| I agree with the general idea in the article that games should be about fun and great gameplay at its core. What I don't agree with is this simplistic narrative by gamers on how how very evil and greedy game producers are. Because gamers themselves play a significant role in that. As an example, mobile game developers largely switched to in-game purchases not because they want to, instead because it's the only model that works to even get back their investment. Even asking as little as 3-5$ for a high quality game means most people skip it, even though they would love the game and could easily afford it. Apple Arcade is a counter act against this very perverse market dynamic. Gamers created this dynamic. For being cheap. And please don't respond to say that you're not cheap, it's not a personal comment. Next example. As a Battlefield fan, let's take good old ultra evil EA. Let's restrict this to the monetization part. Upon launch, Battlefield typically costs about 60€ where I live. And it doesn't take very long for this to significantly drop. IF you want to go crazy, you can go for some ultimate version, for about 100€. 59.99€ for some mysterious reason is carved in stone. Games have costs this amount (or less) since forever. Inflation seems to have no grip at all on game prices, nor does the price reflect the explosion in complexity, scope and upkeep (servers, anti-cheat, more bugs due to complexity, etc). I guess this is some gamers' "value treshold". A game just can't be priced any higher no matter the value on offer. Let's talk value. If you're a fan of the series, it has almost infinite replay value, as is the point of an online shooter. You can play the game for years, for thousands of hours. People are still playing BF4, which is from 2013. And still gamers complain that it's expensive. The reality is that at least for this game, it's a steal. Extraordinarily cheap highly engaging entertainment in limitless supply. Thousands of hours compared to about the cost of going out for dinner. The low price of 59.99, enforced by irrational gamers, likely is subsidized by optional in-game purchases that do not affect gameplay. In other words, people wanting a fancy soldier's coat in the game are basically paying to keep 59.99 steady, seemingly forever. And in this magic gamers world, ongoing costs somehow don't exist. Basically, any method to monetize is evil. All of this is to say that game producers use the model that works. If you refuse to pay for fair value and sabotage every reasonable method, this is what you get. Gamers need to look in the mirror. |
> Let's talk value. If you're a fan of the series, it has almost infinite replay value, as is the point of an online shooter. You can play the game for years, for thousands of hours. People are still playing BF4, which is from 2013.
> Let's talk value. If you're a fan of the series, it has almost infinite replay value, as is the point of an online shooter. You can play the game for years, for thousands of hours. People are still playing BF4, which is from 2013.
> And still gamers complain that it's expensive. The reality is that at least for this game, it's a steal. Extraordinarily cheap highly engaging entertainment in limitless supply. Thousands of hours compared to about the cost of going out for dinner.
But you can't know that at launch time, and with the hit-based dynamic that the publishers have set up, they need a lot of buyers on launch day. Reviewers are completely in the industry's pocket and everyone knows it. So it's a complete lemon market.
59.99€ isn't the price because it's what the good games are worth. It's the price because it's what gamers are willing to risk losing if the game turns out to suck. And that part is very much on the industry's side - pre-orders, day 0 patches, lack of credible criticism and a very limited ability to get refunds are big factors in this dynamic.