Buying "Complete" games is official dead

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

I call it. The days of buying a finished game or a game with free updates is officially dead.

Browsing Steam I see nothing but Early Access Games and DLCs for already finished games, some of these DLCs deliver as little as a SINGLE new weapon to a game, at $0.50-1.00.

Early Access Games are developer dependant, a good example is Rays Retro Pixel Castles, WE know and have seen how active he is with his project, he has a high chance of delivering a game. These games need starter funds or they would get no where.

A bad example is Castle Story, which was in Alpha years ago and then suddenly the developers just dropped off the face of the Earth, suddenly they are “back in action” and you can buy their half cut, half assed game on Steam for a whopping £13. This game had starter funds and went no where (It currently still is, I pirated it to check).

These DLCs are getting out of hand, however a good example of a DLC would be Don’t Starve Reign of Giants which adds a ton of new challenges to the game.

A bad example would be pretty much every EA DLC in existence, expensive and deliver content that could have easily been given away for free or half the asking price.

Why am I ranting on about this? Well I used to love the old Need For Speed games, as early as Hot Pursuit and as late as Most Wanted. EA killed this franchise. I then seen The Crew, which is due to be release in December by Ubisoft and it reminded me of the good NFS street racing games with a big open map and plenty to do.

[b]Then I seen this

Not even release yet and already they have managed to plan £50 worth of DLC, which add content to the game that an Open World Sandbox racing game should have in the first place. FUCKING CARS.[/b]

So I fixed their promotion banner with my terrible Photoshop skills:

From here I officially declare that I shall only buy games from dedicated independent developers, I will never pay for a game made by a large scale studio again.

#2

Unpopular? Sure. Dead? Nope.

Good luck with that.

There’s room for different types of games. Sometimes you want to play a blockbuster AAA game. Sometimes you want to play a little indie game. It’s not a zero-sum equation.

I would argue that “pseudo-indie” studios that just put out crap cloneware are more harmful to the game development scene than the AAA studios are.

#3

Uh… Minecraft? (at least untill now)

#4

Valid points.

Maybe not entirely dead but I would say it is not far from it.

Sometimes I want to play a AAA game yeah, like Borderlands. I actually liked that game, then they brought out the DLC. So when I wanted to play it through again with my friends, some of us had the DLC while others did not. Already paid £35 for the game when it first came out, not giving them more money. We solved that problem though.

Good point here as well, small “Wanna-be” game developers tend to release reskinned versions of already smash hit games. This damaged the quality of the market, as well as the original concept.

However, that aside, I still stand by my view that things are getting out of hand with Early Access games and DLCs and that I won’t be purchasing any AAA game in the future, with a few exceptions being Fallout and Half-Life 3; once of course I have pirated them and ensured I will get my moneys worth.

I have not purchased a AAA title in quite a while, I have probably bought 3-4 titles over the past 5 years. Am I particularly proud of ripping people off? No not really, but I am not prepared to throw my money away for a mediocre game.

Released quite a while ago, and the developer was dedicated and worked around the clock to get his product out there. I might have went a little overboard when I said it is “dead”, should have probably said “dying” lol.

#5

[quote]I might have went a little overboard when I said it is “dead”, should have probably said “dying” lol.
[/quote]
Ok then it’s fine :slight_smile:

#6

W1ZtBCpo0eU

#7

I would prefer to pay after playing ;D

#8

It’s called in-app purchases :stuck_out_tongue:

#9

I too am infuriated by this practice, but I think they are only hurting themselves in many cases. The good developers who make “good” games dont often do this, and the second I see the words season pass I immediatly decide not to purchase.

Games like Skyrim didnt do this, and sold millions. I even bought the DLC too, because I genuinly felt it was extra on top of a huge game, not like I was paying for what should already be included. I dont think many of these developers even know what a game is anymore, it’s all about a “next gen high res hollywood spectacle” tht costs millions, while cheap to develope games like minecraft outsell them - they are clueless morons (imo).

#10

The computer games market has grown up.

McDonalds: buy crappy and unhealthy food for a high price.

Need for Speed The Crew: buy crappy and unsatisfying DLC for a high price.

Both the food at McDonalds and the gameplay at Need for Speed (or any other pay to win game) are designed with one goal in mind: extract as much money as possible from the gullible majority who is unable to grasp the money-farming tactics used.

The food is salty to make people thirsty and to increase soda sales, and the soda is sugary to speed up digestion and make peope more hungry. The gameplay is tuned to lure players into the game at a low entry price (or cough “free” cough), make them addicted to the progression and then slowly tuning up the difficulty so that there is no other realistic option than to buy moar DLC, even though theoretically you could play the entire game for “free” … if you enjoy mindlessly grinding for a couple of years.

It’s capitalism, it’s business, and it’s fine as far as I’m concerned. I do not like fast food, I believe the business models behind it are unethical, and neither do I like the fast food equivalent of games. Running a business like that is bad for your soul. But it’s how businesses work.

However, luckily, with rising awareness of unhealthy food and pay-to-win games some of the customers choose to buy quality food and buy quality games. Often quality food can be found in small-scale local shops, and often real quality games can be found with small-scale independent developers. It’s how it works: business gets too large, the money milking machine takes over. Just know how it works and make your own choices on what you eat and what you play.

And choose: you want to run the game-development equivalent of a fast food restaurant (easier to make money) or of a local quality food shop (much harder to make money).

p.s. Gibbo, loved your mad photoshopping skillz bro ;D

#11

I should have written that I would prefer paying after fully evaluating a game. I would prefer voting for games and I would prefer that the amount of money that the authors would get would depend on the votes with a non linear rule to avoid giving a big advantage to those with a huge exposure, to favour cultural diversity. Sorry, I don’t like capitalism.

#12

The numbers don’t add up for one-time paid games.

Cas :slight_smile:

#13

Back when I was a wee boy, before such thing as dlc, games cost about AU $100. Eventually they dropped to $80ish. Keep in mind that I don’t believe production costs have decreased, and then there is inflation. I also believe that the price of games has dropped considerably in recent years, perhaps driven by disposable mobile games and online distribution. So essentially, I think games have greatly de-valued over time. As such, I can see the reasoning behind offering extra content to make an extra quid.

All that said and done, I do get a bit peeved off if you have payed a decent price for a game, but are offered some bare-bones product that almost necessitates extra purchases to enjoy the game.

Yes it is an annoyance, but dont forget games are getting relatively cheaper over time. If we want a ‘full content game’ then we should be prepared to pay a bit more for them.

#14

[quote]de-valued
[/quote]
what de-valued are the gamers. it’s not the cheep arse crap devs throw into mobile-game-market - it’s the people who buy it.

#15

whoa, whoa, whoa… whoa…
…
…
…whoa … wait a minute here.

You’re saying my plan to abandon the game in 6 months is a bad idea?! Damnit! I guess I’ll have to complete it then. :frowning:

sighs and starts making plans to finish the game

[DLC Rant]
But in all seriousness, I’m quite annoyed at what the market has become. I don’t mind paying for proper expansion packs, but some of these games are just getting insane. $3.99 for a skin pack? I miss the old days where there was no DLC, only full blown proper expansion packs . . . and if the reason for having the this much DLC really is because “Games are too expensive to make and we need extra revenue” then I’d rather pay $90-$100 for a title, and get the entire game all at once, or free content updates. But that will never happen, us (the gamers) somehow never realize that paying $50 for a half complete game and then $30 more for DLC to “complete” the game is no different than paying $80~ all at once. We will we complain to death about an $80 game, yet I’ve never seen many of those first person shooter fanboys complaining about their half a dozen $10 map packs. Sigh. :slight_smile:
[/DLC Rant]

#16

what de-valued are the gamers. it’s not the cheep arse crap devs throw into mobile-game-market - it’s the people who buy it.
[/quote]
Cuts both ways … demand just balances supply. Anyway, out of the developer and the player, only one of the two has it within their power to actually make better games. It isn’t the player.

But that’s spiralling off into politics now. Why are consumers so dumb and easily satisfied these days? Is it a failure of education? Who knows. :clue:

#17

Cuts both ways … demand just balances supply. Anyway, out of the developer and the player, only one of the two has it within their power to actually make better games. It isn’t the player.

But that’s spiralling off into politics now. Why are consumers so dumb and easily satisfied these days? Is it a failure of education? Who knows. :clue:
[/quote]
I think what has actually happened, at least with the smaller time devs, is that the “in it for the money and not their customers/fans” one have realized that it’s more profitable to release a dozen crappy games and use their marketing power to make 10k/pop on one time sales from non-loyal customers than it is to make one good game that takes 10 times as long to develop, make 40k/pop and develop an actual quality fan base.

Same things happened to television, reality TV makes less gross, but has a higher net profit than a big budget scifi show.

Numbers out my ass, but it’s just an example:
The Next Big Stupid Reality TV Show:
Total Cost Per Episode: $10,000
Gross Profits Per Episode: $30,000
Net Take Home: $20,000
Risk if fails: Basically zero.

Bestest Scifi show EVER:
Total Cost Per Episode: $150,000
Gross Profits Per Episode: $160,000
Net Take Home: $10,000
Risk if fails: Really high.

… and that’s why television sucks now a days, what sucks for us gamers is a lot of lower quality devs have realized it works the same way in game development as well. Now don’t get me wrong, if someone wants to release a fun clone, and I like it, I will buy it. Nothing wrong with a bad ass clone that just reinvents the wheel if it’s still a blast to play. But still, there’s a ton of obvious cash-grabs out there that are basically the gamer equivalent to all these reality TV shows all over television. :slight_smile:

#18

The problem is that people don’t want to pay for things any more, pure and simple, but at some point, if you don’t want to pay for anything, you won’t get very much, so you’ll eventually cave in and buy something as cheaply as possible. This leads creators to reduce prices continually to try and harvest all of these bottom feeders. And then it follows that creators all find themselves in the same boat all competing for the same customers, and there’s so very many developers compared to customers time (not the actual number of customers - it’s customers time we compete for). So when the most valuable thing a customer appears to have is his or her own time, they start to get very pernickety about what they waste their time doing. Convincing people to spend money and waste their valuable time on your creations is a very tricky proposition. And so we end up with the penultimate solution: everything starts to end up being free.

Having removed the penultimate barrier between your customers and your creations, which was money, you’ve only got to compete on getting attention instead, along with everyone else. Great. This leaves us with two questions.

Firstly, how the hell do we make a living? The days of a beard, ironic glasses and ramen are long behind the likes of me. It’s not remotely sustainable. The only reason there’s so much of it about right now is that there’s a generation of hippies out there who think that they can manage like that. Newsflash! You can’t! 99% of these people creating stuff “because they love what they do” will fail, and not because they don’t love it, but because they’re starving, homeless, and growing up. Goodbye, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Harsh life lesson: everybody does it for the money. You try and tell me you’re not in it for the money… great. Carry on doing it until your money runs out and then go and find a job somewhere else, preferably not in competition with me. There’s plenty more where you came from, but because of something known as confirmation bias you will never hear about the 99% failure rate. There are literally so many ironically bespectacled beards out there making platform games about depression that it only takes 100 of you to produce 1 game that people notice briefly. Good luck on that “difficult second album”. The rest of us realise that there is but one goal in it all and that’s to at least make a living and love doesn’t get you very far in this goal. It’s time to grow up and start taking notice of how the real world works.

Secondly, what do you mean penultimate? I speak of none other than the business model that is to come after free! Yes, there’s only one more place that we can go… and that’s to pay people to play. Don’t ask me exactly how that’ll work but it’s not so very far off the current situation and is almost a similar situation in retail. Did you know that Heinz pays supermarkets to put their beans on the supermarket shelves? When you see a special offer on Warburtons Crumpets in Tescos, it’s because Warburtons have paid Tescos to put them there?

Food for thought.

Long live free-to-play.

Cas :slight_smile:

#19

I’d say there’s a healthy middle ground. You’re absolutely right, the days of the old “I make games/music/art because I love it and you wont tell me what to do!” screw-the-system hippies are long over, and there’s tens of thousands (of millions?) of these people out there saturating the markets with D-quality content trying to push their next clone of angry birds or the “new” RPG/platformer/MMO that’s just like everything else. (Same comparison can be made in the art and music industry of course)

But, I think you can still be a developer with the “make games for the love of gaming” philosophy and still survive, but there is a very critical key difference between the guy who was successful and the silly hippies. One actually knows what it takes to make a successful game and realizes it’s the equivalent to a full time job (or more), the other is a group of man-childs who just want an easy ride through life and thinks having a job is “overrated”. Those guys nearly-always fail unless they get insanely lucky and make the next “fad” game of the week.

I’d be lying if I said “I’m not after money”. To me, RPC is a labor of love because I have a passion for video games, but will I do this level of work for free? Heck no. If I’m going to put out profitable-quality level talent with my time, I should be allowed to make money doing it. The difference though I think sits in my attitude for why I charge money for it; I know working on RPC is a full time job, and will take a very long time to develop this game correctly. In order to really fully realize what RPC is I should have the income to dedicate my time to the game and not have a regular 9-5 job slowing me down. Could I do it for free? Sure. Although dedicating 12-14 hours a day of my life to a project with absolutely no returns would be incredibly stupid, if I could sell it and turn it into a real job.

I found your note on confirmation bias pretty funny, because I’ve been trying to convince people that confirmation bias exists trying to give them realistic expectations. People don’t want to hear about the 99% failures, they think everyone can be the next Notch, Gabe Newell or John Carmack with little actually work, and to them, a “little work” is seldom even a fraction of a percentage of the work needed just to get noticed much less even be profitable/popular.

It all falls back to the personality of immature people, honestly. They see what they want, not the reality. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me to release RPC for free because “that would be so cool!”. Seriously? Developers have families to feed! :stuck_out_tongue:

I guess what it boils down to is I agree that no one does high quality work simply for their love of it. At least, not without having a real job on the side and absolutely no life buy work and their hobby, it’s just not realistic. Although I still think people can make games with “loving of gaming” philosophy mind and hold on to that old 90s philosophy of games-for-gamers without all the “$3.99 skin packs” to get extra cash. The person doing it just needs to not be a hippie about it thinking they can release Angry Birds Clone No. 47 and become a millionaire. Your attitude shouldn’t be to “never work again!”, it should be “start a small business that takes a lot of work to keep floating” and I think that’s where a large amount of those 99%'ers fail, they just want an easy ride. They don’t realize game development is many times harder than just working a 9 to 5 job in a cubical somewhere, they think it’s well, all fun and games. :smiley:

#20

Oh! How timely. I’m sure the hive mind listens to my thoughts. IT IS CONSCIOUS. Be afraid.

Cas :slight_smile: