I’m so glad I haven’t bought an EA game since Battlefield 1942.
Ok but hear me out, devil’s advocate, gaming is and has been one of the cheapest forms of entertainment for a long time, and production costs have increased significantly.
I agree with the first part (not that it should mean they can just extract more money out of us), but the second part is something I simply don’t believe.
Don’t get me wrong, I know budgets have increased, but the dev cost definitely didn’t by remotely the same amount. Devs wages are pretty stagnant since the initial silicon Valley boom and new tools at our disposal have made it a lot easier to create games, be it for indi devs or the corporate giants. Sure, graphics got fancier, but so did the readily aviable stock assets. High end work stations cost maybe a bit more, but they are a drop in the bucket in the 100+ million budgets of today.
What has increased on the other hand is the amount of executives/managers and their wages. In addition to that marketing has gone up a lot, probably over half of most budgets go there. The growing corporate overhead with its archaic structures also eats up a lot.
If we go purely by dev cost, prices should go down since the overall profit would increase with the greater amount of players. Everything else is corporate overlords throwing shitloads of money at a mediocre game to make it seem worth something.
Market size has also gone up. 30 years ago and selling a million copies is mind-blowing. Today it’s on the lower end of big game launch. Lower profit per unit, but many more units sold which really helps balance out the difference.
Have production costs increased or has marketing/publishing costs gone up dramatically as gaming attempts to get a greater demographic and introduce predatory monetisation methods? Tools and techniques for game development surely improve over time making development easier and more cost effective.
Can’t wait for nobody to understand ads in old video games when they’re being played years later.
It also always reminds me of this: https://piped.video/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
There is literally no reason to hardcode the ads in the game. They need a placeholder that will show ads fetched from an API, like Google ads. The ads will always be up to date and targeted
There is literally no reason to hardcode the ads in the game. They need a placeholder that will show ads fetched from an API, like Google ads. The ads will always be up to date and targeted
Bold of you to assume the games will even be available to play years later.
Because DRM mechanisms.
Or because the servers went offline or the company didn’t bother to keep the source code. A few years ago, there was a really bad remaster of one of the GTA games where it turned out they used the mobile version of the game as the source code because Rockstar hadn’t bothered to keep a copy of the game. There was another time where it turned out that the copy used for a remaster of a game was a cracked version of the game, and people could tell because they hadn’t even bothered to remove the cracker’s logo. It’s estimated that over 50% of games are now gone forever because companies just don’t bother to preserve copies of the source code.
Hence all games should only work while online to keep commercials up to date and measure user interaction…, I mean, to provide the best user experience possible. /s
There is literally no reason to hardcode the ads in the game. They need a placeholder that will show ads fetched from an API, like Google ads. The ads will always be up to date and targeted
Their games should be free at this point
.
Indie games, FromSoft, and larian ftw.
Imagine new patches for old games with this shit.
Billboard ads? Shitty but ehh not that bad overall. In game ads over radio or video? Nah miss me on that.
It’s the implementation that will probably annoy me the most. If the ingame radio station in GTA tried to sell me coke or Pepsi I probably wouldn’t even notice since it fits in with the world. But knowing EA they will probably put them in as additional loading screen that you can’t skip.
Great games are cheaper than ever. If you buy into those only trying to extract as much money from you as possible, that’s on you
hear hear. best games i play are significantly cheaper than 60 bucks, and are compete packages.
its almost like the rate of profit is falling, forcing capitalists to find new ways to exploit everything and everyone around them…
I’m not at all defending advertisements because, like every single person on earth, I hate them. However, the constant complaint that ~games are expensive~ is more and more becoming absolutely out of touch. Considering how complex modern games are from a software standpoint, they are fucking cheap as hell. $60 for (generally speaking) 40+ hours of entertainment is a goddamn bargain, not to mention they’ve mostly been priced the same for the better part of two decades. Y’all realize actual people make these things right? People who need to be paid for the work they do? Of all the absolute shit that happens behind the scenes and in plain daylight in the gaming industry, I think we can find better things to bitch about than the price of games.
You realize that it’s much easier now to make a game than it was two decades ago (see other comment)? That digital platforms make it more accessible for buyers to get your game? That the overall trend in the industry has been to get a game out as fast as possible then try to patch it after the fact, when that wasn’t even an option two decades ago (internet existed, sure, but not everyone had good internet)? Sure, the quality of graphics may have gone up, but everything else has been left behind.
Also, saying that people complaining about price is out-of-touch, is itself out-of-touch. Most people have even less purchasing power now than they did two decades ago and you want us to pay even more for a product inferior to what we would’ve gotten years ago?
Considering that most titles are cross platform I’d say it’s actually much more difficult to produce games these days than it was in the past (see Cyberpunk’s shaky release due to it trying to run on everything under the sun at launch—and being forced out too early due to investor demand). It’s not like game engines and other development tools make it so people press a button that says “make game” and the game pops into existence.
My main point is that games have not actually gone up in price for over two decades. And, as you have pointed out as well, there are an awful lot of actual things to complain about with the gaming industry. The out of pocket cost we pay to play the games is really not one of them.
What about DLCs? And micro-transactions? And lack of optimisations? Base games these days are more like beta versions of what used to be provided in the past… It kinda feels like shrinkflation, price is the same but you get a lot less, both in quality and quantity.
I guess some thing about it, like a game costs less than a big budget Hollywood movie to make, and Hollywood movie tickets don’t cost $80
but audience for movies like 100x times bigger, yk
Sounds like they’re screwing the loyal fans to make up the cash. Imagine if an independent movie or snap budget film charged $80 a ticket because they have a smaller audience?
Considering how complex modern games are from a software standpoint, they are fucking cheap as hell
Frameworks, ready to use engines and props and less care for efficiency (see Ark Survival) make it less effort for more results.
Wasn’t there some asian guy who made a whole action level in Unity just for fun?
So because someone made something as a hobby that means other people shouldn’t be paid for work? Also, sure, tools exist to ease in the production of a game (and in every other creative media), doesn’t negate the fact that people’s talent and work are what make the product exist.
No, i only said it isn’t as expensive as you think anymore.
Where did you say that?
Between the lines.
And talent is in AAA overruled by sales people.
I think we can find better things to bitch about than the price of games.
I’m sure you’re right about that. But this topic isn’t about games being too expensive. It’s about ads being forced on people with no compensation. (Many people don’t want ads under any circumstances, while some people say they would accept ads if they get financially compensated.)
I’d agree with you if the devs were being treated better, games should cost more and be shorter. But the price hikes aren’t that. They’re pure greed.
That extra money isn’t going to pay the developers. EA just shut down multiple studios, including the studio responsible for the critically acclaimed AA game High-Fi Rush, and are already talking about shutting down more. EA has closed more studios than they’ve released games this year, and the past 3 years have seen record high layoffs - even worse than during the 2008 financial crash. All this while companies brag about record-breaking profits.
And with the rise of digital media, production costs saw a significant decrease. There was a short period of time where physical copies were $60 and digital were $40. Now digital are averaging $70 and execs are already talking about increasing the price to $80-100.
So… Like I said, there are plenty of things to complain about in the gaming industry aside from the price of AAA titles (which contrary to your claim) have remained priced at about $60 for the past 20+ years. These so-called price hikes are non-existent, and based on inflation, are actually price decreases. Yes, most profits for everything (not just games) go to the CEOs and investors, that is the root cause of the destruction of the western world.
Also there are myriad fantastic indie titles that only cost like $20 so, uh, go play them instead?
As for your claim of digital releases briefly being cheaper than physical copies—I don’t recall that ever being a thing. Granted, I was mostly a console gamer from the 90s through the early 2010s so maybe I missed that.
that would be fair if these companies weren’t incredibly profitable, only increasing that profit, and only using that profit to pay the executive and shareholders.
it’s just greed. they don’t need the money.
Ubisoft gonna try beat them to it
Hell, the game could go from 70$ to Free with Ads, I’d still not be interested. I despise ads and I absolutely refuse to see them.
I feel you, friend
Trying to learn a new language and my friends keep recomeneding duolingo. But my zero tolerance for ads makes Duolingo dead on arrival.
They been doing that since forever ago
They’re also using YOUR bandwidth to download these ads.
They needed to sell that turd of a movie somehow. 🤣
Yeah seriously; I’ve been seeing ads like this in games since at least the 6th generation of consoles (PS2/GameCube/XBOX). I distinctly remember seeing Napster and Cingular Wireless ads in Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, for example.
Hell, in the 90s we had entire games that were basically ads, like Chex Quest, Cool Spot (7-Up), and M.C. Kids (McDonald’s).
