The High Cost of Gaming

[robinturner]

I've just read an article in the Guardian about why the latest console games cost so much. I was mildly curious since the ludicrous cost of console games is one reason I've never bought a games console (the other reason being that I have enough things distracting me from my job and my marriage already, thank you). The article was not terribly convincing, but some of the comments provided food for thought. Few people bought the author's claim about the cost of developing new games leading to higher prices. After all, it's hard to see why it should be so much harder to develop a game for the Xbox than for a PC. Even if we leave out the PC/console disparity, I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that games are harder to develop than they were in the 1980s, when, we are told, they were all designed by pairs of spotty teenagers who were saving up for a new haircut. It is partially true, in that now we have hardware that can do half-way decent renderings of artwork, it's a good idea to hire some real artists to produce the artwork (not to mention people with decent voices to do the voices, and so on). However, I doubt very much if the actual coding is any more difficult than it was back in 1980 when people were writing 1KB (yes, that's kilobytes, not gigabytes) programs for the Sinclair ZX81. I wrote a game for the ZX81, and believe me, fitting it into 1KB was bloody difficult. (It was also a crappy game.) In those days, you coded what happened to individual pixels.

Then there's the argument that game prices have to be high because manufacturers need to factor in the hidden cost of resale. Even in the strange world of business ethics, the idea that you should charge more for a product because someone might sell it to someone else is suspect, simply because it applies to any product (except for things like food and toilet paper). Versace charge ludicrous prices for their clothes, but I don't see them saying, "We have to charge so much because our buyers might donate their Versace jackets to Oxfam, where someone else could pick them up for a tenner."

Then there's the piracy argument. Naughty, naughty people have this naughty idea that if they buy something, it belongs to them and they can do anything they want with it, including making copies of it available for other naughty people. Sarcasm aside, let's assume that the games industry (along with the music and film industries) give up any pretense that they are selling a product and declare that they are leasing it. They can then claim that unfortunately, they need to pass on the cost of piracy to legitimate consumers. This is just about tenable, though it does raise the possibility that if someone has paid the piracy pemium, they should then be allowed to indulge in piracy. But how does this explain why a PS3 game should cost more than a PC game, given that it is as, if not more, easy to download illegal PC games?

Let's cut the crap. Games cost more than they did in the 1980s because people will pay more for them. Console games cost more than PC games because console gamers will pay more for games than PC gamers. This is capitalism, folks, so stop whining about ethics and use bittorrent pay up.

Comments

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Bittorrent is very wonderful, indeed.

[grimreaperess.livejournal.com]

First off I wanted to say that here (Australia) new PC and console games cost about the same. It's somewhere in the vacinity of $90-120AUD depending on the game. I know my partner paid about $90 for his brand-new pre-ordered copy of CS2 a couple of years ago, and with a quick search online reveals that most of the new Wii games are around the same. PC games drop in price a lot quicker, probably because there's a bigger market. You can play a PC game on any PC but you can't play a Wii game on a PS3 for instance (duh).

In terms of pricing in general, there are a few reasons behind it.

Yes, piracy is a big one and I think it's somewhat legitimate. However I think it should be industry that should break the cycle by making software and games affordable in the first place and eliminating the need for piracy. They need to understand that geeks/people will almost always pay for something if a) they really want it and b) it's a good price (even a bit more than a good price!). They should take a 'loss' for a few years to help break the cycle.


These days a new independent/brand new (not a sequel or established) game gets a shelf life of about a month. That's it, about one month to make back their costs. If the publishing house doesn't sink millions in to marketing, then the game pretty much goes unnoticed. That's why new games cost a lot, there's a huge risk factor and a lot of marketing to make it stand out.

It is a very different industry to what it was in the 80s. Yes people were programming with less memory etc and that was one hurdle, but programmers weren't expected to create entire 3D worlds down to each leaf on each tree. I'd take a pretty big leap and say that companies are employing a lot more people in a lot of different fields to work on each game than they were in the 1980s. The market is now a lot bigger, there are a lot more people making games than there were back then too, which brings me back to the risk factor/marketing aspect of the pricing.

Basically, we're fucked. It's the state of the industry and there's not a lot the end consumer can do about it. Bittorrenting won't help, in all likelyhood it's going to keep prices high.

Also hi! ironed_orchid sent me here. I'm not actually a gamer myself, but my partner did a diploma in computer games programming (and I got to hear about the woes of the industry). I've also had a chance to have a good talk/argument with an ex-adobe rep about piracy and pricing, that's pretty much the basis for my argument here. :)

[kristian.livejournal.com]

These days in order to make a crappy RPG you've got to hire Patrick Stewart to do some crappy voice acting while in the olden days if you wanted to make a crappy rpg you umm didn't hire Patrick Stewart.

I guess the gaming industry is just following the Hollywood means of entertainment production. Big Names, Big Budgets and Shitty Results, but profits!

You should go visit the guy making Mount & Blade! He's in Turkey right?
Best $20 I ever spent. Well, besides that time...

[evan.livejournal.com]

If your reasoning was completely correct, than in an efficient game market we'd see people making lower-cost (lower-margin) games to undercut the big players and make a fortune. In truth is really is much harder to make a popular game. Compare grand theft auto to mario bros: more art, more story, hugely more complicated engine, and the associated necessary testing goes up as well too. I don't think major games can be made by minor people anymore (though there is the occasional indie-film equivalent like katamari damacy).

[solri.livejournal.com]

Speaking of M&B, have you tried the Onin No Ran mod? I started it a couple of days ago and have done little but play it since. It's rather beta, but that goes for anything to do with M&B ;-)

[solri.livejournal.com]

Your comment about shelf-life is apt. I was browsing the titles at our local store, and there was a massive difference between new and old games. Hitman: Blood Money (which isn't brand new, but hit - ahem - Turkey recently) is 90 lira ($65). OK, I liked the demo, but if that isn't too much to spend on a PC game, you've got too much money. On the other hand, I picked up a copy of Sim City 4 (which came out a few years ago) for 20 lira ($15). So maybe this pricing policy is good - it teaches us patience.