Massive Quality Disparity Between Games Of The Same Price: An Industry Based On Uninformed Consumers

[Saris Kai]

Hello all, I was thinking about the state of the Industry at the moment particularly in regards to the rise of piracy and boat in the triple-A studio system. Firstly I could not help but come to the conclusion that many triple-A studious artificially inflate their development costs as a way justify outrageous prices on many subpar products that are themselves products of lazy game design. I am going to use example from games I am familiar with and also keep in mind I'm from Canada so we get shafted for prices on a lot of games because our retailers don't adjust prices when our dollar is strong.

I have played +150 hours of Fallout New Vegas and there are still some things I have not done. I'm sure I could have done everything in that time but whatever, I still have a reason to keep playing it. That game cost me $70 when it came out, other games that cost me $70 when they came out were Halo 3, Brutal Legend and Mass Effect. Other these other titles second largest lifespan was ME with +80 hours, next Halo 3 with only 17 hours and pitifully Brutal Legend with about 9 hours and only cause I had to redo part of it. I enjoyed the content of the 4 games, but the latter to had no reason for me to keep playing them after a while. There is absolutely no reason other than not wanting to bother that the latter two games could not have had at least as much content as Mass Effect 2. These games did not have drastically different development budgets from each other. Ok, Brutal Legend probably spend quite a bit of its on music rights but if Obsidian and Bioware can put as much content into games like Fallout NV and Mass Effect as they did then how the fuck can Budgie backed by Microsoft not easily afford to do the same? That's an easy answer and brings us to the next issue, they didn't bother because they knew that their largely non-savvy consumer base will pay full price for much less. I can see single more important factor involved. Yes there are defiantly other forces at play but this my is the crux of the issue. Two many people with low standards provide motivation to do any better unless the developers personally want to. How this effects piracy is fairly straight forward:

A) In a Free Market the market decides the value of something not its creator,
B) Piracy while illegal allows people the option of paying $0 for a game thusmaking its value $0,
C) The Disparity in quality between similarly priced games results in the consumer deciding that if Game X the better game is worth $70 then Game Y, the perceived lower quality game is defiantly not worth as much.
D) Not being presented with the option of paying less for it because of people with low standards propping up its perceived value because they are derp enough to buy the same game every year with minor tweaks instead of demanding one game that has its rosters updated (looking at you every sports licence ever)

However instead of fixing this to avoid something like another crash of 1983 there are corporate apologists who stress developers need to be paid for their work ignoring the fact that they could still be paid at current rates entirely by subtracting a tiny % off a game's profit (because they already see so little of it) convincing said easily manipulated people their points are valid when they don't hold up to objective analysis of the state of the industry.

What are your thoughts? Mine are currently that I'm getting to jaded to enjoy anything any more.

 

[zehydra]

"B) Piracy while illegal allows people the option of paying $0 for a game thusmaking its value $0, "

And thus in a sense, all intellectual property is valued at $0.

 

[Saris Kai]

"You can't own an idea, man"

I am not saying people should not be rewarded for good work, there just needs to be a better way to ensure they get the recognition.

 

[tippy2k2]

Maybe I'm not getting your point here but by the argument I'm seeing, you're saying that the game's length is what dictates how good the game is. Because you can get 150 hours out of a game like Fallout, that means that games like Halo should be 150 hours long. Obviously the stupid sheep don't realize that games should take a week's straight worth of time for it to be worth it and just keep buying short games because they're too stupid.

I suppose Halo could do what Fallout does and just pad the game for a hundred hours if that would make you happy.

 

[blizzaradragon]

The problem with this logic is that different people put extra value into different areas when it comes to a game. For example, while you only got 17 hours of game out of Halo 3 there are tons of people who have gotten hundreds or even thousands of hours out of it through things like co-op and multiplayer.

Also length doesn't directly mean quality. Oblivion has hundreds to thousands of hours of game, but I think it's a puddle of piss. Meanwhile I absolutely love the Assassin's Creed games, and their campaign is somewhere between 10-30 hours depending on how much side stuff you do.

While there are some games that are just universally bad, you can't say that just because a game is shorter means that they didn't bother with the game cause they knew people would buy it. That's a mighty huge assumption, and you know what they say about assuming...

 

[lacktheknack]

Quality is in the eye of the player. I love The Experiment, most people think it can go die in a corner. I adore Uru, my friend despises it. Etc.

So why not inform yourself? It's not like there isn't fifty reviews at any given moment for a game, and reading the least complimentary ones lets you know what they didn't like better than rave reviews. Plus, interviews and such will tell you LOTS of info about a game. I never regret a single purchase I make.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

"B) Piracy while illegal allows people the option of paying $0 for a game thusmaking its value $0, "

And thus in a sense, all intellectual property is valued at $0.

That is what pissed me off about my brother a couple years back. I was talking to him about an awesome book I had just bought, and then he mentioned that I shouldn't have wasted my money because he could have helped me get it free in e-book form.

Of course I think that is stupid, but it hits me more because I am a writer that hopes one day to get a book or two published, and get paid for it as well.

When I mentioned to my brother that, "the money I use to buy an author's book help that author, not just by earning money, but also sales records can help move an author forward to get more book deals," he just shrugged it off like there was no problem with downloading a e-book for free.

That's of course how I feel about the games industry. I can't stand it when I hear people rage about pricing, and then turn around and illegally download a game. I don't see how they don't realize that what they are doing is part of the problem.

 

[Savryc]

All I got from this was you think a games quality is based only on it's length and that anyone that likes games that you don't has low standards. Was pretentious what you were aiming for?

 

[isometry]

I think your analysis is correct, and it's something that triple A game producers probably think about a lot.

To add another bit of information, the price of new games hasn't adjusted for inflation since the mid-80s. The most expensive game I ever bought was Donkey Kong Country on SNES for $90 in Christmas 1994 (that was the MSRP, the price that all the stores in my area of the US had it for). Adjusted for inflation, that would be $140 today. I feel like I'm ripping off Bethesda when Skyrim costs only $60 dollars, and they must be aware of this.

That's why I feel good about buying DLC for games I've played a lot. Even though some of the Mass Effect 2 DLC was mediocre, the base game itself is easily worth the total price I paid.

This is also why I'm against people buying used games. Since I game on PC these days, it's been years since I've even thought about buying a game used or trying to sell a game I've bought, and I think that's the way it should be on consoles as well. Sure not all games are worth $60, but that just means waiting a few months or years for the price to fall.

To summarize, at least games that provide replay value way beyond their $60 purchase price will benefit from more DLC sales and fewer trade-ins. But unfortunately that's not enough to stop companies from flooding the market with overpriced and under-produced games, setting us up for a repeat of 1983.

When Nintendo entered the market in 1985, they didn't set out to make games that were "good enough", because no one knew what "good enough" was at that time. Instead of "good enough" they said "let's make the best games we possibly can, and see how far that takes us." It's rare for artistic and commercial interests to align this way, investors almost always want to stop at "good enough." To give a specific example, here's a statement about the development of Mega Man 2:

"So we, of our own accord, got together, spent our own time, we worked really, really hard, you know, just 20-hour days to complete this, because we were making something we wanted to make. Probably in all my years of actually being in a video game company, that was the best time of my working at Capcom, because we were actually working toward a goal, we were laying it all on the line, we were doing what we wanted to do. And it really showed in the game, because it?s a game, once again, that we put all our time and effort and love, so to speak, into it, designing it." -Keiji Inafune , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Man_2

In those days Nintendo limited 3rd party developers like Capcom and Konami to ~5 games per year to maintain a high standard of quality. And I'm not saying Nintendo did this because they are good guys, they did it because no one wanted to test the limits of ripping people off with full-priced crappy games following the crash of 1983.

Since then developers have gradually re-discovered how much they can lower their standards. The reason that NES games in 1985 cost $60 just like our current games, is because our current games have much less ambition for excellence. Before production even starts they have decided in their minds what is "good enough." No one sets out to make the best game they possibly can anymore.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Since then developers have gradually re-discovered how much they can lower their standards. The reason that NES games in 1985 cost $60 just like our current games, is because our current games have much less ambition for excellence. Before production even starts they have decided in their minds what is "good enough." No one sets out to make the best game they possibly can anymore.

Business/Industry is about efficiency first and creativity/originality absolutely last.

As far as I'm concerned, the days of cutting edge development within the AAA Studio market is dead. *Everything* of note this year from the AAA listers is a sequel. Everything is derivative of its own genre.

Taking creative risks costs money, and why would businesses bother taking risks when there are sure-fire formulas? It used to be that profits would get reinvested into more risky projects as a means of expanding development (and expanding concepts).

However, that very rarely happens in the AAA market anymore (or in music. or movies).
When the best-selling game of all time isn't really any different from its progenitor, it's a sign that something is wrong.

Perhaps when I'm old and gray, while teaching history with the benefit of hindsight; I'll find myself citing how in 2011, the combination of global economic depression high unemployment (lots of spare time) and relative popularity of shooters lead to the same fucking game breaking sales records three years in a row.
And then, I'll say something silly and pithy like how gamers were looking for something consistent in an age of great inconsistency, and how this lead to the 2nd Great Gaming Crash of 2014 or such.

 

[Saris Kai]

"B) I don't see how they don't realize that what they are doing is part of the problem.

I don't see how you don't see that piracy is a symptom and not the problem, all piracy of every type ever has been a symptom, not the problem. It may be a symptom that makes a problem worse over time but the point of the matter is that the way the industry as a whole is set up is part of why its happening. They are not able to shift their business models fast enough to deal with what the internet has enabled in terms of data sharing. Projects like Minecraft are doing it right but as a smaller company they can innovate faster, giving people an unfinished game so they can see the potential first hand, getting donations to finish it while getting millions to betatest it for them. I know not all types of games could work on this model but a fair number more than currently do could benefit from this. This solves the lost revenue issue resulting from Piracy because the game is payed for by customers before it is even finished, the developer will know if they will be able to break even quickly based on receptionist with only a minimal upfront investment. It also makes people wearing of paying full price for games they dont know the quality of to try them and have an input on development so they are less like to download it illegally.


As to the people saying I am equalting length to quality, I'm not and should have been more clear. I am talking about the effort involved in creating the quantity of content. That much effort could easily be put into other aspects of gameplay in other series and it is in some cases, just not in most of the games Ive seen.

 

[Joccaren]

*Sigh*

To everyone saying 'You're saying its the length that should dictate the value of a game'. No. He is not. He is saying its the amount of content. Look around the Mass Effect 1 galaxy. I can buy the game for $20 new, and it has a mass of planets and secrets hidden within. Yes, a lot of them are quite barren, and a lot of the bases are copy pastes, but there is a LOT of content there. Get games like Halo, and there is less to explore, less to visit, and a couple of online maps that are sometimes copied with slight editations from single player areas. The amount of content just doesn't add up to that of Mass Effect, yet Mass Effect is priced lower than all the Halo games around here.
Now, Halo will have to pay more money to keep its multiplayer servers running, and that is a reason for extra cost on top of the content.
What he is saying is to look at games like Fallout, Mass Effect, Skyrim - games with a massive amount of content - then look at your Halos and Call of Duty's - games with almost no content compared to the others but with multiplayer - and ask why they have the same price. Why do they? Simply because we will pay that price. If we were to not pay it, and demand to pay less as they have not put as much into the game as other games selling at that price, then the price would drop and the companies wouldn't be that much worse off for it.

There are of course other things that must be taken into account for the cost of a game than just its content - the licence for its engine, or the cost to develop an entirely new engine, the cost of multiplayer servers being kept up, the cost of advertising - more goes into a game budget than just the content, but there are some games you look at and go 'Why does it cost this much? Nothing has changed, its using the same engine, its got 1 or two different maps and a campaign that doesn't have that much content in it, it isn't advertised that much... Why?'. Will this actually change anything? No, you'll still get the derpy average Joe that will pay any amount for any game as he just doesn't care, or doesn't know, but it is something to think about.

all piracy of every type ever has been a symptom, not the problem.

I'd beg to differ. Some people will always go that little bit cheaper just because they can, and free as they pay nothing at all. Nothing short of charging nothing for games would completely stop piracy, and even then there would probably be some to get extra DLC or W/E the company tries to make its money off for free. A lot of piracy is a symptom, but there is also some that would just happen because people are too cheap to pay anything for something they want. So, not 'all piracy of every type' is a symptom. A lot is, but not all.

 

[thrillingsuspense]

It's not like this is a new problem. Or a problem that's exclusive to video games:
28 Days Later cost about 5 million to make
Valentines Day cost about 50 million

while people can argue that this means that there is no connection between the quality of content to budget ratio everyone still has to pay the same price to watch either. It's the same with games. So, your thoughts are pretty accurate. Too many people with low standards.

Welcome to the world of the jaded consumer.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

Piracy:

1. practice of a pirate; robbery....
2. the unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc.

Theft pure and simple.

It doesn't matter what the situation, the only way I would put a sympathetic thought on a situation of theft, is if it was a "need" type item, something needed to survive and all charitable options have been exhausted.

Other than that there is no excuse and game companies cause nothing. Yes, things that game companies do can make people work at pirating more, but in the end such things that companies do, only happen because of the pirates.

So, you are looking at it all backwards; DRM, pricing, and such things are symptoms of the piracy problem. In the early days of gaming, there was little to no anti-piracy measures. But when computers and gaming became popular and more commonplace, people that didn't have money for such cool and awesome stuff, wanted to find a way around paying for it. Once those people found a way to do it, then started hosting places to help other people to do it as well. Of course when the industry got wind of such things, they of course think up of better ways to keep people form stealing.

First and foremost, people pirate and illegally download because they can't afford the price, or they have the money but they rather use it on other things since it can be easy to illegally download.

Pricing does come first on a product, but that is no excuse to illegally download. Nobody deserves or is entitled to play games. So, the pirating comes first, it is the cause.

Now on being able to test out the product, that is what demos are for. If the game doesn't have a demo, tough, that is what reviews are for, you then look at many reviews and weight the results. If it is a console game, go rent it.

Minecraft is a very strange example, it isn't the norm and I doubt it will ever be. Considering, the company may get money from people when they buy the game before it is finished, but of course they can't charge for a complete game, and if they make promises like Mojang, then they won't get anymore money from those people and those people will end up paying less for the finished product before other people. Plus, such model would only work for PC and maybe download to hard drive games on consoles. That would only become the norm when people stop having a demand for physical copies of games, and that will not happen anytime soon. I know I always buy a physical copy if there is one available; I want my nice new CD/DVD with packaging(nice little case) with nice pictures and booklets and ad inserts.

I don't know how to convince people, that think like you, that piracy is the problem. This situation seems to turn out to be like the "chicken and the egg" question, even though it isn't and it is common sense that Piracy is the cause of the problem and raising prices and DRM are the symptoms.

In then end it comes down to the buyer, because in most respects the buyer in entitled to nothing, no guarantees. We are lucky that some game companies put out demos at all, because game companies don't have to do that, they could just be like all other companies of products and leave it to the consumers to decide what they want and what they think might be better.

"Buyer beware"

We are just going to have to live with the whole war against piracy thing, because until we come to a point when nobody feels the urge to steal and get free stuff. But that doesn't mean that companies should just give up, because when they do, there is a much higher percentage chance they will fail and disappear from the gaming world.

Again, I still can't see how people can condone piracy or say that it isn't a problem. Another stupid sect of people that are making this situation worse, are the people that say they pirate because of the anti-piracy actions. That makes no sense at all, because companies will always react to that buy tightening anti-piracy, because lightening up or backing off on it will basically be a message that it is okay to pirate and illegally download.

 

[Veylon]

This is one of those situations that I find utterly baffling. We live in a world where nearly any piece of information can be called up in a minute or two. And yet the industry relies on millions of people who can do this to not only be ignorant about their products, but to be ignorant and then go out and buy them at high cost. I can't explain how an internet bulging with reviews, LP's, and discussions can fail to keep those interested up to date.

In any case, the video game industry is run more by betting on averages than expecting any one game to recoup it's costs. A company might put out three games, costing $10m, $25m, and $2k, and have them all be at the same price. It's the same way that book publishers charge the same for great books as for terrible ones.

As for Minecraft, the idea with the Alpha/Beta being cheaper was to round up a little extra cash so that Notch could keep his house heated without getting a day job. It kinda got away from him. The little Infinimer clone that could was never meant to be a blockbuster.

 

[random_bars]

Um, you have heard of multiplayer, right? That's probably why Halo 3 and Brutal Legend both seemed short to you - they were both games in which the single player, while fun, was really just a small sample of what the mechanics can do, with the expectation that players would then go on to play the multiplayer, where those mechanics could be expanded on and used to their full extent.

Don't like multiplayer? Fair enough, but then you can't really complain when you buy a game in which a large part of the gameplay comes from something you're not going to use.

 

[Strain42]

For some reason I thought this topic was going to be about how the same game can be released on different consoles, with one version superior, but they cost the same.

Like Mortal Kombat for the PS3/360. If you get the PS3 version you get Kratos. If you get the 360 version you don't. They cost the same, but PS3 players get more.

That seems unfair to me.

 

[Saris Kai]

Um, you have heard of multiplayer, right?

Yes and I played multiplayer in those titles. The Meta was shit because of all the xbox live tards. I no longer have a Gold Subscription because of how annoying playing online on consoles is for an adult.