Should you pay less for older games?

[Vanilla ISIS]

The thing about games, especially modern ones, is that they're just code.
It's not like a car, where an old car is an actual thing that you can physically interact with.
Cars are a limited resource, games aren't.
You can copy a game anytime you want so the prices of the existing ones won't raise.
I can understand raising the price of an old cartridge or a CD ROM because those are limited (at least the original ones from the time of the initial release) but I can't see modern games ever cost more than they do when they're new.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

I sure wish I could.
But then in my little corner of the world a PS3 game from ten years ago is only marginally cheaper than the PS4 game releasing in a couple of weeks.

Doesn't Amazon come to your little corner of the world? I almost never buy physical media anymore, let alone from B&M (brick and mortar) besides the rare pre-order of a physical collector's edition if it's a good deal.

 

[stroopwafel]

I almost never buy physical media anymore, let alone from B&M (brick and mortar) besides the rare pre-order of a physical collector's edition if it's a good deal.

Me neither. I find digital(and not having to swap discs) way more convenient. Having a 'physical copy' is a moot point by now anyway considering that without the patches and updates you have incomplete code on the disc anyway. It does make me nostalgic for the videogame import stores of the '90s but we live in a completely different world now.

As far as the value of digital goods I think the principle of supply and demand still holds up. Once sales go down and demand decrease prices go down to increase demand(or sales happen more often). It's why pretty much every digital game goes down in price after a while except for GTA5.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

Not sure how accurate or exaggerated this is, but... [http://www.fistfullofpotions.com/#article/187]I suppose it would explain Valve [https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0228/technology-gabe-newell-videogames-valve-online-mayhem.html] and why they don?t care about HL3 hehehaha.

Spoiler

But for serious, that article?s from 2011 so not sure how much different their financials are currently.

 

[CaitSeith]

That's how market works. A game that lots of people already own will go down in price, because less people are buying it (people don't buy the exact same game twice if they already have it). A game doesn't go down in prices because it isn't good or influential; it goes down in price because all people willing to pay full price have already bought the game.

With things like movies or books, things like a Star Wars DVD can cost about the same as a copy of the Avengers on DVD.

And your comparison with DVDs is way-off. I have seen great DVDs in discount bins that were formely priced more than twice or trice as much when first released. And Star Wars wasn't first released on DVD, was it? What you saw was a re-release; no wonder it's going to have a similar price!

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

You should play less for WORSE games, both new and old. Good old games are deserving of your money millions of times more than a brand new fifa or madden game released in the current year will be and that one will charge you full price.

That's true in an ideal situation, but not the general norm.

If I go buy up another copy of Ultima at this point, I'm handing a batch of cash to EA. While EA isn't entirely unlikely to put out a new Ultima game (They've tried. Twice.). Its certainly not going to be anything related to the styles of old Ultimas I enjoyed. Most likely, it won't even give any sort of payoff to the people who made those games at all, at best some fraction of a cent. I would, ironically, just be throwing my money into the next Fifa or Madden in all likelihood (or into some EA executives or stockholders bonus payoff).

If I bought a copy of my other favorites series, Heroes of Might & Magic, its more or less the same deal, but with Ubisoft. Ubisoft has kept making Heroes of Might & Magic games, but even the semi-good one they initially churned out after getting the IP was flawed, and its only gotten worse from there.

That's the wrong way of looking at it. You don't buy games to get more of them made, you buy games cause the games themselves are worthy of it and their intrinsic value deserves to be rewarded. Some amount of the profits go to the people who worked on them or to those who facilitated their creation by allowing an infrastructure for their publishing to exist. Whether they then take that money and blow it on crack and hookers is completely irrelevant because the game is still worth that much. Even if you hate EA, without them you would not have ever experienced Ultima in the first place. Would you be fine with wiping ultima from your memory just to not support EA? If not, bite the bullet and buy the game.

 

[CaitSeith]

snip

You don't buy games to get more of them made

So how do you get more of them made? AAA publishers nowadays answer only to investors, and the later want only sales and profit.

Even if you hate EA, without them you would not have ever experienced Ultima in the first place.

The EA of today isn't the same as the EA of back then. Most of the people involved in Ultima no longer make games or moved on to other company.

Would you be fine with wiping ultima from your memory just to not support EA? If not, bite the bullet and buy the game.

That's a heck of a sales pitch, don't you think?

 

[CaitSeith]

Also, sticking a disc in is still faster than downloading 50 GB

Citation needed. With the time that takes to install the game, plus the day-one patch, the difference in time with downloading the online purchase is too small to be noticeable.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

I almost never buy physical media anymore, let alone from B&M (brick and mortar) besides the rare pre-order of a physical collector's edition if it's a good deal.

Me neither. I find digital(and not having to swap discs) way more convenient. Having a 'physical copy' is a moot point by now anyway considering that without the patches and updates you have incomplete code on the disc anyway. It does make me nostalgic for the videogame import stores of the '90s but we live in a completely different world now.

As far as the value of digital goods I think the principle of supply and demand still holds up. Once sales go down and demand decrease prices go down to increase demand(or sales happen more often). It's why pretty much every digital game goes down in price after a while except for GTA5.

I still choose to go physical with PlayStation because I don't trust Sony with online purchases. I had two different accounts stolen while I wasn't console gaming. Now I use a password too complicated to remember. Also, sticking a disc in is still faster than downloading 50 GB, and I say that as someone with a 300 Mbps connection. I also have a 1 TB download limit, so the less I have to download in a month, the better.

That sounds like the digital equivalent of a drag race.

 

[sXeth]

That's the wrong way of looking at it. You don't buy games to get more of them made, you buy games cause the games themselves are worthy of it and their intrinsic value deserves to be rewarded. Some amount of the profits go to the people who worked on them or to those who facilitated their creation by allowing an infrastructure for their publishing to exist. Whether they then take that money and blow it on crack and hookers is completely irrelevant because the game is still worth that much. Even if you hate EA, without them you would not have ever experienced Ultima in the first place. Would you be fine with wiping ultima from your memory just to not support EA? If not, bite the bullet and buy the game.

I'd suggest you reread that, because the whole point was that EA (or Ubisoft) in the second example, weren't the ones that created it.
We can digress from the issue of companies that buy up and hoard other IPs that should just go back into the public domain though.

Back onto older games in general, these games have already gone through their day of paying back their production costs. Their intrinsic value is measured in cents (or fractions thereof) used to host them on Steam or GOG or wherever.

You've also seemingly misread the whole thread, because your final point is not one of the pricing, but suggesting that anyone who doesn't consider decades old games worth the same cost as current ones as advocating not to buy them at all.

"Why I buy a game" is really down to personal preference. "To acknowledge or celebrate its quality" is a fairly illogical answer, in my opinion though. You literally can't make a qualified statement on its quality until you've played it. A paradox of entertainment media in general, granted. Recompense towards the production and distribution costs is mostly irrelevant for most older games that have either already made back those costs or the company absorbed them. Supporting the creators is a nice sentiment, but doesn't tend to bear out in practicality the farther you get from the games original creation, as staff cycles in and out, rights change.