So, I buy a chicken. Do you know how many ways you can prepare chicken? I haven't counted but I'll bet I could have a different meal every day for a long time. And you know what? That's a big part of why chickens are a $50 billion a year business.
So, what does that have to do with games? The bigger the industry the better the games. So, how to expand? The big selling titles cost many millions to produce and market. And it's a risky business to get into. For example, Kingdoms of Amalur was a pretty good game but it lost a lot of money and put Studio 38 out of business.
To leverage the investments DLCs are now ubiquitous. But they take time and money, and they are also a financial risk. So, how to make the business more profitable and less risky? I think that the Skyrim experience points the way. There are more than 40,000 mods available that have made it an immeasurably better game but they don't provide any revenue. There are, however, a couple of mods there that are fully blown, high quality, DLCs. But again, no revenues. Why not open a game for independently produced DLCs, then market them and pay royalties to the producer? You get more DLCs much quicker at
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You get more DLCs much faster and at no financial risk. We are seeing crowd funded titles such as Might and Magic X and Wasteland II that are pretty good games but obviously cheapies. They have to bear the costs of production (engine, marketing, etc.) which detract from the game itself. I'll bet that if a major game company adopted a strategy of soliciting and paying for content we would see scads of independent producers, both indies and dedicated small studios, enter the market.
And guess what? We gamers would be half way to heaven.