Online evolution

Over the  last 10 years games have been able to take advantage of the increased use of online accessibility to allow what originally may have been closed isolated narratives to evolve into online virtual worlds that adapt the wants and desires of the playerbase. This has lead to several changes in overall game design. The first is that players never view a game as being "complete" anymore, as there is always the possibility that the game makers will add more content to make the game bigger or more complex. A second change is that a bad game can fixed after its released. whether it is a technical problem that needs to be addressed or the players feel more narrative needs to be added for a better experience there is always hope that this can be addressed in the future. 2 examples of this are the games Fallout 3 and Bioshock 2. Fallout 3 had what is known as a hard ending, in that once the narrative is complete the game can no longer be played, however many players found this conclusion rather jarring as it stopped them from exploring the game world after the end of the story. This lead to the creation of a story change where the ending was removed so that players could play to their hearts content.
In Bioshock 2 the issue was more complex in that many players felt the game was not as good as the original game and that its narrative was simply bad. This lead to the creation of a completely new narrative that could be played as an alternative to the original that many players and reviewers felt was stronger than the original . These are both large scale examples of online expansions to a videogame, but they are strong indicators or where games are currently going in the future.

expansions to Fallout 3

bioshock 2