Just caught a glimpse on Steam, as I loaded it up, to see Dead Island: Riptide, and the fact it'll be released April 23rd.

Here's a short list of what it is offering (Note: Putting this in spoilers incase people don't want to see this material):


I've pretty much lost all dreams, desires, hopes, but pretty much my faith in the gaming industry right now. Only company that maintains what little trust I have is Bethesda/Zenimaxx because I like Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas. Getting that bit of information out of the way, part of it being reduant which I apologize for right now, i'm particularly irked at the releases of games as of late. The only thing to tempt me, giving me the "slightest" bit of consideration for Riptide is the price of $40k, versus your standard $60 price tag.

However, with that said, the more I read the details about this game, the more it reminds me of people talking about Left 4 Dead 2. We were going from Left 4 Dead to a new, wondrous game with new missions, new weapons, new playable characters, new enemies, etc.... Though I enjoyed L4D2, I have to agree with others, after playing L4D with fellow players, the second iteration should have been an expansion pack/DLC content. That's the feeling/connotation that was given to me anyways.


What are your thoughts on the matter of DLC/Expansions and creation of new titles? Are developers too quick at brushing material in favor of releasing a new game whose content, 75% or more, could easily pass off as an expansion in the previous game? Are developers abusing DLC/Expansions to the point we'll witness a return to dark ages where what's done is done and the only thing to be seen are bug fixes once in a blue moon?

Only foot I got in the door of the gaming industry was a fansite operator with a relatively small chance at a QA tester position, so I have no idea how much it costs to develop DLC/Expansion material. That being said, I do wonder where the visible "line in the sand" is drawn when it comes to the shenanigans of some developers.

This is going to end well...


Anyway, as long as the quality of the new Game is Good quality, I have no probelm with buying it full price. I would have spent fifty dollars on Skyrim's "Dragonborn" DLC because of how amazing the quality of the expansion was.

Some games actually end up becoming a separate game even if they were meant to be made as expansions. Thief 2 was originally going to be an expansion, but the graphics were more slightly more advanced than the ones in the first Thief. Same thing happened with Battlespire where it had graphics that were different from what it was supposed to be an expansion of, which was Daggerfall. I am not at bothered by DLC since it has been common place since shareware could exist. In fact, many 90's games on the PC and even 2000's games on the PC had DLC, but it was normally in the form of a full version of shareware or free optional content. Most DLC still is just optional content.

Some companies do misuse it, but that happened with every form of a new thing that was useful. In fact, Nintendo pretty much was a dictator during the NES era. The reason the Master System and even the Atari 7800 didn't do well in North America was because of how much of a dictator Nintendo was to companies. DLC is rarely ever used to truly screw over the game in ways like making the ending of the full game inaccessible after shareware stopped being a thing. I think Square was one of the few companies who did that at all.