“You can’t just have Geralt for every single game.”
I mean… Yes. You literally can.
Mario, Sonic, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby… You can create infinite video games with the same main character over and over again. Its like an infinite money glitch if the character is popular and well liked.
What happened to him in the end? I remember her sacrificing herself to the winter, but all I remember is Geralt living and then the post game DLC. Maybe I got the really weird ending, haha
There were multiple endings depending on the choices you make throughout the game. Same for the two DLCs.
The ‘good’ endings were in the base game she confronts the winter and succeeds, returns to Geralt as a father figure, and lives on as a witcher. Then in the Blood & Wine DLC, Geralt basically retires in his own vineyard.
They need to release a fake “Witcher 4” that’s just an older Geralt moping around his vineyard bitching about how his knees hurt. All of his quests would be things like pestering his workers about how badass he used to be, going to town to return a watermelon to the fruit vendor because of a mushy spot he didn’t notice when he purchased it, shit like that.
All the while, the townsfolk would slip idle chatter about crazy shit that Ciri’s doing off camera.
Honestly, as a stopgap that just releases out of nowhere for the sole purpose of building hype for the actual Witcher 4, kinda like how Bethesda did with their random vault dweller mobile game, I’d be all for it.
Geralt could go on a Gwent tour… but what’s this? Upon entering this new land of Walachia, some bandits stole his Gwent deck while he was asleep in his camp. And he had the ultra rare nude Triss card in it, too! Open, The Witcher 4: a quest for cards and vengeance.
All of those games’ characters are essentially just mascots though (other than samus). So they’re not really an applicable comparison for continuing a character long term in a story focused world that tries to be somewhat grounded in terms of consequences and passage of time.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was released as a fully finished product that I actually own a physical copy of.
Borderlands 4, will probably be a quarter finished when it released, filled with all kinds of apologies, possibly have micro transactions, and will likely be able to be taken out of my library at some point as it’s digital only.
I hate that you get downvoted for pointing out the reality of the situation.
Relative to the price of everything else, $80 for a AAA videogame is actually reasonable. The problem is that rent has gone up drastically, food has gone up drastically, and our wages have stagnated. Getting pissed off at Gearbox for charging $80 for Borderlands 4, and then paying $15 for a burger and fries without an equal reaction just doesn’t seem sensible to me.
Everything is awful, and videogame devs aren’t the ones stealing all our buying power.
I’m not sure where you’re numbers are coming from, but the inflation calculator I found through Google says that $59 in 1992 is more like $135 today. That’s still a significant increase of course, although I wonder how much publishers benefit from not needing as much physical distribution. After the initial investment selling digital keys on a third-party storefront like Steam should be pure profit, no?
1992 was a very different time with very different market conditions and consumer behaviour for video games. Games used to have a much greater perceived entertainment value, despite their relatively small development budgets compared with today. They were also entirely physical media and renting was still a very common way to play them. From what I remember, it wasn’t the most financially accessible hobby either. Most of my friends growing up didn’t have permanent access to their own gaming console and not everyone that did had all the latest games. Nowadays, the gaming market is completely saturated with high quality titles, most of which are fairly cheap as well if you don’t buy them on release.
In any case: Super Mario Bros 3 came out in 1988 and released 1990 and 1991 for the US and Europe respectively. It also didn’t cost $59 and your inflation calculation seems off…
Except the production costs have also gone down. The development itself is easier thanks to better tooling and developers no longer require putting out physical media (which used to be a pretty significant part of cost).
And there's no excuse for $80 when Clair Obscur released at $50 and is one of the best games released this year. I seriously doubt BL4 will be $30 more impressive than Clair Obscur. How about studio heads do their job and streamline their production process to make better products for lower costs instead of offloading their bloat onto the customers.
The industry is completely different now. The original was made in the 80s where programmers were hard to find and it took 10 of them 2 years and a million dollars to make. Then physical cartridges needed to be made and distributed that only ran on specialized hardware that also needed to be made and distributed. It selling for the equivalent of $180 could be justified since it was niche technology. There’s a reason Biggie Smalls brags about owning a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis in a rap song. That shit was expensive even in 1994.
Today, someone can make Super Mario Bros 3 in a month after watching some game dev tutorials on YouTube, upload the .exe to Steam, and sell limitless copies to anyone who owns a computer. Selling it for $180 would be ridiculous. There’s no reason tech today should cost the exact same as it did in the 80s.
you can’t use straight 1:1 inflation to infer what the contemporary cost should be of digital products like video games, movies, tv shows, music etc. There is no physical asset to tie the individual product value to. There are of course production costs, but those are the same whether you make 50 copies or 50 million.
The reason inflation hasn’t hit video game prices is because the video game market has grown exponentially since the 90s. They make more money by selling low margin at higher volume, compared to high margin and low volume. It’s all about maximizing that total profit, not individual sales.
Publishers can try to charge more, but it’ll be up to consumers if that actually gets them any more money overall. only time will tell.
Counterpoint for the general case: games also have a much larger playerbase these days and manufacturing of cartridges and components can be done at much greater economies of scale. In many cases, there is no physical media manufacturing cost to a lot of the sales.
For the specific point: Gearbox/Take2 have lost all faith from me so, while I don't generally mind some games being in that price range, there's zero chance pitchford and his ilk are getting that from me.
Nah. I keep seeing this argument and I really disagree with it. It’s actually really simple economics; we don’t need to calculate inflation into this. If I think the price of something is too high (especially something I don’t need to survive), I don’t buy it. Companies can cry all they want, in the end I don’t care.
It doesn’t seem like you disagree with anything they said?
If everyone followed your lead, the end result would be that video games don’t exist anymore. Just in case you didn’t play that out completely in your mind.
The industry makes something around 190 billion per year, they will be fine without raising their prices to 80$. I ran that in my head considering that I worked in the industry myself. Devs aren’t paid enough not because we don’t pay games enough but because these companies are run by greedy fucks. Don’t feel bad for them, buy games when they are on sale or buy indie games. Games won’t go anywhere be reassured.
It’s “simple economics” to attack people trying to make art and entertainment for having the gall to ever consider increasing their prices, knowing full well that the cost of living has increased drastically? You’re going with “that’s just the market telling them they’re charging too much” while ignoring the reality that rent has doubled - and in some cases tripled - food costs have gone up 50%, and wages have barely improved? It’s the fault of video game developers that you have relatively less money and cannot afford to purchase their product around the other products you need or are expected to purchase?
If your wage increased with the cost of living, you would not see this price as “too high.” But because some price increases are on necessary purchases, we attack the unnessecary ones, like good little capitalists. Adam Smith would be proud.
$60 in 1992 is about $135 in April 2025, inflation included.
Sure games became more complex, but tools became more powerfull, and so did computers.
In 1992 you often had to code your own engine, which amounted for a good chunk of the development cost. They had to do that using a ressource envelope magnitudes smaller than what we have today. Heck, a jpeg screencap of the original Mario game is bigger than the whole original game itself. Let’s not forget that games where physical, which had to be included in the final price.
Todays devs often uses off the shelf engines, tools that automate some of the tedious task, like making trees (Speedtree) and asset reuse is done on an industrial level, there are even marketplaces for that. Moreover, game distribution changed to be mostly digital, you don’t need to factor the medium price into the asked price.
You cannot really compare 1992 dev costs with modern ones. The whole way games are done changed way too much for that.
Moreover, the market has grown way beyond what is was then. The required profit per copy sold is a lot smaller than it was then, and thus should be accojnted for.
Honesty, I don’t see a AAA needing to have more than $60-70 atm, and I think this bump in price is entirely due to the ever increasing marketing cost, more than the game development.
This is why I will always have some nostalgia for physical media. I still got CDs I bought in the 90s (which I’ve copied onto my hard drives a long, long time ago) and while they need a like coaxing to work at times, they are forever mine and no one can take them from me.
I was very hesitant to go on steam specifically for their ‘you don’t own shit even if you paid and followed the rules’ garbage.
I bought Star Wars squadrons and it worked for a bit. Now it doesn’t even boot and I don’t know why. Initially it was my shitty anti-virus that was causing the problem, but even after disabling it it doesn’t load.
It’s called staying away from venture capital. It really is as simple as that. Because Valve has a lucrative business model they have no need or desire to raise capital from outside investors, therefore there is nobody to squeeze them for value at the expense of their customers.
If you watch Cory Doctorow’s talk where he coined the word “enshittification” he explains how the process works, and it starts with outside investment. Enshittification is just a catchy term for value extraction, from the perspective of the customer.
What some devs don’t understand is the “reward” on soulslikes is actually learning the boss itself. Figuring out the parrying patterns in Sekiro feels very good, it’s not about what happens after beating the boss.
What makes it challenging and not punishing is having telegraphed moves, windows to punish the boss, and clear animation that shows you how to dodge/parry, without bullshit hitboxes.
I respect the hustle, but as a professional gameplay programmer : the fuck did you expect ? Piling systems upon systems does indeed increase the game logic’s complexity exponentially. Probably a big reason why there are so few (good) immersive sims even though it’s quite the popular genre.
I had to turn the music off as it got repetitive, but the rest of the audio stays on. The sound effects are so satisfying as everything is counted after playing a hand and you’ve got a bunch of jokers and cards triggering and then flames begin to build up.
The music is pretty great but I think they’re really talking about the diegetic sound effects. When you get a multiplier the pitch rises for each new mult, but no matter how many you get it never goes sky high I think it uses some version of the infinite stairs effect.
I would argue that Bioshock is one of the few video game franchises that would probably do well in a non-interactive story medium. It's a very story driven video game. As long as they trust the writers to respect the source material and come up with a compelling story, I think it could be great. There's always a chance that it's a disaster though.
They signed a contract with Sony saying they’d require PSN to play the game. They knew this would be a requirement. It’s not like PSN suddenly isn’t available worldwide. They were fine with the deal until players got upset and now they want out of the deal to save face.
The problem was never the PSN requirement, it was dropping it on people months after launch. No one would be pissed if it had been enforced from day one.
They don’t want out, they want sony to wise the fuck up and get with the program.
All I’m saying is, this isn’t some planned-in-advance good cop bad cop routine.
Agreeing to terms isn’t the same as watching your business partner mismanage the customer base to the point your lunch goes up in flames.
Sony is the publisher. Launching the game in countries that don’t even have PSN is 100% on them. Sony is taking action that makes no fucking sense in context, no matter what Arrowhead agreed to.
Lay with dogs, get flees. I don’t pity Arrowhead for signing an anti-consumer contract with an anti-consumer company for money and then realized it hurt their image with consumers. This is the consequences of actions. Maybe their next game will be self published. That was always an option. They didn’t pick that. They picked this.
Yes, you’re right. Arrowhead aren’t playing good cop. They deeply regret their decision. As they should. They ruined an amazing game by giving control of it over to Sony. I still agree with the OP. Fuck Arrowhead for ruining an awesome game by giving Sony control.
Your approach to discussion is similar to that of a wrecking ball.
Next time, just add a single sentence along the lines of “still glad seeing everyone involved anti-consumer bullshit crash and burn”.
That’s still a valid take. But you’re not gonna see the improvement in the industry we all want realized without caring about the nuances, or acknowledging how and when most people actually care.
I think the reason I’m most glad I’m not a lawyer is bc then I would believe that that tiny text is a meaningful gotcha that some how justifies Sony being stupid. No, it wasn’t required bc you could play without signing in. Tiny words don’t define reality.
Well I don’t know how to make a game, but I do know how to write interesting characters and stories, and Emil clearly doesn’t, so something something glass houses, Bethesda.
Just like I don’t need to be a ship captain to tell when the titanic is sinking. It doesn’t matter how it’s made, a product is bad if your model audience doesn’t like it. Starfield isn’t some avant-gard experimental piece, it was meant to appeal to the masses. He can’t use the excuse of opinionated craftsmanship to excuse its poor quality.
I honestly don’t intend to be rude, so please don’t take this the wrong way. But this is a very minor detail that was featured in prelaunch marketing and went heavily viral. I understand not wanting to encounter spoilers about important events in a game, but this is not that.
I had it spoiled for me as well when the game launched. I didn’t consume any of the promotional material and didn’t see anything about it across my algorithm so fuck me right?
I don’t really care that it was spoiled, like you said it’s not integral. I do care about the flippant attitude that just because 100 other people knew about it already, that means you should too. Real “crabs in a bucket mentality”.
Yeah. It baffles me that some people prefer to make excuses for being inconsiderate, and even suggest that anyone who doesn’t like it leave, rather than simply add a spoiler tag.
this is a very minor detail that was featured in prelaunch marketing and went heavily viral
It is a mistake to assume just because you have encountered something that everyone else has as well. Not everyone follows viral media. Some of us actively avoid it.
And yes, this was indeed a spoiler for me. I would rather it had been a surprise in-game.
It’s totally fair game to discuss what is in official promotional material from months ago in a diacussion thread about the game.
It’s also fair to try to avoid spoilers about the game, but if you are so spoiler averse that you don’t even want to know what was in the games advertisements, you should avoid all discussion threads about the game.
We as a community should hold ourselves to a higher spoiler standard than the marketing teams.
While I know that sounds like a reach at first, consider other media. Movie trailers tend to give a lot away, but that isn't within the control of the directors. It's done by the studios who are trying to generate as many eyeballs and clicks. Not deliver a complete narrative experince.
I have had the bear bit spoiled for me as well, would have rather seen it blind in game. But oh well, however I don't think that should preclude folk from discussing reviews, mocap and how unusual of a production cycle this game has had. Discussing the game itself doesn't require specfic story points. Much like discussing the Barbie movie set production require details on plot.
I’ve had people on here yell “spoilers!” over a thing you literally find out in a character background video in the character creator before the game starts. It’s wild.
I stand by my feeling that if someone is that sensitive about what they think is a “spoiler,” then they’ve really got to not click on anything related to the game, especially comment sections, where people talk about playing the game. It’s on them at that point, because most folks don’t define “spoilers” that broadly.
IMO some people are way too sensitive about spoilers. Why should the entire world have to cater to their desire to not hear about a game? Taken to its extreme it means nobody ever gets to make casual covnersation about a video game. I always wonder whether most people actually care about this or it is just an extremely loud and angry minority. I only have two friends who care about spoilers.
It’s completely acceptable to not want to hear about major plot points when a game has only been out a month or so, but folks getting mad about stuff that was in promo materials and you can learn before you even start the game proper have really got to recalibrate.
I want to play FF16 but can’t until it comes out on PC, in a good year or two. So am I on game forums or posts about FF16? Nope. I even avoid twitter threads (or did when I was still used twitter), after clicking on one and finding out about a character death randomly, that everyone there knew about because they were playing the game and assumed everyone reading it was, too.
If you’re going to a place where people are talking about a game, you had best be prepared to be spoiled. If you’re not, stay off them until you’ve played the game. You can’t police people talking about minor or funny events in a game they figure other people know about, just because you haven’t played it yet.
Knowing you can fuck the bear isn’t the same as knowing what it is like to fuck the bear. I’m glad I know fucking the bear is possible, because now I can go fuck it.
Seriously! I got a $50 steam gift card for Christmas, bought one full price dlc (Shadow of the Erdtree) and like five or so indie games that I’ve put way more time in!
I bought the first one for $20. For the second I’ll play on Game Pass, if it is available, or again wait for $20. Maybe even less if I forget about it, which I might.
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