This, I think, is the big open secret about the push for consoles to move towards pure digital distribution.
It’s easier to not have to compete against your back catalog for gamer attention, if you cut off end-users ability to access it!
Rockstar already tried something like this, when they released the Definitive Defective Edition.
It failed successfully, in no small part to the remaster being absolute garbage, but for the AAA publishers, it’s merely a small setback that they will try again in the near future.
The game must be a GOTY contender or I’m not gonna pick it up at full price. I have no issues paying up for a new, unique experience that sounds exciting. Games I know I like, but rehash an old formula land on the wishlist until they are 30% off. Games that look cool, are recommended, but I’m not sure I will like them land on the wishlist and need to be below $20 when I buy.
With these simple rules I still have too many unplayed and unfinished games in my library, so… yeah… you gonna have to take some risks to win big.
I’ve got to be honest, the price of a game is probably the least important factor on whether I make a full price purchase.
I’m not going to rush out and buy something I’ve no real interest in. I can count on one hand the number I’ve made this generation. On PS2 I’d be grabbing something every week or two, but now I just can’t get excited for the latest and greatest updates on old formulas. Half the time I buy just to encourage them to make more games like that, like I did with Talos Principle 2, Astro Bot and Split Fiction.
I might pick it up later if I feel inclined, or see it on a decent discount. Like Clair Obscur, that I picked up for £29 in a sale just because I remembered it existed and fancied something to play over the winter holiday.
The difference is back then, I didn’t have to wait 2 years (give or take) for games to go on a proper sale to enjoy it. I’d just wait until a month or two has passed and ask around, go into Gamestop/EB Games, rent it at Blockbuster, find used games at yard sales, etc. and buy them for cheap (or potentially barter for them or be lent the copy).
We pay $70 to not play at release due to server issues and critical bugs. We do QA for most major gaming companies - while paying for the privilege to do so. We pay full-price for incomplete experiences that we are misled into believing are complete experiences, as well.
Most games I purchase at release (or pre-order) are just in limbo on my account while I wait for a playable product. By the time it’s playable, there is usually $70 worth of DLCs for me to buy.
I’m still holding to it, but I agree, it’s getting harder and harder to find stuff on sale for less than $5. Especially if you’ve been on Steam for a long time and have a large library already.
is there a way to tell what is indie and what is slop? i really think it’s getting like the ebay days of the 90’s. just … something feels off. repetitive. odd.
I am anxious about nothing and feel the whole range of human emotions, hope for the future, enjoyment of other things. I feel quite happy most of the time actually.
i’v heard some people say this sort of thing is likely that your subconscious or whatever just isnt being “fulfilled” by that level of activity, that you got to try something a little “higher” like creating your own game/telling your own story
Yeah, especially since I know I likely wouldn’t play it much.
On the other hand, if it was free (also as in money) and open-source, and I liked it, I could donate. Although I don’t have much money, so probably just smaller amounts, better than the 0 I do right now by not gaming instead.
For example, I absolutely wouldn’t pay $9.60 for Binary Eye (barcode/2D code scanner app) if it cost that much, but as a donation that was fine.
Well, I could make an exception for games on physical media. I like it, and it has resale value.
Yeah I’m a very patient gamer, I’m perfectly happy to just play games on my Steam Deck years after they come out. If there’s something I want, I’ll usually just wishlist it and let it sit there until it goes down to a price that seems reasonable. Much better to get it for $15-20 with all the DLC and bug fixes than paying $80+ for an unfinished buggy mess IMO.
Let’s see, 70-100+(!) bucks for the (yawn) twentyseventh COD with a 4 hour campaign, or 20 for a game that is complete and lasts for dozens if not hundreds of hours?
The most expensive game I own is Baldurs Gate 3 (@ $70 CAD) and it’s the only game that was worth full price in my 12 years of activity on steam and over 250 games purchased. My next most expensive game was $30 CAD and I only bought a few games that high.
The price has crept up with the paid expansions, but holy shit do NOT sleep on the Castlevania one. It doubles the base game content, and fits in great.
Not only that, but charging full price for a game and then charging $15-20 for cosmetic DLC is fucking wild. If I’ve paid you $60+ for a title, I expect the full experience. If you want to add some shit a year down the line to lengthen the life, I’m on board, but day one DLC that costs more than the base game was played out the moment Bethesda graced us with horse armor. I’ve gotten more joy out of Vampire Survivors than I have out of any Ubisoft and EA games in the last 20 years combined.
For what it’s worth, only one player needs the DLC for everybody in the session to use it, which is pretty cool of the devs to allow that in this day and age.
Unless something changed, players who don’t own DLC can’t play as the DLC characters. I believe they can interact with all the rest of the content normally, just locked to the vanilla character selection (which is still broad and fun enough, and further expandable with mods).
As the other commenter said, only one person needs the dlc to play the (non-character) DLC content. It also frequently goes on pretty big sales, though right now it’s probably full price since the newest (and imo, best) DLC just dropped. Each DLC is a significant content expansion to the game, and is absolutely worth the asking price (except maybe seekers, which fell a bit flat for me on release. It’s since been rebalanced).
If you wanted to weigh which DLC to consider getting, I would recommend Void if you like the idea of modified items that do cool shit, an alternate ending to the game, and some cool new mechanics. It comes with a dope sniper survivor and a void survivor that trades health for damage or vice versa.
Seekers comes with an alternate path of stages leading to an alternate (very challenging) boss. I find that the seekers boss is a severe difficulty check compared to the ease of reaching the boss, compared to the void boss which you only fight late in a run or after a different boss. Two of the survivors feel lackluster to me, but False Son is an absolute beast and the only melee character capable of truly tanking rather than using i-frames or mobility.
Alloyed Collective is the newest, and comes tons of new mechanics (free for everyone but expanded on in the DLC), a new path to follow, SEVERAL new super interesting boss fights, tons of new stages, and tons of new enemies. Overall, super worth it. The characters it adds are a drone controller (a previously unviable play style) and a loot gremlin that gets tons of really awesome interactions and A Cube.
My list would be Alloyed, Void, then Seekers. Alloyed and Void add the most to the base game, Seekers is mostly alternate stuff that won’t touch your runs, though the new shrines are pretty useful early game.
That’s another problem, even if we disregard optimizations, AAA games from 2015. look better than modern upscaled stuff, Unreal Engine seems to be easy enough to use nowadays that big vertically-integrated slop publishers replaced seasoned developers with the cheapest of zoomers.
A significant portion of the Nintendo library would launch into the stratosphere in terms of overall sales if they would port to other systems, such as PC.
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