One way to get out of the video-game industry funk is to recognize that players aren’t spending $70 on most games
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The $60/$70 price tag on video games from major makers is an entry fee, it doesn’t get you the full game anymore. You have to pay for luxury editions, expansions, microtransactions of some sort, battle pass. It’s cheaper to start a tabletop miniature army than play video games now.
Let’s go, another chapter of letting a small amount of AAA games dictate our perception of video game prices.
They become cheap if you’re patient enough.
Except Nintendo. And the mentality is spreading, I’ve never seen sekiro below $40
These price hikes could not have come at a worse time, not just in the sense of the general cash people have but in the sense that video games right now are straight up not interesting.
Good games are not being made anymore. Bloated “experiences” designed to keep you hooked and spending money are being made. I can’t even accuse them of being casino games because that would more fun and interesting.
The rise in price comes at a time when we have virtually limitless backlogs of digital and physical games that are superb and high quality and indie games that get better and better. The price alone isn’t the issue, it’s the price and stagnation of game design
Games have been $60 forever, $70 is a relative bargain
The games have never been easier to make and the market bigger, fuck their margins
My rule of thumb is $1 per hour of gameplay. So if I don’t expect to get at least 70 hours out of a game, I’m not paying $70 for it. I don’t consider it a bargain until I get down to significantly less than a dollar per hour.
I haven’t spent more than $30ish bucks on a game since … 2013?? I think the last game I paid full price for was gta5 on ps3
Do y’all not know about the bargain bin and steam sales…? Is everyone so up to date on their backlog you can’t wait a few months for that price to drop to 50%
It doesn’t take long, Doom the dark ages has already hit that discount a few times iirc
My friend, let me tell you about this thing called “Pre-order.”
There are plenty of “gotta have it first” people out there. Doesn’t matter if it’s a new phone, game, see a movie on opening day, whatever. Plenty of gamers want to be in Alpha and Beta tests (which FML they do nothing but bitch about as being unplayable) and shell out money for skins and early upgrades or level up packs. Vloggers and tiktokkers too or whatever who want to pull in the views as they play the new games.
These are the people the studios cater to. Not the patient gamers who wait for the product to go on sale 90 days down the road after the initial rush is over.
So as long as the people in the first paragraph exist that’s what the studios will charge.
Yeah but the IMPERATIVE IS ON US to make sure that the industry (AAA, AA & Indie) are on their best behaviour.
Like as an example, a game that looks like it would run on potato PC should run on one
Or do not allow a game to cross the recommended requirement of 8 GB ram etc…
Games should be cheaper to make, too.
See, that’s the conundrum: big companies make huge investments and want a ROI. They dump 100+ million dollars on a game with a team that’s over 200 people and expect 10x money back.
Shit has ballooned out of control in the corporate world and Indies have to fight tooth and nail against each other, bigger players, shovelware and older titles
How much of that money goes into marketing, and executive pay checks?
Well, many complex games have no budget on graphics, that’s why you can have one-man army dev making a monster of a game like Aurora 4x.
Yeah, and then the game made by a small team ends up being much more successful.
the game made by a small team ends up being much more successful
More successfull relatively to the money spent, but not overall.
Gotta keep in mind that there are like a thousand other indie games released for every Hollow Knight or Stardew Valley. Survivor bias or something
Fuck $70+ games.
Where are these statistics from?
Great statement. But why?
Do the math on dollars per hour of entertainment. Games are comparably cheap at first glance. They problem is that people are cheap too. So they won’t pay more for a better profuct. That has led the industry to invent more ways to get your money. Microtransactions, dlc… I would pay $100 for a game like portal these days. It would be less than a dollar per hour enjoyed. And no extra costs. But instead we have thousands of “free” games that are now geared to be most enjoyed by the people who pay the most.That said, today’s games aren’t just a cd in a package. Most require servers running to be played for the most fun. What I would like is more of a subscription to a server provider that pays for servers for all the games. It’s more efficient if you play lots of different games. And a lot less hassle.
Great news!
They are!
… Just typically not the overproduced and overpriced corpo ones.
Wanna drive down AAA game prices?
Stop paying them!
Support your favorite indie or AA game today!
I just played Escape from Ever After. Every bit as good and polished as the old Paper Mario games. $25. They cost $50-$65 back then.
… I’ve never even heard of it.
But I do love the old paper mario games!
So wow, now we have a real life example of actual word of mouth spread of a game, as opposed to just being a passive advertisement sponge!
Every time - every single time - I’ve purchased a major AAA game anywhere close to the release window in the past 10 years, it’s been a mistake. Pay a shitload more for a half baked, buggy, unfinished mess.
At this point I just don’t buy big time releases within 6 months of launch. Even when I’m certain of the game itself, it just ends up being a mistake.
Its the best way. Its cheaper, you have plenty of user reviews to check first, and you get a completed game, without bugs.
Become a patient gamer. This winter sale, I bought probably 25 games totaling around 30 dollars. It’s enough to keep me busy for the next 5 years.
This… Put games on your wishlist, set your wishlist to only show sales, and sort by price. Then only buy games from that list when they go on a significant sale. Plenty of decent games out there regularly go for $5-10 or less. With very few exceptions I refuse to pay more than $20-30 for a game and, even then, only if they’re like 50% off and not likely to come down.
Also… stop pre-ordering games. They’ll still be there when they do go on sale. You don’t need to play them as soon as they come out. Conquer that FOMO shit and develop some integrity.
stop pre-ordering games. They’ll still be there when they do go on sale.
Yeah but then I wouldn’t get the sick Cardi B Wet Ass Pussy character skin 😮💨
I put a rule not to buy any game util i finish what I already have. I have not bought anything for the last two years.
You don’t even have to be that patient these days. I got Arc Raiders 3 weeks after release for 60% off, it was like $18.
Or live with AA and indie games like many of us do, at tell AAA publishers to get fucked by not spending money on their live-service crap.
You can go AAA for cheap no problem, people just need to not get FOMO‘d out of your minds and half-resist the compulsion to jump on the newest shiny thing immediately.
The newest DOOM is around 27 Euros rn and not even a year old. Buy on release - or worse yet, pre-order - and you‘ll get the worst deal (financially as well as technically).
Game prices are fine for me because I literally just wait until they‘re at a point where I don‘t see them as a waste. In the meantime, there‘s 203 untouched games in my Steam library that had reached that point in the past already. Not even mentioning the hundreds of games I got for free between GOG, Prime, and Epic.
And, not buying immediately you get to know if the shiny is real or is just a painted turd. Or if it disappears after a couple months.
Basically do the same thing. Until a game hits $20 or less, I won’t purchase it. For $70, I would rather buy something useful like new shoes.
Counterpoint: It’s just so much fun when you are starting on release day, not getting spoiled, no one has a clue where what is there is no meta and a lot of community interaction.
E.g. Elden Ring, we started together at 12 am when it launched, killed the first couple of bosses. Then the next few days forums were filled with posts, people had different theories, NPC questlines were being discovered. It was the same two years later with the DLC. A friend of mine bought it finally and started playing last week. But he is .missing all of that.
Everybody values their money differently. If you think paying out of your ass for games is worth it for this, go ahead.
That’s the definition of the FOMO OP is saying to ignore
Yeah I have avoided so many game, movie, and tv spoilers, it’s not really all that hard. Plus you can write a review without saying anything about the story
On that note, Dark Ages was probably my favorite game I played last year and was worth the cost new as well. For half price, it’s absolutely worth it even more.
