EA's Free-To-Play GM Says $60 Games Are "Exploitative"

[Cursed Frogurt]

Remember people, there are ways to shop smartly while still contributing towards developers that you want to support (i.e. not resorting to piracy or used games). If you're unsure of a game, rent it or use a service like Gamefly which lets you keep said game in which case you're purchasing it. If the game sucked, I return the game and the developer isn't supported.

You can buy games digitally on sale, which still sends the money to the right people. For example, that Stacking looks like fun and I respect Double Fine and want to see other projects from them, but I'm going to wait until it's on sale.

It's very rare that I just flat out buy a game for $60. If I do get a game on day-one it's usually through Amazon or Walmart when they have a $10 or $20 credit deal and free shipping. I got Mario Galaxy 2 for $30 and DCKR for $30 on day-one.

 

[Dana22]

Microtransactions are more exploitative then retail prices. As shown in Battlefield Heroes.

ps. Ive never paid 60$ for a game.

How are Micro-transactions exploitative, for the most part they are completely optional in most games that use them, for the most part transactions are limited to cosmetic upgrades in 60% of the F2P games anyway, certain games like to make paying money a way to go around farming for in-game currency which could be construed as exploitative, but it only exploit the lack of patience that most people suffer from. Yes I've run into SOME games that more or less require you to spend REAL money to really progress, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

How many of such games you played ? Because most of the time, microtransactions DO mean pay-to-win or pay-to-not-get-bored-to-death. Especially in Korean Productions.

Good example is Company of Heroes, it was full blown pay-to-win. That was one of the reasons it died (people who bought stuff in beta didn't get refund).

Battlefield Heroes (and recent BF2 free 2 play). You have limited number of slots for characters, you are not informed that after you create a character you CANT delete it. Thus, to play some other class, you need to pay hard cash for additional slots. I wont even mention things like weapons, which give you enormous advantaged against "vanilla" players.

In MMORPGs things like in game money, or bonus experience are a norm.

All this creates an illusion of free game, but to enjoy it, you need to pay for additional benefits. There are, of course, plenty of good examples of microtransactions, but Id rather pay for a product once, and know that everyone can enjoy the same version of game.

 

[Rayne870]

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

Pretty much this in total. Also it is very ironic that EA is saying the prices are too high when they have a large share in the market and are releasing games at the price they are complaining about. Ah well, I'm pretty happy with how things are in terms of pricing per hourly play and entertainment value.

 

[Missing SHODAN]

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

But this argument is largely about risk and investment.

If I go to see Drive Angry (haven't seen, just picking a film that I'd deemed 'risky' in my head when I saw the trailer) in the theater and it's awful and I leave early, I'm out $15.

When I bought FFXIII for $60, and decided it was awful, I was out $60. The fact that the game features 40 hours of gameplay or whatever wasn't any comfort when about 15-20 hours in I'd decided my nostalgia for Final Fantasy wasn't enough to overcome the fact that I did not enjoy the game and hadn't enjoy the last 15-20 hours of waiting for the game to magically turn back into FFVI.

The fact that I could have, say, 10-40 hours of awful experience versus 1.5-2.5 hours of awful experience isn't really a comfort at that point.

When games are good, yeah, they're great values for the money. You'll get no argument from me there. However, when they're crap, they're expensive crap. What is being argued here is that people would be willing to try more games if there wasn't the risk that they'd spend a fairly sizable chunk of cash on something which turned out to be completely not their thing.

This would also be less of a problem if you could return video games to the store on account of "it was crap," but the industry has ensured that's not an option.

EDIT - also, it's hilarious for "nickle and dime you" EA having someone talk about how one could price things better. I wouldn't mind being nickled and dimed for, say, a $15 game, but when it's $60 + First Day DLC, that really does feel exploitative.

I understand what you're saying, but couldn't a person just wait for the reviews or, better yet, couldn't a person wait for a game to go down in value? Granted, reviews aren't your opinion but if a game isn't incredible then there's bound to be some crappy reviews.

I've got over 40 games on 360, and out of those I've paid full starting price for 6 or 7 of them. The rest have mostly been under $30. Sure, they're a bit older, but who cares? I've had a hell of a time. From the perspective of an individual consumer, that's pretty good.

I also buy many games used, and I don't rip the tags off until after the return date has come and gone. If I don't like a game, I return it. Some might have problems with that, but I've got my wallet to worry about.

Anyway, buying anything for entertainment is always, always a risk. Paying for movies? How do you know you're going to like it unless you've already seen it. Games are the same way, and no one gets to play every game before they buy it. Demos for all games would be nice, but that ain't happenin'.

You're actually basically agreeing with me here. $60 is unattractive to risk not having fun, but $30-40 is pretty agreeable. Like you, I have frequently been willing to buy games once time has passed because while I might not be willing to experiment to find out how you'd write a sequel to Bioshock's plot for $60, when it's $10 during a Steam sale, the worst that happens is I've lost slightly less than I'd have spent going to the theater if it turns out to be head-desk bad. Buying anything for entertainment blindly *is* always a risk, which is the point I am making. If you're trying to get a consumer to risk money on something, they're more likely to gamble if the risk is seen as smaller ($10-15) than higher ($60). The last thing EA wants to do is drive people to the used market where risk is lower and they make no money at all (hence why they're doing their best to make the used market less appealing.) Nor do they want to get a sudden spike of sales two years after the game has launched, having found a market after the risk-adverse went "ok, I'll try it now and hey it's awesome!" (aka, what happened to Psychonauts, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychonauts#Sales).

Yes, you can try things later, as they get cheaper over time and eventually they may find an audience they couldn't at launch. The fact that the game did really well three years after launch doesn't do the publisher any good, though, if they're posting a loss during the first six months and had to lay off most of the studio then - and in many ways this is bad for the consumer AND the publisher. The publisher sees red in the books at launch and goes, "Cancel production on this title," and when consumers find out the game was really fun because they picked it up at $20, well, now your chances of getting a sequel are much lower - especially if the publisher went out of business or had massive layoffs when the game didn't sell at all after launch.

 

[Wolfram23]

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

snip.

snip.

I hate the theory of $/hour of entertainment. If we're to use that argument, PCs suddenly become significantly more of a value than consoles, considering how much time we all spend on them even if we're not gaming. Just saying.

Anyway, to see a movie for $15 you're paying for seeing the movie, and having a 50 foot screen, and surround sound, big seats, possibly 3D glasses, and enjoying a public entertainment.

For $60 you get to play a game on your $200 console and your $800 HDTV with your $100 of peripherals and your $500 surround sound system and your $20 HDMI cables sitting on your $500 couch with your feet on your $80 coffee table...

Hmm.

This is why $/hour doesn't hold up. You can't entirely quantify it like that.

The general business model of ANY product is price to produce (or to provide) divided by estimated sales, multiplied by desired profit ratio. Movie theaters often have significantly lower profit ratios than games. Of course it depends on the game, but when CoD: MW2 and then CoD: BOps sell hundreds of millions of copies... obviously their profit margin is ridiculously large and they should adjust the price to keep it all fair.

Adding more length to a game isn't hard. You throw in collectibles and instantly add 10 hours to a game (like, say, Assassin's Creed). One person might spend 100hrs in a game, another person might beat it in 25 hours and be done with it. The $/hr theory is just way out of whack.

 

[ZombieGenesis]

At the end of the day, the current developer infrastructure is shite.
We need a new one.
Retailers can't sell at over 50% profit margins, no DLC that isn't free or an expansion pack, sequels and new IPs have to pass a quality standards mark before they can be released.

Raise you're hands if you have the skill and want to job.
Right, let's get crackin'...

 

[Vrach]

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

Check the price of making a movie vs the price of making a video game. Only games that come close to movie production costs are Starcraft 2 (which became famous for it's 100 million budget) and MMOs.

(note, comparing triple A games with blockbusters as we ARE talking about triple A games here, seeing as we're saying '60 bucks')

I was talking cost to the individual. And its not unreasonable. 4x entertainment. 4x cost. seems reasonable to me. (assuming i buy the good games ofc)

Comparing dev costs between them doesn't really work FYI due to the three incomes movies have (cinema, dvd/blu ray sales, television syndication) compared to gamings one revenue source (the games).

Yeah totally. Because there's no such thing for games as retail sales, digital distribution (which is far more developed and accepted in the games business and leads to MUCH greater profit margins), game rentals and cyber cafes. Oh and movies totally have pay per month and microtransaction models for certain genres.

Yeah cost:length of entertainment works. But production costrice doesn't. If you're a fan of the first, fair enough... but pricing according to the second makes a hell of a lot more sense to me (if we're doing by fairness instead of by exploitative capitalism, which is what the article is about)

 

[dropZero]

There's no reason to pay the full $60 dollar price for a video game. Within a couple months the price always drops to something more reasonable. You just need the patience not to run out and buy a game on release day.

 

[Baresark]

I hate how these guys wait till the entire video game community bring up an issue like this, then finally someone from one of the worst culprits of the pricing schemes, agrees. I'm sorry, we all know the price tags on video games are affecting them in adverse ways, but EA should shut the fuck up. For real though, he only agrees because he has found a different way of making that same amount of money, if not more.

But go back a single generation, this argument didn't occur at $50 games nearly as often, and I can't remember thinking $40 was too much to pay for a video game, unless it was exceptionally bad. There IS NOT a free-to-play solution for this problem, it can easily be resolved by selling games at a price that isn't ridiculous. Take the idea of every title having to be "Triple-A" out of the equation, there should really only be a few titles a year that try this. Not every other title.

 

[Baresark]

There's no reason to pay the full $60 dollar price for a video game. Within a couple months the price always drops to something more reasonable. You just need the patience not to run out and buy a game on release day.

I agree completely, but have you noticed that CoD Blops pricetag hasn't dropped a single cent? Haha, crazy shit. Not that I would buy it for cheaper even.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

Compared to other mediums our price point is fine.
films cost what 15 dollars
thats mayber 2.5 hours
a game costs what 60 dollars
so your willing to pay 4 times it for 4 times the length. 10 hours is a short game in my books. (yes im including multiplayer.

Its an expensive hobby. but not more than people can afford.

By that logic, books which take up to 24 hours to read, but cost only £0.50 at a charity shop must be the bomb! Why play games at all?

Ok, ok. Money for fun all great and good, but I still think that the current generation game prices are exploitative, especially if the PC prices rise to the same ones as console games.

We've already paid for our hardware (I shelled out £1000 recently) so why should we also shell out extra for games?

I'm sticking to only getting good games, too many recent games have fallen flat on their face trying to impress.

I'd rather play some good (and fun) mods of oblivion, or half life, or WC3 even or whatever than shelling out £40 for a game that I know that I can finish in 3 or 4 hours, and not have fun at that.

So, yes. I think that it really is too much. But I'm sticking to my guns as a hardcore gamer and as any good hardcore gamer would - and holding tightly onto roots until the shitstorm subsides, and the sun comes out again and some nice flowers bloom.

And if you didn't get that last sentence, then the shitstorm resembles all the bad games and high prices, the sun means better times, and flowers are actually decent games.

Now I retire to finish this new install of win7, then build my portable centrifuge. Bye-ee.

 

[Metal Brother]

Speaking as someone who just paid $60 for an EA title (go Crysis 2!) please let me cry out: OH THE IRONY!!

I don't *feel* exploited. ;-)

 

[dropZero]

There's no reason to pay the full $60 dollar price for a video game. Within a couple months the price always drops to something more reasonable. You just need the patience not to run out and buy a game on release day.

I agree completely, but have you noticed that CoD Blops pricetag hasn't dropped a single cent? Haha, crazy shit. Not that I would buy it for cheaper even.

Yeah, the Call of Duty games seem to be an exception to the usual price drop. Modern Warfare 2 is even still $60 dollars on Steam.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Even with money to burn I have been disappointed to many times with games over the last few years to justify buying on release anymore. I don't mind waiting, and letting only the games that really prove themselves get my money. I have purchased more games for my phone over the last year then for all the consoles put together.

That's my stance right now, only applied to all gaming (not just consoles).
Barring certain amazing Steam deals and some cheapie Gamecube titles I haven't bought many games on my own initiative in the last year. Got one for my birthday and picked up a random DS jrpg on a recommendation (was actually good rather than cliche).

Spent maybe 60 dollars TOTAL on new games last year, and not much more on some old used games.

 

[Larsirius]

I really got to laugh at how many consider 60$ a game is expensive, when we in Norway fork over the equivialent of a Jackson for a new release.

 

[michael87cn]

It's like Monkey Island says; never spend more than $20 on a game.

 

[Atheist.]

Didn't N64 games used to cost $80 new? I also remember seeing an old Nintendo Power advertising NES games (it was an old issue) for around $75 a pop. I could be wrong though, my memory is garbage.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't N64 games run on cartridges? Cartridges were much more expensive than CDs or DVDs...

I realize the format was different but that does kind of cement the point that games are less expensive now than they were back in the before-time before disc-based gaming was as common as it is now.

Let's not forget the fact that even though digital distribution removes all the physical aspects including shipping and packaging, titles from there are priced the same as retail stores...

The publishers probably have contracts with the retailers saying they won't undercut the retail price with their digital copies, otherwise the retailers might stop selling their products.