Weekend Reading: DLC, Electronic Arts and Money's Worth

Recently, Dragon Age: Origins shipped with downloadable content in the form of the Shale companion and quests, which are available to all those who get the game new, and in the form of the Warden's Keep area and storage facility that also adds some unique armor and fresh abilities for the main character.

After that, The Saboteur, the final game released by the full-fledged incarnation of Pandemic, came complete with a day-one piece of DLC allowing the player to receive more hiding places in Paris in order to escape the Nazis and the option to actually engage in some kind of risqué behavior with the strippers who hang out around their hideout.

The thing these titles have in common is their being published by Electronic Arts and the DLC being mainly pushed through the EA Store, a digital distribution service the publisher is warmly supporting at the moment.

Another aspect the games have in common is the distinct impression that both the Dragon Age: Origins stuff and the Saboteur DLC could have easily been part of the experience delivered in the initial release of the game and, more importantly, for free.

Putting DLC out immediately after the game is out is currently just a minor trend but one could easily imagine a future where each videogame comes out alongside some 5 or 10 dollar pack, which adds some more weapons, characters, tweaks or even new areas.

The problem is not with offering this kind of DLC but with making it painfully obvious that it could have been part of the original release. So, maybe publishers would be better served if they used DLC as it was originally advertised, a sort of digital-only mini expansion employed to deliver bits of new content for a game that has already been thoroughly played by the majority of gamers.