A recent interesting thread on indiegamer forums talks about the possibility to charge customers for extra content for niche games. An example that everyone can see is Oblivion data packs, like the (in)famous horse pack 😉
Lot of people complained about it, not willing to pay even only $5 for such a “little” update. On the other hands Bethesda replied that it was a huge success. Surely we’re talking about commercial games, I know no example of such business startegy in the casual/niche shareware market.
I thought about it just recently, when I decided to add a modular expansion to my game Magic Stones, the “Quest Mode”. Basically each quest added several new neutral enemy avatar and 2 new playable avatar from 2 new magic schools of Life and Spirit. The quest mode is very different from the rest of the game and I think is the most fun part of it.
So, when I added that, I had to decide if to ask a small amount for each pack, or just release them as a “free add-on” to encourage the potential buyer to make the big step and buy the game.
While I don’t actually have any statistical data to support my idea, I can say that giving away free content (and quality content, not just “extra levels” but valuable new game features) had a very pleasant impact both on customers comment and also on reviewers. Was not uncommon to read phrases like “considering that the game gets frequent updates, is really a bargain at this price”.
In any case, I don’t plan to do that very often for future games, because is very time-consuming (every update requires at least 1-2 weeks of work).