Considering the at least 200+ hours I invested in give or take ten* games throughout my childhood / adolescence / young adult past, then even €100 would’ve been a steal.
I’ve always thought games were expensive until studying game development in college. From programming to 3D modeling, and boy can I confirm that it takes a lot of work to do well. The developers and artists that do it well, and ethically, deserve to be fairly compensated as such, provided no one becomes disproportionately rich.
*Age of Empires 2, MU Online, Unreal Tournament 1999/2004, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1/2/3, Battlefield 1942, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, R.O.S.E. Online, Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, Battlefield 2, Insurgency.
The developers and artists absolutely need to be fairly compensated for the highly skilled work they’re doing. The question is, does a good game require 1500-2500 of them? That’s where you need to sell 9 million copies of an $80 game to break even. Particularly in an era where online sales mean you no longer need a distribution partner who will produce hundreds of thousands of discs at a time, and who has existing partnerships with big box retailers, so much of that publishing budget, relationships and supply chain are no longer needed. Even with the standard 30% cut that digital storefronts take, a team of 30 people can spend five years developing a game for $15-20 million, including marketing and localization, sell 500K copies at $50 and break even. This type of scaling back is what’s needed to keep the industry profitable and sustainable. I’m not saying there’s no place for huge budget games, but they don’t need to be the norm that bankrupts developers from one bad release.
“In terms of actual price of $70 or $80, for really great games, I think it will still be a steal in terms of the amount of entertainment that the top games, top quality games bring to people compared to other form of entertainment.”
I actually don’t entirely disagree, problem is that I’ve yet to play a game that was actually good enough to be worth $70-80.
Even the highest rated games of all time have flaws that every video game has. The tech simply isn’t advanced enough yet to justify the cost, not until we have games that are designed so well that you can do practically anything in them that you could do in real life. That means we have to move past things like invisible walls, awkward conversations with NPCs that don’t flow like a real conversation would, buildings that can’t be entered, short walls that can’t be climbed over, etc. (e: I’ve been around since the 3rd gen of consoles, and I can’t believe that we still don’t have the kind of games that I’ve been dreaming of since childhood.)
Furthermore, if your game has microtransactions, you can shut the fuck up. They generate so much income, that Free to Play is a sustainable business model. I am of the opinion that any game that has loot box mechanics, gambling, etc. should always be free.
I would say something like elden ring might be worth that price point given the breadth of the experience. Thing is, Elden ring is actually kinda too big. I like it, but a run through is like a multi week commitment, and I definitely don’t want that to be the norm, especially for fromsoft.
Yeah. I think there’s a problem with the modern development cycle that a fuckton of the budget goes into marketing and marketable assets (i.e. all them graphics that look great in the trailers but nobody’s computer can actually handle, and then the rest of the team’s on the hook to make a game on a shoestring that can actually use all of that content - The only way you can possibly accomplish that with a fraction of a fraction of the budget is if it’s super simplistic and repetitive gameplay that’s stretched over 40+ hours like a peasant on a torture rack.
Think about how many games you’ve played over the last decade, and how many of them were still fun to play after the first five hours, either because the primary gameplay loops were satisfying enough to keep you engaged, or because the game was keeping it fresh with new mechanics that didn’t bungle clumsily atop one another like a raspberry and beef trifle. Making great games is difficult and expensive, and most studios would rather put out something with a guaranteed return than anything that’s fun to play.
tech.yahoo.com
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