https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/06/11/e-3-2017-video-games-turning-into-multi-year-quests/380260001/ Not really new news but it's interesting to see some numbers behind it, and also the amount of growth in a short period of time.

From the link:

"In some cases, publishers will get creative. Activision Blizzard introduced microtransactions to its hit action game Call of Duty in 2013, which included items such as a $1.99 Bacon Pack, dressing weapons with a type of camouflage resembling strips of bacon."

Yep. Creative.

Who knew - way back in 2013 - that bacon would catch on? haha

Finally, I won't have to feel bad about not being able to finish a game!

Picture masterminds flipcharting ideas and brainstorming stuff and all of a sudden comes a fella screaming "DUDE... THE BACON PACK!" and stuff. Everyday we stray further from god's light man ;P Heh.
Can't even name how much stuff I ditched over the past 3yrs in terms of gaming. No regrets.
Can't say the same about books, though ;(

A quote from the article: Whoa! That expansion thing they mention sounds awesome! So you, like, can get new content and features to the base game with these ekx.. epx... expansions, not having to wait for a sequel?

I recall when over 10 years ago I was playing this game "Starcraft", thinking how cool it would be if it continued the story of the Queen of Blades and introduce some new units like Terran medics or Valkyries. But no, since we didn't have these "expandion packs" back then, we couldn't have that. We had to wait until Starcraft 2 instead, playing nothing in between.

/sarcasm

When arcades were big the games were made virtually unending in that they became too hard. It was done deliberately to keep the quarters flowing.

What about arcades such as Top Landing where satan himself designs the whole system just to suck up quarters in the first 15 seconds, huh? Pretty ideal for kids I say! ;)

That reminds me Starcraft is almost 20 years old...man, makes me depressed, I'll be an old man soon :-((((
But yeah, kind of bizarre statement. Even the original Command and Conquer and Warcraft 2 in the mid-90s already had expansion packs.

That's corporate creativity, for ya. o.O

I think the point of the article was not that this is something new necessarily, but that it's a trend growing fast, and also that this is a major design consideration for an increasing number of games. In earlier years a studio might have been on the fence about an expansion pack until after seeing how successful a particular title turned out to be; now full expansions and smaller paid DLC are part of a game's design from the get-go.

Yeah, other games did this first. It was a relative trickle compared to today, and the trend shows no signs of slowing down since the consumer keeps throwing more and more money at it.

Paradox busily taking notes.

Anyways, this has been a thing for decades, just look at FIFA, COD, final fantasy, street fighter, Nintendo. Just rerelease each year the same thing with a reskin. Truth is the pomace is dimmer than a broken dimmer switch and will be milked like the pregnant cow it is (all via clienttwares to make it simple, lucky we don't have such things here).

USA Today: Always a decade out of time!

That thread title...

It never ceases to amaze me how clueless the mainstream media is regardless video games. It must be a generational thing.