This is just a few thoughts on the subject from my perspective.
It's been asked many times before, if the price of games have risen while the amount of content has decreased, and I will say for the overwhelming majority of titles, that this is the case. But I think that this is a double sided issue, that should be explored with more than just a simple answer. So I will go ahead and give my conflicting thoughts for you all to discuss.
YES:
I can say that most, if not all "triple A" titles are overpriced. When I play games, I aim to be satisfied by the entertainment value, and not the over glorified graphics engine. With costs to produce games sky rocketing, it makes sense for the distributors to MSRP games at 50$ or more, in order to recover costs on development and turn a profit. But I'd argue that development expenses are in vain on these types of titles. Granted, we get good games that are able to justify the cost, on occasion, but regarding the issue as a whole: companies wasting thier time making prettier effects instead of pretty storylines or gameplay mechanics is just plain wrong in my opinion.
On top of that, more times than not I'm coming up against a game that has lost content compared to it's predecessors due to the console's overwhelming market share in the game development industry. PC gamers get "sloppy seconds" from the console guys, with UI that could only be halfway usable on a 360, and inaccurate control over my player character. So not only are we getting second rate titles, but rarely are we getting second rate titles even designed for the system I'm playing it on. So we're getting poorly optimized second rate titles that require overwhelmingly expensive computers to enjoy them at thier fullest. One good example of this flaw would be Quake 4, to Quake 3. Quake 3 to this day enjoys more player attention than Quake 4, and as I found with a few of my playmates that had to turn things down to play it, it looked worse at the same framerates than quake 3 did.
Granted, I preferred quake 4 to quake 3, but it was a natural fit for me.
The average cost of a video game nowadays is 50$, providing that it's new. Paying 50$ for a video game is steep as it is, but then you look into what that gets you and the value continues to go down from there. I complete the average "triple A" titles in 5 hours flat, with most of the games coming with very little in the way of enjoyable content. For example, Mirror's Edge took me 5 hours to beat, according to Xfire. F.E.A.R. 2 took me 4. All things being equal, I enjoyed both games, but I only got 9 hours out of that 100$ worth of games. That puts us in the price range of approximately 10$ an hour to play a video game.
Mirror's Edge was beautiful: it supported PhysX, had rich gameplay with solid mechanics, a somewhat interesting storyline and overall was a very enjoyable gameplay experience, but there really should have been more to it. It was almost the best combat experience I've ever had in a game, and the gameplay pretty much begged you to never pick up a gun. Instead of carrying around 10 heavy *** guns like nameless from doom, I could only hold one gun, and instead of reloading you just tossed the gun. I can respect a character with limitations. yes, she could shoot a gun, but it slowed her down and took her hands away from her. She was better at jumping, punching, and somersalting than she was at her gunplay. If any of you have ever seen "Wanted", the combat plays out very similarly, in that the player ends up running through a scenario picking up and tossing guns as they go, and it's surprisingly fluid. It made for a great combat experience. But at only 5 hours... the music CD it came with has actually seen more playtime for me (the remixes were pretty good, seriously!).
So now that I've stated that I feel games should be longer, I have to touch on the games that are long, but have no place being so. Bioshock for example, should have been a 5 hour game, but I spent 10 hours dying and disarming traps (for a total of 15). What game companies seem to be missing nowadays is this: We don't mind doing the same **** over and over again. Hell, you can give us the exact same thing over and over, and if it's fun, we'll pay to play. For example, if you consider the origional Mario Bros, there was amost zero difference between the first and last level: Get from point A, to point B, stepping on as much **** as possible inbetween; but it was FUN, and consistent. What was fun in bioshock? Fighting big daddy's. But I easily spent more time doing **** I didn't like than anything else!
While a few aspects of the game were nice, there was no incentive to do anything besides click at things that weren't me. The people I encountered all seemed fake and unbelievable, and the atmosphere didn't grab me at all. Granted, I got this title for 20$, and it managed to keep me playing for a total of 15 hours, but at what cost? I spent more time disarming turrets and cameras than doing anything I enjoyed, only to die 2 minutes later because I forgot to check around the NEXT corner for cameras. Then a gang of splicers and helicopter equipped machine guns would chew my *** up, but then I'd show up in the nearest vita chamber and just start the process over. it didn't take long to realize that I'd rather die than waste a med kit. Basically, I finished the game because I paid for it, but that's the last time I take reccomendations on a game.
So now that we've established a cost, at roughly 50$ for a new title, and I have an average play time in the newer titles of about 5 hours, we're talking 10$/hr to play a video game. Assuming that you have a LAN center in your area, most of them charge in the ballpark of 5$ an hour. Sure, I don't have all the luxiries of having the fastest PC around, but I do get to play through and beat the same 5 hour game for only 25$, so I'm saving money! It's possible that that game might not be available at that particular LAN center, but I'm simply making a case for my thesis on game prices, yes it is too expensive when I can pay to play them at a per hourly rate and save money. And to think I used to think 5 dollars for an hour of gameplay was steep, but nowadays, that's cheap! And that's not even counting the cost I gladly paid for the computer to run these half assed titles! I've dumped almost a 1000$ in my PC this year just in upgrades, and yet, I'm still getting nowhere near the type of return I'd expect from this type of investment. I remember when I bought FF7 for PC, it cost me 15$, and I got 80 hours out of it and then I played it again, and again. And I enjoyed every freaking second of it.
So yes, the vast majority of PC games are too expensive in this day and age. And that's before considering the cost of a new PC, custom or not.
NO:
Now, I'm going to argue against myself, because I do feel that not all games fit the same mold. I've run into a number of cases where PC gaming has paid for itself several times over. As a rule, if bethesda made it, it's worth paying for. And it used to be the case for Epic, but Unreal Tournament 3 hasn't grabbed me at all. Unreal Tournament 2004 was a steal with the epic game pack I bought a while back, including Unreal II, Unreal Tournament GOTY, and Unreal Tournament 2004.
If you were to play Fallout 3, for example, which in my opinion is one of my all time best game experiences, you could easily get 50 hours out of a single campaign, providing you followed through with every part of the game. I think Fallout 3 was the first game I actually got excited about prior to release, and actually enjoyed playing it., and it's actually the first game that I felt a need to play with the designer tools.
Not to mention, some times it's just fun to go out exploring doing absolutely nothing but wasting raiders and blowing up busses. To me there's pretty, then there's interactivep retty. Fallout 3, as a rule, worked the way I'd expect a game of it's class to work. If we were to say you'd create a character that was good, bad, and inbetween, that's roughly 40 to 50 hours each time through, all with thier own rewarding experiences... And at 50$ that's still a value of 33 cents an hour of gaming. That's got most triple A titles beat 30 times over. This, folks, is why we own PC's, to have a game we can play for hours on end that rewards us with good graphics, but also an interactive storyline and enjoyable charcters and events.
Another type of game that really seems to give back to me are games with a solid gameplay mechanic. I already talked about Mirror's Edge, and while I would say it's not a 50$ game, it's a GOOD game. When it goes down in price, buy it. But there are other games that fit that mold, for example, I'm a fan of the katamari game series, because the game mechanic is simple: roll a big ball around, pick stuff up so your ball gets bigger, so you can pick up bigger stuff. Rinse and repeat. It takes any gamer back to the days where games were simple, but could keep you playing because you were interested in beating your high score. Because the game was simple to learn but hard to master, I actually spent time playing the games!
Another epic game with solid mechanics was Portal. I didn't have any guns, I just had a device that let me bend the rules. Solving puzzles with tools like this typically engross me more than anything out there.
Then there are times where games are enjoyable enough to simply be a good time sink. World of Warcraft has proven to faithfully fill this role in my life. During times when I was almost on my last time, I'd subscribe to world of warcraft. WoW, a good CD, and a tall boy of whatever would get me through a night completely entertained, wihtout going out and spending money on a date, or a movie or even when I used to race. But that's about the limit of it. Game's rarely deliver on thier cost, and that's my opinion.
What are your thoughts, guys and gals? I'm sure I'm not seeing some things.
It's been asked many times before, if the price of games have risen while the amount of content has decreased, and I will say for the overwhelming majority of titles, that this is the case. But I think that this is a double sided issue, that should be explored with more than just a simple answer. So I will go ahead and give my conflicting thoughts for you all to discuss.
YES:
I can say that most, if not all "triple A" titles are overpriced. When I play games, I aim to be satisfied by the entertainment value, and not the over glorified graphics engine. With costs to produce games sky rocketing, it makes sense for the distributors to MSRP games at 50$ or more, in order to recover costs on development and turn a profit. But I'd argue that development expenses are in vain on these types of titles. Granted, we get good games that are able to justify the cost, on occasion, but regarding the issue as a whole: companies wasting thier time making prettier effects instead of pretty storylines or gameplay mechanics is just plain wrong in my opinion.
On top of that, more times than not I'm coming up against a game that has lost content compared to it's predecessors due to the console's overwhelming market share in the game development industry. PC gamers get "sloppy seconds" from the console guys, with UI that could only be halfway usable on a 360, and inaccurate control over my player character. So not only are we getting second rate titles, but rarely are we getting second rate titles even designed for the system I'm playing it on. So we're getting poorly optimized second rate titles that require overwhelmingly expensive computers to enjoy them at thier fullest. One good example of this flaw would be Quake 4, to Quake 3. Quake 3 to this day enjoys more player attention than Quake 4, and as I found with a few of my playmates that had to turn things down to play it, it looked worse at the same framerates than quake 3 did.
Granted, I preferred quake 4 to quake 3, but it was a natural fit for me.
The average cost of a video game nowadays is 50$, providing that it's new. Paying 50$ for a video game is steep as it is, but then you look into what that gets you and the value continues to go down from there. I complete the average "triple A" titles in 5 hours flat, with most of the games coming with very little in the way of enjoyable content. For example, Mirror's Edge took me 5 hours to beat, according to Xfire. F.E.A.R. 2 took me 4. All things being equal, I enjoyed both games, but I only got 9 hours out of that 100$ worth of games. That puts us in the price range of approximately 10$ an hour to play a video game.
Mirror's Edge was beautiful: it supported PhysX, had rich gameplay with solid mechanics, a somewhat interesting storyline and overall was a very enjoyable gameplay experience, but there really should have been more to it. It was almost the best combat experience I've ever had in a game, and the gameplay pretty much begged you to never pick up a gun. Instead of carrying around 10 heavy *** guns like nameless from doom, I could only hold one gun, and instead of reloading you just tossed the gun. I can respect a character with limitations. yes, she could shoot a gun, but it slowed her down and took her hands away from her. She was better at jumping, punching, and somersalting than she was at her gunplay. If any of you have ever seen "Wanted", the combat plays out very similarly, in that the player ends up running through a scenario picking up and tossing guns as they go, and it's surprisingly fluid. It made for a great combat experience. But at only 5 hours... the music CD it came with has actually seen more playtime for me (the remixes were pretty good, seriously!).
So now that I've stated that I feel games should be longer, I have to touch on the games that are long, but have no place being so. Bioshock for example, should have been a 5 hour game, but I spent 10 hours dying and disarming traps (for a total of 15). What game companies seem to be missing nowadays is this: We don't mind doing the same **** over and over again. Hell, you can give us the exact same thing over and over, and if it's fun, we'll pay to play. For example, if you consider the origional Mario Bros, there was amost zero difference between the first and last level: Get from point A, to point B, stepping on as much **** as possible inbetween; but it was FUN, and consistent. What was fun in bioshock? Fighting big daddy's. But I easily spent more time doing **** I didn't like than anything else!
While a few aspects of the game were nice, there was no incentive to do anything besides click at things that weren't me. The people I encountered all seemed fake and unbelievable, and the atmosphere didn't grab me at all. Granted, I got this title for 20$, and it managed to keep me playing for a total of 15 hours, but at what cost? I spent more time disarming turrets and cameras than doing anything I enjoyed, only to die 2 minutes later because I forgot to check around the NEXT corner for cameras. Then a gang of splicers and helicopter equipped machine guns would chew my *** up, but then I'd show up in the nearest vita chamber and just start the process over. it didn't take long to realize that I'd rather die than waste a med kit. Basically, I finished the game because I paid for it, but that's the last time I take reccomendations on a game.
So now that we've established a cost, at roughly 50$ for a new title, and I have an average play time in the newer titles of about 5 hours, we're talking 10$/hr to play a video game. Assuming that you have a LAN center in your area, most of them charge in the ballpark of 5$ an hour. Sure, I don't have all the luxiries of having the fastest PC around, but I do get to play through and beat the same 5 hour game for only 25$, so I'm saving money! It's possible that that game might not be available at that particular LAN center, but I'm simply making a case for my thesis on game prices, yes it is too expensive when I can pay to play them at a per hourly rate and save money. And to think I used to think 5 dollars for an hour of gameplay was steep, but nowadays, that's cheap! And that's not even counting the cost I gladly paid for the computer to run these half assed titles! I've dumped almost a 1000$ in my PC this year just in upgrades, and yet, I'm still getting nowhere near the type of return I'd expect from this type of investment. I remember when I bought FF7 for PC, it cost me 15$, and I got 80 hours out of it and then I played it again, and again. And I enjoyed every freaking second of it.
So yes, the vast majority of PC games are too expensive in this day and age. And that's before considering the cost of a new PC, custom or not.
NO:
Now, I'm going to argue against myself, because I do feel that not all games fit the same mold. I've run into a number of cases where PC gaming has paid for itself several times over. As a rule, if bethesda made it, it's worth paying for. And it used to be the case for Epic, but Unreal Tournament 3 hasn't grabbed me at all. Unreal Tournament 2004 was a steal with the epic game pack I bought a while back, including Unreal II, Unreal Tournament GOTY, and Unreal Tournament 2004.
If you were to play Fallout 3, for example, which in my opinion is one of my all time best game experiences, you could easily get 50 hours out of a single campaign, providing you followed through with every part of the game. I think Fallout 3 was the first game I actually got excited about prior to release, and actually enjoyed playing it., and it's actually the first game that I felt a need to play with the designer tools.
Not to mention, some times it's just fun to go out exploring doing absolutely nothing but wasting raiders and blowing up busses. To me there's pretty, then there's interactivep retty. Fallout 3, as a rule, worked the way I'd expect a game of it's class to work. If we were to say you'd create a character that was good, bad, and inbetween, that's roughly 40 to 50 hours each time through, all with thier own rewarding experiences... And at 50$ that's still a value of 33 cents an hour of gaming. That's got most triple A titles beat 30 times over. This, folks, is why we own PC's, to have a game we can play for hours on end that rewards us with good graphics, but also an interactive storyline and enjoyable charcters and events.
Another type of game that really seems to give back to me are games with a solid gameplay mechanic. I already talked about Mirror's Edge, and while I would say it's not a 50$ game, it's a GOOD game. When it goes down in price, buy it. But there are other games that fit that mold, for example, I'm a fan of the katamari game series, because the game mechanic is simple: roll a big ball around, pick stuff up so your ball gets bigger, so you can pick up bigger stuff. Rinse and repeat. It takes any gamer back to the days where games were simple, but could keep you playing because you were interested in beating your high score. Because the game was simple to learn but hard to master, I actually spent time playing the games!
Another epic game with solid mechanics was Portal. I didn't have any guns, I just had a device that let me bend the rules. Solving puzzles with tools like this typically engross me more than anything out there.
Then there are times where games are enjoyable enough to simply be a good time sink. World of Warcraft has proven to faithfully fill this role in my life. During times when I was almost on my last time, I'd subscribe to world of warcraft. WoW, a good CD, and a tall boy of whatever would get me through a night completely entertained, wihtout going out and spending money on a date, or a movie or even when I used to race. But that's about the limit of it. Game's rarely deliver on thier cost, and that's my opinion.
What are your thoughts, guys and gals? I'm sure I'm not seeing some things.
![Rich'[ard]](/forums/data/avatars/m/81/81732.jpg?1626886362){kind=avatar}
