Games

How is this title allowed to be so misleading?

If anyone reads the article, the guy is arguing for honesty and transparency with video game prices as opposed to the multi-tiered and/or subscription based schemes that are used currently.

"‘I don’t love the artificiality of pricing structures post-retail,’ Douse wrote. ‘Use the inflated base price to upsell a subscription, and use vague content promises to inflate ultimate editions to make the base price look better. It all seems a bit dangerous and disconnected from the community.’

Douse believes games should be priced based on their ‘quality, breadth, and depth’, instead of simply being fitted to established pricing structures."

He's saying the base price should be higher because there should only be one price.

I'd be okay if we downgrade back to 2010 graphics. How much would that save ya?

Wrong premises lead to wrong conclusions. Games are expensive because publishers that add absolutely no value to the product take a big cut of the revenue. The solution is not to raise prices and continue feeding the parasites, it's to cut costs. Otherwise, the price increase will simply lead to less people buying the products and even lower profits.

Have they tried cutting down on avocado toast?

The sticker price of games is what it is. Micro transactions, subscription models, DLC, and such have all been flawed attempts at remedying this. If they increase the sticker price of games they'll be subjecting themselves to more critical consumers, more risk averse buyers, and less movable players.

The question they have to ask is, do they feel safe rolling those dice, if their survival might otherwise depend on decreasing a game budget?

So sandbox games become almost free and big blockbuster games with 5 million lines of dialogue and AAA graphics cost 3k?

The high base level costs aren't due purely to development, I'd wager. How many admin staff, redundant management, petty meetings, and exorbitant costs go to overhead that could be solved with a 20 minute meeting and less triple expressos for the executive team?

Moreover, chances are we could find several issues with the flow of work around the development of the game itself. Poorly optimized communication, for the win.

Does he see the shit big publishers have been pumping out for years?

Looking forward to paying more for the "base" game, and then a bit more for season passes cos why not, and then maybe they could make the season pass not include all the DLC so I can pay more for that too, and maybe they can fill the "base" game with adverts for the DLC, and maybe they can release the "base" game as a shitty buggy mess 🤞

I'm almost never willing to pay current AAA game prices for a game that it's possible I'll be bored with after a few hours. I'd much rather spend the same amount on 3 or 4 well-reviewed indie games as the chances are I'll get at least one game amongst them that I'll enjoy investing my time into.

Not speaking of BG3, I feel nowadays there are too many cooks in the kitchen with big budget games.

With little research I did BG3 has about 450, but compared to COD which has about 3,000 people working on it. I can’t even grasp how to organize that many people to work on a single idea, and for COD I think it shows they don’t either.

In my opinion it depends on the game. Games as good as BG3, with no micro-transaction crap and a bit of updates for bugs and some patches? I would pay more for it and gladly. BG3 feels easily worth $120 to me.

The problem is, other studios will see BG3 able to charge that, then go try doing it themselves, riddle it full of micro-transactions, release it half baked, and then gaslight us by telling us we're being unrealistic with our expectations.