Kinda a nice example why it is bullshit to rate stuff on a one-dimensional scale. Given the right point in my life, I too would like the calculator app more than Elden Ring, for example during a math exam back when +/-/*// were all the operations I needed. Good times.
I’m still a little disappointed at that part in the movie when the guy simply recommends an AR. Dude should have listed off a bunch of specifications like in movies when a Car Guy lists engine details.
“Ah, I think you’ll be interested in a new build I have here. Noveski upper with a ten point three barrel, suppressor compatible, monolithic handguard, there is an adjustable gasblock which I’ve left a little overgassed but I get the feeling you won’t be using this piece long enough for that to be a problem. The lower has a two stage flat trigger. Very good break. Ambidextrous controls. Non-latching charging handle of course. I’ve taken the liberty of putting a low power variable zoom Trijicon optic on top. Twenty five yard zero with M855.
It comes standard with six anti-tilt steel magazines. Although, for you Mr. Wick I’ll go ahead and make it twelve.”
That or it should have just been Ian recommending obscure French guns until John Wick leaves.
To this day, the best scene where a character gets a gun is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly when Tuco, the ugly, walks out of the desert and makes his gun out of the parts of other guns. John Wick movies feel like they are only trying to be cool, not fun.
Well, I believe that game publishers should be forced to work in vats filled to shoulder height with whale semen. Probably best for everyone if neither of us get our way.
Without further research, i have to imagine he means charged per hour of gameplay, so a 40 hour game, a 10 hour game, and a 120 hour game should all be priced differently.
Considering replay value I’m not sure how you actually accomplish that pricing method in a reasonable way, but i don’t fault him for thinking in that way (assuming it is not actually streaming)
Edit:
I’m not saying i agree with the quote. I don’t think it’s fair to be angry at an assumption, so be mad at what he actually meant. Also, the actual quote at least has some level of merit, even if i think it’s a bad idea (certainly not as awful as a subscription model).
Here’s the full quote with source:
“Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick isn’t concerned with upsetting fandoms, as reinforced by his latest comments that video games should be priced on their “per hour value”, aka based on the hours of gameplay you get.”
Oh for sure. I mentioned above that i didn’t mean to suggest that this idea is the correct one, only that i don’t believe it was intended to mean subscription model. It’s less of a greedy idea and more of just a bad idea (in my opinion). There is also at least some merit to the statement, i.e. if he’s suggesting that triple a titles that are particularly short shouldn’t be full price.
“Length” of a game is useless out of context. Games like the later assasins creed are bloated garbage with overinflated playtime. On the other hand you have games with procedural generation, optional endgames, post launch content and the simple fact that a small, but still significant amount of players will play through a short game multiple times, because they enjoyed it so much/wanna get better. (In my case, thats Furi)
What I am trying to say is, you can’t really get a proper amount of hours of playtime for any game, unless its like 99% cutscenes.
I agree with you. I didn’t mean to suggest that he’s correct, only that i don’t think he meant to infer a subscription model. In my opinion, that changes it from a particularly greedy idea to simply a poorly thought out one. Unless, of course, he really did mean subscription model.
Edit: Also i can see the logic if this ceo is looking down upon triple a titles that are particularly short but still charge full price.
I didn’t want to make that assumption because then i run the risk of reacting more based on my own biases and less on the context of that was actually said. I did pursue the source of the quote:
“Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick isn’t concerned with upsetting fandoms, as reinforced by his latest comments that video games should be priced on their “per hour value”, aka based on the hours of gameplay you get.”
I’ll reiterate that i don’t necessarily agree with this idea, but i can at least see where he’s coming from. I’ve absolutely played games that were incredibly short (I’m looking at you, Fable 1), and thought wow, fun, but i spent $50 on this?
Constant mandatory skill checks for skills you would never use that can only be leveled via proceedurally generated minigames designed by a hallucinating AI trained on 90s TV show or movie board games. “Why do I need a mastery of macrame to progress the storyline of this FPS?”
It is literally just a hammer that embosses his name on your forehead and it costs you $9.99 for the pleasure of being hit. Occasionally the imprint doesn’t take and he fixes some of it, most of the time it is incomplete.
Paying for the resources you consume instead of paying for capacity you’re not using isn’t a bad pricing model. Although I prefer HP Greenlake’s model over AWS.
But in the context of consumer product pricing it’s wildly anti-consumer to bill a software running largely on your own hardware consuming your own electricity based on how long you run said software. It’s expecting consumers to accurately project and plan their usage which consumers are pretty famously bad at. It’s also expecting consumers software running on consumer hardware on consumer home networks to function as expected, and all of the three are famously unreliable and janky
The AWS model works so well because of intense automation in horizontal and vertical scaling plus technologies like Kubernetes, Ansible and the entire automated build pipeline. But most importantly it relies on a full team carefully designing the automatic deployment and scaling to maximize benefits and minimize costs
Yup, the golden era of AAA games has been over since after the 360/PS3 days arguably.
Now it’s all corporatized and basically trying to nickel-and-dime users - which apparently a large amount of users are perfectly okay with (more or less) due to devs still pushing out battle/season passes, $20+ MTX skins, and lootboxes.
I don’t think all AAA games would go that route. A bunch of them definitely would but some of the publishers that have a passion for games and not just cranking out the same shit year after year would definitely not go that route.
You can still play real video games through emulators tho, there are tons of hidden gems in every console! I’ve been finding joy again by playing those
Raging barbarians replaced with literal demons. XCom unit replaced with BFG squads. I could see that working. There’s a mod I play for Civ 5 which adds a barbarian civ which - when they defeat things - turns units and cities into MORE barbs. It’s fucking brutal and turns the game into a ‘last man standing’ rather than anyone being able to win. I love it!
DOOM: Battle for Earth. A 4X strategy/survival game. Basically you try to save Earth with limited resources or prolong it’s death. Kinda like They Are Billions.
I’m thinking all the other civs are demons. The trick is the player/slayer can only destroy thier cities, not capture them. So the only cities you can actually have are player made. The rest you rip and tear through.
That’s how they used to be in the early days of the Internet. The earliest online multiplayer games like Cyberstrike charged by the hour. Cyberstrike cost six dollars an hour! Games in the BBS days were by the minute.
… Not that I feel there is any reason to bring that back. I am ok with live service games charging a monthly subscription though.
But the idea itself isn’t as unheard of as everyone here acts like it is.
This headline is clickbait. The actual article was posted in another thread and while I don’t have it available to me right now, the gist was basically that the CEO was just explaining how they had calculated the price of their games based on operational/production costs and average expected entertainment-hours.
startrek.website
Aktywne