An expansion pack, expansion set, or supplement is an addition to an existing role-playing game, tabletop game or video game. These add-ons usually add new game areas, weapons, objects, and/or an extended storyline to a complete and already released game. While board game expansions are typically designed by the original creator, video game developers sometimes contract out development of the expansion pack to a third-party company, (see Hellfire for Diablo), it may choose to develop the expansion itself or it may do both (Ensemble Studios developed the real-time strategy game Age of Empires III and the first expansion called the WarChiefs itself, but contracted Big Huge Games for the second expansion pack, the Asian Dynasties). Board games and tabletop RPGs may have been marketing expansions since the 1970s, and video games have been releasing expansion packs since the 1980s, early examples being the Dragon Slayer games Xanadu Scenario II and Sorcerian.
Read more about Expansion Pack: Summary, Stand-alone Expansion Packs, Console Game Expansion Packs
Famous quotes containing the words expansion and/or pack:
“We are caught up Mr. Perry on a great wave whether we will or no, a great wave of expansion and progress. All these mechanical inventions—telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles—they are all leading somewhere. It’s up to us to be on the inside in the forefront of progress.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“A man was to live in that egg-shell day and night, a mile from the shore.... Think of making your bed thus in the crest of a breaker! To have the waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eying you always, night and day, and from time to time making a spring at you, almost sure to have you at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)