[FredPret]

Master of Orion 2 was the peak.

Some games like Factorio have minimal content but endless combinations of it in interesting ways.

One that stands out is Europa Universalis, which both encodes and presents a crazy amount of history.

But even a paper-thin game with 20 hours of value is cheap at $50. That's $2.5 per hour, ~one-third the rate of a movie, and kind of on par with a new book.

[thriftwy]

The problem is that they are competing with TV series and books. Why pay $200 for a game when that buys a year of premium Netflix subscription or smth like that? Or ten e-books? Only huge hits will be sellable that way.

Also, imagine what world looked like when books were as hot sell as games two decades ago. Any books, really, were inifinitely sellable because they provided a dozen hours of mild entertainment and often were the only option.

[johnnyanmac]

> Why pay $200 for a game when that buys a year of premium Netflix subscription or smth like that? Or ten e-books? Only huge hits will be sellable that way.

pricing philosopies are really the only difference. That's why no one sells you a $200 game. They sell a $30-70 game and then sell you 5 $20 expansions along the way, and maybe 10-20 $5 skins (and sadly this is very conservative. Just check out prices in the mobile sector). Gives more time to develop (or cut your losses) and it drip feeds more money out of customers without necessarily making a whole new game.

[thriftwy]

You can only pull it off if the game is real nice, though. Or if it's real good at milking you.

Some movies can also sell you some merchandise and a poster and perhaps a second go to cinema. More important, they can also sell IP rights to make a game out of it.

And people seem to forget that The Witcher is, first and foremost, a great book series.