How Much Should Video Games Cost?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- How Much Should Video Games Cost?
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Its not that episodic games cant be good. Its when a full game that is completed is divided so that it can be sold 2x. Just imagine playing a game and seeing a door with a sign that says 'comeback in episode 2'.
i would imagine that the story would be in a cliffhanger but stop if they havent bought part 2 but if they had bought part 2 then it would continue as normal and have part 1&2 as a bundle of 100$ but if you buy them separately then it would cost 60$ per part and they would release part 1&2 either the same day or a week apart
@@Meek2001 not even necissarily a plot point door, an in-game item store, a side-quest dungeon, a save point.
Garten of Banban
isnt this just an excuse to make a sequel on the same game without any of the effort.
They are already multiple games. Deux mankind comes to mind. It just ends so abruptly and we have still not gotten a sequel
Don't buy a promise. An episodic release is buying a promise of a conclusion, unless of course each part is a satisfying story in its own right. And each story in its own right has to be worth the price of entry too! And understand that not everybody will be able to pony up the cash for later episodes, or not get as many new players when the later episodes come out and it's no longer a $50 investment but a $200 investment to experience this new story!
Buying any game is 'buying a promise'.
@RippahRooJizah Kind of. Buying any game digitally sort of implies a promise you'll be able to access it at a later time. In general, I do my best to avoid games that aren't complete experiences at launch. That is getting harder and harder to do, but there are still plenty of games releasing on a regular basis that aren't built on some kind of "promise" for content in the future.
Unless of course you're talking about multiplayer games. The ship sailed on those things a long time ago.
@@jameslwjtoler I'm just talking about any form of promise, be it future content, an ongoing story, multiplayer, it being good, future bug fixes, etc.
I remember when Half Life 2 and Sin did episodes and we never got an ending for either 😞
Life Is Strange started strong and ended so weak. Swore off episodic games after that
A big problem you could run into: A lot of people are just gonna wait for all 3 parts to come out, and then grab all three so they don't have to wait.
Yep. Which is gonna cause them to cancel the later two episodes because the first didn't sell
And if you're good at waiting, you can wait for a sale.
That's what I've been doing for many years now lol. I waited a couple years before getting a new game for the most part as I can't justify the price of a new game when most of them are at least $60-$100+ for some games (Australian pricing).@@CheapBastard1988
People already do this though... Game of the Year editions. I wait for those usually... that plus Steam sale is a easy wait usually.
That's what a do with the movies lol I wait for part 2 ( finale) to come out. Not endgame tho, I was too excited
I think the same thing that applies to books works here too. When you write a series. YOU HAVE TO have a plot arc that gets resolved. The main arc can be a cliffhanger, but there has to be some payoff or fans wont like it.
It also applies to movies. Imagine if you were planning a Star Wars trilogy and shot the first movie without knowing what would happen in the next two. How dumb would you have to be to do that???
@@nicholasvinenAnd yet you just described the god awful sequel trilogy. Ironic, and it kind of does serve as a warning against episodic content for any media if you don’t do it carefully. Bad content is bad content, no matter how you want to economically priced it or roll it out.
There are some big differences, however.
Books started to be divided in series primarily because of printing. Usually 500 pages is the upper limit of what you want in a book to still have decent quality with the standard printing process. So if you plan on a story that has 900 pages in total, doing 2 or 3 parts makes a lot of sense. Also, books are usually complete within themselves, the full story might require extra stuff, but that book in particular will likely have some plot that starts and gets resolved within it's length.
Movies are episodic because you can't really expect people to sit for more than two hours doing nothing, and because for the longest time the primary means of distribution were movie theaters, there was an inherent cost to keeping a room for longer than you should.
TV Shows are episodic for a similar reason, audiences will be engaged for only so long and you have limited time within a day to run all your shows.
Games have none of these issues. Play sessions can last for more than 8 hours easily because games are interactive, and even if they do not, it's customary for people to play, stop and come back regularly. Years ago you'd pay for each play session in arcades, but that only made sense because you were essentially renting a physical machine in an arcade.
@@christianscrogins663 nobody asked
Yeah we are just going back to piracy at this point, I dont even play AAA titles anymore but if I wanted to I am not shelling out that money, meanwhile I have bought over a thousand dollars of indie games that had upwards of 5 people working on them in total, some even by a single person. They were all complete from the day one without weird dark monetization patterns. Go figure!
That is an argument to raise prices even more as piracy back in old days barely existed
@@ligametis what are you talking about, piracy was absolutely rampant until steam got popular
@@ligametis which good old days are we talking about? Pretty much everyone i knew with a pc used to pirate everything ~20 years ago.
@@ItsJoneslike 80s when only cartridges existed
@@someoneelse5005me and my homies hate steam, at least there is now epic as competition. Either way I am talking about pre-2000s cartridge systems. Steam encouraged piracy for me
Linus is flat out wrong in is critique in pricing. A simple Google search showing actual images of catalogs shows that the average price of games in the 90s is actually higher than it is today, being that lower tiered games sold for more money while the cap for high AAA tier games being 60-70 dollars. I think the problem today is that more people fall below that threshold of "is 60-70 dollars is worth a AAA gaming experience?". When you think of the fact that a movie ticket costs 10 dollars roughly for 2+/- hours of entertainment, videogames are insanely undervalued in society.
In western society. In third world country its still overvalued.
This is only if you place value on how long it takes you to get through a piece of media. The average movie is several times more expensive to produce than the average video game despite taking less time to "complete". Video games need to stop worrying about how long it takes to complete the game and more about its content. A 5-10 hour masterpiece is much better than a 90 hour slog.
We aren't all well of enough to keep spending 100s of dollars on 2 games
I've noticed the same whining from lots of people. Most AAA games 30 years ago cost at least $50 at release. I fondly remember my dad bought me Super Mario on the NES back in the days for $50. If you adjust for inflation that same game would be WAY more expensive today. And that's excluding the insane cost of making a modern game. People have no clue about inflation it seems. $50 for a game today is dirt cheap, when you barely get 2 IMAX movie tickets for the same price, WITHOUT any snacks. You also get a ton of games for free these days (Genshin Impact, Path of Exile, The First Descendant, Warzone etc.). People are spoiled rotten, especially in the west.
I think Linus is assuming that each game will be a full game in size. In reality, what the studios are likely to do is take a game like BG3 and simply split it into 3 parts, each for 40-50 bucks, and call it a day. 60-70 bucks is already a lot for me for just one game, especially when I can play League of Legends for free or play $15 a month for WoW.
League of Legends in not a good choice buddy , as a former league player who has burned 3000 h of his life , leave the game as soon as you can .
I think the best way to look at it is how much time do you get out a game. BG3 is cheap, I played for over 150 hours. It cost like $.33 per hour. I paid full price for Horizon Zero Dawn and like 70 hours or nearly a dollar an hour.
@@kena4977 I usually won't buy any game unless I get a minimum of $1/hr out of it. That's kind of my baseline. BG3 took me over 200 hours for a single playthrough, and was well worth it to me.
Here's what I think is going to happen, though, with BG3 as an example. They'll split the full game into part 1, 2, and 3, being the 3 acts in the game, and charge full price for each portion. It's seemingly nothing but a slight degradation of the product for more money overall. They could just include like 3 cosmetics in each game and make more money instead, in my opinion. $15 horse armor was millions of dollars after all. Plus with it being 3 parts, it's so much harder for devs to make any patches past release day of the second part, and continuing the story is less seamless.
I don't like it, but it isn't impossible to do well.
15$ a month + DLC prices.
@@chronodis the expansions are not only unnecessary for many players, because you can play Classic without them, but are for two years of continuously updated and new content. And again, League of Legends is just free to play entirely. I'm not sure what your stance is on this topic, but I'm assuming you're disagreeing with me. The idea of taking Baldur's Gate 3 and splitting the game into the three acts and selling each at $60-70 is silly. It breaks up the flow of the story, which screws up the narrative, and is a flat cash grab. They can make each game standalone and full like they have been since they started making games, or charge an extra $10-20 if it really costed that much extra to make, but a full $120+ extra just because seems ridiculous to me.
the problem i see with this idea of selling a game in parts is that, most players dont even get through the first ten hours of a single player game and its quite visable in the achievements or like the very first achievement in the first 10 minutes ive seen often is only at 60%-80% of players completed. Which may end up causing you to actually lose sales as most players wont buy the second or third part of a game. You gain alot of revenue from the fact many players buy the game and never even start it. if everyone only starts paying 50 bucks instead of the usual price of 60-70 then your simply going to lose money over time as most players wont ever get to a point where they want to spend the next 50 and even the next 50 after that. Plus how does this work with DLC? because DLC kind of already fulfill's this idea as alot of DLC is either cut content that gets finished or on occasion its a brand new thing.
@@GH0STST4RSCR34M Like so many other online service games. This is one of the reason I don't touch those games. Still, can't really compare to a single player game without no need to keep up online infrastructure + constant updates, servers, etc. When a single player game does this, there are so many possible issues. What if the company doesn't finish the game, but leave it 3/5. What parts are released at different platforms, and you can't finish your game without buying a new hardware. There would be so much scummy stuff. No idea what FF VII remake is doing, I'll play it when it's fully done.
i think Destiny 2 is different as its selling expansion packs for an Always Online service. This is more or less talking about mostly singleplayer Titles where you just buy the game and play. plus ill be honest ive never played Destiny so i wouldnt know but isnt Destiny like an MMO? MMO's work very differently then what Single player games do. @@GH0STST4RSCR34M
On the contrary, it means they can sell you the game thrice.
Let's imagine a game will be sold in 3 episodes.
First ep sells for $50 and 100 people buy it. Out of these, only 50 finish it.
Second ep sells for $50, 40 people buy it. Out of these, only 20 finish it.
Then comes the 2 episode bundle for $50. Another 20 people buy it, even if they are never going to play or even make it to the end of part 1.
Third ep sells for $50 again, 10 people buy it.
Now you have the Full Story bundle, another 10 people buy it.
If this was a full game released once, they would sell 100 copies, making 5kUSD.
But by adding together all sales of each episode, they managed to sell 180 copies, making 9800USD
And with careful timing, all those extra editions they already make such as Collector's Edition, Premium, Gold, Extra, Digital, Pre-Order Special, GOTY, they can do one for each episode and then one for the final bundle. All with the cost of one game.
Of course, that in the head of the executives. And of course they can have all the excuses that the "full game is not out yet" to deflect all criticism.
@@ggwp638BC One note, if it was an episode style of release, the sale of the first episode would be way different from a full game release. So many are waiting to get all at once or wouldn't buy expensive multipart games. If the part one was cheap, it could even get way higher numbers, but the content would have to be insanely good to get people buying more expensive part 2 and 3. Easy to sell part 1, but hard to sell anything past that point.
This could also mean that games are designed overall way easier, since if a gamer quits, they can't see the part 2 or 3. For example, Elden Ring was a masterpiece, but a large percentage did quit at semi early. The game was so good that it would be easy to sell those later parts to gamers who really enjoyed it. At the same time, they would cut the potential buyers more than half with the game design/style. Imagine if the part 3 started right after Malenia. Episodes would compromise the game. I'm not saying From Software would do changes, but other larger companies would 100% make everything to push people buying all possible episodes.
Don't kid yourself, the price will rise to 69.99 in no time. They will just claim "Part 1 is basically a full game."
Used to pay £33.99, get a full singleplayer and a multiplayer with continued DLC map packs released over time. Now I have to pay £60+ for a reskin of the last game, £15 for a battlepass for cosmetic items, and weekly DLC to change how my character looks, and pay £30+ for singular DLC maps/modes that get replaced quarterly. "Just dont buy the cosmetics" is the option but the ONLY put out cosmetics and never new content anymore. Greed has ruined every triple A development team.
qnd worse they delist and otherwise render the last one unplayable to try to force you to always buy the new one immediately
I completely avoid any game that requires you to spend extra.
@metallboy25 what does "requires" mean? technically no game requires you to buy anything extra. Aside from like mmo type stuff
I've played multiple TellTale games (The Walking Dead, Batman, Borderlands) and in each of them I would wait until the story was finished. Not because of a price point issue, but because I, as a player, would forget what happened or what choices I've made.
This is the core issue with episodic gaming. It's a bigger risk than it appears to be as there's a whole segment of people that don't want to wait months to a year for the next part of the story. This puts extra stress on the dev studio since they're missing funding that they were expecting to keep the story going.
What I expect Sony's plan is to do is mostly cut up pieces of the game, say Single player vs Multiplayer, and they'll sell each side separately.
splitting it up like that makes a lot of sense. if you could buy campaign, multiplayer, and extra mode(cod zombies, tf2 mvm, ect) for 20-30$ each players could save money and the game gets more players(that they can sucker into micro-transactions)
The average game isn’t worth $70, and the games that ARE don’t charge you $70.
This couldn't be more true.
And that's church, yo.
Legit though, most of the games I buy are anywhere from 79 to a hundred bucks. + There's always pay to a win option for the game at like 120 bucks sometimes even more. Cuz that's completely fair, hey you're rich? Well you get to start off with a maxed out gun against people that get garbage with no attachments.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, AAA games that are monetized heavily through microtransactions should not be $70 or even $60.
They should be free.
When it comes to monetization in the game industry, it is never this OR that, it is this AND that. These companies exist to maximize profit above all else and if they can get away with monetizing every aspect of the games they make, they will do it.
Server cost a lot to maintain. If the game was free to play the company would have to put a large part of their revenue to people that dont pay for the game.
I really tend to avoid games with micro transaction either way.
@@daometh well good for call of duty because they rent out amazons
Ill wait 3-4 years for the game to be 1/2 price.
Sometimes only a couple months like Starfield
Sometimes not even that long, when a game comes out, and then STEAM has a winter sale a couple months later, as was the case for Sonic Superstars where the entire game plus the DLC goes is on sale for $42 down from $70.
If AAA games are going to be 150 dollars, i'll just stop playing AAA games. For that much money you could buy 10 indie games, some of which are better than a AAA game.
Ive already stopped. 70$ for an unfinished buggy mess? No thanks.
Ultimately it comes down to what people are willing to pay for, but games are already expensive. In Canada games are about $20 more than they are in the U.S., so $70 USD games are $90 CAD, and I know other places have it worse. Sure, people cite prices back in the day for being similar, but you didn't need to spend money on a console + an online service + DLC + microtransactions + a subscription service. The game was one and done, even if it wasn't good.
The AAA industry's prices are bloated as heck and not sustainable. Maybe Sony should try to push for something cheaper than the AAA, photo-realistic, $200 million+ cinematic games that they tend to make. It makes those Last of Us remakes/remasters look like acts of desperation to support Sony's mega AAA spending. Something has to break at some point.
If the structure of the story justifies being split into parts, I’d be ok paying $30 a piece for 3 chapters. I even like the idea of a game with a miniseries structure, 8-10 episodes at $8-$10 a piece. But it would have to be a Naughty Dog level story. Not just “good for a video game”. An actually great story.
The problem i have with games going from 40$, to 50$, then to 60$, now to 70$ and god knows whats next, is that in many countries, the average pay barely moved the past 15 years.
For example, the real average pay in my country went from around 18 000- 20 000 to around 22 000- 24 000 (local currency after tax, and that is the 15 years difference), while the rent went from basic 1+1 (40m squared) being 8000 with utilities to 13 000 and you are lucky if you get utilities, so games changing from around 800-900 to being 1500 is massive.
Piracy.
Aye, aye captain!!!
That is why developers are gonna start skipping PC ports. Rockstar started the trend.
@@77edwilson More and more devs are making PC ports..not the opposite.
@@77edwilsonisn’t that just shootings themselves in the foot?
Then why they should create games at all?
I think for the episodic gaming method you would need to announce a schedule like with TV series. Part one will come out this day, part two on this day, etc. This way you will know and anticipate when you will be able to continue the game.
The idea the pressure to up the sale price has anything to do with the money the developers and publishers pay their employees goes right into the Linus bad take bucket.
dunkey made a good video about this. adjusting for inflation games used to cost the equivalent of 120+ today. selling games in parts will be a delicate issue to solve. It would feel really dumb to make the whole game and everyone knows it's finished then sell it for 3 separate parts. But selling part one after it's finished then selling the next pieces as they finish would go a lot better. Expansion packs are a lot easier to swallow but completely different. Metro exodus released as a large, full game. I could then buy and further explore the stories of the side characters to tie up lose ends, expansions done well. Subnautica did something really cool that I wish I saw more of. Subnautica was a massive project, and was very successful. They then reused a bunch of the work building subnautica with new assets and new story to release a second, "smaller" game to give us more lore to the larger story of subnautica. It could even be considered a part I and II even though the stories are a bit disconnected, they happen on the same planet, at different times.
Games in Aus are already getting toward 120, 130 total cost, this will literally price people out of gaming if it gets passed on down here
I really hope they dont do episodic gaming. Because its never going to be each part is its "own game." Its basically just going to be one game that should be together, split into two or more. Lets have spiderman 2018 for example. The story for the first one was around 18 hours to complete. If they made spiderman 2018 in 2 parts, its not like you would get more content. It basically be stopping at the halfway point, only getting a 9 hour experience, and then paying again for the last 9 hours. That game would have not sold as well as it did if they decided to go with the episodic model. At least I would definitely wait until I get the 2 parts together.
people who talk about how SNES games and modern AAA games having similar prices forget that SNES games WERE SUPER EXPENSIVE to produce... as in making copies to sell in stores was super expensive.
there are dozens of SNES games that literally have a 1 to 1 copy of the SNES' main CPU inside of the cartridge. other games like some Capcom games had chips in them that allowed for fast wireframe 3D graphics. and of course there was the SuperFX and SuperFX2 chips that allowed flat shaded and textured polygons.
that of course came ON TOP of the price of the storage chips, the PCB, and the custom case that publishers had to source from Nintendo themselves.
and games only being available in retail stores meant that those stores also got a cut of the price.
so... what do you guys think the difference in revenue for the publisher it is selling a SNES cart with microchips and big cases sold in retail only, compared to a PS5 game sold as a digital download.
in order to be 100% equal in concept, a PS5 game would need to come in a plastic storage box, that has an AMD ZEN2 CPU installed inside it... because, again, that's literally what happend with many SNES games... they had a fucking second CPU inside of them... that is such an outlandish concept from a modern perspective. so you can't compare SNES prices with modern game prices.
tomb raider 2013 and shadow of the tomb raider was a good example sort of a episodic release and both games stories "concluded" but tomb raider 2013's story was expanded to shadow of the tomb raider. But it should be a wrapped up story in each section with a option to expand story, missions etc in a new realise for example and players dont feel like they got scammed if the studio doesnt end up releasing the next game
And also the games were pretty long
@@Blockbuster2033 true but still good games
The big thing is they need to be release in a timely fashion. If the game takes 2 weeks to beat but then they dont release part two for 6 months. i will have lost all interest to continue it most likely.
I like the reverse of this situation where Halo MCC costed less at the beginning when you pre-bought all the games (as opposed to if you bought everything now) since you were buying a promise
I want to sit down (usually on holiday break) and play a big juicy game start to finish. I generally don't have the time or interest to pick up a game i played 3-6 months ago just because a DLC dropped. Most of the time i wait for the GOTY or 'complete' edition to release before picking up AAA games.
This does sometimes result in me not playing games i probably would have enjoyed because the Dev's just can't seem to wrap it up. Grim Dawn and Stellaris come to mind.
Starcraft 2 came out in 3 parts, but each campaign had its own storyline focused on each race. They got tied together well so it felt cohesive but the game was complete when it was Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, or Legacy of the Void. Online got updated even if you never bought the later games as well so competition was still accessible; you just didn't get the campaigns. If that's the model, no problem.
Realistically, the price of games should be increasing. Even just considering the span of the last 20 years, adjusted for inflation a $60 game from january 2000 would cost $109.14 in todays money. If the cost of games is pegged at $60/70, then over time the "real" price of games will steadily decline due to inflation.
For me though, $150 for a game is just too much (though i will admit, im a pc gamer who hasnt spent full price on a game for over a decade). For the right price, i think episodic games could be a good thing as they would give games an opportunity to buy into the game for a lower price to see if they enjoy it
The other problem with episodic gaming is that you now have to re-advertise for each of those parts.
It blows me away how close many studios are from going bust. Obsidian - the creators of Payday 2 which bought in shitloads of money - almost went bust years later after their Walking Dead game.
I bet I haven't spent more than $15 on a game in the past decade, especially for the ones I actually still play. Only exception would be some of my Nintendo discs; and I'll eventually buy some soundtracks, because that's what I'm personally into.
Same for me. All the games I play were either free on Epic, on sale on Steam or official Steam Key websites. Star Wars Battlefront II for $4.79 or Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition for $12.29. The most expensive game I purchased was Space Engineers for $20. I can't pay for a lot of $70+ (or $100 in the near future) games.
11:56 Linus is completely right there. Destiny 2 is a prime example. Each expansion is probably $40 USD at launch, but now you can get about every expansion, excluding the newest one, on sale for like $30 USD.
Imagine being in the UK where publishers think its okay to sell games at a 1:1 conversion rate between the £ and the $.
If games are gonna be sold in parts, it is time to bring out the good old pirate hat. (This is if a game can not do what it should. A 60 dollar games, should have a story that takes 60 hours to play)
It's been a long time since I've been excited for a game. This year has been wild for having to come to the realization I'll never be the target audience for anything ever again.
Streaming and modern movies? Terrible! Triple A games? Terrible! Honestly the only thing worth doing is reading books anymore. And you can get those from the library without paying lol
You just became old. You will never get as excited again even though the games are objectively better than in the past. Just try playing some of your favorites from back then. You immediately recognise how clunky games were back then
@@fabianfeilcke7220 Lol, games have objectively gotten worse over time. Last I checked a game from 2003 didn't have paid cosmetics up the ass and enough dark patterns to make a crossword puzzle out of.
What would you call God of War 2018 and God of War Ragnarok?
Ragnarok was pretty much announced at end of God of War. Freya's angry arc was shown and implied that it will be expanded upon in part 2
Each season of a Tell Tail game is a single game, in the same way that a season of a modern serialized TV show is. Any given season of Game of Thrones has a season long story arch.
3:10 that already happens. With season pass 1, season pass 2, Side quests pack....
Considering that:
1) amount of profit earned in no way, shape or form corelates with the quality of the product - there's no interest in improvement and AAA market at this point is nothing but cookie-cutter mediocre dumbed down shit for people lacking severely in their cognitive ability
2) gaming has year after year record breaking profits (not revenue) and that's accounting for inflation
3) gaming is still the least paid, worst working conditions in the entire IT industry
I have absolutely no interest nor business nor see any viable justification why I should be willing to pay more for a video game in 2023. Not when the industry is regressing in every possible way outside of audiovisual wrap.
I liked how in Sea of Stars you can accelerate credits so you choose whether you watch all of them carefully in a slow reading pace or you just basically fast forward through them. Especially that it lists all the backers from Kickstarter
Pretty much feel the same as Luke. If it's a whole act of a story in one package, then that's fine. But if it's arbitrarily chopped up, then it's going to feel blatantly like a cash grab.
I'd prefer the whole experience in one release, but it does make sense that there needs to be some kind of consistent inflow for studios.
Starcraft 2 was in 3 parts and each part was amazing. I’d rather have that than a half-assed sequel any day.
TLOU isn’t an episodic game series…? “Part 2” is an entirely new game.
Yea, this irritated me too. It's like saying they split up Harry Potter into 8 parts. You could argue about the FF7 Remake Trilogy, but realistically, they expanded and fleshed out the game so much, that having a complete game would take atleast two decades to develop and it would be a 400-500h game on a casual playthrough. No company would work on a game for 20 years, not even knowing if this game will even sell.
Watching this 6 months later, when Fantasian has just been announced for Switch and I know Linus will be able to play it emulated on PC is such a ride.
when starcraft 2 was split into three games that you had to buy to play the whole thing I decided it wasnt worth the 150 bucks and didnt play it and I still havnt
I feel like episodic games are a great idea for large games, because if they suck by the time you've gotten to the end of part 1 (say 50$), you just won't care to pay for part 2 or 3. Where as if you bought the whole game for 100$ and still only played the first 1/3rd, you'd be getting jipped.
Your games were $60 as a kid?? Damn. When I was a kid here in the states, $30 was triple A.
Not at launch. Game of the year edition maybe. Almost all triple a games at release were 60 for a long time.
@@anynigmaSonic the Hedgehog 2 was 54.99 at launch. So you’re totally right on the money. Sometimes games like Baldur’s Gate 2 were $80 if I recall correctly.
Here in the US it depended on the platform as a game back in the 90's on the GameBoy, or Game Gear could be $25 to $40 depending on the game, and where it was bought from, but a game on the Genesis, SNES, 32X, PS1, Saturn, N64, etc.. could be $30 to $80 for a game like Earthbound on the SNES when it came out. Then we get into computers where a simple shareware game could be little as $5 all the way to $100 for a major flight sim title with all the extra goodies. but on average most games were $40 to $60 USD when new across the board for a very long time.
Having said that no way I'd ever pay $150 for a game, and the most I'm willing to pay at the very very top is $80 if it's a really really good game, but I can always wait for an expensive game to drop in price, and play it later on.
an atari cartridge was a lot more than $50, n64 games were $50-70
28:08 now that just sounds like a whole host of JRPG games.
I mean bg3 act one pretty much released standalone as early acces
"Is it any different than how we are doing it now,"
The wait for it all to be repeased. Not to mention the change of the game, where your whole game, will now be broken up into an assort of small starts and stops.
I think if we're gonna chop a game up and sell it in pieces, it should be done along the lines of essential vs optional content, not chopping up the entire product into 3 linear chunks. Consider two scenarios: Scenario 1, you buy the full game and just stop halfway through, not experiencing the whole story. Scenario 2, you buy the full game and beat it, but don't take the time to go through all the side content.
I think more people fall into Scenario 2. They are interested in completing the full narrative, but don't go out of their way to explore everything, do all the side quests, etc. So IF this must be done, it makes more sense in my opinion to separate the products along this lines- "base game" includes the main quest/story and some basic optional content, and paying more gets you more of the "full" experience. With "episodic" games, people in Scenario 2 are now paying 3x for a game they still are not fully experiencing. By just paying for the "base" game, they can finish the story and pay for the side content separately if they want.
Assassin's Creed III did an episodic DLC "Tyranny of King Washington."
I wonder if that was the catalyst of episodic games (I don't recall it being done prior, but if someone want's to correct me)
50 dollar (per 2012 years inflation value, meaning it'll be somewhat more today) for the game itself, then paid DLCs ONLY when adding new content/story.
Checked up to see what my 50 USD would equate to.. 68,97 dollars. Booo. (An ironic way to know you're getting older is to compare what you find is worth it's cost like say 50 dollar for a new game and then compare to inflation rate)
People seem to forget that the value of the dollar has only gone down. For example if you bought a game for $59.99 30 years ago, that's the equivalent of paying $128 TODAY. Games have actually gotten cheaper over time, that is why game companies are charging more. Dunkey did a great video covering this.
on one hand game studios employ more people but the other side of it is you are no longer writing your game in 6502 assembly and dont need a 6-7 figure lead programmer for the full duration of development cycle. making a game now is like making a mod 10 years ago.
OG Wolfenstein 3d was in parts and that was awesome! Games could easily pull it off if they started it at like 40$ to get your taste before pulling out a 100$ game + expansion. Trials are cool, but rarely available.
The issue with episodic games is that AAA devs don't need that to succeed, so they'll probably just cut their game in 4 parts to make more money. Some indie devs on the other hand would need that model to survive, since making a game costs a ton of money, so releasing the game in chapters, using the money from the previous chapter to continue the story, makes sense. The problem is that gamers don't buy episodic indie games, they don't trust episodic indie games, because in the past most episodic indie games died after the first or second chapter because they didn't make enough money to continue.
I think the AAA developers should be looking at developers like Larian and Battlestate, releasing early access and building on the game upon release and offering different releases to buy up to 150 but lowest even 40. No micro transactions, but rather than relying on the money made from the last release you can fund the development as it progresses.
Empire is an expansion pack because A New Hope was intended to be, and was, it's own story. It did so well that they renamed it to EP4: A New Hope and made Empire and Jedi.
I think Mass Effect is the far better gaming example. The series was obviously not over until ME3, but every one had its own full story. They were all full price too.
However, I think a key distinction is that each of these were developed as seperate games. The wording Sony is using here heavily implies that they are effectively going to cut up a full game into parts not make seperate games in a series...
The problem with comparing the Final Fantasy Remake project to this is that the Remake games may not cover the entire original game, but they definitely pack way more content. Rebirth alone takes 40 hours if you ONLY focus on the story. The proposal of splitting up games would be like getting the first five chapters or something of that game, calling it Rebirth Part 1 and selling it for 30 instead of 70.
I’m reminded of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and the way they broke up the Fate of Atlantis DLC. There were three parts each of which took place in the realm of a different Greek god. They were all self contained arcs that led from one to the next, each one adding new gear and abilities along with the new area and story.
So basically, Sony is becoming Paradox. Every Paradox game is basically 15-25 dollars for each DLC, of which there are probably over 20 of them. Each might seem insignificant but when you have them all, gameplay is like a symphony.
Yeah but even paradox has been slipping lately. I wouldn’t trust Sony as far as I could throw them.
About episodic gaming, i think the movie series comparison works. Are you willing to pay 20€ for an episode? hell no. but for a season? yeah. If the season is a rounded concluded storyline.
The difference is that they’ll try to take the base game and chop it up to charge you far more than they would / could have in a more traditional sale. DLC is one thing. Taking a base game and charging you 50 to 100 percent more for to essentially finance the experience is not the way.
Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 were very well implemented self contained games, in episodes.
I found a receipt for Super Mario 3, for $50 in 1990. That would be $125 today. It's insane that games are so cheap.
Yeaaa..... Then next year "Press start to continue" --- Pay $1.99 to enter the game screen. "Choose level difficulty" --- $5.99 for easy mode, $7.99 for hard mode, $29.99 for expert mode. "Press pause to open game settings menu --- $0.99 per option change. "Achievement achieved --- $0.49 to accept each reward.
It should be noted, in the old days, you also, oftenly, had to make your own engine.
Much of that work has been done by Companies like Epic, or even in house inside of places like EA.
They don't have to do this work over, for every game they release.
Definitely wouldn't be doing engine work, as you guys discussed, in episodic gaming.
This is like watching (I never did) "How I met your mother" or "The Game of Thrones", getting engaged in it for years, just to have a sucky ending that nobody likes and feels betrayed.
The discussion seems to be Movies series vs miniseries
2:24 - The problem is that companies want to MAXIMIZE profit, vs a compromise of game quality, customer respect, and respect for the art form.
If ALL games devolve into microtransactions... i probably won't be playing many AAA titles....
I have given up for the time being with current gen games, and just gone back to playing older games including ones I missed. I'm talking on A Athlon XP and Radeon 9700. IMO gaming has major issues currently and it doesn't feel like gamers care enough to have the issues fixed, including cost to what you get.
i think that in order for me to be on board with episodic gaming, it would need to be like expansions in the way that i can buy the first expansion, skip the second if im not hooked, and then still be able to buy and play the third later. Going with the star wars analogy, i havent seen a new hope in years but i can still put on empire strikes back and enjoy watching it despite not remembering everything before it. If i cant boot into the second part of a game without having a save file from the first, that game should have been sold as one unit. Depending on the game, i can forgive having to buy the first part before any of the others, since even back in the day you obviously needed the base game to play an expansion. but if i need parts one AND two just to play part three, im out.
It isn’t either or though the premise here is wrong. You can make good games without needing to charge 100s become milions of people will buy it.
Split game in parts and we will start sailing the high seas again
The gaming industry as a whole has some serious issues: triple A titles are a rush-job every year charging 60 - 70 USD, many times to the detriments to those IPs more than not. On the flip side, you have gacha games and "free to play" games with their own lootboxes, loot systems, and skins whom people spend thousands of dollars on every year.
I honestly do not know what the solution is. I just play games and hope they're fun and worth playing.
Episodic gaming lives and dies on its narrative. It HAS to be compelling, the characters should be appealing in both writing and appearance and the internal continuity has to be consistent so anybody could really get their money's worth. Because what will happen is that people will likely pirate all the parts first then wait for a sale to buy all of them because buying them whole is more expensive as well as buying each part. The game also has to convince people that the parts are worth waiting for which, if we're looking at the attention to FFVII RE, there's not really all that much.
I feel like it should be a base game releases and after that you can purchase the new seasons when they come out.
I feel like episodic gaming is an excuse for big game publishers to extract 3x the value out of us releasing 3 unfinished parts and quitting after the first, because it didn't meet quota.
If it were like dlcs where the dlc is not mandatory to have a satisfactory experience with the product i could argue to buy into that. Also the game would have to be cheaper like 50€ as well as each dlc costing something like 20€.
You need many employees if you have that many managers and sales people
I'm not buying a single player game without a start and the end. I'll wait for all the parts until they are all released. If Sony wants to raise the price of the games, first lower the price cut of PS store... 30% is too much! Seems like I'll buy less (new) console games and more PC releases + cheap used games.
I mean didn’t bg3 release act 1 anyways with early access. They practically already did episodic gaming but did act 1 then act 2 and 3 at same time.
Starcraft 2 did it, and it was great. We got more content for an amazing universe.
I agree with game price above 100usd, IF that will guarantee:
1) No microtransactions
2) Story actually ends in satisfying way
3) Above 10h single player content (not 100% achievements crap)
Hold on, if films are being used as a comparison point, how much does a DVD or a Bluray cost?
To split what could be a full game into parts just seems like a comp out to me. If you think your game is worth more $$$ so be it but make a great game. So many large studios aren’t giving their games the TLC they need and it’s starting to show games like BG3 just exacerbate the issue cause they are so great.
A couple things.
First the Star Wars Movies are literally called episodes. Just going to mention that.
Second I think you went off on the wrong discussion here.
The point here is that Sony wants to find ways to make more money off of less developer work and money spent making it. Because economics.
The problem here is with sequels.
There are certain things people expect from a sequel that is a whole different project.
Look at Horizon Forbidden West. If it had released as just Horizon Zero Dawn but with a different story people would have been upset. It is a sequel. It took a long time to make and as such we expect it to go beyond the original.
Which is a real pain for developers. They end up having to create new systems, processes, etc for the game. Which all costs time ad money.
So what Sony wants to do with Insomniac isn't release unfinished stories, but release a game in several complete parts. With each one utilizing the same engine, mechanics, etc. So that it doesn't require all the effort of a sequel.
And you don't have to take my word for it because they have already done it. And people loved it.
Marvel's Spider-man came out on PS4 as a complete game.
They then sold several DLC's as a part of an expansion called "The City that never sleeps". Each one continued a single story that took place after the end of the main game. Together they were a complete story about Yuri becoming a vigilante and Black Cat.
Then they released Miles Morales. Not a sequel. But a new game in the same city with the same mechanics, processes, etc. It told the story after the DLC that focused on Miles coming into his own as Spider-man.
So in fact they released Spider-man as 3 separate games. 3 parts to 1 story.
They then released Spider-man 2 which continues after Miles Morales. Miles is in it, Yuri is in it and Black Cat is in it.
In Spider-man 2 they added Venom as a playable character for a bit. Created the model, moves, everything.
Now we find out thanks to leaks that they plan to release a Venom game as a game between Spider-man 2 and 3. Like Miles Morales was.
So insomniac is already releasing their games in multiple chunks. They have been doing so for years at this point. And all of the above games were excellent sellers with both critic and audience approval.
So the question here isn't about other companies or developers.
Or whatever Luke made up about episodic games being incomplete. This isn't about episodic games.
This is about using the same resources across multiple games in a series before having to tackle the sequel.
And so far it is already working.
I didn't mind the Telltale business model I never bought any of them before all of the episodes came out but even if I didn't I get why they did it. I also would have no problem paying for the different character paths of Pathological 2 once they come out. I'm even buying all the other games the studio makes so that they have enough funding to continue working on Pathological. What I am however not ok is paying more than 100€ full price for a game that's split into different parts. I'm not talking about the Final Fantasy 7 remakes which are full games that at this point are more reimagines than remakes.
You're basically being sold what would be counted as a content patches as expansion packs now. The real question is how much are you willing to pay for how much content. My guess is everyone is just going to start waiting to buy games tell they are heavily discounted to a price point they want to pay.
21:10 that's every high quality Gacha Game. namely Genshin, Honkai Star Rail, Honkai Impact 3rd, ZZZ, Wuwa, etc.
Wasn’t part of the cost back of the-day the cartridge. Or even the blue ray, or shipping costs of dealing with selling thru brick and mortar store. Well it’s all digital now
I think that episodic gaming would be much more honest than splitting a single game in parts. The latter method feels like 2/3 of the game is just DLC without even the original buyer getting the DLC included with the game.
If you truly want to sell the game in parts, do it similar to Fallout NW and Fallout 4. Make the whole main story playable through with only the main pack but the game would have more content along the story if you had purchased the extensions parts.
The problem with episodic and in parts release models is that if the part 3 / episode 3 sucks, nobody is going to buy part 4/5/6. You could just call parts as seasons and make it similar to seasons of high quality TV series. If I had played the third part a game that were equally good to Breaking Bad season 3, I'd definitely be buying the next season, too.
A more important question than how much games should cost, is how much making games should cost. In lots of cases it sounds like they're being very wasteful with their budget, not directing it where it's more important, dumping a lot on useless or even harmful stuff etc.
I'm completely fine if the standard became episodic games just because they will actually have a way bigger incentive to make games good because the most expensive part of making a game is laying the groundwork to build the actual game you see on top of. So if they want that big initial incentive to pay off they would actually need to wait till the game is good before they release the game and we dont have half baked garbage from some of these publishers (UBISOFT)
The Empire Strikes Back is a sequel, a very familiar concept to games.
Example - a brand new and full campaign in the GTA 5 world, sold as a part for GTA 5
It entirely depends on who tackles the episodic gaming. Some companies would do it fantastically, others would shit on themselves just to try and get another episode buy out of you.
How many sport games come out Every year.😅
i think you guys are not understanding that games were extortionately overpriced to begin with lol plus all the other factors of more reach in the modern era and cheaper development tools, shared assets, game engines, and way more supply games should be cheaper than they used to cost IMO especially games that only have less than 40 hrs of gameplay.
You say that Larian studios swung for the fences, and knocked it out the park... and "not everyone can do that" but... nobody in AAA games is even TRYING to do what Larian did. None of these companies are designing a self-contained story where you just buy the game, and get the best experience you can get for the price.
The devs and designers at AAA studios are trying to build full games, and then their boardrooms are telling them "you have to make this a live service, you have to make DLC, you have to have skins and a cash shop, you have to have season passes, you have to have battle passes, you have to tease the content out a little bit at a time, you have to include fifty side-systems that have nothing to do with your vision, you need the game to be an infinite grind that keeps people coming back with daily rewards so they'll purchase stuff from the shop."
In AAA, you have to compromise your artistic vision for the business plan. It's so inherently unfulfilling and unsatisfying that people are exhausted.
More AAA companies COULD do what Larian did. They could focus their efforts on storytelling and writing. They could look at what makes their game exciting or interesting or fun, and put work into making those systems the best they can be. They could plan to deliver a complete product, but the business plan doesn't allow it.