In terms of the grand history of gaming, this really only came about in the past <10 years. It’s not simply expansion packs, but size, frequency, and amount of DLC. I don’t think it’s a bad thing per se, mind. But this is a very different era for sure.
Civ II is not a good comparison, though, and there’s no inflation adjustment necessary. I can’t recall how much Civ II’s expansions cost. But they wouldn’t cost as much today as they did then, because back then there wasn’t really a firm market for this sort of thing (beyond, nobodythought an expansion of just alternate game scenarios would sell at full game price), and now we have much better market understanding of this stuff since expansion/dlc/etc is such a common practice. Also, game prices have not gone up the way e.g. movie prices have. Fantastic Wordls’ release year movie ticket price would have been 4 or 5 bucks or something but now it would be 10+ bucks. But game prices are the same now as then, for a variety of reasons. Civ II (or Warcraft 2, which got a real expansion and some third party “scenario” disks) wouldn’t come close to a Paradox title (but what does?) or even Civ VI.
I agree it’s not a huge change though. It’s a natural evolution. Expansions always made sense in some scenarios. Most of the expensive work is done already (engine, loads of assets for content, etc). It’s cheaper and easier to distribute them - no need to print physical media, package materials, etc. I think we’re still figuring all of this out too, in terms of amount, frequency of release, how to package stuff, etc.
I think there’s a software issue at play here, though, that needs solving. As a content creator, I think what I want to do is offer DLC and then try to package them reasonably when the time comes. Let’s say you didn’t Season PAss, though. You bought A, E, and F. now I am selling A-F. The Grand Mega Pack is cheaper than the sums of A-F, but possibly also cheaper than B+C+D. I think you ought to get some money off of GMP. Steam doesn’t allow me to do this.