Game pricing is in a weird place. Big games have cost ~60$ for like 30 or 40 years now. So with inflation their real cost has dropped dramatically. This does not, of course, help most people because in real terms wages have also dropped dramatically.
A logical market would price games based on the size of the dev team and the length of development, but the way it works now you get 10-person games and 100-person games and 1000-person games all competing with each other at the same price point, it's ludicrous.
I mean kinda, but it's completely vibes based. Larger companies have absolutely no problem releasing a "smaller game" at $60 because they can run an ad campaign to get people to buy in.
If you go by entertainment value (instead of art value) the capital G Gamers do have a point that it's fairly cheap, honestly. If you take your average AAA game at about a $60 dollar price point it's sort of insane that with all the work that goes into it it's only like 4 times as costly as, say, a new popular fiction book, written by one person
This is why the sticker price of a game going up has not really bothered me the way predatory monetization does. Especially when older games are often found in subscriptions services or in very deep sales
Game pricing is in a weird place. Big games have cost ~60$ for like 30 or 40 years now. So with inflation their real cost has dropped dramatically. This does not, of course, help most people because in real terms wages have also dropped dramatically.
A logical market would price games based on the size of the dev team and the length of development, but the way it works now you get 10-person games and 100-person games and 1000-person games all competing with each other at the same price point, it's ludicrous.
Aren't indie games and smaller games cheaper in general though :thinking-about-it:
I mean kinda, but it's completely vibes based. Larger companies have absolutely no problem releasing a "smaller game" at $60 because they can run an ad campaign to get people to buy in.
To be fair, I haven't bought games for 60 in a long time either. The absolute most I am willing to pay is 40
I rarely buy for full price. Once in a while, but rarely.
If you go by entertainment value (instead of art value) the capital G Gamers do have a point that it's fairly cheap, honestly. If you take your average AAA game at about a $60 dollar price point it's sort of insane that with all the work that goes into it it's only like 4 times as costly as, say, a new popular fiction book, written by one person
This is why the sticker price of a game going up has not really bothered me the way predatory monetization does. Especially when older games are often found in subscriptions services or in very deep sales