One way to get out of the video-game industry funk is to recognize that players aren’t spending $70 on most games
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Become a patient gamer. This winter sale, I bought probably 25 games totaling around 30 dollars. It’s enough to keep me busy for the next 5 years.
This… Put games on your wishlist, set your wishlist to only show sales, and sort by price. Then only buy games from that list when they go on a significant sale. Plenty of decent games out there regularly go for $5-10 or less. With very few exceptions I refuse to pay more than $20-30 for a game and, even then, only if they’re like 50% off and not likely to come down.
Also… stop pre-ordering games. They’ll still be there when they do go on sale. You don’t need to play them as soon as they come out. Conquer that FOMO shit and develop some integrity.
stop pre-ordering games. They’ll still be there when they do go on sale.
Yeah but then I wouldn’t get the sick Cardi B Wet Ass Pussy character skin 😮💨
Yep. I’ve been waiting a half a year to get the Dark Souls franchise. It has paid off well.
I set a rule not to buy any game util i finish what I already have. I have not bought anything for the last two years. Any game that interest me is going to my wishlist for now.
You don’t even have to be that patient these days. I got Arc Raiders 3 weeks after release for 60% off, it was like $18.
Games should be cheaper to make, too.
See, that’s the conundrum: big companies make huge investments and want a ROI. They dump 100+ million dollars on a game with a team that’s over 200 people and expect 10x money back.
Shit has ballooned out of control in the corporate world and Indies have to fight tooth and nail against each other, bigger players, shovelware and older titles
How much of that money goes into marketing, and executive pay checks?
Well, many complex games have no budget on graphics, that’s why you can have one-man army dev making a monster of a game like Aurora 4x.
Yeah, and then the game made by a small team ends up being much more successful.
the game made by a small team ends up being much more successful
More successfull relatively to the money spent, but not overall.
Gotta keep in mind that there are like a thousand other indie games released for every Hollow Knight or Stardew Valley. Survivor bias or something
I haven’t spent more than $30ish bucks on a game since … 2013?? I think the last game I paid full price for was gta5 on ps3
Do y’all not know about the bargain bin and steam sales…? Is everyone so up to date on their backlog you can’t wait a few months for that price to drop to 50%
It doesn’t take long, Doom the dark ages has already hit that discount a few times iirc
My friend, let me tell you about this thing called “Pre-order.”
There are plenty of “gotta have it first” people out there. Doesn’t matter if it’s a new phone, game, see a movie on opening day, whatever. Plenty of gamers want to be in Alpha and Beta tests (which FML they do nothing but bitch about as being unplayable) and shell out money for skins and early upgrades or level up packs. Vloggers and tiktokkers too or whatever who want to pull in the views as they play the new games.
These are the people the studios cater to. Not the patient gamers who wait for the product to go on sale 90 days down the road after the initial rush is over.
So as long as the people in the first paragraph exist that’s what the studios will charge.
The $60/$70 price tag on video games from major makers is an entry fee, it doesn’t get you the full game anymore. You have to pay for luxury editions, expansions, microtransactions of some sort, battle pass. It’s cheaper to start a tabletop miniature army than play video games now.
Is it? What game requires any of that? Even the most microtransation heavy games lile NBA 2k and Fifa are perfectly playable without micro transactions. You’ll still get a top team you’ll still get 100s of hours out of it.
Paying for an expansion to a game you like doesn’t seem like it belongs that list. DLC from the Souls games (Bloodborne included) adds a ton to its respective base games.
There are examples that I can excuse. I’m more of looking at the likes of Destiny 2 or World of Warcraft.
Great news!
They are!
… Just typically not the overproduced and overpriced corpo ones.
Wanna drive down AAA game prices?
Stop paying them!
Support your favorite indie or AA game today!
Don’t like games with predatory microtransactions?
You’ll never believe this, but you can also just stop playing games with them!
Get all your friends onboard with the plan, fight the man!
I just played Escape from Ever After. Every bit as good and polished as the old Paper Mario games. $25. They cost $50-$65 back then.
… I’ve never even heard of it.
But I do love the old paper mario games!
So wow, now we have a real life example of actual organic word of mouth spread of a game, as opposed to just being a passive advertisement sponge!
They become cheap if you’re patient enough.
Except Nintendo. And the mentality is spreading, I’ve never seen sekiro below $40
Have you met our lord and saviour, retro gaming?
And the Son, Emulation?
Or the step brother, piracy?
The only problem is too much choice!
Seriously, when you’ve got thousands of ROMs and vintage PC games to choose from, it’s really difficult to land on one to play right now!
I went down a rabbit hole of emulation last year. I got PCSX2 and tons of games like Ratchet & Clank, Tak 1-3, Jak 1-X, the Sly series, Spider-Man 2, and so many others. I spent a good month and a half just playing old PS2 games and I had an absolute blast
Nice! I’ve been gradually playing through a bunch of NES classics: Faxanadu, Dragon Warrior, Blaster Master, Fire Emblem. The next game I want to go through is Castlevania 1 and then Ultima IV after that!
Or live with AA and indie games like many of us do, at tell AAA publishers to get fucked by not spending money on their live-service crap.
Every time - every single time - I’ve purchased a major AAA game anywhere close to the release window in the past 10 years, it’s been a mistake. Pay a shitload more for a half baked, buggy, unfinished mess.
At this point I just don’t buy big time releases within 6 months of launch. Even when I’m certain of the game itself, it just ends up being a mistake.
I rarely buy games on release. Recently, ghost of yotei. While I enjoyed the hell out of it, it was shorter than I would have liked and had a very predictable ending. I didn’t feel burned, but I should have waited. The other was the new dragon age. I didn’t pay full price but it was still a lot and I knew within a few hours that it was going to be ass. I pushed through for a few more hours but the soulless writing and lack of weight behind conversations turned me off. I decided to forget it, and play inquisition yet again. Lastly there was forbidden West that I got with my ps5 which was a gift. Don’t regret that one, though it’s not without its flaws. None of them, however, did I find buggy or unplayable.
Its the best way. Its cheaper, you have plenty of user reviews to check first, and you get a completed game, without bugs.
Just don’t buy Triple A titles.
The last “AAA” title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)
There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.
The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.
Retail price doesn’t even matter anyways. It’s more a placeholder to make sales seem more impressive with X% off to make people feel they are getting a bargain.
Yeah but the IMPERATIVE IS ON US to make sure that the industry (AAA, AA & Indie) are on their best behaviour.
Like as an example, a game that looks like it would run on potato PC should run on one
Or do not allow a game to cross the recommended requirement of 8 GB ram etc…
Fuck $70+ games.
Where are these statistics from?
SteamDB.
Thanks! That’s a really neat link
Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.
For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:
- Broken at launch
- Unoptimized/framegen crutch
- Basic features missing
- Nickle and dimed to all hell
Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.
BUT, that doesn’t mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a “steal” or “bargain” either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.
If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.
A fifth thing for your list: formulaic and predictable af
Why are 90% of AAA games a dude with a gun? How many iterations of dude with a gun can we possibly get?
Check out ITAD then… lots of ways to make sure you get stuff super cheap.
Though it’s really confusing to set up.
Btw, do i have to manually unsubscribe games i unsubscribed/bought on Steam and GoG? Synch is set up.
If you’re doing sync, you can tell it to remove items from your waitlist when they are added to collection. It won’t work retroactively, but it will do it going forward.
There are plenty of cheaper games out there. Go on whatever virtual store and check out current sales, and simple games made by small studios.
Cult of the Lamb, Spiritfarer, My Time at Portia, The Last Campfire, Arise: A Simple Story and What Remains of Edith Finch are all worth checking out.
