games should cost ~90 €
@saxnot @waweic I think it's arguable that games should cost significantly less than they used to.
Simple economics. There's way more games than there used to be and they have effectively unlimited distribution. You don't need to pay to manufacture boxes or disks, you just copy a few bits on the steam store or epic store or gog or xbox or playstation or nintendo store.
You have supply that's exploded exponentially and demand that's only increased linearly, that's a recipe for lower prices.
Where does the extra money come from? It doesn't. Yes, there's microtransactions and loot boxes an all that, but that's a different product than the games themselves. Lots of customers never buy a single microtransaction or loot box, and other customers stay away from games that have that sort of thing.
The music industry had the same problem -- unlimited supply and stable demand -- and they had to make up the difference not by finding new ways to monetize, but by reducing their spending on the product. That's one reason why music tends to suck now, companies can't afford to take risks on gambles that might not pan out.
Simple economics. There's way more games than there used to be and they have effectively unlimited distribution. You don't need to pay to manufacture boxes or disks, you just copy a few bits on the steam store or epic store or gog or xbox or playstation or nintendo store.
You have supply that's exploded exponentially and demand that's only increased linearly, that's a recipe for lower prices.
Where does the extra money come from? It doesn't. Yes, there's microtransactions and loot boxes an all that, but that's a different product than the games themselves. Lots of customers never buy a single microtransaction or loot box, and other customers stay away from games that have that sort of thing.
The music industry had the same problem -- unlimited supply and stable demand -- and they had to make up the difference not by finding new ways to monetize, but by reducing their spending on the product. That's one reason why music tends to suck now, companies can't afford to take risks on gambles that might not pan out.
games should cost ~90 €
@saxnot @waweic that's a good point. I'm old school and develop my own game engine from scratch, but you don't need to at all, there's tools that are great without having to spend that upfront. That alone means your development is focused on the game stuff instead of the broader ecosystem stuff.
Stuff that used to be super high end is now common. Music tools are cheap, motion capture is commonplace, 3d tools can be free if you don't mind a learning curve, compare all that to the beginning when you had to develop all your tools before you could even start worrying about anything.
One advantage id software had back in the day was their work with softdisk where they slowly developed and iterated on tools and engines with each new game. Their rudimentary platform games became a scrolling Mario demo became Commander Keen and Duke Nukem which ultimately became keen 4 and Duke Nukem 2, all building on earlier engine work. Today a team making commander keen can use a game maker studio that could take care of a lot of the stuff id needed to work miracles and put a lot of time into making, such as smooth pixel*pixel scrolling and pixel*pixel movement.
Stuff that used to be super high end is now common. Music tools are cheap, motion capture is commonplace, 3d tools can be free if you don't mind a learning curve, compare all that to the beginning when you had to develop all your tools before you could even start worrying about anything.
One advantage id software had back in the day was their work with softdisk where they slowly developed and iterated on tools and engines with each new game. Their rudimentary platform games became a scrolling Mario demo became Commander Keen and Duke Nukem which ultimately became keen 4 and Duke Nukem 2, all building on earlier engine work. Today a team making commander keen can use a game maker studio that could take care of a lot of the stuff id needed to work miracles and put a lot of time into making, such as smooth pixel*pixel scrolling and pixel*pixel movement.
games should cost ~90 €
@saxnot @waweic I think that if you wanted to see that games are more expensive, you would need to take the integral of price over time for similar properties.
Whereas previously tier 1 video games would have a few months at peak price and then they'd quickly fall to bargain bin prices, I've noted that top tier games seem to stay at elevated prices much longer than previously. Witcher 3 is 5 years old, and it's still over 50 dollars on steam. In the past a 5 year old game wouldn't even be on the radar, forget about being priced nearly as much as it was back then.
Hell, Skyrim is 10 years old and it's still $20. Not that long ago a 10 year old game might be in a $20 compilation pack of a dozen great games, not alone by itself.
The peak price may not be as high, but the area under the curve would be much higher I believe.
Whereas previously tier 1 video games would have a few months at peak price and then they'd quickly fall to bargain bin prices, I've noted that top tier games seem to stay at elevated prices much longer than previously. Witcher 3 is 5 years old, and it's still over 50 dollars on steam. In the past a 5 year old game wouldn't even be on the radar, forget about being priced nearly as much as it was back then.
Hell, Skyrim is 10 years old and it's still $20. Not that long ago a 10 year old game might be in a $20 compilation pack of a dozen great games, not alone by itself.
The peak price may not be as high, but the area under the curve would be much higher I believe.
games should cost ~90 €
@saxnot @waweic My experience when I was a kid was that rather than being on sale, the older games just got cheaper fast. It used to be the orthodoxy that video games would make 90% of their profit in the first couple months after release and then they'd drop off in price becuase retailers wanted to get rid of the old stock to get the latest game on the shelves at full price.
Whereas today video games are seen as something you can sell long-term, they didn't think of video games the same way. It was at a point where for most video games unless you found a copy at EB or something like that used you simply couldn't buy a new copy at any price because companies didn't think they could charge enough to justify keeping production of physical product ongoing.
Digital distribution changed the game.
Whereas today video games are seen as something you can sell long-term, they didn't think of video games the same way. It was at a point where for most video games unless you found a copy at EB or something like that used you simply couldn't buy a new copy at any price because companies didn't think they could charge enough to justify keeping production of physical product ongoing.
Digital distribution changed the game.
games should cost ~90 €
@saxnot @waweic You're right, the hype giveth and the hype taketh away.
I wasn't hyped for 2077, so when I got it and it turned out to be a decent enough game (on PC mind you) I was pefectly happy with it. People who were hyped thinking it would be a a cyberpunk life simulator definitely would be disappointed.
Personally, I'd prefer to see it that games are promoted when they're released. It annoys me when they're like "Look at this game! It's so amazing" and it's 3 years before you actually see it if it's ever even released.
I wasn't hyped for 2077, so when I got it and it turned out to be a decent enough game (on PC mind you) I was pefectly happy with it. People who were hyped thinking it would be a a cyberpunk life simulator definitely would be disappointed.
Personally, I'd prefer to see it that games are promoted when they're released. It annoys me when they're like "Look at this game! It's so amazing" and it's 3 years before you actually see it if it's ever even released.
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games should cost ~90 €
@saxnot @waweic Well, that's something we can both agree with. Strongly.
Why the hell would you order something not knowing if it's going to be any good when you can just wait a few months and get it?
I can see something like a kickstarter where you're paying a bit to help something exist and understanding that maybe you'll never see the thing. Giving a massive amount of money to a megacorp to get a property at the same time everyone else gets it doesn't make a penny of sense.
Why the hell would you order something not knowing if it's going to be any good when you can just wait a few months and get it?
I can see something like a kickstarter where you're paying a bit to help something exist and understanding that maybe you'll never see the thing. Giving a massive amount of money to a megacorp to get a property at the same time everyone else gets it doesn't make a penny of sense.
games should cost ~90 €
@saxnot @waweic I agree with you (given that's exactly how I've done my things)
Reality check though: Open source isn't really likely to actually draw much help until 80% of the work is done, and even then probably not.
People and organizations see the amount of free development done for something like the the linux kernel and start salivating, thinking that they can capitalize on that free labor, and start working under the assumption that eventually someone else will start doing the work for them. In reality, virtually none of those projects ever have more than one contributor. For every OpenArena or FreeCiv, there's probably 1000 projects that are fully functional, fully open course, and have never had another human being so much as open the source file.
Reality check though: Open source isn't really likely to actually draw much help until 80% of the work is done, and even then probably not.
People and organizations see the amount of free development done for something like the the linux kernel and start salivating, thinking that they can capitalize on that free labor, and start working under the assumption that eventually someone else will start doing the work for them. In reality, virtually none of those projects ever have more than one contributor. For every OpenArena or FreeCiv, there's probably 1000 projects that are fully functional, fully open course, and have never had another human being so much as open the source file.