I will call X. Let's suppose the publisher decides that he will sell it this way: he divides it into 20 parts. Maybe part one is just creating a character and doing a tutorial on weapons and armor. Next is a newbie area. And so forth. On launch day, he offers the 20 pieces at $3.50 a piece. That's $70 to the math challenged. (sorry). He also offers to sell all 20 at once for $60. Now, from what I have read, this is just about the worst abuse of a customer that could possibly happen. The entire game divided into 20 DLCs at day one? Yipes!! So what is my reaction? I DON'T CARE. All I am interested in is whether the game experience is worth the money. Since the publisher is offering choices about how to buy it, it's actually a (very small) plus. Heck, for $7 I can get a pretty good feeling for the game, and save a bundle if it is not for me. But still, it's details compared to the overriding question of value vs cost.
And it should be mentioned that value vs cost is totally individual. If someone thinks $10 for a red colored hat is a good buy in his current shooter, well, by definition it is. Wouldn't be to me, but what difference does that make? It's his decision. If someone thinks it's a good deal to spend a ton of money so his apple trees will bloom faster on his virtual farm ---- it 's not my concern. It's theirs.
Actually I have a very firm view that the market, which is people putting their money down for what they want, will sort out the whole mess. What is truly bad will be weeded out. [Please --- I am not talking about out right fraud or felonious business practices; that's another topic.] What is truly good will triumph. Has it not? There are games, a very few of course, that keep a huge following for people years after initial release. E.G., Skyrim. I just watched a you tube that just showed the latest HR graphics mods for Skyrim while playing music (Leiliana's Song from Dragon Age). Now I like Skyrim vanilla. I eventually got about 35 mods running that turned it into something Very Special. And now people are STILL doing more with it. Or heck, look at Galciv2. It's been around a long time. Some very dedicated people volunteered to put together a community update package to improve the AI, and Stardock has volunteered, and has done, some reprogramming of the exe file for Twilight of the Arnor to take it still further. Returning to the point... how was Galciv2 funded? How the heck do I care? Whatever it was...it was part of producing a fine product that is still a lot of fun to play, and now is going to be even better, at this late date.
And now we have Galciv 3 with Founders, Early Access, and loads of DLC and expansions or whatever the heck you call it planned. If the result is a good game the details aren't very important - to me as a consumer. If it fails - hello - the same thing is true! (But I really doubt that to be sure, especially after each live stream!!). Since the same is true either way I maintain, interesting though it may be, the details are beside the point --- to me, as a buyer.
2. A more subtle point perhaps. So there are many, many ways of producing and funding a game. Well, I maintain that the more the merrier. Because the more choices there are the greater the opportunity for the publishers to find something that works for them, and if it works for them that implies that a decent game is being made available to me, and that is what I am critically interested in. (As I say, the publishers themselves necessarily take a different view --- but not all that different because if their customers aren't happy, they fail.).
It's sort of like genetic diversity. If you have a group of people with very little genetic variation, similarly for a group of any creatures, who try to survive by constantly intermarrying what do you get? It isn't pretty. With a lot more possibilities, better. So the gaming industry. Once their was one way (well actually two ways). You bought a disk and that was it. Or, the second way, you pirated it. That's all there was, back when I was much younger than now. Now there are many ways. And a key for a publisher is to find a way that works for his company and for his customers. Stardock, not being a mega software publisher like Bethesda or Blizzard, needs to find their way. So they choose Early access and DLC for Galciv3. Thus they have managed to keep much of their team around for a long time, which is very good for the end user. Of course the critical issue will be whether a fair percentage of their products are good ones --- no one, even the big boys, is going to be perfect.
The point is, that having many choices as to how to proceed gives a smaller publisher more opportunities to get it right. And that is what I care about. Indeed, I have spent a good deal of time trying to carefully document problems motivated by the earnest hope that I might just be helping the product succeed in a very small way. I believe it is time well spent. It is of course an advantage that I am retired so I have more time. (But I also have a lot less stamina!)
Summary.
I don't care much what's under the hood. What I do care about is the end product and its total cost, and therefore I conclude that my business is to decide whether stuff is worth my money, primarily achieving that by trying to be an informed shopper. And whatever (legal) means a company finds that helps them produce a decent product at a reasonable overall price is fine by me.
