While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
Man, imagine if movies or books charged you by the hour. Lord of the Rings would make bank!
Thing about a book (and a movie) is, that once it’s out, it’s done (99.99% done).
For a game like GTA Online (be it V or VI), there are ongoing server costs, massive content updates, support, all that jazz.
I’m not saying I support it, just that I understand
your understanding is misplaced; their ongoing costs are MASSIVELY offset by their in-app purchases already. to claim they need more is just greed.
Game companies make profits unrivaled by any other industry and all we hear is “it’s not economic to sell a game for 60 bucks.” Now there are microtransactions and those profits skyrocketet. Now even that is still not enough. It’s just Ridiculous.
Take 2 is playing a dangerous game betting the farm on a single property and then trying to come up with new ways to milk it. When it falls out of favor it is going to sink them.
It’s worked fine for blizzard and wow for the past 10+ years even though is a hollow shell of what it used to be.
I hate dollars per hour to determine how something is good value. I could sit and watch a 3-4 hour movie but if it’s a genre I dislike then I’ll probably not feel I got value out of it. Likewise if I buy a 70 quid game but it’s 15-20 hours and it’s got a great story, impressive visuals and solid mechanics then I’ll have got my money’s worth but if something is 70 quid and it’s filled with things that feel like a checklist to do then I’ll end up regretting the price that I paid.
It also means that companies that would release a tight and cohesive 15-hour game will instead release a jumbled sloppy episodic 150-hour mess to pad their pockets.
It would mean worse games coming out that cost more money
Ima sell my watered down soup in dollars per deciliter.
I don’t actually disagree with moving from the 60/70 USD standard, but instead I think big budget blockbuster studios should die off, and focus on making optimized, shorter, and more creative games.
Can I counteract that with “then maybe you should release finished products at the initial public release date”?
If video games were priced by hours of dev time, I could kind of agree (with the theory, in practice it doesn’t really make sense). But let’s be honest here - that’s not what he means at all.
Not only is it not what he means but this same asshole would probably force devs to add padded objectives just so he could claim it takes more hours to finish. The new GTA will have 1000 missions where you have to walk across the whole map to retrieve some object that needs to be walked back to the other side if this dick gets his way. It’ll be the first game in history where it takes 2 years to 100% it and costs $200 so it’s a steal - only $100 per year of gameplay!
For some reason I can’t see your answer on the post: despite us being both from lemmy.world and me being able to otherwise access your profile and see your posts and comments, the only way I can see it is in my notifications, not as an answer to my post. Anyway.
That’s why the original argument is inherently flawed: for the same price, I’d rather have 20 hours of carefully crafted content than 500 hours of AI generated fetch quests in a basic, procedurally generated open world from the latest version of the Ubisoft game framework. As a customer, I’m not buying playtime, I’m also buying the quality of that playtime.
This is also why we don’t pay for a movie, an album, or even a show or an exhibition by their duration.
I agree, as should salaries of employees. Every hour you produce something measurable you get paid. See how far that idea goes.
Executives are assholes and should not be listened to, ever.
That’s a terrible idea. You’d pay more than an entire paycheck just to play a typical JRPG which typically have 40+ hours of gameplay. I’m not paying $600 to play one game.
This is developers incrementally conditioning you to accept an even worse state of things for games. And if they follow through, I’ll pirate their shit and never give them a dime of my money again.
Stupid metric by some rich asshole who is solely focused on making more money.
Seriously I’m tired of all these gaming CEOs that don’t play games therefore are so out of touch. Guy is just another Kotick clone.
I read something like this and my immediate thought is “torches, pitchforks, guillotines.”
Returning to a feudal economy is a sensible idea, lighting with renewable materials, making hay while the sun shines and executing traitors is much more productive than playing games
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Oh God, Factorio will cost me my life savings
Oh shit… I thought the $/hr was a good idea until you mentioned Factorio.
I agree, that’s why i think Take Two owe me $23 because i finished GTAV in 37 hours.
Though i hope Wube, Bethesda, and Fromsoft won’t bill me for my playtime…
"breaking news: a czech man known only as kovarex has rocketed to the top of the most wealthy men in the world list. Legislation is currently being drafted to regulate the use of the drug ‘factorio’ with several legislators describing as ‘extremely addictive. Like, so addictive. Really guys.’ "
I played 3 GTAs, and I only enjoyed gta 2. They owe me money
Awesome proposal. Some indie games would suck me dry and I’d be paying 1/4 of the price for AAA releases! Is this the redistribution of wealth Marx has been talking about?
