Let's ignore the fact wages don't necessarily match inflation or how low incomes are outside global north. There is a reason why Turks only have to pay 20 dollars for even new games because porkies know they'll not buy and wait for crack otherwise.
I want shorter games that look worse and I am NOT joking!
Or however the quote goes.
Edit: "I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I am not kidding."
I sincerely hope the next wave in indie game development is getting back to the times where storytelling ambitions exceeded the available visual tech so much that they didn't let that shit stop them.
So much time and money and manpower is put to the visual aspects of games that I cant imagine a writer or story director would feel free to actually go hog wild because they've just got a big number in the backs of their head all the time, and whenever they think of something huge another 0 is added.
And also anything cool that gets put in that is not mandatory to experience or extremely obviously signposted is a waste of money and effort.
I would die for some indie Marathon Infinity shit, hiding esoteric and surreal horror short stories behind speedrun tech that may or may not be important to understanding the events of the game and the internal development of the player character.
I cant imagine a writer or story director would feel free to actually go hog wild because they’ve just got a big number in the backs of their head all the time, and whenever they think of something huge another 0 is added.
Yes, absolutely. This is exactly how movie script writing works too. They have to be strategic with their use of big dramatic stuff happening. Any time they write something cool they have to think for a second like "is that actually gonna fit in the budget, can I replace it with something 90% as cool but 50% as expensive?"
There's a word for it too but I don't remember it
Adjusted based on what?
Here’s an adjustment - 14 years ago, the price for a AAA game was $60, and the minimum wage was $7.25. Now, the price is $70, and the minimum wage is $7.25.
This dude in 1860: 'These factory made shoes should be so much more expensive than the pair that the village cobbler made when I was a kid, look how many people worked on them!'
B-b-b-ut I thought the price of goods was defined magically by the free market equilibrium between supply and demand, where all the rational actors maximize their benefit? Was that wrong?
The target base of players has also expanded about 10-fold since a couple decades ago. And because there is practically zero cost of distribution, that's just 10x the revenue at no extra cost. There is a reason these companies make obscene profits nowadays.
Diablo 4 (and other recent titles) have microtransactions and other methods of monetization they wouldn't have had 20 years ago so they're still getting their money.
On a related note, Bobby Kotick should be hanged.
Someone should let him know how much the minimum wage and average wages would be if adjusted for inflation
I used to be a physical games holdout, but don't really bother anymore. However, one of the things I hate about digital distribution and Steam's de facto monopoly is that the price of PC games has dramatically increased and they now cost the same as console games, while they used to be much cheaper in the physical era.
Any game that sells DLC or has micro-transactions should be free.
I don't wanna sound like a snob but can AAA games just stop existing? They've devolved into games about micro transactions, subscription models, "games as service" things. The best games of the past 10 years have all been indie titles that sold for $30 or less.
It also doesn't account for the fact that games have a significantly bigger market now. These companies are incredibly profitable, it's weird that this guy is acting like they aren't. It's like he sees layoffs in the games industries and assumes companies operate in good faith when they do layoffs. My company (not a games company) literally does layoffs after "record year"s. What a dumbass.
It’s like he sees layoffs in the games industries and assumes companies operate in good faith when they do layoffs. My company (not a games company) literally does layoffs after "record year"s.
He can't help it, he's high on boot polish :bootlicker:
Games were priced at that point for profitability when the market was tiny. The market today is many times larger than it ever was.
Ah yeah, the price is independent of demand and convenience. Inflation is the only factor at play, I keep forgetting that.
Inflation shminflation, that presumes they were ever worth $60 to begin with. I hate how libs will lay bare that no same person thinks in the way that the market actually works. As it stands now, the price of anything is largely the result of what people are willing to pay for it, nothing else matters, from $1 lube to $300 dollar Supreme bricks. To say that "some people are not willing to pay $70 for something, when actually, they should be not willing to pay $140 for it" is absolutely insane talk by the facts of how the western system works.
To top if off, he's acting like the comapany didn't set the price at $140 to do us, personally, a solid. They did price point analysis like every other corpo did and realised fewer people would buy it at that price point in a way that would make them less money than if they sold it at $70, this is high school-level economics at play.
