Multiplayer map packs? Sure, they’re okay. Character skins, extra weapons, more vehicles? We’ll yawn and save our Points. Paying for a fully unlocked career in Tiger Woods? Hey! Don’t make us pull this article over, EA!

In other words, until early 2009, buying game add-ons on Marketplace was just kinda nice. And yes, we mean “nice” that way. True, Bethesda blazed a bright and early trail with a meteor strike of Oblivion awesomeness, but until Fable II kicked off the year with one bang-up storm on Knothole Island, Game Marketplace was really only good for new music-game tunes, Xbox Live Arcade games, and the occasionally interesting theme or multiplayer map. Suddenly, we’re buying extensions to the single-player experience — long our holy grail of DLC — left and right, hand over fi st. Aside from experiencing gratitude, excitement, and higher credit-card bills, we also paused to wonder why game creators are finally giving us what we all want. So we went ahead and asked them.

OXM: Why do you think single-player downloadable content is just now taking off in early 2009?

RON ROSENBERG, CRYSTAL DYNAMICS: I think we’re just beginning to see bandwidth availability in homes where downloadable content makes sense. Creating single-player content is labor-intensive, and it’s exciting to have a connected audience that can support the scope of the effort.

THOMAS DELBUGUET, UBISOFT: Because I like to believe that we (developers in general) don’t just cut and paste. Single-player games are generally story-driven, and therefore require careful planning and elegant integration. I think developers are now coming out with games with which they actually could afford to invest time to anticipate DLC.

OXM: Does your team view DLC as a chance to finally get in primo stuff that didn’t make the cut for the original game, or as a chance to innovate and create all over again?

PETE LAKE, CRITERION: [With Burnout Paradise], we wanted to give people game-changing content, so we had a lot of brainstorming meetings where we asked ourselves, “What’s the craziest thing we could do?” Once we’d gotten really excited, we’d try to figure out how to actually deliver it. We never wanted to restrict ourselves to what we had done before. To help us focus, we looked at how people were actually playing the game and, using this observation and telemetry, we made decisions based on what was likely to be popular.

JEREMIE TEXIER, LIONHEAD: Knothole Island has its own story that runs alongside the main storyline. For this particular adventure, we decided to stay away from the main drama to keep it a fun, light, and, most importantly, original experience.

TODD HOWARD, BETHESDA: We see it as new and missed opportunities. Some is brand-new gameplay that we may want to try, and others are done to fill “holes” that show themselves after a game releases. We try to stay away from “more of the same.” That’s boring for us to create, and boring for the players. I think it’s really important that DLC feels instantly new and fresh.

DOUG LOMBARDI, VALVE: Both. In the case of Half-Life 2, we didn’t quite have time to finish Half-Life 2 deathmatch while finishing Half-Life 2 single-player and Counter-Strike: Source [all for PCs]. With Left 4 Dead, we’re shipping a new gameplay mode that began production after the game shipped.

DELBUGUET: We wanted to extend the Prince of Persia experience that we worked so hard to define. So our challenge was to craft a “new” experience for fans that would maintain the foundations of what we built. We extended the storyline to further develop the relationship between the Prince and Elika, and we wanted to address certain complaints, namely the game’s challenge level.

ROSENBERG: In many ways, releasing a full game is akin to releasing an entire season of a television series in a single shot, whereas DLC is closer to a big summer blockbuster movie. I think there are amazing opportunities to focus on creating a tighter, more focused dramatic experience that could take games to a new level. You learn a lot working on a big game, and it’s great to see the team apply that to the DLC.

OXM: Ten bucks seems to be the usual price for most DLC these days. Does that just cover the bills of creating it, or does it allow you to earn a decent profit?

ROSENBERG: You can buy DLC for all kinds of price points, but $10 does seem to be the going rate for really good stuff. I’ve seen speculation among gamers that publishers are trying to get rich off DLC, but it’s really not about that for us. We’re much more focused on supporting the community that was kind enough to purchase the original game and extending their fun. Just to give you a sense of scope, we’ve had a team of over 60 people working on our DLC, so while we do receive some advantage from established tech and assets, we’re also putting in a lot of effort to bring these new releases to the fans.

TEXIER: We just want to make sure that the price reflects the right balance between the user experience and the cost of actually making the DLC. Though we have reused some technology, all the content for Knothole Island was created from scratch, so the $10 will mainly go toward ensuring our survival. [Laughs]

LOMBARDI: I hate to punt, but this one is going to vary wildly. If you’re putting out three new maps with all the same textures, your investment is low — but your return may also be low. If you design a compelling new bit of gameplay, have a large and active installed base, and didn’t spend too much to build the DLC, you could make a tidy sum. I can think of at least one DLC sold at $10 that did over 1 million units…and $10 says that one was profitable.

OXM: Where can DLC grow from here?

LAKE: A big improvement would be a decrease in the turn-around time between when we make the content and when we can release it on the console. Currently, there’s a long process of certification and testing, and I’d love to find a way to make the whole process more reactive.

OXM: Are you starting to see DLC as a trial run for the so-called disc-less future?

ROSENBERG: It seems likely that if we have music-on-demand and video-on-demand, that we’ll also have games-on-demand. Choice is good, and it’s cool that our DLC will be offered via retail outlets and Xbox Live.

HOWARD: I don’t think so, no. Personally, I like buying games at the store. I like boxes and manuals. I want to hold it. LOMBARDI: Don’t believe the hype. DLC is just another sign that we’re moving away from “fl y and die” products to “service-oriented” products, which have a much longer lifecycle and evolve past the initial launch.