Their audience, which means every potential buyer. People will expect of an expansion what they're used to getting from an expansion. Which means that some people will expect more than others.
And, again, you are making WILD assumptions as to what 'people will expect' or what 'people are used to getting.'
Not that age or experience should be used as an argument from authority, but just as an anecdotal example, I've been playing computer games since the TI-99 4A, with a good dose of my 'childhood' spent on a much beloved C-64. My 'expectation' of what an expansion is, based on experience, is probably vastly different than, say, a gamer who cut his PC gaming teeth on WoW and Mass Effect in like 2008.
You play Temple of Apshai? I did. It had an 'expansion' - Dunjonquest. Do you know how SMALL that expansion was? It makes something like Honest Heart for F:NV seem GINORMOUS!
Or Icewind Dale's Heart of Winter (let alone Trials of the Luremaster) and how 'small' that would be compared to, say, Point Lookout for Fallout 3 or Citadel for Mass Effect 3? Yes, HoW would take LONGER to finish, but the content (and code) for either of those add-ons DWARFS what is in HoW.
So how are you measuring expansion? Amount of code? Cost to make? Added features? Cost? Hours of gameplay? I'd argue that you'd be hard-pressed to get any real consensus from a random polling of gamers at all.
Really not that simple.
Which is my point. Expansion used to mean significant content - and today we have very different uses of it.
Used to WHEN? 1980? 1995? 2011? And to WHOM?
Significant content? You want to measure the amount of what you got in Dunjeonquest? In Tales of the Sword Coast? Really?
It isn't rocket science because IT. ISN'T. SCIENCE. It is, at absolute best, speculative based on your personal experiences.
And you are trying to impose that on others, telling people who disagree with you that they are living outside of reality (your reality, really) and that they are spouting (your words) bullshit.
No one ever claimed it had a gold standard. I'm pointing out that not everything can reasonably be called an expansion - because people have been arguing there's no difference between calling something DLC and then calling it an expansion.
Again, this is another straw man. If you don't understand why, then you don't understand the fallacies in your logic. No one is saying that anything and everything can be called an expansion. I gave some broad parameters, and if you wikipedia 'game expansion' or find bloggers ranting about expansion versus DLC (which is where I'm placing your views, with the blogging rantings, your welcome) what you'll see is that no one agrees. You can find people declaring, full-throated, that expansions must be equal in size to the original game. Few 'expansions' would count under that definition, and, honestly, many sequels.
Point out whom you are arguing with that is making, as their point, that expansions can be any addition to a game. Who is making that argument?
No one other than you, to fight against it?
Welcome to what a straw man argument is.
Fantasy land being DLC and expansions beeing freely interchangeable.
See directly above.
No one is arguing that.
At worst, you could try and argue my description of Venn diagrams is me trying to say all DLC are expansions - but you would be absolutely missing my point. The circle of all things that are DLC and the circle of all things that are expansions overlap, but they are neither two completely overlapping circles NOR one circle completely engulfed by another.
Straw.
Man.
If you stop acting like an insulted elder - we might have a productive conversation.
Ad hominem
I'm what you might call very good at not being emotionally involved in a debate - because it makes you miss points and you tend to become irrational once you boil over.
Non-sequitor.
This means you're not going to have the slightest effect feigning indignation. I consider it a pathetic tactic, really.
Ad hominem.
So, by arguing that expansion shouldn't be equated with DLC - because it's useful for communicating significant content is the same as hijacking the word and imposing my view on others?
Straw man.
No one is saying that DLC and expansions are exactly the same thing.
And no one is calling you out for stating that.
Oh, yeah, I'm beating you down because my arguments are annoyingly rational.
No, the baiting emoticons and the personal attacks (read: insults and ad hominems) are you 'beating me (and others) down.'
For not getting emotional, you sure express yourself in a very surly way.
