[Maark Abbott]

Serenity, on 15 October 2018 - 07:58 AM, said:

Looks like I'll be the only person not buying this on release

I also won't be

Or probably at all 'cause it's Rockstar

[Aptorian]

Yeah, it's probably way too popular for your tastes

[Serenity]

Maark Abbott, on 17 October 2018 - 08:01 AM, said:

Serenity, on 15 October 2018 - 07:58 AM, said:

Looks like I'll be the only person not buying this on release

I also won't be

I thought that was a given

[Maark Abbott]

Alternative Goose, on 17 October 2018 - 08:36 AM, said:

Yeah, it's probably way too popular for your tastes

Popularity has nothing to do with it. Most games that are popular that I dislike, I dislike because they're shit (and frankly there's no point beating about the bush with that). With RDR, it's because it's Rockstar and I really dislike the GTA games, therefore I've never given RDR a chance.

Serenity, on 17 October 2018 - 01:44 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 17 October 2018 - 08:01 AM, said:

Serenity, on 15 October 2018 - 07:58 AM, said:

Looks like I'll be the only person not buying this on release

I also won't be

I thought that was a given

Games aren't worth the price they cost new now anyway, so it would take something very special indeed for me to consider a day one release. £50 is almost my entire monthly leisure spend in one go. Add to that the fact that demos are no longer a thing so I can't test a game out first before putting money on it...

The only exception to this rule seems to be open betas, but I've only seen those for fighting games made by Arc System Works so far.

[Mentalist]

Serenity, on 15 October 2018 - 07:58 AM, said:

Looks like I'll be the only person not buying this on release

Nah, I won't be buying it unless it eventually meanders it's way to the PC.

[Khellendros]

Maark Abbott, on 18 October 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Games aren't worth the price they cost new now anyway, so it would take something very special indeed for me to consider a day one release. £50 is almost my entire monthly leisure spend in one go. Add to that the fact that demos are no longer a thing so I can't test a game out first before putting money on it...

The only exception to this rule seems to be open betas, but I've only seen those for fighting games made by Arc System Works so far.

Arguably, games are too cheap (by which I mean, the AAA games which cost £40-£50 on release). Game prices have remained static for decades despite the rising costs of game development over the same period. These games would now have to shift millions of copies before they become profitable (and is, in part, why indie development of smaller games, episodic games, smaller DLCs, microtransactions in games, and 'games as a service' has appeared in the last decade or so). £70 on release for a AAA game is a fair price in relation to development costs (I'm not, of course, saying anything about ultimate quality), but the public have strongly resisted overt price rises. So, instead, other systems appeared through which costs could be recouped over time.

This post has been edited by Khellendros: 20 October 2018 - 06:02 PM

[Aptorian]

As a person being payed entry wages with no seniority, I have to say I commiserate with Maark.

Games may actually be cheaper than they were on for example SNES but 550DKK for the base game on PSN is still a lot money.

Only way I pay that for a game is if I know I will get a lot of game for that money and the game is a must play.

Luckily Red Dead fits both those conditions.

[Silencer]

Khellendros, on 20 October 2018 - 06:01 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 18 October 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Games aren't worth the price they cost new now anyway, so it would take something very special indeed for me to consider a day one release. £50 is almost my entire monthly leisure spend in one go. Add to that the fact that demos are no longer a thing so I can't test a game out first before putting money on it...

The only exception to this rule seems to be open betas, but I've only seen those for fighting games made by Arc System Works so far.

Arguably, games are too cheap (by which I mean, the AAA games which cost £40-£50 on release). Game prices have remained static for decades despite the rising costs of game development over the same period. These games would now have to shift millions of copies before they become profitable (and is, in part, why indie development of smaller games, episodic games, smaller DLCs, microtransactions in games, and 'games as a service' has appeared in the last decade or so). £70 on release for a AAA game is a fair price in relation to development costs (I'm not, of course, saying anything about ultimate quality), but the public have strongly resisted overt price rises. So, instead, other systems appeared through which costs could be recouped over time.

Except, most of that isn't true.

Major AAA titles are making a tidy profit off their $60USD base prices (but let's be honest, how many games are only $60? Deluxe Edition, Ultimate Edition, Season Pass...) and last I checked, the Activision, EA, Ubisoft trifecta had enough money left over to buy and then close multiple studios over the last decade. If games weren't making bank off their base price, I guarantee you they would not still be making games. As for "rising costs" - sure, but those "rising costs" aren't employees! Wages in game development, after an initial surge, are as stagnant as everyone else's. Never mind the ongoing "crunch time" unpaid overtime bullshit expected in the industry.
The rising costs are in marketing budgets, online servers for those apparently money-making "games as a service" (seems a bit odd that they'd spend more money if the base game was not selling well enough..hmmm), the ever-present push to have the prettiest game around (despite some games with less advanced graphics being some of the most successful!). Distribution costs are, in fact, down now that digital has taken over. So pretty much all the rising "costs" are self-inflicted. And they're being taken on board deliberately to increase profits. I'd suggest that no AAA title (and I'm talking big launches here - not ones that got a massively overblown budget for a small/unknown IP that then flopped, because that's on the business) in the last decade *needed* anything more than hard sales to make bank. The DLC, season pass, microtransactions, and loot boxes were all pure profit from there.

DLC was originally just a word for expansion packs that were distributed online. Then it came to mean "smaller than an expansion pack" content. Then it became "any online content that isn't a microtransaction". The meaning of the word has changed based on the rest of the industry, and originally it was fairly benign. Now it just means "how much can we charge relative to the work involved for this if we package it, instead of selling it as a microtransaction".

Frankly the industry has shot itself in the foot, by being a bunch of greedy, money-grubbing assholes who have no concept of what they are actually selling. The rise and rise of giants like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft has put the industry into its own "too big to fail" timebomb. Because they want more money. Because they want more money with no extra effort required. That's why the quality of story writing, the quality of world building, the quality of map design, has all gone down. It costs "too much" to do that properly these days. It's far more cost-effective to throw extra bucks at the texture artists, and then drop a map full of disjointed copy+paste side quests around the place. And by "too much" I mean more than the absolute minimum they can spend.

As for consumers resisting the rise of a base game price? Not only have I basically never heard of a company asking us or really trying - the exception being COD, which constantly sells for $10+ more than any other game around that I've seen, almost never goes on sale, and retains its base price for years beyond its shelf life. Doesn't seem to affect their sales. But not only that, the cost of distributing games has gone down so much thanks to Steam, GOG, etc, that there's a compelling argument that base prices should've gone the other way! (Seeing as printing and distributing actual physical media costs a fuckload more than asking Steam to host a digital copy.)
But really, the primary reason why game prices shouldn't have gone up is economics. 1) the wages of your average employee has barely moved for the last two decades...so how can you ask them to pay more? 2) games are now selling ten times as many copies as they used to - so unless demand outstrips supply, wherefore the price increase? 3) profits are soaring anyway.

So I don't buy that games are too cheap. At all. I think the publishers would very much like you to believe that. But last I checked, none of their executives were struggling to pay rent.

[Khellendros]

Silencer, on 21 October 2018 - 03:51 AM, said:

Khellendros, on 20 October 2018 - 06:01 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 18 October 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Games aren't worth the price they cost new now anyway, so it would take something very special indeed for me to consider a day one release. £50 is almost my entire monthly leisure spend in one go. Add to that the fact that demos are no longer a thing so I can't test a game out first before putting money on it...

The only exception to this rule seems to be open betas, but I've only seen those for fighting games made by Arc System Works so far.

Arguably, games are too cheap (by which I mean, the AAA games which cost £40-£50 on release). Game prices have remained static for decades despite the rising costs of game development over the same period. These games would now have to shift millions of copies before they become profitable (and is, in part, why indie development of smaller games, episodic games, smaller DLCs, microtransactions in games, and 'games as a service' has appeared in the last decade or so). £70 on release for a AAA game is a fair price in relation to development costs (I'm not, of course, saying anything about ultimate quality), but the public have strongly resisted overt price rises. So, instead, other systems appeared through which costs could be recouped over time.

Except, most of that isn't true.

Major AAA titles are making a tidy profit off their $60USD base prices (but let's be honest, how many games are only $60? Deluxe Edition, Ultimate Edition, Season Pass...) and last I checked, the Activision, EA, Ubisoft trifecta had enough money left over to buy and then close multiple studios over the last decade. If games weren't making bank off their base price, I guarantee you they would not still be making games. As for "rising costs" - sure, but those "rising costs" aren't employees! Wages in game development, after an initial surge, are as stagnant as everyone else's. Never mind the ongoing "crunch time" unpaid overtime bullshit expected in the industry.
The rising costs are in marketing budgets, online servers for those apparently money-making "games as a service" (seems a bit odd that they'd spend more money if the base game was not selling well enough..hmmm), the ever-present push to have the prettiest game around (despite some games with less advanced graphics being some of the most successful!). Distribution costs are, in fact, down now that digital has taken over. So pretty much all the rising "costs" are self-inflicted. And they're being taken on board deliberately to increase profits. I'd suggest that no AAA title (and I'm talking big launches here - not ones that got a massively overblown budget for a small/unknown IP that then flopped, because that's on the business) in the last decade *needed* anything more than hard sales to make bank. The DLC, season pass, microtransactions, and loot boxes were all pure profit from there.

DLC was originally just a word for expansion packs that were distributed online. Then it came to mean "smaller than an expansion pack" content. Then it became "any online content that isn't a microtransaction". The meaning of the word has changed based on the rest of the industry, and originally it was fairly benign. Now it just means "how much can we charge relative to the work involved for this if we package it, instead of selling it as a microtransaction".

Frankly the industry has shot itself in the foot, by being a bunch of greedy, money-grubbing assholes who have no concept of what they are actually selling. The rise and rise of giants like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft has put the industry into its own "too big to fail" timebomb. Because they want more money. Because they want more money with no extra effort required. That's why the quality of story writing, the quality of world building, the quality of map design, has all gone down. It costs "too much" to do that properly these days. It's far more cost-effective to throw extra bucks at the texture artists, and then drop a map full of disjointed copy+paste side quests around the place. And by "too much" I mean more than the absolute minimum they can spend.

As for consumers resisting the rise of a base game price? Not only have I basically never heard of a company asking us or really trying - the exception being COD, which constantly sells for $10+ more than any other game around that I've seen, almost never goes on sale, and retains its base price for years beyond its shelf life. Doesn't seem to affect their sales. But not only that, the cost of distributing games has gone down so much thanks to Steam, GOG, etc, that there's a compelling argument that base prices should've gone the other way! (Seeing as printing and distributing actual physical media costs a fuckload more than asking Steam to host a digital copy.)
But really, the primary reason why game prices shouldn't have gone up is economics. 1) the wages of your average employee has barely moved for the last two decades...so how can you ask them to pay more? 2) games are now selling ten times as many copies as they used to - so unless demand outstrips supply, wherefore the price increase? 3) profits are soaring anyway.

So I don't buy that games are too cheap. At all. I think the publishers would very much like you to believe that. But last I checked, none of their executives were struggling to pay rent.

Of course games can and do make bank and absurd profits, that's not my point. I'm suggesting that they couldn't do that based on sales of a standalone, £40 nothing-added game as per even fifteen years ago. I think that's where we disagree. Yes, huge amounts of that budget go towards marketing, but, you know, without that marketing there may not be that increase in a customer base which you point out.

I fully agree that wage stagnation means the majority can't pay what I termed a fairer price (although wage stagnation in game development is offset by how many more developers are employed to produce big games now). But at the same time consumers want more and more from their AAA games. If a AAA now went back to producing a more modest, budget-sensible offering, I suspect it would bomb (not because of a downgrade in quality, but because it wouldn't meet today's expectations of what a AAA game is). Is this self-inflicted? There is certainly truth to that. Do some companies try to take advantage of their new pay systems? We've certainly seen that in the recent backlash against microtransactions. But that doesn't mean that that is how it started out, or that every company always operates in that way. I don't like crappy so-called DLCs, and I absolutely can't stand microtransactions, but in many cases (and this with smaller games too) I feel that the intent is to become profitABLE first, and after that make added profit. Perhaps you are right that a £40 major AAA game can be profitable just on that today, but I would be surprised. I would be happy to be proved wrong.

You make a point about these companies constantly shut down studios - well, that normally happens if a studio's output appears unprofitable and cannot be sustained in the long term. You seem to be suggesting that they should continue to run loss-making divisions because they have so much money built up - a good sentiment, but that's not how corporations work in any industry and the danger is that the loss turns into a major problem further down the line. Yes, there is certainly an issue with poor management and business process too, I make no bones about that. None of these points are mutually exclusive.

You also talk about quality which i explicitly left out of the conversation - I make no argument that games are 'better' because of these developments.

[Khellendros]

https://www.raphkost...-cost-of-games/

I found this an interesting read. But it is only one study by one person (and he freely admits he needs more data points). The comments disagreeing with his findings also make some interesting points (which he does engage with).

Apologies for derailing the RDR2 thread.

[Silencer]

Khellendros, on 21 October 2018 - 09:47 AM, said:

Silencer, on 21 October 2018 - 03:51 AM, said:

Khellendros, on 20 October 2018 - 06:01 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 18 October 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Games aren't worth the price they cost new now anyway, so it would take something very special indeed for me to consider a day one release. £50 is almost my entire monthly leisure spend in one go. Add to that the fact that demos are no longer a thing so I can't test a game out first before putting money on it...

The only exception to this rule seems to be open betas, but I've only seen those for fighting games made by Arc System Works so far.

Arguably, games are too cheap (by which I mean, the AAA games which cost £40-£50 on release). Game prices have remained static for decades despite the rising costs of game development over the same period. These games would now have to shift millions of copies before they become profitable (and is, in part, why indie development of smaller games, episodic games, smaller DLCs, microtransactions in games, and 'games as a service' has appeared in the last decade or so). £70 on release for a AAA game is a fair price in relation to development costs (I'm not, of course, saying anything about ultimate quality), but the public have strongly resisted overt price rises. So, instead, other systems appeared through which costs could be recouped over time.

Except, most of that isn't true.

Major AAA titles are making a tidy profit off their $60USD base prices (but let's be honest, how many games are only $60? Deluxe Edition, Ultimate Edition, Season Pass...) and last I checked, the Activision, EA, Ubisoft trifecta had enough money left over to buy and then close multiple studios over the last decade. If games weren't making bank off their base price, I guarantee you they would not still be making games. As for "rising costs" - sure, but those "rising costs" aren't employees! Wages in game development, after an initial surge, are as stagnant as everyone else's. Never mind the ongoing "crunch time" unpaid overtime bullshit expected in the industry.
The rising costs are in marketing budgets, online servers for those apparently money-making "games as a service" (seems a bit odd that they'd spend more money if the base game was not selling well enough..hmmm), the ever-present push to have the prettiest game around (despite some games with less advanced graphics being some of the most successful!). Distribution costs are, in fact, down now that digital has taken over. So pretty much all the rising "costs" are self-inflicted. And they're being taken on board deliberately to increase profits. I'd suggest that no AAA title (and I'm talking big launches here - not ones that got a massively overblown budget for a small/unknown IP that then flopped, because that's on the business) in the last decade *needed* anything more than hard sales to make bank. The DLC, season pass, microtransactions, and loot boxes were all pure profit from there.

DLC was originally just a word for expansion packs that were distributed online. Then it came to mean "smaller than an expansion pack" content. Then it became "any online content that isn't a microtransaction". The meaning of the word has changed based on the rest of the industry, and originally it was fairly benign. Now it just means "how much can we charge relative to the work involved for this if we package it, instead of selling it as a microtransaction".

Frankly the industry has shot itself in the foot, by being a bunch of greedy, money-grubbing assholes who have no concept of what they are actually selling. The rise and rise of giants like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft has put the industry into its own "too big to fail" timebomb. Because they want more money. Because they want more money with no extra effort required. That's why the quality of story writing, the quality of world building, the quality of map design, has all gone down. It costs "too much" to do that properly these days. It's far more cost-effective to throw extra bucks at the texture artists, and then drop a map full of disjointed copy+paste side quests around the place. And by "too much" I mean more than the absolute minimum they can spend.

As for consumers resisting the rise of a base game price? Not only have I basically never heard of a company asking us or really trying - the exception being COD, which constantly sells for $10+ more than any other game around that I've seen, almost never goes on sale, and retains its base price for years beyond its shelf life. Doesn't seem to affect their sales. But not only that, the cost of distributing games has gone down so much thanks to Steam, GOG, etc, that there's a compelling argument that base prices should've gone the other way! (Seeing as printing and distributing actual physical media costs a fuckload more than asking Steam to host a digital copy.)
But really, the primary reason why game prices shouldn't have gone up is economics. 1) the wages of your average employee has barely moved for the last two decades...so how can you ask them to pay more? 2) games are now selling ten times as many copies as they used to - so unless demand outstrips supply, wherefore the price increase? 3) profits are soaring anyway.

So I don't buy that games are too cheap. At all. I think the publishers would very much like you to believe that. But last I checked, none of their executives were struggling to pay rent.

Of course games can and do make bank and absurd profits, that's not my point. I'm suggesting that they couldn't do that based on sales of a standalone, £40 nothing-added game as per even fifteen years ago. I think that's where we disagree. Yes, huge amounts of that budget go towards marketing, but, you know, without that marketing there may not be that increase in a customer base which you point out.

I fully agree that wage stagnation means the majority can't pay what I termed a fairer price (although wage stagnation in game development is offset by how many more developers are employed to produce big games now). But at the same time consumers want more and more from their AAA games. If a AAA now went back to producing a more modest, budget-sensible offering, I suspect it would bomb (not because of a downgrade in quality, but because it wouldn't meet today's expectations of what a AAA game is). Is this self-inflicted? There is certainly truth to that. Do some companies try to take advantage of their new pay systems? We've certainly seen that in the recent backlash against microtransactions. But that doesn't mean that that is how it started out, or that every company always operates in that way. I don't like crappy so-called DLCs, and I absolutely can't stand microtransactions, but in many cases (and this with smaller games too) I feel that the intent is to become profitABLE first, and after that make added profit. Perhaps you are right that a £40 major AAA game can be profitable just on that today, but I would be surprised. I would be happy to be proved wrong.

You make a point about these companies constantly shut down studios - well, that normally happens if a studio's output appears unprofitable and cannot be sustained in the long term. You seem to be suggesting that they should continue to run loss-making divisions because they have so much money built up - a good sentiment, but that's not how corporations work in any industry and the danger is that the loss turns into a major problem further down the line. Yes, there is certainly an issue with poor management and business process too, I make no bones about that. None of these points are mutually exclusive.

You also talk about quality which i explicitly left out of the conversation - I make no argument that games are 'better' because of these developments.

Your point seems to be, if I boil it down: "Capitalism *shrug*".

Which is all fine and dandy, but it is both unsustainable and detrimental to these companies in the long run. There has, to my knowledge, never been a period in time when major AAA releases (COD, Battlefield, Halo, Elder Scrolls, etc) were unable to make profit simply off their base price. These companies are worth BILLIONS. Which would be fine, if they paid their employees more accordingly, instead of trying to horde it all.
Destiny sold US $500 million worth of copies on DAY ONE of it launch - for reference, that is five times its cost to develop (145 million - noting that Activision's total investment was close to $500m but that includes things like the games engine, which is a 10+ year investment, not just game cost - and they still made bank in one day). GTAV sold one billion dollars in three days. COD: Ghosts did that on day one. That's not DLC, microtransactions, or whatever else. That's retail sales.

For the record - those studios aren't closed because they don't make money. It's because they don't make enough money. They make less than half a billion dollars on day one. Or, in plenty of cases, the big three never intended to keep them open. They purchased them for the IP they owned. Gut the staff, keep the stars, and throw the rest out with the garbage. Which is horrific for the industry.

Compare Hellblade. Universally praised for delivering AAA quality on an indie budget. It's entirely doable. The likes of Activision, EA, and Ubisoft just don't care. Hellblade made hella money for it's budget...and at a lower price point, to boot - but it didn't make stratospheric amounts of cash. And that's not good enough, apparently.

I, personally, can't condone that behaviour. It's 2007 Wall St bullshit and it needs to go. For the economy, for gaming, hell, just for the sake of having a modicum of morals and ethics and love of the work first, before worrying about whether a game makes $100 million in profit or $1 billion. Because that's what the difference is. It's NOT profit vs no profit. It's profit vs sickening amounts of profit. And all of it off the back of developers who are often worked into the ground to meet arbitrary deadlines.

[Malankazooie]

In RDR2 talk. Did anyone else see the advert they released to television media, beginning about a week ago? Looking good! Also, when is RDR2 Online going to happen? I haven't heard any talk about it. For GTA V, GTA Online was available on launch day (had it's issues, but quickly ironed those out). One could argue that GTA Online (and by extension RDR2 Online) is where Rockstar butters its bread

[Aptorian]

GTA 5 Online was delayed two weeks. And when it launched it had significant issues. Still has I think?

I have been ignoring new info on the game but I'd assume the online is day one?

[Khellendros]

Alternative Goose, on 21 October 2018 - 04:23 PM, said:

GTA 5 Online was delayed two weeks. And when it launched it had significant issues. Still has I think?

I have been ignoring new info on the game but I'd assume the online is day one?

No, November launch is what I heard for the online stuff.

[Maark Abbott]

Silencer, on 21 October 2018 - 12:52 PM, said:

Khellendros, on 21 October 2018 - 09:47 AM, said:

Silencer, on 21 October 2018 - 03:51 AM, said:

Khellendros, on 20 October 2018 - 06:01 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 18 October 2018 - 05:46 AM, said:

Games aren't worth the price they cost new now anyway, so it would take something very special indeed for me to consider a day one release. £50 is almost my entire monthly leisure spend in one go. Add to that the fact that demos are no longer a thing so I can't test a game out first before putting money on it...

The only exception to this rule seems to be open betas, but I've only seen those for fighting games made by Arc System Works so far.

Arguably, games are too cheap (by which I mean, the AAA games which cost £40-£50 on release). Game prices have remained static for decades despite the rising costs of game development over the same period. These games would now have to shift millions of copies before they become profitable (and is, in part, why indie development of smaller games, episodic games, smaller DLCs, microtransactions in games, and 'games as a service' has appeared in the last decade or so). £70 on release for a AAA game is a fair price in relation to development costs (I'm not, of course, saying anything about ultimate quality), but the public have strongly resisted overt price rises. So, instead, other systems appeared through which costs could be recouped over time.

Except, most of that isn't true.

Major AAA titles are making a tidy profit off their $60USD base prices (but let's be honest, how many games are only $60? Deluxe Edition, Ultimate Edition, Season Pass...) and last I checked, the Activision, EA, Ubisoft trifecta had enough money left over to buy and then close multiple studios over the last decade. If games weren't making bank off their base price, I guarantee you they would not still be making games. As for "rising costs" - sure, but those "rising costs" aren't employees! Wages in game development, after an initial surge, are as stagnant as everyone else's. Never mind the ongoing "crunch time" unpaid overtime bullshit expected in the industry.
The rising costs are in marketing budgets, online servers for those apparently money-making "games as a service" (seems a bit odd that they'd spend more money if the base game was not selling well enough..hmmm), the ever-present push to have the prettiest game around (despite some games with less advanced graphics being some of the most successful!). Distribution costs are, in fact, down now that digital has taken over. So pretty much all the rising "costs" are self-inflicted. And they're being taken on board deliberately to increase profits. I'd suggest that no AAA title (and I'm talking big launches here - not ones that got a massively overblown budget for a small/unknown IP that then flopped, because that's on the business) in the last decade *needed* anything more than hard sales to make bank. The DLC, season pass, microtransactions, and loot boxes were all pure profit from there.

DLC was originally just a word for expansion packs that were distributed online. Then it came to mean "smaller than an expansion pack" content. Then it became "any online content that isn't a microtransaction". The meaning of the word has changed based on the rest of the industry, and originally it was fairly benign. Now it just means "how much can we charge relative to the work involved for this if we package it, instead of selling it as a microtransaction".

Frankly the industry has shot itself in the foot, by being a bunch of greedy, money-grubbing assholes who have no concept of what they are actually selling. The rise and rise of giants like EA, Activision-Blizzard, and Ubisoft has put the industry into its own "too big to fail" timebomb. Because they want more money. Because they want more money with no extra effort required. That's why the quality of story writing, the quality of world building, the quality of map design, has all gone down. It costs "too much" to do that properly these days. It's far more cost-effective to throw extra bucks at the texture artists, and then drop a map full of disjointed copy+paste side quests around the place. And by "too much" I mean more than the absolute minimum they can spend.

As for consumers resisting the rise of a base game price? Not only have I basically never heard of a company asking us or really trying - the exception being COD, which constantly sells for $10+ more than any other game around that I've seen, almost never goes on sale, and retains its base price for years beyond its shelf life. Doesn't seem to affect their sales. But not only that, the cost of distributing games has gone down so much thanks to Steam, GOG, etc, that there's a compelling argument that base prices should've gone the other way! (Seeing as printing and distributing actual physical media costs a fuckload more than asking Steam to host a digital copy.)
But really, the primary reason why game prices shouldn't have gone up is economics. 1) the wages of your average employee has barely moved for the last two decades...so how can you ask them to pay more? 2) games are now selling ten times as many copies as they used to - so unless demand outstrips supply, wherefore the price increase? 3) profits are soaring anyway.

So I don't buy that games are too cheap. At all. I think the publishers would very much like you to believe that. But last I checked, none of their executives were struggling to pay rent.

Of course games can and do make bank and absurd profits, that's not my point. I'm suggesting that they couldn't do that based on sales of a standalone, £40 nothing-added game as per even fifteen years ago. I think that's where we disagree. Yes, huge amounts of that budget go towards marketing, but, you know, without that marketing there may not be that increase in a customer base which you point out.

I fully agree that wage stagnation means the majority can't pay what I termed a fairer price (although wage stagnation in game development is offset by how many more developers are employed to produce big games now). But at the same time consumers want more and more from their AAA games. If a AAA now went back to producing a more modest, budget-sensible offering, I suspect it would bomb (not because of a downgrade in quality, but because it wouldn't meet today's expectations of what a AAA game is). Is this self-inflicted? There is certainly truth to that. Do some companies try to take advantage of their new pay systems? We've certainly seen that in the recent backlash against microtransactions. But that doesn't mean that that is how it started out, or that every company always operates in that way. I don't like crappy so-called DLCs, and I absolutely can't stand microtransactions, but in many cases (and this with smaller games too) I feel that the intent is to become profitABLE first, and after that make added profit. Perhaps you are right that a £40 major AAA game can be profitable just on that today, but I would be surprised. I would be happy to be proved wrong.

You make a point about these companies constantly shut down studios - well, that normally happens if a studio's output appears unprofitable and cannot be sustained in the long term. You seem to be suggesting that they should continue to run loss-making divisions because they have so much money built up - a good sentiment, but that's not how corporations work in any industry and the danger is that the loss turns into a major problem further down the line. Yes, there is certainly an issue with poor management and business process too, I make no bones about that. None of these points are mutually exclusive.

You also talk about quality which i explicitly left out of the conversation - I make no argument that games are 'better' because of these developments.

Your point seems to be, if I boil it down: "Capitalism *shrug*".

Which is all fine and dandy, but it is both unsustainable and detrimental to these companies in the long run. There has, to my knowledge, never been a period in time when major AAA releases (COD, Battlefield, Halo, Elder Scrolls, etc) were unable to make profit simply off their base price. These companies are worth BILLIONS. Which would be fine, if they paid their employees more accordingly, instead of trying to horde it all.
Destiny sold US $500 million worth of copies on DAY ONE of it launch - for reference, that is five times its cost to develop (145 million - noting that Activision's total investment was close to $500m but that includes things like the games engine, which is a 10+ year investment, not just game cost - and they still made bank in one day). GTAV sold one billion dollars in three days. COD: Ghosts did that on day one. That's not DLC, microtransactions, or whatever else. That's retail sales.

For the record - those studios aren't closed because they don't make money. It's because they don't make enough money. They make less than half a billion dollars on day one. Or, in plenty of cases, the big three never intended to keep them open. They purchased them for the IP they owned. Gut the staff, keep the stars, and throw the rest out with the garbage. Which is horrific for the industry.

Compare Hellblade. Universally praised for delivering AAA quality on an indie budget. It's entirely doable. The likes of Activision, EA, and Ubisoft just don't care. Hellblade made hella money for it's budget...and at a lower price point, to boot - but it didn't make stratospheric amounts of cash. And that's not good enough, apparently.

I, personally, can't condone that behaviour. It's 2007 Wall St bullshit and it needs to go. For the economy, for gaming, hell, just for the sake of having a modicum of morals and ethics and love of the work first, before worrying about whether a game makes $100 million in profit or $1 billion. Because that's what the difference is. It's NOT profit vs no profit. It's profit vs sickening amounts of profit. And all of it off the back of developers who are often worked into the ground to meet arbitrary deadlines.

£50 is still too much for a game if I know I'm gonna have to shell out money to see the actual ending of that game.

[Aptorian]

Speaking of worth and cost of development. Rockstar released a thank you note to all
the people involved in RDR2

https://www.rockstar...ption2/thankyou

According to excel there's 3023 people on that list. No way to know if these are actual workers or if they're including whole studios where only some people are connected to RDR.


Somebody on Resetera posted this:

Quote

Chinese media is reporting 2000 devs, 1000 motion capture artists and 700 voice actors. Total budget of over $800m.

http://gad.qq.com/ar...e/detail/287883

Assuming these numbers are correct... Holy Toledo. This is the Waterworld of video games only it's apparently already a succes.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 23 October 2018 - 05:19 PM

[Traveller]

All I see online at the moment is 'where's the map?', 'when's the map going to be leaked?' 'I NEED the MAP!!'

Wtf is wrong with people, they wait how ever many years for a team to create a dense and interesting environment to explore, and then they all want a fecking map to show them where everything is BEFORE the game is even released. That said, Rockstar have done a sterling job to get this far.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 23 October 2018 - 06:00 PM

[Malankazooie]

Alternative Goose, on 23 October 2018 - 05:07 PM, said:

Speaking of worth and cost of development. Rockstar released a thank you note to all
the people involved in RDR2

https://www.rockstar...ption2/thankyou

According to excel there's 3023 people on that list. No way to know if these are actual workers or if they're including whole studios where only some people are connected to RDR.


Somebody on Resetera posted this:

Quote

Chinese media is reporting 2000 devs, 1000 motion capture artists and 700 voice actors. Total budget of over $800m.

http://gad.qq.com/ar...e/detail/287883

Assuming these numbers are correct... Holy Toledo. This is the Waterworld of video games only it's apparently already a succes.

This article cites some similar stats: How the West Was Digitized The making of Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2

Quote

- The final script for Red Dead Redemption 2's main story was about 2,000 pages.

- Bringing the script to life meant 2,200 days of motion-capture work — compared with just five for Grand Theft Auto III — requiring 1,200 actors, all SAG-AFTRA, 700 of them with dialogue.

- 1,200 actors, all SAG-AFTRA, 700 of them with dialogue. "We're the biggest employers of actors in terms of numbers of anyone in New York, by miles," says Dan (Dan Houser)

- The finished game includes 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue.

- The result of all their labor, Dan says, is "this seamless, natural-feeling experience in a world that appears real, an interactive homage to the American rural experience. [It's] a vast four-dimensional mosaic in which the fourth dimension is time, in which the world unfolds around you, dependent on what you do."

[Aptorian]

Crazy stuff. I love the fact that Rockstar can afford to just pour money into a project like this because they know they can earn it all back tenfold.

All kinds of small video clips of gameplay leaking out on Reddit and Resetera now. Game looks phenomenal.

[Mentalist]

Traveller, on 23 October 2018 - 05:59 PM, said:

All I see online at the moment is 'where's the map?', 'when's the map going to be leaked?' 'I NEED the MAP!!'

Wtf is wrong with people, they wait how ever many years for a team to create a dense and interesting environment to explore, and then they all want a fecking map to show them where everything is BEFORE the game is even released. That said, Rockstar have done a sterling job to get this far.

According to eurogamer, the map already leaked.