Riiiigggghhhhht, AAA games are floundering, and the problem is because they're not charging enough for them. It has nothing to do with all the bloat that's been added to AAA games that's caused their budgets to balloon like...
Making every game a massive open world with sprawling landscapes and/or city skylines.
Pushing graphics to look more and more realistic by cramming as many ugly details into things that nobody wants to see and likely won't notice anyway, from eyebag wrinkles to hairs on a woman's face.
Throwing in half-hearted RPG mechanics into games that have no business being RPGs, all for the sake of adding more "builds" and "playstyles" to now design and balance the game around.
Voice-acting everything, even in-game encyclopedias and narration, with overpaid voice actors and sometimes even more overpaid celebrities (who always just phone it in).
Turning every game into a cinematic story by painstakingly animating or motion-capturing dozens of cutscenes that will more often than not interrupt the flow of the game.
Adding half-assed multiplayer or "games as service" features that exist purely to sell microtransactions to suckers, only to have to shut the servers down a year after release because not enough consumers bite (and because there are multiplayer games everywhere and they're all competing against one another).
Advertising them in the most ridiculous ways, like buying ads on billboards, busses, and skyscrapers, or creating 5+ minute long "cinematic" trailers that use more high-resolution visuals and which in absolutely no way reflect how the games actually look or play at all.
Making games with all the above and releasing them on a yearly basis, forcing companies to have to hire hundreds of people to crap out a single title just to keep up (and often abusing them).
Also pc patches years down the line that either update a company launcher or relate to console changes, both of which don't actually add anything to the pc version but will still find a way to break it after years of working well enough.
Let's not forget the hilarious goat rope that is ray tracing. The feature that does absolutely nothing except eat frames and crank up the price of graphics cards.
I've been playing the Dead Space remake with ray tracing on, and there was nothing that make me go, "Wow, I'm glad I shelled out beaucoup bucks for an RTX 3070!"
Hate to say it but I must agree, I had the same thoughts while trying several games on my new 3060. CP2077 was one of those where people were hyping up the RTX effects. I tried it out in various parts of the world, weather conditions, and times of day, even taking RTX-On/RTX-Off before and after screenshots to compare outside the game. Honestly Cyberpunk already had good enough "fake" reflections and lighting that the difference with RTX is negligible.
But hey now we can see our reflection in Quake 2 RTX!
DLSS on the other hand is a god-send and I can't imagine ever wanting to turn that off.
I feel that in regard to a lot of mobile and cheap games. Like, they are F2P or dirt cheap under the idea that they will instead nickle and dime you instead. But for a lot of them I'd outright pay full price just to play it like a normal game because its still a good game that has been stripped to annoy you into paying.
Otherwise fuck this guy. You got 300 hours out of Elden Ring because its a good game, not because of anything to do with its price. You don't go in the back to give the Chef an extra 50$ when the meal is incredible, why would this logic apply to this industry?
My standard has always been 1€ per 2 hours (not counting cutscenes). However that initial price is taken on faith that a game will deliver those hours.
The more you ask as an initial investment the more people will have to search for alternative methods of finding out if a game has the content to warrant the price, and since most games are hands-on experiences....well
Last game I bought was after playing alot of it. Yarrr.
Played it because streamers I enjoy played it and it looked fun and accessible to me.
I thought "this is a very original and fun take on the genre, the translation is very well done, and I want to tell the devs they made something great despite my very limited budget".
When it went on sale for about 20 dollars I bought it on GOG. I would not have paied at all had the price been too high.
No "always online + microtransactions look at how woke our game is" cancer. I can download the install file, save it on a USB key and install it when and where I want.
Just a silly colony-building survival with original water management mechanics, because beavers.
That doesn't mean I must play the game for 60 hours.
Reflecting on it, talking to others about it, those count too. A short game with a deeply impactful something to it that makes me enjoy it beyond the time I'm playing it is a perfectly valid interpretation of the "dollar per hour" rule.
So doing the maths from their logic, the author wants AAA video games to cost ~£2,000 (~$2,400, >€2,250) each, before we get to season passes, DLC, subscription fees, microtransactions and other ways of getting people to cough up more.
The only people who would advocate for that are those who believe video games are a social ill and wish to end the industry through setting the price so high the vast majority of people are priced out and have no choice but to quit. Not the first time this concept has been implemented.
People don't like hearing it, but it's actually true, and I have the numbers (and personal experience) to back it up.
Think about what you consider the best the game industry ever was. You're probably thinking somewhere between the SNES/Genesis era and the PS2/Gamecube era, right? Games were way, way more expensive back then. A high profile PS2 game was $50 new back in the early 2000s. Adjusted for inflation, that's $80.
"But what about DLC and microtransactions!" you argue. Oh, you mean like expansion packs? Warcraft 3 was sixty dollars in 2002, which is a hundred bucks today. Add in TFT and you're looking at nearly 200 dollars. Were you complaining about that? Why was Warcraft 3 totally worth it when today the exact same thing is a cynical, corporate cash grab?
How about Street Fighter 2? That game had three different versions on the SNES alone, and they were no different from DLC today. Street Fighter 2 was a hundred fifty dollars in today's money, and that's just the first version which had a whopping eight characters. If they released a fighting game with eight characters for $150 today you'd be rioting in the streets.
Most of you are going to get mad about it, but you know I'm right. The only reason you remember games as being a "better value" is because your mom used to buy them for you. Unless you were an adult in the early 2000s, you don't get an opinion on whether or not games are too expensive nowadays, because they objectively are not.
EDIT: Gonna get this out of the way before anyone has the chance to even bring it up. No, I'm not saying Calla Duty 41: War of Wars is worth $100. But I am saying that modern masterpieces like Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Doom Eternal, etc. are. I was willing to pay a hundred bucks for a fantastic game back then, and I still am.
Let's put it this way: Why was the content of Final Fantasy 6 - the actual game itself - worth $150 dollars, but Final Fantasy 15 is only worth $60 despite having a hundred times the complexity and content?
Let's put it this way: Why was the content of Final Fantasy 6 - the actual game itself - worth $150 dollars, but Final Fantasy 15 is only worth $60 despite having a hundred times the complexity and content?
Final Fantasy 6 was released to a much smaller market on a format that cost significantly more to distribute.
There's no meaningful way to compare the video game industry today to the video game industry in the '90s.
We don't make any more money than we used to back then. And when game prices go up, I have more important things to spend that money on. So they don't get ANY money from people like me and can just eat shit and die.
This is why, for example, Trump's strategy increased tax revenue by lowering taxes. The taxes were lower, so more people were willing to pay rather than move offshore or hide assets. Or put simply, pinging two people for 50 dollars each is less money than pinging 6 people for 20 dollars each. Because at the 20 dollar price point, many more people were willing to buy.
The average salary in 1990 was 20k and now it's 53k. We make more money that isn't worth as much. So yes there is an argument to be made that the standard $60 price point is outdated due to inflation and the price should go up.
That doesn't really take into account how much those damn carts cost to make vs digital distribution.
Let's put it this way: Why was the content of Final Fantasy 6 - the actual game itself - worth $150 dollars, but Final Fantasy 15 is only worth $60 despite having a hundred times the complexity and content?
Because the industry still had growing pains and charged what they think their game was worth. It wasn't until until Gen 7 with online connectivity and normies flooding the hobby that the "$60 standard" was cemented into public consciousness. From then on, it became quantity > quality, copies sold over revenue.
And for all of your durr-hurring about MUH INFLATION ADJUSTED DOLLARYDOOS, you forget video games are a luxury. Unless you're so fucking old you remember voting for Jimmy Carter, stagflation is a bitch. The games industry will have to seriously wrestle with increasing MSRP when people are paying $20 for a dozen eggs or $1,300 a month for heat.
Games have never cost under $60 if you factor in inflation. Not even $50. Unless you mean you never buy anything but indie budget titles, in which case I actually agree somewhat. I buy like two AAAs a year these days, and only the ones that are just about guaranteed to make it into my favorite games of all time. I'm too old to be putting in 100 hours on a new game every month like I used to. Give me something I can drop into and out of in the blink of an eye, because that's how life is when you have a mountain of responsibilities.
What would be your price cap? The higher price you would pay for a game?
I paid £99.99 (~$120? I bought it when I was still "home") for Forza Motorsport 7 Ultimate Edition. I think that's the most I've paid for a game.
As for what I'd pay for a game, maximum...depends how long it lasts. FM7 is still the latest title over 5 years later. It averages out at £20 a year and I played well over 500 hours of it. I'd probably pay whatever Microsoft slapped on the box of the next game, unless it's something utterly ridiculous.
Maybe $200 if it comes with some kind of display item and it's the only one they release that generation.
I've never really thought about what is the highest I would pay for Forza games. I have all 12 of them, all seven Motorsport and all five Horizon. I can't imagine not buying them, honestly.
I haven't bought many current gen games. My friends gifted me a couple of games they wanted to play with me for my birthday, saying that I can't feel guilty about supporting my enemy if they buy them for me.
Not sure how I feel about that development.
At the moment I'm just waiting for Forza Motorsport : Make Every Lap Count (What a stupid name, I hope they don't actually stick with it.)
The Crew 3 looks interesting too, but it's Ubisoft.
Riiiigggghhhhht, AAA games are floundering, and the problem is because they're not charging enough for them. It has nothing to do with all the bloat that's been added to AAA games that's caused their budgets to balloon like...
You forgot "Denuvo".
Don't forget the PC port being complete fucking dogshit and needing multiple patches to make it playable.
Also pc patches years down the line that either update a company launcher or relate to console changes, both of which don't actually add anything to the pc version but will still find a way to break it after years of working well enough.
Let's not forget the hilarious goat rope that is ray tracing. The feature that does absolutely nothing except eat frames and crank up the price of graphics cards.
I've been playing the Dead Space remake with ray tracing on, and there was nothing that make me go, "Wow, I'm glad I shelled out beaucoup bucks for an RTX 3070!"
Hate to say it but I must agree, I had the same thoughts while trying several games on my new 3060. CP2077 was one of those where people were hyping up the RTX effects. I tried it out in various parts of the world, weather conditions, and times of day, even taking RTX-On/RTX-Off before and after screenshots to compare outside the game. Honestly Cyberpunk already had good enough "fake" reflections and lighting that the difference with RTX is negligible.
But hey now we can see our reflection in Quake 2 RTX!
DLSS on the other hand is a god-send and I can't imagine ever wanting to turn that off.
What urks me are people flooding forums to bitch when it isn't included. Fucking mouth breathers.
Don't forget the games are frequently not complete and require various packs of DLC, plus have a loot box style system for unlocking crap.
Or have complete chunks torn out before launch to repackage as DLC, like with Zaeed in Mass Effect 2.
👏👏👏
Hello fellow gamers and not piece of shit corporate assholes.
I feel that in regard to a lot of mobile and cheap games. Like, they are F2P or dirt cheap under the idea that they will instead nickle and dime you instead. But for a lot of them I'd outright pay full price just to play it like a normal game because its still a good game that has been stripped to annoy you into paying.
Otherwise fuck this guy. You got 300 hours out of Elden Ring because its a good game, not because of anything to do with its price. You don't go in the back to give the Chef an extra 50$ when the meal is incredible, why would this logic apply to this industry?
>Not tipping the chef after tipping the waiter
And you call yourself an American?
Most waiters are women. I will not tip them money for trying to act cute with meh service.
why should i pay more money for poorly coded tranny propaganda?
Paradox games with all the DLC commonly exceed 300 dollars, I think Sims 4 breached 500 dollars.
Games are not 'too cheap' lmao, not unless you buy them on massive discount and even then I feel ripped off at times.
This is why I only buy Stellaris DLCs at absurd mark downs. I think I spent under $2 for the Necroid DLC last Xmas.
I'd be willing to pay $500 for an actual good game.
Approx the cost of Europa Universalis and all DLC
I would pay more for a good videogame, I would not pay more for modern day videogames.
I get more entertainment from older games that I replay then expensive new open world trash and movie games.
Um ... I don't even want to say what I've dropped on World of Tanks.
I'm thankful they ruined the game on console a few years back with a complete UI overhaul.
I quit for good and saved years of impulse buying.
My standard has always been 1€ per 2 hours (not counting cutscenes). However that initial price is taken on faith that a game will deliver those hours.
The more you ask as an initial investment the more people will have to search for alternative methods of finding out if a game has the content to warrant the price, and since most games are hands-on experiences....well
Last game I bought was after playing alot of it. Yarrr.
Played it because streamers I enjoy played it and it looked fun and accessible to me.
I thought "this is a very original and fun take on the genre, the translation is very well done, and I want to tell the devs they made something great despite my very limited budget".
When it went on sale for about 20 dollars I bought it on GOG. I would not have paied at all had the price been too high.
No "always online + microtransactions look at how woke our game is" cancer. I can download the install file, save it on a USB key and install it when and where I want.
Just a silly colony-building survival with original water management mechanics, because beavers.
( Timberborn ).
If it's a time sink that isn't enjoyable then I simply don't count it.
A game needs to have fun and engaging gameplay. If the gameplay is a mindless grind then I'd rather play something else.
I must enjoy a game for a dollar per hour.
That doesn't mean I must play the game for 60 hours.
Reflecting on it, talking to others about it, those count too. A short game with a deeply impactful something to it that makes me enjoy it beyond the time I'm playing it is a perfectly valid interpretation of the "dollar per hour" rule.
So doing the maths from their logic, the author wants AAA video games to cost ~£2,000 (~$2,400, >€2,250) each, before we get to season passes, DLC, subscription fees, microtransactions and other ways of getting people to cough up more.
The only people who would advocate for that are those who believe video games are a social ill and wish to end the industry through setting the price so high the vast majority of people are priced out and have no choice but to quit. Not the first time this concept has been implemented.
There would have to be some purge to make old games out of reach to kill the hobby.
There already exist enough good games from so many categories. A lifetime's worth of it.
Governments have yet to kill small devs with red-tape suffocation. Dosen't take millions to develop a fun game like The Last Spell.
sounds about right
People don't like hearing it, but it's actually true, and I have the numbers (and personal experience) to back it up.
Think about what you consider the best the game industry ever was. You're probably thinking somewhere between the SNES/Genesis era and the PS2/Gamecube era, right? Games were way, way more expensive back then. A high profile PS2 game was $50 new back in the early 2000s. Adjusted for inflation, that's $80.
"But what about DLC and microtransactions!" you argue. Oh, you mean like expansion packs? Warcraft 3 was sixty dollars in 2002, which is a hundred bucks today. Add in TFT and you're looking at nearly 200 dollars. Were you complaining about that? Why was Warcraft 3 totally worth it when today the exact same thing is a cynical, corporate cash grab?
How about Street Fighter 2? That game had three different versions on the SNES alone, and they were no different from DLC today. Street Fighter 2 was a hundred fifty dollars in today's money, and that's just the first version which had a whopping eight characters. If they released a fighting game with eight characters for $150 today you'd be rioting in the streets.
Most of you are going to get mad about it, but you know I'm right. The only reason you remember games as being a "better value" is because your mom used to buy them for you. Unless you were an adult in the early 2000s, you don't get an opinion on whether or not games are too expensive nowadays, because they objectively are not.
EDIT: Gonna get this out of the way before anyone has the chance to even bring it up. No, I'm not saying Calla Duty 41: War of Wars is worth $100. But I am saying that modern masterpieces like Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Doom Eternal, etc. are. I was willing to pay a hundred bucks for a fantastic game back then, and I still am.
Let's put it this way: Why was the content of Final Fantasy 6 - the actual game itself - worth $150 dollars, but Final Fantasy 15 is only worth $60 despite having a hundred times the complexity and content?
Final Fantasy 6 was released to a much smaller market on a format that cost significantly more to distribute.
There's no meaningful way to compare the video game industry today to the video game industry in the '90s.
We don't make any more money than we used to back then. And when game prices go up, I have more important things to spend that money on. So they don't get ANY money from people like me and can just eat shit and die.
This is why, for example, Trump's strategy increased tax revenue by lowering taxes. The taxes were lower, so more people were willing to pay rather than move offshore or hide assets. Or put simply, pinging two people for 50 dollars each is less money than pinging 6 people for 20 dollars each. Because at the 20 dollar price point, many more people were willing to buy.
The average salary in 1990 was 20k and now it's 53k. We make more money that isn't worth as much. So yes there is an argument to be made that the standard $60 price point is outdated due to inflation and the price should go up.
That doesn't really take into account how much those damn carts cost to make vs digital distribution.
Because the industry still had growing pains and charged what they think their game was worth. It wasn't until until Gen 7 with online connectivity and normies flooding the hobby that the "$60 standard" was cemented into public consciousness. From then on, it became quantity > quality, copies sold over revenue.
And for all of your durr-hurring about MUH INFLATION ADJUSTED DOLLARYDOOS, you forget video games are a luxury. Unless you're so fucking old you remember voting for Jimmy Carter, stagflation is a bitch. The games industry will have to seriously wrestle with increasing MSRP when people are paying $20 for a dozen eggs or $1,300 a month for heat.
No, I actually agree. A higher price for more content.
Maybe the higher profits would keep the predatory ESG trash from getting in.
Games have never cost under $60 if you factor in inflation. Not even $50. Unless you mean you never buy anything but indie budget titles, in which case I actually agree somewhat. I buy like two AAAs a year these days, and only the ones that are just about guaranteed to make it into my favorite games of all time. I'm too old to be putting in 100 hours on a new game every month like I used to. Give me something I can drop into and out of in the blink of an eye, because that's how life is when you have a mountain of responsibilities.
I paid £99.99 (~$120? I bought it when I was still "home") for Forza Motorsport 7 Ultimate Edition. I think that's the most I've paid for a game.
As for what I'd pay for a game, maximum...depends how long it lasts. FM7 is still the latest title over 5 years later. It averages out at £20 a year and I played well over 500 hours of it. I'd probably pay whatever Microsoft slapped on the box of the next game, unless it's something utterly ridiculous.
Maybe $200 if it comes with some kind of display item and it's the only one they release that generation.
I've never really thought about what is the highest I would pay for Forza games. I have all 12 of them, all seven Motorsport and all five Horizon. I can't imagine not buying them, honestly.
I haven't bought many current gen games. My friends gifted me a couple of games they wanted to play with me for my birthday, saying that I can't feel guilty about supporting my enemy if they buy them for me.
Not sure how I feel about that development.
At the moment I'm just waiting for Forza Motorsport : Make Every Lap Count (What a stupid name, I hope they don't actually stick with it.)
The Crew 3 looks interesting too, but it's Ubisoft.
What did you think of The Crew 1 and 2? The third game is going to be far removed from the original formula.