I ran into an article today from a former reviewer who was angry. It’s worth reading.
The premise of the article was that we are over paying for our games and the people in the industry are assholes for saying otherwise.
So I felt a need to reflect on this.
First I agree.
When I started this blog I was purchasing every single new PC release that came out. This meant every single PC game at full price, all $60 with another $60 in DLC.
About a year ago I decided to stop buying every day on release. Instead I began to find some satisfaction in the one to two month old releases. Eventually I began to start dipping into the retro libraries of Steam and founded the “Steam sales” series.
Steam did not offer a boom to PC sales. Actually what it did was band aided a dying format. PC sales are no higher now at the peak of Steam’s popularity than it was 10 years ago. PC sales still represent roughly the same percentage of sales present a decade ago.
Actually all Steam has done for the gaming market is made it so that people can purchase multiple older games for the same price as a newer one.
This practice of course already exists in the console world, it’s called a “used game.”
So no, even with Steam’s mega sales and being much cheaper than console, the price of games is really not going down. PC gamers pay the “there’s less people playing multiplayer tax” every time they buy a game. They also pay the “one month to a year late DLC tax” as well.
$60 is a lot for a game. It’s a lot for a game that is 2-3 hours in length.
Generally speaking reviewers seem to give games insanely high scores despite getting only 2-3 hours in content for $60. Even getting a 60 or a 70 is rather high for how little you get out of these games.
But the reviewing community at large seems okay to tell people that “yes this game is worth paying $60 for.” It seems odd that a game like LIMBO which was made by one guy for under $40,000 is more popular than Homefront which cost millions to make. It’s as if the price point for an equal amount of gameplay was different?
These days when I pay full price for a game and pre-order I often find myself duped into it. With Omerta: City of Gangsters for example I was offered a special gangster type as a pre-order exclusive benefit. No less than a week later the gangster was offered up to everyone for free. Worst yet the game wasn’t exactly what was described. It appears from many demo videos that you would be able to build anywhere. In reality you could only build on designated construction sites… which made the world as a whole smaller than that of Tropico 3 (a game made 5-6 years ago).
I also felt “screwed” when SEGA released Aliens: Colonial Marines. The community outrage over this game was so large that people were giving this game far lower reviews than it actually deserved. The game wracked up about 10-15 hours of gameplay, almost 4x the industry standard, and offered a functional multiplayer.
The outrage was over SEGA, or more importantly Gearbox releasing a non-playable demo of the game which had visuals and gameplay elements that were never going to be in the game. When the game was released, the game received looked nothing like the demo or promotional material.
There was a good reason for this. According to Kotaku the visuals and gameplay were from a totally different game. As the story goes Gearbox contracted out the work to Obsidian Entertainment because they were too busy making Borderlands and Borderlands 2. Obsidian Entertainment created a visually beautiful COD style game but because of constant story changes and oversight from both SEGA and Gearbox they just couldn’t make room.
So the demo shown to everyone was one from Obsidian Entertainment’s work on the game. Gearbox took the game and had to crap down the graphics so that the average PC could actually play it.
The end result was me pre-ordering a game for $60 and immediately feeling ripped off when everything looks and plays really crappy.
Aliens: Colonial Marines to me was a game worth about $20 and if the DLC was good enough it might add up to $60.
But that’s not the business model that they’re working with. They’re making a game to sell for $60 and then sell each piece of DLC for $5-$15.
AlphaOmegaSin is also upset with this in light of EA announcing they would have microtransactions in every single future title. This would not be a problem with Electronic Arts announced they were reducing the price of Sim City 4 to $20 and planned to sell DLCs and expansions. It wouldn’t be so bad if Battlefield franchise was going to be free and have microtransactions.
But what they’re saying is that they are going to sell games at $60 a pop and on top of that every single game on launch will come with microtransactions that will also add up even more dollars.
To put this simpler the game now costs on launch $60+. For the basic game you pay $60 and eventually you will have to do some sort of leveling up system in which if you pay extra ($60) you get all the guns, but if you grind for a year you can get all the guns for free.
Hrm…
This sounds familiar.
It’s as if I’ve heard of this profit model before.
Oh I remember now.
It’s League of Legends.
Yeah free to play, except if you want to play well and get all of the heroes it will cost you over $300!
Around a decade ago I argued that MMOs were the best way to play because you could have self-created content and the price capped at the monthly subscription fee. The way the market is going is really making me feel like I have to get back into MMORPGs.
TheGameGuru.Me 