In support of Christina Norman

I don't often do this, but I worked with Christina, she's aways been awesome. She came out recently about day one DLC.

"There's no point in releasing DLC a year after your game has come out when most people have already sold your game back to GameStop three times," said at a GDC panel, reported ShackNews. "That means getting it out early; that means even day-one DLC. That is a terrible thing to some players.

"Players rant—they know nothing about this DLC that's coming out except its name. But then it's 'oh this game must be incomplete, the game must be ruined.' Game developers are not evil. (Some are evil.) But most are not evil.

"We just want to release awesome stuff. Players please, give us a chance. Judge our games based on what they are. Judge the DLC based on what it is. Stop thinking you're a producer and telling us when and where we should be building our content."

Originally from Shack News

I've been there. And I have to say what she said is right on the dot. I can't speak for all companies, but BioWare doesn't make DLC with the intention to make more from what they've already created for the game. They don't get right through development and decide to cut off X portion of the game and re-wrap it as day one DLC with the work already done.

They do grab a set of people to create the DLC just like a mini game. And they do it in parallel to the main game. This chart one of the comments had pretty much describes it:

(Click to see it enlarged)

So what she's saying is if we didn't charge you for the DLC it would have never have been made. And thats true.

Day one DLC sells. The longer a game is out the less enthusiasm and sales there will be for any DLC released.

I don't mind that fans voice their displeasure. Actually personally I like it. For me it's an opportunity to make something better. Maybe it's better communication, or maybe it's a change in action. Whatever the case is, the fans win out, and if I've made something better I feel like I win too.

The only thing I warn is, the passion some people have drives them to sometimes spew pure vitriol. Thats not so useful, and in the worse cases it's so insulting it can't even be listened to. If the intention is to get someone to LISTEN and change things for the better, you don't do yourself or them any favors by trying this. The more descriptive you get on what you did and didn't like the better it is.

I've worked there, BioWare does listen guys, and they do try to remedy concerns players have.