Poll: Would you accept higher base game prices in exchange for a return to old form?

[Eclipse Dragon]

No, I can hardly afford games as they are.
If the publishers and AAA devs want to make more money, they can try not making over-budgeted monsters. Stop including extraneous features because the game that made the most money has it, adopt an art style that's more cost effective and ages better, rather than having cutting edge graphics.

 

[Bombiz]

Yeah... no. Games are too expensive as it is. Games like Doom 2016 and Fallout 4. Apparently they're 60 USD on Steam, which is the default price for games in the US, but in brazilian money, it's 229,99. Even with a 50% discount, it's still too much.

Edit: Just looked at the new Deus Ex, released about 2 weeks ago. It's also 60 USD, but R$129,99. I have no idea why Doom costs R$100,00 more.

out of curiosity what is the minimum wage is Brazil?

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Yeah... no. Games are too expensive as it is. Games like Doom 2016 and Fallout 4. Apparently they're 60 USD on Steam, which is the default price for games in the US, but in brazilian money, it's 229,99. Even with a 50% discount, it's still too much.

Edit: Just looked at the new Deus Ex, released about 2 weeks ago. It's also 60 USD, but R$129,99. I have no idea why Doom costs R$100,00 more.

out of curiosity what is the minimum wage is Brazil?

It's around R$880,00 a month.

 

[aozgolo]

The Games Industry, despite some very vocal bellyaching is definitely not suffering from the %60 price tag, it's grown by leaps and bounds, there's more people producing games these days than ever before.

A company can appeal to it's customer base all they want, but ultimately they only are allowed to exist and do business at the whim of the customer. I play on PC where it's not uncommon for just one year beyond release seeing AAA games at hefty discounts, sometimes up to 75% off. I am seeing an increase however in the number of AAA games being released on PC despite it having some of the largest discounts. This is because it keeps the product fluid in the market and continues to generate income. A measure of success for a company isn't always how many people bought the product at full MSRP, but how many units they continue to move a year, or more in the future.

Discounts will still happen regardless of launch price, and for many people, they know what value they are willing to pay for a game. I never played Starcraft until I was able to buy the entire Battle Chest for $15 about 10 years after it was released. If a game launches at $60 you may have 100,000 people buy it at that price, the rest will wait until it is discounted. If you launch the same game with the same hype at $80 you may only have 50,000 people buy it, and the rest wait for a discount. The math here is fuzzy of course, but these companies have entire marketing departments (which they can afford selling $60 games btw) that have all this figured out, and as much as they'd love to charge more, they know doing so upfront for just the base game is economic bad business.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I picked the third option, but it's not quite accurate to what I mean. For me, there enough games with the current prices (or in many cases, a lot of great indie games that cost significantly less) that are good enough that I can keep plenty busy without needing an overall increase in quality. I buy games that I know I will devote a lot of time to, so I never find myself wondering which short and shitty AAA "cinematic" game I'll buy next. I just don't get those games since the options on PC are extensive enough that if there was no other game ever released, I'd still probably be content for the rest of my life.

 

[CritialGaming]

No, and here is why.

Microtransactions are not put into the game to help subsidize development costs. They are there for greed. Remember when we used to have cheat codes? Character unlocks for beating the game? Earning new weapon skins? Yeah those are fucking microtransactions now.

I will not pay for for a complete game, because I refuse to allow developers to hold content for ransom.

If you want proof that a full, long, deep, amazing experience can be profitable for 60 bucks only, go take a look at The Witcher 3. CDPRed is a shinning example and just proof that microtransactions are nothing more than greed from the publishers.

Jim Sterling just posted a video a week or so back talking about how he spoke to Deus Ex developers that confirmed the game was never designed to have microtransactions in it, and only got them due to a crunch time decision from Square Enix. I would imagine a lot of developers are getting these design decisions forced upon them by higher ups. Because let's fucking face facts here. There isn't a lot of good game design options available to developers when you are trying to make a complete experience and yet somehow still trying to entice people to spend even more money on the game.

What ends up happening is they nerf the "fun" of the game, usually by making progress painfully slow unless you drop some cash. It's all bullshit.

Make good games and you will make plenty of money from them.

Make shitty games and everyone will suffer.

EDIT: Witcher 3 cost 81million to make, and produced a 62.5M profit in the first 6 months of release.

 

[Qizx]

Gladly.
I would pay 70-80 for a FULL game, no DLC, nothing cut, clearly a full well flushed out game. Maybe an xpac or two a few years down the line.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I rarely buy games anymore at their full retail price. The instances which I do, I know it's complete experience that isn't going to nickle and dime me. I've never bought a game and felt like chunks of it were missing because I do my research and make sure I know what I'm buying ahead of time. DLC and micro-transactions are easily ignored in games that aren't dependent on them (which again, I avoid.)

That being said, no, absolutely not. $60 is by no means cheap and as I've gotten older (And ironically started making more money) I've got more discriminating about what games I buy. I have less and less time to play games so I try to make sure what I'm buying is truly worth the investment. Raising the price of games even higher just makes it easier for me to ignore them and wait for the price to come down. AAA needs to trim the fat and stop dumping gajillions of dollars into development and proclaiming games that sell millions of copies financial failures (looking at you Square Enix)

 

[hermes]

What is "the old form"?

Return to the times when if there was some game breaking bug, there was no way to fix it? Return to the times when expansions costed as much as the entire game? Return to the times when game prices were defined by some dark magic? Return to the times were only a handful of authorized published where able to make games, and the sales were predefined by manufacturers? Return to the times when the only way to get games was import them, if you didn't live in one of the target demographics? Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

And people keep talking about "finished games", but they don't know what it means. Games don't get cut down because of DLC plans, they get cut down because budget or time restrictions. Games that had features cut down existed since forever, the difference is that now, with DLC, you may have a glimpse of what they decided to pospone; instead of never even knowing.

The "good old times" was a time when what you get is all you are ever going to get... ever, unless you bought a new game; and some "complete games" were damn short. Try justifying Star Fox, Castle of Illusion or Double Dragon 2, games that are easy and short enough that can be completed in a few hours, at a 80 - 100 $ price tag, and then come talking about "complete games"

 

[Canadamus Prime]

No. AAA games are overpriced with the bullshit. There's no way in hell I'm paying any more for them. In fact I don't, I usually wait for them to go on sale.
It's like when I saw Fallout 4 was $80 CDN I said FUCK THAT!! I refuse to pay more than $60 for a game. I'm the consumer and I decide what the game is worth!

 

[baddude1337]

I very rarely buy games brand new, and the only ones I usually do are niche strategy sims as they never depreciate.

I would love for IAP's in full price games to disappear as well as not have so much DLC and skin pack spam, however. I do miss when we got proper full sized expansion packs instead of tiny map packs. Hell, even COD 1 had a large expansion with a full new campaign and Battlefield style multiplayer.

More than anything else I think developers/publishers need to get better money management skills. It seems ludicrous to me that marketing budgets dwarf actual development costs. Maybe actually take risks investing in smaller, more focused experiences than sinking hundreds of millions into a single games made to appeal to as many as possible with a ludicrous marketing budget.

 

[sXeth]

The whole games are too expensive to make deal doesn't really line up when you start analyzing those expenses.

Sure, higher-res textures are probably more intensive to make then stuff back in the day (assuming tools haven't streamlined as well, which seems unlikely), and all that. But how much of the extra expense is hiring overpriced voice cameos, ad campaigns, licensing products so your game has "authentic" brand vehicles or whatever. Nevermind random waste like Bungie giving Paul Mccartney however many thousand dollars to make a song thats only in the game for 4 seconds on a jukebox in a room no one uses, and never ended up being in any of their trailers.

How much are singleplayer games paying to develop netcode, run anti-cheat systems, etc for their MP modes that go woefully unused? By contrast, how much is Blizzard spending making mostly irrelevant cartoons about Overwatch. The whole marketing loop itself is kind of insane. They're paying to make ads for teasers of trailers for reveals of trailers, sometimes multiple times over.

 

[veloper]

If you want only the 'complete' game with all the planned DLC already included, you'll have to wait anyway, because it takes time for the DLC to be developed.
So if you can wait that long, chances are you'll get a discount anyway. No need to pay more, for a DLC-less game.

 

[WeepingAngels]

So, basic premise;

Games prices have stagnated and remained the same for over two console generations now - more than a decade - despite the fact that games are more expensive to produce, market and publish now. If you know anything about economics, this is a pretty big sign/lead-in to knowing why so many new manipulative and BS ways of making money post-launch (IE: Halo 5's REQ Packs, CoD Supply Drops etc.) and the seemingly unfinished state of games lately.

For comparison, depending on how you want to slice the numbers - the price of a 3DS game, new, adjusted for inflation should actually be $60 USD and a new Xbox One/PS4 game should be about $75-$90. That is quite a difference compared to what we actually pay.

I cringe when I see consumers trying to justify higher prices. The cost to produce games is the under the control of the publisher, they need to bring their budgets down. I won't even pay $60 anymore and I certainly won't pay more than that. I imagine I am not alone.

So the question is this;

Would you be willing to pay more for the base game (EX: $75 for the base game) if it meant the removal/large elimination of many micro-transaction policies/schemes and a return to more classic design (Things are included on Day 1 and unlocked through challenges and gameplay, not RNG and more money)?

Personally, I say yes, because I feel like the old way (things on disc unlocked through gameplay) allowed for much healthier and better game design.

What you are suggesting is making the micro transactions mandatory. Expansion packs would still be around without DLC. So in the end your $75 game with a $40 expansion would be $115 plus tax. No thanks.

 

[Nazulu]

Yeah, I prefer that change, non of that micro-bull-shit, and then I'd wait for it to go down in price like I always do ^^

 

[MHR]

No. I'm part of the userbase not participating in the "fee-to-pay" parts of the profit strategies with these games. I would take great lengths to actively avoid paying for anything more than I have to. The way it's working out for me, all these other impatient suckers are paying the extra money, and I'm not. It doesn't matter if I don't get maximum value out of a F2P Facebook-inspired shitgame like the new Deus Ex Breach mode. I'd rather not take part in it at all than pay money to get paltry benefits. Fuck that noise.

Baseline miserly el-cheapo strats, dawg

 

[Gengisgame]

I would like to point out that if your answer is that you try to get these games cheap and it doesn't affect you don't really have much of a say in the matter over how a game handles it's content over someone who buys it new.

I am not trying to be rude in saying that, you can spend your money how you like but these things are a 2 way street, if I make someone a major factor would be in pleasing those who support it.

 

[barbzilla]

So, basic premise;

Games prices have stagnated and remained the same for over two console generations now - more than a decade - despite the fact that games are more expensive to produce, market and publish now. If you know anything about economics, this is a pretty big sign/lead-in to knowing why so many new manipulative and BS ways of making money post-launch (IE: Halo 5's REQ Packs, CoD Supply Drops etc.) and the seemingly unfinished state of games lately.

For comparison, depending on how you want to slice the numbers - the price of a 3DS game, new, adjusted for inflation should actually be $60 USD and a new Xbox One/PS4 game should be about $75-$90. That is quite a difference compared to what we actually pay.

So the question is this;

Would you be willing to pay more for the base game (EX: $75 for the base game) if it meant the removal/large elimination of many micro-transaction policies/schemes and a return to more classic design (Things are included on Day 1 and unlocked through challenges and gameplay, not RNG and more money)?

Personally, I say yes, because I feel like the old way (things on disc unlocked through gameplay) allowed for much healthier and better game design.

Yes I would happily pay more if I thought it would mean publishers would stop all of their shenanigans, but they never actually would stop now that they've had a taste of it.

Now on to the real reason I responded. Games were bumped up to $60 each arbitrarily in the first place. Unfortunately game development costs have gone up, but not so much that the $60 isn't still bringing in huge profits (think about it, since the publishers are as greedy as we know them to be, why would they continue doing something that wasn't making them boat loads of money?). The real problem is the way the game is divided. On average there are at least 5 companies taking a cut of the video game. You have the publishers taking 30% (who need to go away and put the power back into the developer's hands not to mention the 20% that publishers take off of the top on a video game), the marketing company taking 15% (or team in some cases, especially if their is a big publisher involved), the retailer taking 20%, the console manufacturer taking 20% (if it is a console and not PC), and then finally the developers get their pitiful 15% or $9UDS.

This is actually part of why developers are so reliant on publishers right now. Since the publisher is taking 30% of the 45% that is earmarked for the development team in this arrangement, it leaves the devs just short of being able to publish their own AAA titles, so they go back to the publisher again for another round. The retailer aslo is getting way more than they should, but that is more to do with digital purchases and downloads cutting into their profits by a huge margin (though publishers need to stop pressuring the development teams into creating unique content for all of the retailers to help keep them alive (ignoring the fact that if they just let them die, a new project or concept would come around to fill the project void. The marketing teams are getting pretty reasonable prices considering their work actually makes or breaks a launch cycle (though I really wish they would stop making false promises, fake gameplay footage, and other shady actions).

All of these people eat up $51USD out of the $60USD that the game sold for. I know I would be very upset if I was working on a creative project that turns out to be huge, and everyone from the patent office to the postman bringing you the notice have all taken out almost all of the money because they think it should belong to everyone else (very unlikely scenario, but you get my drift).

Still though, even with all of that knowledge, I would pay up to $75USD for a game if it stopped things like exclusive content pre-orders, or releasing a terrible buggy mess, then deciding to fix the issues rather than solving them in the first place.

 

[stroopwafel]

That game prices need to go up at some point is pretty much inevatible but I don't think that solves the structural problem of the AAA games industry. And that is simply that on modern hardware games are becoming both too expensive and long to make. The companies that finance these games(mostly publishers) would often rather do something else that is less risky and has a much faster return on investment. Valve hasn't really made a game since it has Steam, Konami would rather make slotmachines and cellphone crap than something like Silent Hills, Rockstar abandoning SP DLC for GTA5 in favor of the GTA Online cash-cow, the middle-market(so prevalent during PS2-era) is all but gone taking much innovation and creativity with it, franchise milking having become the norm making 90% of every AAA game a variation of the same thing, the desperate effort to have some kind of sustained profitability for AAA-games with crap microtransactions, one-time 'cheat to win' cards and mostly lacklustre cutting floor DLC.

Save one or two most publishers are either corporate driven entities that produce exactly the kind of games you expect(EA, Activision and to a lesser extent Ubisoft) or are either making their way out or on the fence of making their way out(Konami and Squeenix Japan and Capcom only releasing a AAA-game every once in a blue moon b/c of preference for mobile game market).

The profit model that the AAA games industry is based on is really on its way out, and so are many of it's games if you consider the drop in frequency of new releases. And even with third party support lacking I think both Sony and MS aren't really going out of ther way to produce new games; no instead they release an even more powerful Playstation and Xbox when developers and publishers already had a hard time keeping up with the 'old' version(took like two years for some decent new-gen games to come out).

Gamers willing to pay more money for AAA-games(even if most of them are cheapskates ) is quickly becoming a moot point. You have a few purely profit driven corporations that divide the cake and you will see this attitude reflected in their games: uninspired, repeated crap accompanied by poor business practices.

Ofcourse, fortunately, there are few exceptions like CD Projekt, From Software or creator friendly publishers like Bamco, Bethesda or Sony. But still, the games industry really isn't what it used to be anymore. Things change, but unfortunately not always for the better.