Is it logical for games to be expensive?

michael1337

Commendable
Oct 14, 2016
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There are some people who cant afford a 70 dollar new game. They say it's just a game and it has no reason to be so expensive.

Some say a lot of effort is put into it, (more than books and movies apparantly for it to be so expensive) and people should get a job and work to buy them instead of ranting.

And some say there's nothing to discuss about it.


Whats your point of view?
 
Solution
I avoid this (mostly) by waiting till the game is out for a while before getting it. Some games I never owned and wanted to try from years back end up costing me almost nothing. For example I played Age of Empires a while back, but missed several versions and have not played it in many years. Was able to buy it on Steam for like $10 for 3 of them with HD remaster. Can't beat that.

WOW expansion, $50 new, in a month or two it will be on sale for $30 somewhere.

There are also many free to play games that are well worth it. Path of Exile, great Diablo copy, Dungeons and Dragons online, Middle Earth online, I think Star Wars online is free to play now. Of course you can and in some cases almost "need" to purchase things to advance...
If you tried getting into the gaming industry a bit, you would pity them for selling their games so cheap.
Games (specially AAA titles) are really money-consuming in the process making because it is not an easy job by all means and not all people can be coders or graphics designers so, the working hands are a bit hard to find and have high wages based on their scarcity and the difficulty of that job.
Games as well have extra costs after the game is finished like providing updates and server maintenance and the games market is crowded as well.
 
Some games are worth the money, many are not.

Today games are more expensive than ever but their quality is much lower than it was before. Games are also a lot shorter now...
 
People need to realize Game costs have actually gone DOWN over time? How can I say that? Well 25+ years ago, new games cost between $50 and $70.

$50 in 1991 is now almost $90 due to inflation. Almost every consumer good has gone up since back then but not games.

Anyone who says "its just a game" has no idea what goes into making such a product. Its not the 80's where a few guys can put together a game in their basement, todays AAA titles have production values that rival the biggest films, and in the end good ones can entertain you for hundreds of hours - suddenly that $70 / 100 hours is only 70 cents an hour. Thats pretty damn good.

That doesn't mean to say a bad game is worth it, so instead of pre-ordering, wait for reviews, buy it if its good, don't if its not. Vote with your wallet.
 
BF3 Paid $50.00, played over 200 hours
BF4 Paid $60.00 played over 200 hours
BF1 Paid $60.00 going to play over 200 hours
Arma3 Paid $35.00 played 350 hours
Skyrim Paid 50.00 played 100 hours
RDR2 Paid $10.00 played over 50 hours

For 1,100 hours of entertainment, I paid $265.00.

For 1,100 hours of movies at the movie theater at movies at 2 hours on average, that would cost around $11,000.

For 1,100 hours of entertainment at a casino, that would cost your mortgage

The only argument I could make against myself on this, would be that I could probably spend 1,100 hours on Netflix and pay less than $100.00...

Bottom line for me is... We pay way too little for games and expect a lot. Just like we do in the real world with taxes. We want brand new freeways, we want trains, we want all this stuff but nobody is willing to pay for it. (A good Simpsons episode highlights this about tax payers)

Solution? Honestly I think there should be monthly subscriptions to play online games like Battlefield. It takes a lot of money to support millions of players on these platforms. And by the way, the more we pay, the more money they can spend on making the game better.

Another possibility is paying based on how many hours you played. Say you reach 100 hours on BF; to continue playing another 100 hours, it'll cost you $20.00.

Now I know everyone is going to go nuts on me for suggesting this, but the reality is we pay too little and expect too much.

 
The problem is not the BF's of the world, it's the smaller developers games, I missed the first BF, but once I got into the series i just coughed up every time because I know that I'll put 300-500 hrs into each one and thoroughly enjoy it. I've just played the crew on Uplay as a freebie, it was fun, wouldn't ever pay full price for it, deleted it already, BUT it might have hooked me.

But for the smaller developers with something interesting, how do they fund it? what if it could be a massive success if they'd only added in another 20-30 hrs of game play, but couldn't afford to? it's chicken and egg. An alternate pay to rent model might work well. Some games will bomb because there is a fundemental gameplay flaw, but some will bomb because they couldn't afford to get it right.

The latest rainbow six has a 'starter version' of the game, nice idea.
Episodic games might work well, 5-10 hours of content at a time, but the first 5-10 hours will cost 5x as much as each subsequent 5-10 hours.
I don't know what Elite is doing, seems like a new game every two years, or are they expansions, no idea.
Origins monthly fee to give you some kind of access to many games might work.
Got to be other options, microtransactions that once you hit a limit unlocks everything.
 
honestly I don't see the problem so much in the fact that games are so expensive.
I'd happily pay 70-80$

the problems I see are the following:
- oversized marketing. for some games there goes just as much money in to marketing as in making the game
- thus leading to poorly optimized and poorly coded games
- limited modability (although even publishers start to realise modable games are way more successful and create a greater hyper without paying a $ in marketing for it)

I'd happily pay a few bucks more if the story mode for example had a few more chapters, there'd be more dedication to detail (you know...that's what made nintendo so popular up to the 90s) and the game looked like it was actually tested and balanced before release (in some games you just wondered if they actually played the game for half an hour before releasing it)

so generally I don't think they're too expensive
there are just some games who deliver more for their price tag and others who fail to deliver
but that's just the difference between a good and a bad product (though I'd say the blame is 75% the publisher's in most cases)
 




A good example of this is Arma 3. An incredible game developed by a team of like 35-40 people. And the community is extremely needy in terms of what they want from the developers.. Yet they bought the game through a Steam sale at $25.00. So yes, this is a big problem. EA is not struggling for cash but Bohemia (I think they are called) could use some help.
 
I avoid this (mostly) by waiting till the game is out for a while before getting it. Some games I never owned and wanted to try from years back end up costing me almost nothing. For example I played Age of Empires a while back, but missed several versions and have not played it in many years. Was able to buy it on Steam for like $10 for 3 of them with HD remaster. Can't beat that.

WOW expansion, $50 new, in a month or two it will be on sale for $30 somewhere.

There are also many free to play games that are well worth it. Path of Exile, great Diablo copy, Dungeons and Dragons online, Middle Earth online, I think Star Wars online is free to play now. Of course you can and in some cases almost "need" to purchase things to advance properly in the game, but you can spend dozens of hours playing for free.
 
Solution