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ARE GAMES TOO EXPENSIVE? - by Mr Biffo

28/2/2016

28 Comments

 
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Games are cheaper than they used to be. That's a simple fact of economics. 

Yet there seems to be something of a debate raging right now about the cost of games, particularly those which stem from the indie scene.

​On Steam, or the PlayStation and Xbox stores, there's a definite trend towards shorter, sweeter experiences. More concentrated doses of story and/or gameplay. 

Some have argued that a game such as Superhot - currently £16.19 on Steam - is too much to pay, when the main story mode can be finished in around two hours. If you're a super-sizing fatpig like I am, £16.19 roughly equates to two trips to Burger King. 

I can't quite wrap my head around this grumbling, given that there's a lot of extra content in Superhot... not to mention that the developers have promised free updates in the months to come. Also, given that it's one of the cleverest, most original, first-person shooters in living memory, it manages the trick of sticking in the memory. What's to complain about there? Why are people so stupid?

Oh. Hang on. Now my brain is telling me that they're not...

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CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN
Games are cheaper than they used to be. Accounting for inflation, the cost has dropped significantly in the last couple of decades.

Even ignoring inflation, and just looking at the price stickers, big games aren't that much more than they were 20 years ago. I remember when Strider was released for the Mega Drive. It was £40, and I couldn't afford it.​

I only managed to get it eventually, by asking for it as a leaving present from my job at Ladbrokes. They also bought me a nasal hair trimmer, a see-through pocket raincoat, and a spy listening device; there's my life in a nutshell right there.

You can pick up the brand new Far Cry Primal now for around £40. On paper, that's not a bad deal: there's a ton of content in Primal - do everything, and it'll last you far longer than it took to play through Strider - and the budget was doubtlessly far higher than Strider's was. 

That's not to say that, even in today's money, £40 isn't a lot. Of course it is, when most of us are trying to stretch one pay-packet to the next. However, it feels like the market as a whole has evolved to meet what people are willing to pay: the price of most big games drops sharply in the months after release - Fallout 4, for instance, is just half the price it was when it was released before Christmas. £20 for the almost-new Fallout 4? That's a bargain by anybody's standards.

Yet it seems that most, on the whole, are fine with the price of AAA games. It's the indies who seem to be getting the kicking; those games created by small teams, working on - often - more idiosyncratic, sometimes crowdfunded, projects.

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FAIR PLAY TO YOU
Back in 2002, the Fair Play Campaign - backed by, among others, Digitiser columnist Stuart Campbell - argued that games were too expensive. Somewhat inevitably, the industry fought back furiously.

Absurdly, there were even journos who came out to attack Fair Play - the people who you would've thought would be on the side of the customer. I remember at the time being baffled, until I remembered the cosy relationship I'd witnessed between many games journalists and PR reps.

It has been some years since the spectre of games-costing-too-much has risen its head - in part, I wonder if the industry's excessive response to Fair Play discouraged others from keeping the pressure on - and it seems only now that it's coming back. 

I just wonder what's going on.

As well as Superhot, the likes of Firewatch (£14.99), and That Dragon, Cancer (£10.99) have also come in for stick over their price. Yes, both of those can be played through in a few hours... but they'll undoubtedly come down in price over the coming months. You don't have to buy something upon the day of release. It could be likened to the way books come out in hardback before the lower-priced soft back edition. Throw in 3D glasses, and the price is similarly comparable to a cinema trip (extortionate popcorn notwithstanding).

I watched that Ron Howard movie, In The Heart of The Sea last night: I bought it for $14.99 on Apple TV in lieu of there being anything else we fancied watching... and regretted it. Nice whales, man, but it was an instantly forgettable experience. Firewatch and Superhot have the potential to linger and resonate, whereas I can barely remember a thing about Call of Duty: BLOPS III.

The indie scene feels like the only area of gaming where innovation is happening. If you're not willing to support a vital outlet experimentation - or, worse, complain about it, like some prissy malcontent - then what are even you doing playing games? What are you in it for?

I'm hoping that, eventually, the rest of the industry will wake up to what we're getting from the indie scene, and start embracing some of that innovation. We need it; AAA games have begun to stagnate. 

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NOBODY IS WHAT?
Nobody is wrong for thinking games are too expensive: we all value different things. What one person is willing to spend money on is different to the next.

Plus, we all have different levels of disposable income. Mix those together, and no two people are necessarily going to think the same when it comes to spending money on a video game.

For my money, broadly speaking... I don't think games are too expensive anymore. When it comes to indie games - depending on the game - I'd rather pay £15 for something that I was going to love while it lasts, than £5 on something that is a chore from beginning to end.

And the big triple-AAA games are, overall, better at giving you bang for your buck. Destiny is a case in point. It might not be a game I'm particularly fond of, but you can't deny you get your money's worth: far in excess of the equivalent eight hours you'd get from four trips to the cinema. Admittedly, I tend to value a single player experience over online play, but that's because I'm different to you. 

Plus, when you consider game budgets, and team sizes, £40 seems relatively reasonable. Much more than it did 15+ years ago. Frankly, when I think back to price of Strider it's astonishing that there wasn't more of an outcry about it back then from the games journos of the day. And they have to gall to whinge about ethics in games journalism in 2016! It was far worse back then. Much as I'd like everything to cost 1p, sadly it doesn't. Money is society's way of showing how much we think a thing is worth.

So... in short... while I want to tell people to shut-up complaining about the price of Superhot and Firewatch, and get a grip... the reality is, if they find the price too high, then the price is too high for them. They don't have to buy it, and won't, whereas plenty of other people will. I might be of the opinion that they'd be missing out, but they might be of the opinion that I'm some bourgeois ponce, stuffing my pouting face with the gaming equivalent of beluga caviar.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
REVIEW: SUPERHOT (PC, MAC)
PANEL 4: ETHICS, MAN - BY MR BIFFO
REVIEWING GAMES CAN HURT - BY MR BIFF
28 Comments
Adam
28/2/2016 03:14:36 pm

I remember paying a ridiculous £50 for Star Wars on the NES (i may actually have got it for a further fiver off with a Dixons coupon). I think i only got about ten hours of play out of it, which seemed like really poor value compared to something like Super Mario 3. I never paid full whack for a game after that. In truth i don't really buy games at all these days but they often seem to be different prices now, whereas they all used to be fairly fixed - NES games were mostly £39.99, Atari VCS games were mostly £29.99 etc. Maybe that's part of the the problem - people have gotten used to buying addictive but simplistic games for 99p, so a game that retails for £40 or £50 suddenly looks over-priced. Particularly when you now don't even get a nice chunky cartridge for your money...

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Adam
28/2/2016 03:16:22 pm

I've just re-read my comment and it looks slightly like the ramblings of an old man. Sorry about that. Nurse!

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Euphemia
28/2/2016 03:32:49 pm

Compounding the perceived over-pricing of a new game is that it's often a "start-up" cost. With games like Destiny etc. you'll be spending often close to double that initial investment in order to keep playing a relevant version. This does feel cynical, although I believe that developers do deserve to get paid for their work, but when it's part of a deliberate mechanic to gouge players that little bit more it leaves a very funny taste in the mouth. Like sailor sauce.

I guess it's all relative in terms of Value. I'm still returning to The Phantom Pain months after it arrived, which makes Ground Zeroes (which cost half the price) even more of a slap in the funions. Half price for a souped-up Demo? Arseholes.

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Omniro
28/2/2016 05:29:55 pm

It's weird how many people judge a game's worth based upon the length of its story. Recently, I have become less and less interested in the stories of games and more interested in their gameplay, to the extent that I'm sometimes irritated at having to sit through cutscenes and whatnot. Unless the story is exceptional, which is quite rare in games, I'd rather just get on with playing.

In Superhot, the potential for gameplay (which is its main appeal), goes way beyond just the story mode. The idea that people would stop playing it entirely once they've finished the story is bizarre. The story in Diablo III doesn't last very long, but people continue to play it for months and months once they've completed it.

But I do agree that many games are too expensive, especially when you see downloadable versions being sold at higher prices than physical copies. That makes absolutely no sense. Plus, the age old irritation of UK prices being higher than US prices.

I watched an old episode of Gamesmaster recently, and my delight upon witnessing the distorted digital "space face" of Patrick Moore was contrasted sharply with the shock of the astonishing prices of the games back then. £50 for "Shaq Fu"!!? In 1994!?!!

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Dirtyolddingus
28/2/2016 07:47:02 pm

I always find it hard to understand the complaint of games being too expensive. So superhot can be finished in 2 hours? Even if you played it once that's £8 a hour. Not bad value compared with other entertainment. Firewatch was a great 4 or 5 hours. Ok dodgy ending but so glad I played it. Easy worth £15.
The amount of time and resources put in game development is huge, I'm amazed games aren't more.
Ok destiny is much maligned but I have enjoyed it over a time and bet I have paid literally pennies per hour to play. Same with the souls games.
Over the years I have paid £70 for snes street fighter, £65 for megadrive for Mortal Kombat and so on. Anyone remember £10 - £12.99 for a Ultimate game and let's be honest most of those were unplayable.
Even ventured into neo geo land for a bit. Ok that's undone the argument,they were too expensive.
In general now I believe a good game gives fantastic value for money. If you don't, just wait a few weeks for the price drop.

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MrDrinks
28/2/2016 07:52:04 pm

I don't feel like I paid too much for Super Hot because I'm having so much fun with it, 4 hours worth so far and I haven't even finished the main missions. I recently bought Rise of the Tomb Raider for about £30 and have only put about 30 minutes into it, instead spending most of my gaming time playing One Finger Death Punch which I got for about £1.50. I wouldn't compare the two games though, they're obviously aimed at a totally different type of gamer but even though I've still to get into Tomb Raider properly I feel like £30 was a good price.

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Chris
28/2/2016 08:37:59 pm

Digital downloads are too expensive for the most part. I think this is because there's no competition (on consoles). If I want to buy a physical copy I can go to Game, Amazon or countless other places. If I want a digital one I can go to.. um... The PlayStation store? Where it is full price?

Console games in the 1990s were ludicrous prices. I didn't own a console back then, but I'd heard stories of games costing fifty or sixty of your English Pounds. I could rarely afford a full price Amiga game at £24.99, and (earlier in the 90s) even a budget Spectrum title at £3.99 was a struggle.

Games haven't actually increased in price that much. I tend to wait until the prices reduce to about £30, as £40 sounds like a bit much. But... if you think about the amount of enjoyment you get out of it, £40 isn't much really. Some people pay more than that every month for Sky, in order to watch a load of sweaty guys kick a ball around in a muddy field for 90 minutes. It depends what your priorities are.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
28/2/2016 08:44:08 pm

I have real difficulty with the idea that an amazing two hours is a worse buy than a merely decent 10 hours. Assassin's Creed at least twice was the length of Portal 2 (far more if you collected all the flags), but I know which one I'd rather replay. Maybe it's because I'm at a point in my life where games feel too long because I have other stuff to do, but I'd rather pay somewhere up to £20 for a few great hours than £40 for 700 hours of grinding on Destiny or something.

I'm not defending mediocre short games like The Order, but when a game is short but great, it really cheapens the medium to prioritise play length over quality of experience.

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Cheapy
28/2/2016 09:41:07 pm

Cripes. I fear my slightly ranting comment in the last update encouraged you to spend personal time writing about the subject. My apologies, good sir.

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Mr Biffo
29/2/2016 04:29:59 pm

Partly, sir! But also comments on Twitter and elsewhere. I thought it was something worth debating. So... thank you.

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Hamptonoid
28/2/2016 10:04:07 pm

Yeah....but....I spent 15 quid on Brothers - a brilliant game, which I enjoyed muchly. 2 days later, the game is finished, and I have nothing new to play and can't justify spending another 15 quid.

Dunno. I mean, I get it - independent yadda yadda - but for me there has to be a better balance.

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ThatsNoMoon
29/2/2016 01:30:27 am

Some of the best ongoing support I have seen has been for games like FTL, Pillars of Eternity, Shadowrun and other such "indie" titles. I fully expect this game to continue the trend.

Sadly, I'm not sure what smaller devs can do to make it clear they are the good guys when the big publishers are doing their best to erode consumer trust.

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Damon link
29/2/2016 05:17:12 am

I had a talk about DLC with one of my friends who works in the game biz. We were wondering why people never seemed to complain much about the full-price expansion packs of yore but complain now about $5 al la carte DLC where you can buy just the content you want just at the time you want it.

Our conclusion came that the younger people in gaming have very limited money and often have to ask their parents for money or to use the credit card. This means that for them it isn't a $20 purchase it's weeks of asking mom to buy it only to have it over that quickly. There's an invisible labor expense added in there for people who can't just say "sure why not" when they want a game.

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ponk
29/2/2016 07:07:06 am

Pricing your game too high will lose far more money by lost sales than will ever be gained by the hike. Besieged, a similarly featured, short game is a great example of how to do it right. It was in the top 10 most played games on steam for around a month at it's release price of £6. Superhot is currently at number 87, which means it's enjoying a minute fraction of Besieged's sales.

Whether it's greed, shortsightedness or misreading the market, it's a stupid decision.

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Old Red link
29/2/2016 11:04:37 am

I find being a generation behind solves this problem. Also, buying games on release through steam seems absurd to me, as the prices always drop to pennies. There's nothing I hate more than spending £20+ on a digital game and then seeing it for £1.79 the next day...well...except for coriander. Coriander can do one.

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Stoo
29/2/2016 11:35:52 am

Agreed about being a generation behind. I often buy the AAA games of a few years ago for about £10 on Steam.

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Stoo
29/2/2016 11:37:44 am

Also I used to think Coriander tasted like soap, but somehow I got used to it.

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Voodoo76
29/2/2016 04:36:56 pm

Completely agree about coriander, that stuff needs wiping out.

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Superbeast 37
29/2/2016 11:41:55 am

Picture the scene. It is an overcast but freezing cold afternoon in late December 1992. I'd acquired some extra tips on my paper round in the few days after Christmas and cunningly hitched a lift with my parents when they went to Asda to grab some shopping.

I sprint across a dual carriageway from Asda's car park to the SWEB store (a bit like Dixons) with my hands in my pockets to stop the biting wind from turning them blue. Being mid-winter it is already starting to get dark.

I'd gone there to see if they had Blazing Skies for my newly purchased SNES as my brother's friend had recommended it. Fortunately for me, they didn't have Blazing Skies but they did have FZERO running on a display machine in the store and I was so impressed I bought that instead!

It cost me £45 and I still have the receipt to this day! That seemed pretty pricey at the time. As I'd come from a Speccy and C64, I was used to paying £3.99 for budget games in WH Smith and only on rare occasions could I treat myself to the extravagance of one of the full-price "ten quid games". I'd always be amazed at the Amiga and ST games on the shelves in their giant boxes with a price tag of £24.99.

Why the big deal? Because that moment in Dec 92 was a high water mark in my life. The most I ever payed for a game in both real terms and pure monetary terms.

In today's money that £45 for FZERO is a staggering £85. Or if it were the equivalent price of what "generation-entitlement" are whining about today, I'd have only paid £24!

You could technically speaking "finish" the entire game and see all the tracks in under an hour with the replay value coming from higher difficulties that rewarded you with a slightly different ending.

Even ignoring inflation, a quarter of a century later and in pure monetary terms, £45 is still the most I've ever spent on a game. Although as I say, if prices had remained static I'd be paying £85.

If I buy Far Cry Primal on PC tomorrow, it will be £25 from Cdkeys. That is on release-day of course. FZERO must have been out a good six months when I bought it. In six months time Far Cry Primal will be £10.

So in real terms that's £85 versus £10.

Granted I do to this day occasionally have a blast on FZERO on an emulator. How many people will be playing Far Cry Primal a quarter of a century from now!

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Damon link
1/3/2016 01:12:50 am

You bring up replay value... one thing to note is a lot of games now are becoming narrative-based. While I like a book and I may re-read it a few times... I'm not looking to re-read it back-to-back.

While I like a film I may watch it a few times but (with one exception) not normally back to back.

So you spend, say $35 on a game (roughly £25 based on google) you play it for a few hours then you've finished the story you had fun but... then what? You're not going to want to re-play the narrative again right away.

F-Zero is not narrative-based, the idea is to keep making the game harder until you finish it on the highest difficulty. In theory Hexen can be finished in about 40 minutes if you know what you're doing... but the replay value comes from putting it on that harder setting and going again. The fun isn't from a narrative it's from the actual gameplay creating an interactive experience you want to do again. Rather than a story you might want to hear again, eventually.

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Greg
29/2/2016 03:15:51 pm

thepriceofgamesisTOODAMNHIGH.jpg

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Greg
29/2/2016 03:36:49 pm

I think there is some validity pricing complaints, especially when it comes to "interactive fiction" titles like Firewatch, Her Story et al, but, in my mind, most of those are still a pretty decent value, especially if the story is worthwhile. But for those who feel these titles are asking too much, there are other ways to get to play them, if they so choose, I suppose. Yay free market capitalism! ;)

Indie games that aren't in that interactive fiction genre, like The Binding of Isaac or Spelunky, always seem to give excellent value. I've got close to 200 hours of play into BoI, and I've barely scratched the surface of the game. Pretty good value for my $9.99 USD, I'd say.

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Damon link
1/3/2016 07:06:56 am

That the thing - most actual GAMES are pretty fairly priced but the interactive fiction games don't have as much replay value and not really much immediate replay vale.

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Picston Shottle
29/2/2016 03:39:07 pm

Most of my games come from Games With Gold, or Deals With Gold on Xbox. I'm not too fussed about waiting to play a game since I don't play online (other than Destiny - but only PvE not PvP cos I have no mates) so it's not an issue having to wait for a few months to play a game. And, being a real life grown up with with a wife who'd much prefer I mow the lawn/walk the dog/take care of the baby rather than arse about playing video games (even though I tell her it is probably a good way to avoid going senile and her having to spoon feed me) it doesn't matter if I'm a few years late in playing a game. I have countless games that I haven't even played, and the number grows weekly. So in terms of value for money, I'm well up on the deal! But is 20 bucks too much? Nah. Indie developers have to earn a living. they make games to make a living. They're not struggling artists who are willing to starve for their art. They have mortgages and kids and cars and stuff to pay for, so why should they be on the bread line just because AAA developers with their enormous marketing budgets, and cheapskates like me, devalue their product?

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Acid Arrow
29/2/2016 10:55:15 pm

Christ on a bike, I remember saving up my money and paying £8.99 for Cabal on the Spectrum. Now this was in about 1989 and I earned no money apart from what I found on the floor and won from passing my 11+.

Overall it was a disappointment of course, and when I think about what games offer for equivalent money now I hold my head in my hands and weep bitter tears of resentment.

I would say though that I balked at spending 16.19 on Superhot even though I had previously spunked about 15 quid on 3 pints only that day. Funny how your mind works eh?

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Dirty Barry
1/3/2016 04:58:58 pm

I reckon the Indie guys have their pricing about right.

However, £50 for a new release seems steep to me and always has done. £70 for street fighter 2 Turbo on the snes!

Surely the right price for a new game should be set at just a little more than a blue ray (say £20 - £24.99). Digital download versions should be at least £5 less than that. Many more people would buy on release, so everyone would still make a profithealthy profit. I'm assuming once the cost of making the game is spent, it doesn't cost much to print a disc. Costs even less to fire all the ones, zeros and C plusses into my internet box.

(Just to clarify, I know nothing about the precise economics of all this, just saying what I would like to see price wise)

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Damon link
1/3/2016 10:32:23 pm

Printing discs is surprisingly expensive, even in this day and age.

I like a lot of indie bands who has issues doing physical releases because it's difficult to find a printer who will make a $25 album cost-effective if they print and sell under 5,000. And that's for a labor-of-love can-we-break-even release.

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Bobbi
1/3/2016 08:28:56 pm

As said in the article, the thing that undoes any complaint is the fact you don't have to buy any game. If the price is too high for you personally, then wait. Super Hot is not life saving medication being cruelly held to ransome. It's a video game, and it's only £17.

For me that is actually too high. Not because I don't think the devs deserve the money for the work they've put in, they probably deserve more. It's not even the length of the game vs price. It's the knowledge of how I hate almost every game I play and the chances of me liking it are so slim I won't pay full price. Even when I buy stuff for £2 on a sale I end up not even bothering to play it. The point is, what is the game in question worth to YOU.

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