Recent monetization of Video Games

[Dhrizzle]

I don't really understand your mentality: that's what a game demo is for. That's also what reviews are for.

Demo or not, good reviews or not, I would still rather pay £50 for a game and possibly £20-30 more for DLC than pay £70-80 straight off.

[stellvia]

They could just raise the price according to inflation, it's not rocket science. Nobody says it has to stay at 60 bucks for the whole thing, forever.

It's not that simple. While game budgets have not stayed the same, neither have sales. I'm not about to do the exact math, but it's at least 5x the size.

Diablo2 was the first AAA title to sell for $60 MSRP and that was in 2000. If we priced by inflation that would be approximately $90 USD. Yet a majority of these AAA titles are selling an incremental yearly upgrade for full price + a $50 season pass which already puts you over $90. Overall market sales are much much higher than they were back then as well. The top console sellers back then were barely cracking 1.5M copies. COD1-3 were all in that 1.5-2M range. COD4 (Modern Warfare) then saw a jump to around 5M units. Yet now they are saying 12M units in the first 3mos is "disappointing". FIFA18 is up to 16M units sold and it was barely selling 4M units just prior to Ultimate Team introduction in 2009... yet that is another title where they barely change anything then charge full price every year.

[PosPosPos]

It's not that simple. While game budgets have not stayed the same, neither have sales. I'm not about to do the exact math, but it's at least 5x the size.

Diablo2 was the first AAA title to sell for $60 MSRP and that was in 2000. If we priced by inflation that would be approximately $90 USD. Yet a majority of these AAA titles are selling an incremental yearly upgrade for full price + a $50 season pass which already puts you over $90. Overall market sales are much much higher than they were back then as well. The top console sellers back then were barely cracking 1.5M copies. COD1-3 were all in that 1.5-2M range. COD4 (Modern Warfare) then saw a jump to around 5M units. Yet now they are saying 12M units in the first 3mos is "disappointing". FIFA18 is up to 16M units sold and it was barely selling 4M units just prior to Ultimate Team introduction in 2009... yet that is another title where they barely change anything then charge full price every year.

It's not that simple because you took it out of context.

I was addressing the point about AAA titles that are trying to stay afloat on the so-called "gold standard of gaming pricing" of $60.

All I am saying is, there shouldn't be resistance on the part of these developers to not raise their price just because games of that standard were priced 60 bucks in the past.

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Demo or not, good reviews or not, I would still rather pay £50 for a game and possibly £20-30 more for DLC than pay £70-80 straight off.

I am not talking about DLCs along the lines of "hey you can pay 10 bucks for this new and utterly irrelevant skin", rather than those that add to the story and gameplay in a meaningful manner, like an expansion.

You are basically asking developers to go ahead and split the game up into different parts so you can pay an amount commensurate with the size of each part you do decide to play. On day one.

Which is ridiculous, and promotes predatory marketing practices like day one DLCs.

[Yunru]

AAA games are giving you less and less every year. And if you want this content they removed, you gota pay a lot of money.

Personaly i find this practices un-fair. And its also a bit false-advertising, as you only get like 10% of what you buy.

To translate it in real world:
You buy a icecream with chocolate. But that icecream doesnt look perfect. No no it needs a topping.
But them you remember that as a kid, that topping came on icecream free.
So you do fell scammed. Product is the same pretty much and the formula didnt change much. Maybe a kornet waffle araund the icecream got a visual upgrade.
(wich is the case of imporoved tehnology, that get cheaper to make those)
But in the end its the same icecream.

After being disapointed last summer with a ice-cream i visit another store. And behold, it get more for less. And that store wasnt over-advertised. While the store i got last year was.

Well the moral of the story is -- Do not trust adds, look araund the corner as you may find a better product. People who make a superior product usualy dont have much money to advertise and they are reliant of word to word and goodwill of a people.

[stellvia]

It's not that simple because you took it out of context.
I was addressing the point about AAA titles that are trying to stay afloat on the so-called "gold standard of gaming pricing" of $60.
All I am saying is, there shouldn't be resistance on the part of these developers to not raise their price just because games of that standard were priced 60 bucks in the past.

Unfortunately people aren't logical creatures. It's the reason why they won't play a subscription MMO that has a lot of content and polish and consistent updates, but will play a "free to play" game and accept a demonstrably worse experience while defending it being worse because "it's free to play" then proceed to plunk down way more than a subscription per month in cash shop items.

Also if they could afford $60 for 1M sales, I'd imagine they can still make good money selling it for that while having 10M sales even if the budget increased close to 10x. (And for the yearly games you sure as shit know they didn't)

[Dhrizzle]

I am not talking about DLCs along the lines of "hey you can pay 10 bucks for this new and utterly irrelevant skin", rather than those that add to the story and gameplay in a meaningful manner, like an expansion.

You are basically asking developers to go ahead and split the game up into different parts so you can pay an amount commensurate with the size of each part you do decide to play. On day one.

Which is ridiculous, and promotes predatory marketing practices like day one DLCs.

Expansions are hardly "recent" though, I mean Blizzard kept half of the WC3 story back for an expansion over 15 years ago. Day 1 DLC (in my experience) is a little different to that though as it tends to be additional bits of story, not a continuation or conclusion like WC3. It's still the same options though - would you rather pay £50 for a game with an option for an additional £20 side-story, £70 for the whole thing with no choice or £50 with no additional story whether or not you want it?

[Daedius]

It's not that simple because you took it out of context.

I was addressing the point about AAA titles that are trying to stay afloat on the so-called "gold standard of gaming pricing" of $60.

All I am saying is, there shouldn't be resistance on the part of these developers to not raise their price just because games of that standard were priced 60 bucks in the past.

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I am not talking about DLCs along the lines of "hey you can pay 10 bucks for this new and utterly irrelevant skin", rather than those that add to the story and gameplay in a meaningful manner, like an expansion.

You are basically asking developers to go ahead and split the game up into different parts so you can pay an amount commensurate with the size of each part you do decide to play. On day one.

Which is ridiculous, and promotes predatory marketing practices like day one DLCs.

Who knew I could agree with you. Wonders do happen!

[Rogalicus]

Expansions are hardly "recent" though, I mean Blizzard kept half of the WC3 story back for an expansion over 15 years ago.

By that logic, they kept half of WC2 story for BtDP. Level packs, mission packs and add-ons also started back in the 90s.

[Nize]

you are making up numbers

It was hypothetical not directly tied to experience numbers but to the idea of their conditioning. There was a reason I used the term "They'll nerf" rather than "They did nerf". There was a grander point there than just the experience numbers, which I don't really care all that much about, but moreso the practices they put in place.

[Daedius]

By that logic, they kept half of WC2 story for BtDP. Level packs, mission packs and add-ons also started back in the 90s.

Or even the cartridge era, with the piggyback feature like on Sonic&Knuckles.

[Dhrizzle]

By that logic, they kept half of WC2 story for BtDP. Level packs, mission packs and add-ons also started back in the 90s.

I wasn't totally sure about WC2, WC3/Frozen Throne and Diablo 2/Lord of Destruction were definite cases of the expansion finishing the story. Starcraft/Brood War and Diablo 3/Reaper of Souls I see differently as the base game definitely finished the story and the expansion was more like a sequel.

First add-on/mission pack I remember playing was the American Revolt disk for Syndicate which even used the same maps for the new levels, just with new missions.

[glowpipe]

You do realize that Blizzard just reduced the amount of time it takes to level right?

but it was never broken to begin with. They wouldn't need to adjust down if they never raised it in the first place.

And for op. Games has always been about the money, devs saying they do it for "the joy of making games and the passion" are outright lying. If they knew their game was liked but not earning them cash, they wouldn't have started the project. These preatory monetiziations work cause people buy them. Its only gonna get worse aslong as people keep buying them

[Sencha]

I wish base price was higher (like 80$) but no microtransaction bullshit in order to have quality games.

[Dhrizzle]

but it was never broken to begin with. They wouldn't need to adjust down if they never raised it in the first place.

And for op. Games has always been about the money, devs saying they do it for "the joy of making games and the passion" are outright lying. If they knew their game was liked but not earning them cash, they wouldn't have started the project. These preatory monetiziations work cause people buy them. Its only gonna get worse aslong as people keep buying them

Leveling in WoW is often adjusted because new expansions raise the level cap, originally we only had to get to 60 now it's double that. As well as XP changes there have also been adjustments to how long it takes to kill a mob in the world in order to reduce the time it takes to get to the XP cap.

All these changes lead to a situation where there was close to zero satisfaction in rapidly dispatching enemies and part way through a zone's story you would find yourself too high to benefit from the quests so you would have to go to a higher level zone (increasing the time you needed to spend traveling instead of leveling.) Recently Blizz changed things so zones within a certain band would change their levels to make sure they remain relevant, they also made mobs a bit harder to kill so you weren't just bouncing around one-shotting everything. Now they just need to tweak things so that the game remains satisfying to play without needing a prohibitive amount of time to level.

[SirBeef]

It's not that simple. While game budgets have not stayed the same, neither have sales. I'm not about to do the exact math, but it's at least 5x the size.

Diablo2 was the first AAA title to sell for $60 MSRP and that was in 2000. If we priced by inflation that would be approximately $90 USD. Yet a majority of these AAA titles are selling an incremental yearly upgrade for full price + a $50 season pass which already puts you over $90. Overall market sales are much much higher than they were back then as well. The top console sellers back then were barely cracking 1.5M copies. COD1-3 were all in that 1.5-2M range. COD4 (Modern Warfare) then saw a jump to around 5M units. Yet now they are saying 12M units in the first 3mos is "disappointing". FIFA18 is up to 16M units sold and it was barely selling 4M units just prior to Ultimate Team introduction in 2009... yet that is another title where they barely change anything then charge full price every year.

There were plenty of AAA games way before D2 that were priced at or above $60. I don't recall any NES games , but SimCity and FF6 on SNES were $79.99. There were plenty of others some not even AAA. But to think D2 was the first is absurd.

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AAA games are giving you less and less every year. And if you want this content they removed, you gota pay a lot of money.

Personaly i find this practices un-fair. And its also a bit false-advertising, as you only get like 10% of what you buy.

To translate it in real world:
You buy a icecream with chocolate. But that icecream doesnt look perfect. No no it needs a topping.
But them you remember that as a kid, that topping came on icecream free.
So you do fell scammed. Product is the same pretty much and the formula didnt change much. Maybe a kornet waffle araund the icecream got a visual upgrade.
(wich is the case of imporoved tehnology, that get cheaper to make those)
But in the end its the same icecream.

After being disapointed last summer with a ice-cream i visit another store. And behold, it get more for less. And that store wasnt over-advertised. While the store i got last year was.

Well the moral of the story is -- Do not trust adds, look araund the corner as you may find a better product. People who make a superior product usualy dont have much money to advertise and they are reliant of word to word and goodwill of a people.

Please don't act as if this is unique to gaming. Even today that ice cream shop us charging you for toppings. Just look at the "family" size bad of chips that they charge $5 for. It's the same size as the old bag or regular chips that were $3 bucks.

[Poppincaps]

but it was never broken to begin with. They wouldn't need to adjust down if they never raised it in the first place.

And for op. Games has always been about the money, devs saying they do it for "the joy of making games and the passion" are outright lying. If they knew their game was liked but not earning them cash, they wouldn't have started the project. These preatory monetiziations work cause people buy them. Its only gonna get worse aslong as people keep buying them

Except people for years have been asking for them to make leveling a more meaningful experience. They finally do it, and now everyone criticizes them for incentivizing character boosts (which if they truly wanted to do that they wouldn't make them 60 dollars). Leveling is in a perfectly fine place right now. I helped a friend level to 120 so he could get ready before BoD and raid with me and it took him like 3 days of 8-10 hour sessions to get to level 120.

As for your second paragraph... you're once again talking about something you know nothing about. Game devs make less money than their colleagues in other fields. A software engineer at google is gonna make more than a software engineer at Rockstar or Blizzard. Game Dev work is long, very hard, and takes a huge toll on your personal life. So why do they do it? Because they're passionate about it. Wanna know how I know that? I'm a game dev.

[stellvia]

There were plenty of AAA games way before D2 that were priced at or above $60. I don't recall any NES games , but SimCity and FF6 on SNES were $79.99. There were plenty of others some not even AAA. But to think D2 was the first is absurd.

I should have qualified that part with "for PC". Prior to that the standard MSRP was $49.99
Yes I'm aware SNES and such were often priced higher for premium titles, but that was a different market at the time and consoles didn't have any agreed upon standard price for games yet like PC had already settled upon.

[Volitar]

Yeah I don't really play any new triple a games anymore, instead of being a game it's a how can I milk you for more money simulator. There is gonna be a crash sooner or later as more and more people get fed up with the bullshit.

[Halicia]

Please don't act as if this is unique to gaming. Even today that ice cream shop us charging you for toppings. Just look at the "family" size bad of chips that they charge $5 for. It's the same size as the old bag or regular chips that were $3 bucks.

That's not business though, that's inflation. When a dollar is only worth fifty cents, everything's going to cost twice as much.

[SirBeef]

That's not business though, that's inflation. When a dollar is only worth fifty cents, everything's going to cost twice as much.

I'm not talking about inflation and I am quite aware of what it does. The shrank the size of the family size bags to the size of normal bags and kept them the same price. Giving less for more.