Poll: How much money do you spend on each game?

[Something Amyss]

At this point I use my backlog heavily, so except for a handful of games a year, everything I buy is on sale. $65 for a game? I don't even know why you'd do that anymore for most titles.

Wait a year, you can get the "GOTY" Komplete edition on sale, with all of the DLC.

Indeed. And the funniest thing? The gaming industry has trained me to do this. They can't help themselves.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm trying to remember the last time I bought any game for $60(aka at launch) and I think it might have been Bioshock Infinite(but I also got XCOM:EU with it). Most of the time I'll wait until it's somewhere around 30 bucks if I'm really into it or less then 20 when it's on sale.

And because my backlog is so fricken insane, there's no reason not to wait till it's cheap. Not only that, I've learned that buying after a several year wait means that not only will it be cheaper, It'll probably have a GOTY edition with all the DLC and hopefully all of the major bugs will be patched out.

It's too bad that I can't expect to get a fully working and content complete game at launch for $60, so I guess I'll have to settle for the same thing(hopefully) at $25 a year or so later.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

probably 10-15 bucks honestly..i pretty much get 90% of my games through huge holiday sales or humble bundle, where things are dimes on the dollar, and I almost NEVER buy a game on release unless it is one major exception. (Witcher 3 being the exception in this case, and I don't regret it one bit.)

even then, I had that at 10-15% off from owning both the first two witchers on my account.

 

[babinro]

Couldn't vote because my pricing wasn't reflected.

I buy 95% of my games from steam sales and bundle sites. Meaning that it's rare to spend more than $15.00 on a single game and even more common to spend $5-$10 for multiple titles.

The remaining 5% are exceptions to the norm. Typically 1 a year where I'll choose to pre-order rather than wait patiently. This is often a digital special edition and therefore costs around $80.00 rather than just the base game.

Since I buy so few games brand new I can actually list them below:
- Dragon Age Inquistion
- Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls
- Diablo 3
- Mass Effect 3
From there things get hazy, I want to say Rock Band 3 (with Keyboard and replacement drumset) but I could be missing something.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes, and now new generations are learning that lesson so quickly. Maybe the future is brighter than we think for that reason alone?

I don't know about that. Look at how fast Watch Dogs and AC Unity sold.

 

[Doom972]

I spend $5-$10 on a game. I use Steam. Some games are so great, that they're worth even as much as $20 in my opinion. If there's a game that I want and it's on Humble Bundle I spend less than $1 on it.
As for extra content, I only buy DLC that adds extra content rather than cosmetics or new weapons, and I only buy DLC for games I really like, and even then I wait for a discount.

 

[maninahat]

My rule of thumb is not pay more for a game than I would a book. That is to say, £4-8 per game, unless it was equivalent to a really good book (in which case I might be tempted to go up to £11)

 

[Frission]

Yikes. Are there people who really pay that much? You forget how expensive this hobby can be.
My upper quartile is more in the 20$ due to Steam Sales (and even that's pushing it). My mode would be more around >10$.

 

[Something Amyss]

There will always be fools, and more importantly, young people spending money that isn't really theirs. They can subsidize the sales and so on that the rest of us love so much.

Unfortunately, they're also the ones who make sure that Microtransactions, day one DLC, etc are a thing.

 

[CaitSeith]

Yikes. Are there people who really pay that much? You forget how expensive this hobby can be.
My upper quartile is more in the 20$ due to Steam Sales (and even that's pushing it). My mode would be more around >10$.

The irony is that there are people people paying thousands of dollars each month in F2P games. And you thought $200 was expensive...

 

[Something Amyss]

They do, but that was always going to happen, just like $10 popcorn at movie theaters. Just like movie theaters though, it's just a temporary (albeit maybe for most of our lives) situation.

Yeah, but would movie studios ever be so unscrupulous as to release definitive editions of movies, or split films into two parts?

 

[Frission]

Effectively bad business practices can only persist if there's someone who's willing to accept them.

Anyway, I'm mystified that anyone can play thousands of dollars per month on F2P games. How is that even possible? Is there an example?

 

[Something Amyss]

Heh, true, but who knew that consumers would ever be so empowered that they could ignore that and wait for their DVR, Netflix, Hulu and so on? The dynamics start to change, and while they will never be perfectly in our favor, I think we're in a very poor asymmetry from the consumer perspective that is bound to change as the technology continues to improve and spread.

The thing is, things seem to have largely gotten worse with technology here. And I think part of that is while the music industry and movie industry had to adapt based on past practices and current technology, games are part and parcel with technology. Games have had DRM since the 70s. Games have been locked and limited since at least the 80s. People will tolerate always-online DRM, and despite complaining, people will buy broken games. There's a similar issue in movies and music, which I generally refer to as the Michael Bay Effect because Bay said people will watch his movies anyway--and it seems like his biggest haters are his best customers--but I think there's an argument for a difference.

Record sales started dropping well before piracy. Movie ticket sales did, too. Gamers are in the middle of a consumer revolt, and the closest we've seen is the usual generation indecision. Not only are the Michael Bays not hurting, it looks like, for the most part, publishers aren't hurting and even indie devs don't seem to be hurting worse than before.

It actually seems the exception, rather than the rule, when bad developers get called out. Even Uwe Bolle's work was unsustainable once they closed those "Springtime for Hitler" tax loopholes, but video games?

This is one of the reasons I don't pay much for most games. Even a bad, broken, or possibly unplayable title can sell millions and be praised. I wouldn't mind paying more for legitimately good games, but I won't pony up the cash with all the apologetics from fans.

 

[mysecondlife]

I spent average of $5 or $6 on each of my last 3 purchase.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Too much is the only acceptable response.

 

[Windcaler]

Depends on the game really. Free to play ones are especially murky for me because some games like warframe Ive been playing over a year and yet to date Ive only put in about $50 in the last year (I think it was $25 the year before that). However for the old republic I dropped $40 and feel thats enough. There are other free to play games such as star trek online that Ive played off and on for years and never dropped a cent on because I dont feel the length and type of content is worth a substantial fee. I also dropped $60 on secret world which is well worth it IMO.

Years ago I didnt balk at subscription based games like City of heros or everquest. However in this day and age there are enough free to play games out there that I can always find an equal or greater experience without spending anything.

As for AAA or just A games my opinions vastly different. I havnt preordered or bought a AAA game at launch since mass effect 2 (which was a big disappointment for me). Since that day Ive waited for reviews and gameplay to come out so I can make an informed decision instead of getting burned yet again. There are very few AAA games I bought while they were still in their $60 range since ME2, watch dogs was one of them and to this day I still say watch dogs was a good game, not great or even revolutionary, just good. Usually "just good" is enough for me to be happy with my purchase

Since PC has become my main platform for the last 5 years or so Im getting smarter and more stringent with my purchases. Ive seen to many bad ports and terrible business practices not to be. That said, I have little problem dropping $5-10 on just about anything that looks interesting. A $5 game is actually cheaper then buying lunch for me. A $10 game is still something I dont consider to much as long as it looks interesting and its something I can play for awhile. When you get up into the $20 line then Im a little more stringent. For 20 and up I expect the game to be good and have some replay value and I will go watch/read a ton of reviews and gameplay so I can make an informed decision

However if a game looks like its going to be heavily DLC based Ive just gotten into the habit of waiting a year for the complete edition to come out. Ive got other games I can play/replay in the meantime

Edit: Oh and as a side note, we dont have a sales tax here in oregon so stuff actually costs the proper amount

 

[baddude1337]

Anyway, I'm mystified that anyone can play thousands of dollars per month on F2P games. How is that even possible? Is there an example?

There was a whole panel at some game dev conference about "Whales" - people who spend huge amounts of money on F2P games. I remember it from a Jim Sterling episode:


There's also a fair few news stories here and there about people who spend loads of money on F2P games.

OT: My days of buying full priced games are pretty much long gone. Most of the time I buy indie titles or Steam sale games. I'm more abhorrent to it now AAA dev's are drastically raising the prices of PC versions of games here in the UK (The PC RRP has almost doudbled compared to last gen), so I tend to just ignore them until they are cheap.

A lot of my gaming these days is via mods or very old games anyway, so I really don't spend all that much on a single game any more.

 

[Savagezion]

Effectively bad business practices can only persist if there's someone who's willing to accept them.

Anyway, I'm mystified that anyone can play thousands of dollars per month on F2P games. How is that even possible? Is there an example?

I used to play a mobile game similar to "Game of War: Fire Age" (just reskinned basically) and I had guild members that spent hundreds of dollars on it because the $100 package was the "best value." One guy said he had spent over $300 on the game in the past couple months. I remember thinking that I had a Steam library of ~125 games that I spent about $240 on. Of which, only about 10 of them were "throw away" games that came in bundles that I didn't care about. But we can even knock it down to 100 AAA games for less than he spent on a F2P mobile game. (And that was just in the past month or two.) It wasn't just him though, eventually the game started adding things that made it P2W and the guild quickly started ignoring people who didn't buy gold. Many of the top people in our guild were doing it and those of us who wouldn't slowly quit playing 1 by 1. The game was fun when everyone on equal footing and helping each other out, but when P2W came in, it quickly became unfun for those unwilling to pay.

P2W can actually encourage some users to spend crazy money on a game for some reason. I don't understand it but I have seen it in action. I guess some people are willing to pay to be #1 on a game.