74763f No.16521142
In a perfect world scenario, how would a video game's true price be determined? Would they all be the same or does it deserve a case-by-case basis? Would it depend on hours of gameplay? I personally believe that should be the case. The only problem is determining how many hours it takes to finish a game and of course you'd have people arguing that multiplayer games like Call of Duty are practically priceless because their multiplayer ranks can take hundreds of hours to reach the extent of them.
When Minecraft first came out, I think I spent about 20$ on it, and I could say that was a good investment since I played it far longer than just a few hours. Same for Team Fortress 2, but I feel like those two were the exceptions to the rule - though, I did pay only 20$ for that as well, I think. Well, in any case, singleplayer games aren't exactly clear-cut, either. You often get games like Fallout and Elder Scrolls which are marketed as being 'endless' but that's only because they put in either tons of pointless fetch quests or because they have literally endless quests and, don't forget, mods.
Anyways, what do you think? It may be unfair, but should video games have a price limit? How can a game's true price be determined right after production?
801082 No.16521150
(Production cost of the game + 10%)/Expected Sales
IE GTA 5 which cost half a billion to make but sold 60 million copies, means it should be sold for $10 when fucking to this day its like $30 second hand
6bf099 No.16521155
>>16521150
This to be quite honest.
e167c5 No.16521161
>>16521150
it's $15 second hand
cf667c No.16521186
>>16521150
basically this. Determining price by "hours of gameplay" is arbitrary assignment of value, when value is already assigned by the market. The developer obviously needs to recoup his costs and turn some amount of profit. At the same time, he can't go too high with the price in order to stay competitive. The only "unfair" part of the current industry is the competing companies not really competing, instead settling on the $60 price mark which allows them to rake in large margins even though they have ample room for undercutting others. If all games cost $30 and yours cost $60, you'd lose sales due to being too expensive. But when everyone is peddling it for $60, you don't seem too expensive anymore, even though it's still the same amount of money. It is entirely possible that this ceiling will rise in the following years.
f16094 No.16521211
>>16521142
>Would it depend on hours of gameplay? I personally believe that should be the case. The only problem is determining how many hours it takes to finish a game and of course you'd have people arguing that multiplayer games like Call of Duty are practically priceless because their multiplayer ranks can take hundreds of hours to reach the extent of them.
There's another problem that comes from this, and it's games that have artificially extended gameplay time, whether through by-design forced downtime periods (e.g. something like Vanilla WoW), or something like Loki, where actually beating the game requires you to play through the campaign three times.
a0aa07 No.16521225
>>16521201
This should be standard for all media that can be copied effortlessly, music, movies, TV shows, so on. I know I've gotten hours and hours out of some devs' games and I'd donate in a heartbeat even if it wasn't required to play the game.
Watch this get implemented and shitskin-friendly games go unsupported.
74763f No.16521227
>>16521211
Yeah, on second thought, I see the flaws of that idea. I think I agree with >>16521150 here, but I'm wondering how such a thing would work in practice. Would it be so easy to predict expected sales? I think that would be especially hard for indie or small-time developers, but then again I don't remember ever seeing an indie developer make a huge video game on the same scale of, say, Grand Theft Auto.
>>16521201
This would be a good idea if markets were restricted to first-world countries. Otherwise you'd have pajeets, hues, chinks, and other undesirables taking advantage of it and only playing for free.
74763f No.16521241
>>16521236
It would cost the devs if there are servers to run.
fddbe2 No.16521247
>>16521150
>(Production cost of the game + 10%)/Expected Sales
This is retarded as fuck.
The sales have to also fund the next game so it should be more like
(Production cost of the game * 2)/Expected Sales
9dceee No.16521258
>>16521142
>how would a video game's true price be determined? Would they all be the same or does it deserve a case-by-case basis? Would it depend on hours of gameplay?
>Anyways, what do you think? It may be unfair, but should video games have a price limit? How can a game's true price be determined right after production?
The price that people are willing to buy it for?
a0aa07 No.16521273
>>16521241
>running games with servers
>not just letting the community run their own servers
39f9fa No.16521275
>>16521186
These (((cheapskates))) keep wanting to raise the prices, as well, but they all recognize that $60 is effectively a soft cap for various reasons, and they don't want to put people off from buying their games by pushing the price past that mark. The armchair psychologist (((journalists))) have admitted that pushing the price of the game past $60 would stop a lot of people from purchasing games even today, though they fail to understand why that number haunts so many AAA publishing companies who keep trying to get their customers to spend more money.
Games are cheaper and easier to produce now more than ever. Digital distribution and standardized tools make things much easier than back in the 90's, when you had to write your own code base and abuse every tool at your disposal to make something that actually functioned at all and you had to spend shitloads of money printing discs or cartridges en masse. The real costs of creating games these days come from the fancy bells and whistles that we expect out of AAA games;
>marketing
>hiring a large staffing base
>marketing
>professional voice actors
>motion capture
>marketing
When you cut out a large portion of that, the cost of developing a game drops dramatically, and you can start taking the time to really push the limits on the gameplay and fun factors, the things that people really want in their games.
>>16521227
Indie devs that actually care about the games they make seem to be doing it right. They tend to price fairly cheap, from five to twenty dollars, based on cost and their own expected sales. The games that get some measure of exposure tend to make their investment back at a reasonable rate at those prices.
The problems happen when the game gets no exposure; a game like Aztez, which got virtually no exposure despite the praise it received for its quality, will languish in obscurity. Part of this is advertising and knowing where to go or who to talk to. Unfortunately, the other part of this, particularly the problem for Aztez at the time, is the media clique ignoring the game altogether for whatever reason.
>>16521247
The multiplier can change based on various reasons, but you have to consider a lot of things in the production cost. Marketing, taxes, server costs, employee pay. The base concept is an interesting thought, though, but it will encourage developers and publishers to continue to push their products out to a wider market, rather than focus on a smaller expected install base and let the game expand outward from there.
668af7 No.16521282
>>16521225
>Video games should be donation based only
terrible idea tbh. I can't see it being viable.
I've never seen a possible business model for the production of entertainment other than commissioning (i.e. someone footing the bill as it's made), crowdfunding being a worse version of the former. Of course it needn't be mentioned that selling non-excludable, non-rivalrous goods is stupid.
>>16521241
>It would cost the devs if there are servers to run.
then you go back to the 90's model where games shipped on a disc with server software, couch and LAN multiplayer, and you didn't need no servers or downloads.
>>16521247
your logic is also retarded. 2*production cost means they'd get enough money to make 2 entire games.
>>16521258
>The price that people are willing to buy it for?
if some retards are stupid enough to fork out $100 does it mean it should be set at $100?
498aeb No.16521292
im not paying half a month's worth of food (whole if i really tried) for a video game
eaee9e No.16521302
>>16521142
>how would a video game's true price be determined
well, supply and demand, but supply is practically infinite, you can always pirate, and legal sources commonly have like -80% discounts, so it practically is 'pay what you want economy' already
eaee9e No.16521303
>>16521292
>half a month's worth of food
are you very thin or living in 3rd world?
9dceee No.16521304
>>16521282
>if some retards are stupid enough to fork out $100 does it mean it should be set at $100?
Yes
Just because some retards don't understand how to keep a budget, doesn't mean I don't. Also, 20 years ago, some games did cost $100.
525e1e No.16521327
As long as I get <1 hour of gameplay per buck, I'm satisfied.
b370a8 No.16521345
>>16521201
This idea is dumber than marxism.
a0aa07 No.16521504
>>16521282
>terrible idea tbh. I can't see it being viable.
How?
>>16521345
How?
0365aa No.16521525
>Anyways, what do you think? It may be unfair, but should video games have a price limit?
Diversity hires and AAA's normalfag catering using dishonest marketing are the culprits for these prices.
c25467 No.16521529
Minecraft and TF2 are both excellent examples of games with low production costs that generate a ton of game play. The price of video games is a symptom of developers pushing for more narrative experiences, which means that each part of the game must be scripted, voice acted, etc. Look at GTA5. If it didn't have the story, and all the coding, voice acting, writing, etc that went into it, and it was just a giant, well polished (not saying GTA5 is well polished) sandbox it could have sold for $30 easily. And it would have cost significantly less to make.
738fe6 No.16521613
>>16521142
€90 is the new standard, plus 4-6,000 in dlcs.
perfect scenario is charging them per minute until they die.
738fe6 No.16521618
>>16521303
he just isn't a gluttonous american.
1cad39 No.16521663
>>16521303
$120 when budgeting for a month's groceries doesn't sound out of the ordinary unless you have kids
7b4378 No.16521664
>>16521618
If he pay's $60 for a game he's probably spending $120 for food. For one person you can make $120 go a really long way.
b370a8 No.16521667
>>16521504
>selling games for $0 and praying for handouts to stay afloat
This will bankrupt you. Surviving on little (to no) chump change is Not a profitable business strategy. For starters, devs won't break even on the money they spent in making a game, won't have sufficient funds to make their next game, and won't have enough money pay their living expenses (electricity bills, etc).
cd1cc1 No.16521679
>>16521142
There isn't a single gamedev on this planet worth giving money to. Games should always be free. Pirate everything.
5c6ec8 No.16521694
20211a No.16521707
20 bucks for a quality AAA game made by a competent, talented team with plenty of content.
If a game is multiplayer-only, it should be half-priced, so ten bucks with no microtransactions whatsoever.
An indie with the same amount of content as a AAA game should be ten bucks.
Less content should make the game scale down accordingly.
If we're living in a fairytale land where we pick the pricing, we can also assume that games are good again and AAA games tend to be more professionally made than hobbyist projects.
a0aa07 No.16521712
>>16521667
>muh profits muhfugga
Dumbfuck, muh shekels is how gaming got into this mess in the first place.
5c6ec8 No.16521726
>>16521150
That's a good way to go bankrupt. If one game doesn't sell it'll take you more than ten successful releases to recover. So with your system games would need to be extremely conservative, even more than now. Niche games would also be gone.
>>16521282
>if some retards are stupid enough to fork out $100 does it mean it should be set at $100?
You set the price at whatever will maximize profit, so you'd need many retards for that. It works for some games though like Shekel Citizen.
74d02f No.16521744
Quite frankly, it is clear that often times it is Society who seems to pay the true price, Sorry fellow neckbeardians, turns out murder simulators arent always well tollerated by the general public.. and dont get me wrong, I cherish killing those hookers just as much as the next neckbeard. (something always seems to remind me that they deserve it nomatter what, Godamnn cheating digital alimony check whore vr sluts! and now only her limp body husk, suspended perfectly, and within , in that goddamn, luxury cum dump fap fest, her digital suspension of consequence, whose lifeless binary eyes will never, ever judge me again, only just perfectly,a uggh, just like that,will shes attest to what have done.
But yesh i agree that pruces are skyhigh! 100 bucks ! Jesus christ himseld could buy every surge amd nachos thr the entire 7-11 for that much! And thats where i meat them, always in the alley..
but something needs to be done, also,def go suck your moms dick u fuckin weeb crybaby noobs. Grow the fuck up and get your kill lust fap sq ueerts the old fashioned way, voting,
8a8487 No.16521747
>>16521292
nigga a video game costs 20-25$ over my weekly cost for food
>>16521327
so as long as you are stupid enough that it takes you a long time to finish a game you are ok with paying a lot of money for it? That may be a dick way of putting it but what I'm tryina say is…. come on now. The results of "how long does it take to get over it" is a variable.
8a8487 No.16521757
>>16521744
>murder simulators aren't popular
You ever play Hitman or splintercell? Granted you are always given some flimsy pretext of "saving MURICA! or putting down some child molestor" Which honestly doesn't fit Hitman for me and takes me out of the game a little. Professional assassins don't need justification to engage in trade work.
525e1e No.16521768
>>16521747
>so as long as you are stupid enough that it takes you a long time to finish a game you are ok with paying a lot of money for it?
No??? I paid like 15 bucks for Grim Dawn and I have almost 200 hours in it simply because it has a lot of content.
5c6ec8 No.16521796
>>16521757
That's what I never liked about Hitman. Being a killer for hire who only gets hired to kill bad guys is just too unrealistic. Bugs aside Death to Spies makes way more sense in that regard.
b370a8 No.16521818
>>16521712
Becoming an entertainment industry more profitable than movies and tv shows? Yes, what an awful predicament the gaming industry is in. I totally agree with you. Why should devs be incentivized and financially rewarded for making good games like Hollow Knight? They should be thankful to live like hobos on the 2 pennies I may or may not donate to them.
3ad123 No.16521825
>>16521679
>the type of movie master plan that only works literally because the character is omniscient and knows exactly how humans are going to act and react to the simplest of shit
I fucking hate this writing crutch so much. Is it to much to plan out something slightly logical that doesn't rely on too much dumb luck?
cf667c No.16522016
>>16521818
>Becoming an entertainment industry more profitable than movies and tv shows?
How is its profitability relevant in any way whatsoever? Our aim, as consumers, is to get a quality product. Whethewr the dev lives lavishly from our money or starves to death is none of our bussiness, so long as we get our quality product.
266d83 No.16522157
Never realized how many communists were on this board.
268578 No.16522375
>>16522157
communism and capitalism are both sides of the same shekel
1b28d1 No.16522451
They dont even need to push the price past $60 anymore with micro transactions now in place.
80f721 No.16522496
>>16522406
>Capitalism is making profit
Imagine being this retarded.
8a822b No.16522588
>>16522496
unfortunaly /v/ is infested by neetsocs and bootlickers
5a80fe No.16522678
>>16521796
It took me a while to figure out what was happening in that webm. Do you know what movie or show it's from?
Sage for mostly off-topic.
d869e3 No.16523081
>>16521186
Do you think they are engaging in price fixing behind the scenes? I never thought of it until now but it wouldn't surprise me.
78c620 No.16523266
>>16521142
Games should cost what players are willing to pay for them.
I'm happy when a game costs what it says on the label rather than hiding the real price behind DLC packs.
000000 No.16524476
>>16521142
This >>16521679
Paying for entertainment is a mistake. The money will always be used against consumers. Pirate everything, no matter what.
548a47 No.16524487
50f921 No.16524676
The standard prices we have for games was based on the fact that games used to be sold physical only and all the logistics, effort, and extra money that comes with that, playable without a patch (at least on console), and DLC and mtx weren’t rampant and didn't even exist for most games, no console wannabe platforms, etc. On PC it used to be $50 max for an actual physical copy that was better than today's collector's editions, now they want you to pay for a fucking download. Low cost =/= cheap or a good deal. Games are now more expensive than ever, even during Steam """""sales""""", all because PC gamers refused to say "no" to Steam and refused to boycott Valve into bankruptcy after they launched Steam.
Even piracy isn't a good deal, you are just getting the digitally distributed game for what it is worth - $0
Idiot A buys an ounce of silver for $500, Person B buys an ounce of gold at spot price, Idiot A tells Person B that Idiot A got a better deal because he only paid $500. Idiot A is acting like because he paid less he got a better deal but he isn't taking into account what they got and for how much. Did Person B get a good deal on his gold? No, but he didn't over pay like Idiot A did for his silver. You idiots that pay for digital are Idiot A but far worse
50f921 No.16524679
>>16521275
> They tend to price fairly cheap, from five to twenty dollars,
That is insanely, extremely over priced for a download
>care about the games they make
if they did they would give their game a proper physical release
9066c5 No.16524707
>>16521142
This discussion is completely pointless because it ignores that the goal of creating a commercial video game is to make a profit; in which case it's priced at whatever generates the most revenue.
In addition, trying to place a price tag based on measurable properties, like the hours of gameplay, will have the exact opposite effect. I forgot what the term for this is called in politics, but basically whenever you try to use a statistic to gauge how good something is, that statistic will instantly becomes useless because everybody will then try to cheat it.
You want another 10 hours of gameplay? Just pull a Ghost'n'Goblins and require players to beat the game twice! Don't forget to grind respawning enemies as well so you can obtain the item required for progressing too.
If you want an example of this effect in practice, simply look at some publishers giving rewards based on metascore. Suddenly, developers care more about what (((game journalists))) think than sales, cater specifically to them and give exclusive special editions filled with tons of goodies in an attempt to inflate their score. Shitty lootbox design with abyssmal droprates to create eternal wealth extractions from consumers? Not present in the journalist version. Those fucks will drop their review before launch anyway, as that's how you get the clicks.
>It may be unfair, but should video games have a price limit?
No. If you want to make an expensive video game, go ahead and do that. There's plenty of high-priced niche games that not only use their high price to recoup the costs of a smaller audience; but also to signal to any consumers that this is a very niche kind of product.
668af7 No.16524734
>>16524676
not disagreeing with you, but I want to point out that
>game for what it is worth - $0
is taking it too far. just because something can be replicated at nearly no cost it doesn't mean it ought to be provided for free (i.e. at a loss), unless you feel like doing charity. Servers, storage, electricity, and bandwidth aren't free.
5df2c3 No.16524788
In a perfect world scenario, there would be no price. After eliminating the commodity form with decentralized planning, resources that can be trivially duplicated such as video games will have a price of $0 the moment the production process is finished. Only the initial production cost is what matters, which will be financed in a way entirely different from paying for a finite product (since computer programs are anything but).
cc9a6d No.16524800
>>16521303
I am a glutton and spend about 140 bucks every month.
Someone spending 120 doesn't seem that absurd, if I cut down on drinks and wine I could probably even go lower than that.
0e776a No.16524801
My standards are $1 for every 10 hours of fun.
5df2c3 No.16524807
>>16524788
And for a more utopian answer, the most valuable aspect of any game to me is replay value. But that I mean literally whether or not a good game is fun to play over again. But it turns out some of the best replayable games had far less man hours and people working on them than some hundred-million-dollar AAA piece of shit. True game value is not even remotely related to the actual production cost of making the game.
Pic related. One masterpiece with ncredible depth and replayability made over the course of a couple years by a single person in the doujin scene. In a utopian world where markets still exist, this would be 10x the price of Call of Duty.
5df2c3 No.16524810
>>16524807
*where markets still exist and it makes any sense to charge money for a series of 1s and 0s.
202547 No.16524823
>>16521303
t.fatty burger mutt
721f33 No.16524830
All software should be free, as in freedom.
b5a8cd No.16524837
What are you guy's opinions on actual donation driven games?
95c807 No.16524870
5df2c3 No.16524923
>>16524870
Not quite. Money lenders and merchants have been making profits since pretty much the dawn of civilization. Capitalism has only been around for a few hundred years.
32dfe9 No.16524925
Give away the source, make normalfags who are too retarded to compile something pay for precompiled binaries.
f401f7 No.16524963
>>16521818
Jesus what has this board become.
f401f7 No.16524969
>>16521744
this is the best sad lonely boomerposting I have ever seen
ffa5bf No.16524976
>>16524963
>how dare the goyim have different opinions
das rite
923f4d No.16525001
>>16521150
problem is say a game costs x where x is 500m as was the case with GTA, x is production cost
500m
/
n
where n is the number of sales
and you are one of the cucks that preordered
so let's say 1,000,000 people preorder
you're saying all of those people should have paid 500 dollars?
the math works fine in the late stages of a game most times but definitely doesn't work in the early stages
you'd have to add a regression factor for the age of a title because the reduction in price is effectively logarithmic and plateaus so late in a game's life cycle you would have less and less incentive to buy because the price would reduce less and less, a regression coefficient would accelerate the reduction in price and mean that old games would be super cheap so people would be able to play them for a couple bucks or whatever (set a price-floor so that it isn't just oh this game has been out 5 years it's freeware now) but that also cheapens the "value" of anthology collections etc
lots of considerations anon, it isn't so simple to really implement something like that and say your favorite vidya producer does this and it turns out disastrous and they go out of business and only shitbag devs and producers are left standing, that's not exactly the desired outcome
97c6df No.16525014
>>16521186
There's a lot more to it than that, though. There's a distinct impression that consumers get based solely on price as well, because they're used to products of a higher price being higher quality. Some indie game companies have discovered that their games actually get more attention and sales when sold closer to $20 than when they were $5. The effect also is present for AAA games. People will see a $30 game and assume an inferior product.
668af7 No.16525453
>>16525014
>The effect also is present for AAA games. People will see a $30 game and assume an inferior product.
Well, if someone's selling a game for cheap, it gives the impression they're not confident it will sell, or that it doesn't have much content. And if the price is high, it gives the impression they charge that much to recoup costs and that the game has more stuff in it. However, those are superficial observations and not necessarily true as it's been observed time and time again that people often don't get what they pay for (usually for worse).
It can also apply to discounts. Remember Anthem, which not only was a piece of garbage, but also melted consoles and sometimes killed them? The price cut 5 days after release wasn't exactly out of EA's goodness.
4f5f25 No.16525534
>>16525453
That's the thing I hate most about markets these days: the sheer amount of people who legitimately don't care about quality.
b66743 No.16525557
>>16525534
I think they do care about quality, but they’re too dumb to judge what quality is by themselves so they let some streamer/talking head on youtube do the deciding for them - hence why Apex got so popular.
493db5 No.16525615
>>16521142
A product's price in a perfect world is determined by the number of middlemen, wages, costs, and so on.
Let's say a carrot costs 0.20 cents, to transport that carrot to the carrot grocery, you need a dude, you need to also pay this dude. The carrot's value increases to 0.40 per carrot because of that middleman, because he bought it from the farm, and passed it to you.
You then sell the carrot for a 0.60, but you also have to factor in how many people are going to buy it this season.
In a non carrot buying season, you'd price it at, say, 1.40 instead of 0.80, since you have perishables that need to be sold, and most will not be sold. You can compensate for this by buying less carrots, but you will still sell less then expected.
During a carrot season, you'll sell them for .80 because they'll mostly be bought up and you'll sell them to finance the next batch you buy, and to pay wages.
So .40 will go to the next batch, .20 will go to wages, and .20 go to overall profit.
That's how it works in a perishable industry.
In a non perishable industry like games, you still have to factor in sales and potential buys based on merit, which is hard to predict, so to compensate, you need a cushion of money to fall back on. This is what led to the 30 buck price tags and so on.
When it becomes clear that people are willing to pay more then 50, they went to 60 around the Call of Duty Modern Warfare timeframe. It's scummy to the consumer, but to the business, it's business. And they've survived the current issue by presenting platforms that sell games for less then 60, most PC games actually sell for much less then that on Steam, GOG and so on, and that's because a niche formed for lower pricing, which was filled.
Naturally, the big companies are failing on profit, because all of the devs are moving to this indie industry and none want to work with the former monopoly because they essentially WERE a monopoly, with all the bad employee and consumer treatment that entails.
The 60$ price tag is a dying label, actually.
And no, video games should not have a price limit at all.
It's a self-policing system, and those who fail shall fail. Preventing people from failing and removing themselves from the system means it will take longer for the big idiots to make mistakes, which only helps the worst of the worst.
Imposing a price limit only helps bad practices. The more you try to regulate an economic system beyond the basics of ethics, the less brutal it is to the failures. That's an issue. It's also not capitalist.
This is pretty basic economic shit m80.
268578 No.16525636
i have a hard time paying more then 10$ for a game.
60ef9b No.16525688
>>16522016
>It doesn't matter if the creator starves to death as long as I was entertained for a few hours
I want to tell you how wrong you are but I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll just start with saying don't you want the person who made something you enjoyed to at least be able to live a normal life?
>>16524870
Wrong. Early American capitalism was value driven, not profit driven. Profit driven businesses being the norm in America is a fairly recent phenomena.
6c88a3 No.16525711
4f5f25 No.16525717
>>16525711
Explain further.
268578 No.16525728
>>16525688
>I want to tell you how wrong you are but I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll just start with saying don't you want the person who made something you enjoyed to at least be able to live a normal life?
no i want them to die so they wont have to suffer anymore
3c1c0e No.16525742
>The only problem is determining how many hours it takes to finish a game and of course you'd have people arguing that multiplayer games like Call of Duty are practically priceless because their multiplayer ranks can take hundreds of hours to reach the extent of them.
You could go by "average player time spent on the game," but then you would have bots hired by publishers to open their game client and idle for 10 years to artificially inflate the price of their game. Games are extremely difficult to price by nature because there are so many aspects to them. What about games which are short or mediocre but have an amazing soundtrack? What about games that you could lose yourself for weeks in, but have almost no cost of assets, like Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft?
164790 No.16525749
If there wasn't so many fucking shady tactics companies use to Jew consumers out of even more money after they've already purchased it, then fuck I can't see why a game can't be sold for like a solid 70 dollars if it's a really good game.
But because of retards in the current year, companies have a very loyal and dumb consumer base, they can throw out any old garbage and as long as it just works, people will buy.
It's why I get so annoyed at idiots who defend X company because Y reason, people who defend a company whatsoever are giving it free PR and will doubtless consume whatever bullshit they throw out.
In an ideal world? A game would be sold at whatever price the majority of players will pay for it and there wouldn't be such things as in game purchases on a game that's already been paid for, (though realistically anything over 100 dollars is a bit steep). Keep that shit in F2P grindfests only pls.
But we don't see that, an entire generation of 'gamers' have been playing games where this sort of shit is normal and expected, a game without such practices simply is a mind boggling concept to them.
2d924d No.16525757
>>16521796
>Being a killer for hire who only gets hired to kill bad guys is just too unrealistic
If you were just a killer for hire then this would be true. But 47 isn't just a hitman, he's the best hitman in the world.
He gets hired when nobody else can do the job, and the only people who are difficult enough to kill to require that kind of talent are generally terrible people.
164790 No.16525758
>>16525636
Damn, the amount of work that went into stacking them like that would have paid at least 5 illegal mexicans for a day
>That last part
Ha! Wasn't expecting it to do that. Guess it was productive afterall
(polite sage for offtopic)
6c88a3 No.16525766
>>16525717
Companies releasing the game is like an IPO. They give out information on the game and it is evaluated for an acceptable market price. If when the game comes out people hate it or it doesn't work, the price for a copy falls because who wants to buy this shit at that price? If its an undervalued or little known game that becomes popular, then the price of a copy (possibly even second-hand) will go up due to more demand for it.
4f5f25 No.16525784
>>16525766
Evaluated by who, though? Fags here would give a very different opinion about Death Stranding than Kojimafags elsewhere. Who's going to be picked to decide? I get that it's a self-correcting system, but who's going to enforce price changes?
668af7 No.16525797
>>16525534
>the sheer amount of people who legitimately don't care about quality.
>>16525557
>I think they do care about quality, but they’re too dumb to judge what quality is by themselves
It's the natural result when things cater to the lowest common denominator. When the bar is set too low, you'll be flooded with retards.
The only solution is to stop all this "go for the broadest audience" mass-appeal nonsense (but kikes won't give up their sweet, easy casualbux), and reject posers and secondaries (though not newbies willing to learn). Problem is these days you'll be called a "meanie", be declared "toxic" and banned for doing so. That's when you seek niches where only experienced/knowledgeable people abound (think equivalents of obscure hobbies like miniature sculptures or building sheeps in a bottle) because only those with the patience autism to enjoy it stick around.
>TL;DR stop appealing to masses and re-educate/purge the retards, or move to poser and retard-resistant, more niche/autistic games (e.g. action-puzzle like Tetris, Panel de Pon, or Puyo).
6c88a3 No.16525802
>>16525784
Doesn't really work without some weird system and not a ton of incentive, but I think its a novel concept
3c1c0e No.16525806
>>16525784
If it would work the same as the stock market, then the prices would fluctuate constantly.
I doubt this model would ever happen, it would scare away the simple-minded consumers that publishers continually look to sell to. They'd need to constantly check game prices if they wanted to buy something at a reasonable rate, and then on top of that get pissed off when they fail to buy a masterpiece when it's new and now they have to pay $200. This system actively punishes discerning buyers because by the time everyone knows the game is worth buying, the price skyrockets.
4f5f25 No.16525827
>>16525806
Maybe a cap could be added, to stop real kusoge going down to <1$ and to stop real good shit from going over 50$ or so? And maybe prices could be fixed at increments of 5$ instead of allowed to fluctuate like stock. Since we're already way out of the park discussing any system that can give less profits to shekelgrubbing kikes let's go all in.
b66743 No.16525842
>>16525797
I actually think tabletop games like Warhammer has the most competent consumer base on average. There are secondaries, of course, but there seems to be quite a clear distinction between those who just read the books or play the video games and the people who actually play tabletop
268578 No.16525867
>>16525842
>Warhammer
you mean age of sigmar (tm),right?
**STILL MAD
4f5f25 No.16525874
>>16525867
>age of skubmar
380992 No.16525919
big budget new release $30
smaller new release $20 (think nintendo 3ds games)
typical indie new release $10 to $20
after that prices decrease by about $5 per year until every game is $5
380992 No.16525942
>>16524837
I actually think that's one of the better profit models, seeing how paypigs/whales are willing to pay for 5 people's worth of purchases in some games anyway
9440a3 No.16525945
>>16521142
New releases should be priced so that they hopefully pay for themselves within a year or so, to an upper limit of around $50. Once you've recovered your development costs, you can gradually reduce the price over the years to a lower limit of maybe $10 to maximize long-term profits.
db2a60 No.16526035
>>16521142
That pic still works.
I've only seen one game in recent memory outside the $20 bracket that was worth playing.
If you're talking about deciding what price to sell your game at, get in line at the local dartboard and try to aim at the spot that gets you the best combination of units sold and profit per unit.
I'd post the equation for profit maximization, but it's been a long time since I've taken economics
e4edda No.16532237
I've always wondered why some first world devs haven't got the genius idea to set up a domestic office, then move to some bumfuck country like Moldova, Bulgaria, Thailand, or the Phillipines and make money from online sales while working overseas.
It's already required anyways for a modern visual artist who wants to "freelance" on the competitive (((global))) stage and eat as well, so I keep wondering why independent devs seem to insist on living in and paying rent for American shithole cities rather than shitholes abroad.
8e9441 No.16532307
>>16521796
> Being a killer for hire who only gets hired to kill bad guys is just too unrealisti
Half the time he gets hired by equally bad people.
f6b98f No.16532342
>>16521142
>In a perfect world scenario, how would a video game's true price be determined?
In a perfect world, games would cost nothing. Because that's what I'm willing to pay for them.
3e8f1c No.16532345
>>16521796
>>16532307
Nobodys going to hire the perfect, most expensive assassin (H2:SA says he charges triple the rate of other ICA assassins), to kill some random fucker.
You hire 47 to get at people who are supposed to be untouchable.
And generally people who are untouchable arent good people.
f50437 No.16532356
>>16521679
Fortunately for you enough people disagree with your attitude that professional game developers exist and still make games for you to pirate.
3aed7c No.16532732
>>16521142
>In a perfect world scenario, how would a video game's true price be determined?
/v/ may not like to admit it, but the answer is Steam Sales.
With hacking and piracy acting as an equalizer incase things get star-citizen levels of fucked.
50f921 No.16535587
>>1652473
>Servers, storage, electricity, and bandwidth aren't free.
Irrelevant in the case of paying for digital distribution. There is a difference between commissioning something and outright paying for the end product. When you pay for a game you are paying for the end product, and in the case of video games the end product has 0 scarcity and infinite supply unless put into physical form, even then that physical form is the only thing with worth.
On the other hand if you think it should still be paid for because servers and electricity isn't free, it should be $1 max and even then that is way too much. Piracy is able to digitally distribute games for $0.
>at a loss
I never suggested that, they could always sell physical copies, you know like they used to do hell PC games used to be $50 max for a physical copy that was better than today's collector's editions, no DLC or mtx and no shitty clients like Steam, and they were able to make enough money from that to keep making games. There were $20 MSRP on release day physical copies for DS and 3DS that have a manual and are on cartridge.
Fuck that Valve drone mentality that it is either give a developer a donation, which the developer and Valve don't even have the decency to admit is a donation, for a download or games will no longer be made
The concept of paying for digital distribution should not exist because people should not be willing to pay for digital distribution
If physical copies never existed and games were always sold digital only then gaming would be shit and none of the greats would have been made. The industry might be shit now but it degenerated from games being sold physical only, it would be far far worse if it degenerated from games only ever being sold digital only
>>16524837
At least they are honest that it is a donation unlike Valve and all the other digital distributors.
I'm still against it.
5c7d54 No.16535592
>>16521142
>>16521211
>>16521327
Instead of using direct play time as a metric, use the measure of quality playtime. Take for instance monopoly, given a 1-2 hour playtime, only about 30 minutes is fun. That gives a ratio of 1/2-1/4 of quality playtime. If you then assume 1$ per hour of quality playtime and a 20$ price for the game, you'd need 40-80 play throughs for the game to be "worth it".
If you assume the average amount of quality play time to be ~80% for a given decent game (because every game has that one portion that sucks), then (80% * play time / cost) is a pretty good metric for if the game is worth it. If >= 1 its a purchase worth making. This is why post game content and/or (((replayability))) are important, because it increases the amount of quality playtime.
337f8d No.16535611
I don't mind whatever price as long as you pay for everything upfront. No microtransactions, no cutting out stuff to resell as DLC, etc…
8abf35 No.16535648
>>16521150
Since when this board has marxists doing the math?
8e9441 No.16535668
>>16532345
>some random fucker.
Joseph Clarence, the Swing King (^:
994e19 No.16535745
>all these retards thinking that time and resources invested should somehow have any relevance at all
I could circle a pencil on a canvas every day until I've spent more time and more pencils' worth of money on it than pic related, but nobody besides Jewish money laundering schemers would even think of paying as much for it. If you spend more resources than the resulting product is worth, then you've fucking failed, eat the losses and stop trying to coat your shit in sprinkles and shoving it at consumers anyway.
You can only judge the worth of a game by the amount of value you get from it, and that's to a degree subjective. Some people would gladly pay 60 dollars for a walking simulator if the art is hollywood enough, but if I buy a videogame and all I do is walk around I'm going to be pretty fucking mad no matter what graphics you shit out at me, sorry Kojima. It's not that graphics don't increase the value, but they need to be added on top of a good game, not replace it. I don't care if the budget could have rebuilt Rome, if the game is designed like shit then I don't want to pay for it or play it to begin with, and most AAA games fall exactly into that category. And stories in almost literally all videogames are complete garbage compared to actually good non-videogame stories, so that doesn't increase the value.
Most indie games aren't worth a shit either no matter how big they appear to be, because there's usually a certain level of frustration in me throughout the whole thing due to bad design and missed opportunities and disappointments. Even if I play it for 2 days straight, if I hated the time I spent and only felt compelled to finish either because I was hoping for something to get better or because I didn't want to stop halfway through, then it's not worth paying for. It's only worth the amount of good stuff I got from it, not the amount of time I spent.
That said there's something to be said about the size of the game. I've spent over 1000 hours in Terraria but I don't think it's worth 60 dollars because the game is relatively very small and mostly takes a long time due to a grinding/artistic elements. If it was priced too high I'd feel like I'm being cheated. I do think it's worth more than 10 dollars though, more like 20-30. Minecraft on the other hand is more along the lines of 10 dollars despite being one of the best selling videogames of all time, the base game is incredibly simplistic and shallow, it's only fun if you roleplay your own fun into it or install fun (mods) made by other people.
bf8411 No.16535747
>>16521303
definitely shitholers, household of 2 and I spend 650 on groceries+household goods a month and I'm not even living in a high COL bughive.
6bb67d No.16535920
>>16535747
>household of 2 and I spend 650 on groceries+household goods a month
and this is why you don't date landwhales
d5aeea No.16538756
Imagine paying for bits of information
charging for information, be it videos, images, software or vidya should be illegal and is borderline usurous
>muh cinema
you pay for the "experience" (of sharing a room with loud negroes and chicanos for the whole movie and after stepping on popcorn and getting your soles sticky)
>muh illustrators
you pay for the work and skill put towards drawing the furry inflation porn youcommisioned
721f33 No.16538838
>>16521303
Nigger 60-120$ is a fucking lot.
Imagine how many ingredients you can get to make food.
>>16535747
What the fuck are you spending it on where the total goes up to 650$ a month, holy shit…
a9c720 No.16538896
>>16535747
You're not supposed to eat the oven after you're done cooking, retard.
422745 No.16538906
>>16535747
What the fuck.
At work, I can get by with 4 of 6 pizza pockets from a box for $4.77 CDN. So one meal at work costs me $3.50 at most. Eating out at a restaurant costs about $10.00. I spend less than $50 a week on groceries and I have more than enough food, it fucking spoils if it's perishable, before I can get to it (I don't waste meat, though). My rent is like $450 because extended family, and all my bills are less than $800/mo CDN (approx $600 US). What the fuck are you even doing?
ad1412 No.16538922
>>16521142
They would be roughly the same (including sales), but there would be no DLC or Micro-transactions, No games as a service, No unvetted Indie games, No cell phone games and no forced online components.
f7189b No.16538929
Console games were so much more expensive earlier. N64 games were notoriously expensive, at least here. Even not accounting inflation one N64 game cost 130 dollars.
ad1412 No.16538943
>>16538838
Anon $40 - $50 is one plastic bag of groceries in CY++++.
>>16538929
>not accounting inflation one N64 game cost 130 dollars.
are you sure? I don't remember any game being over $60.
f7189b No.16538950
>>16538943
Yes. I paid equivalent of 100 dollars of Fester's Quest, out of my collected allowance.
f7189b No.16539067
>>16539053
On that note when it comes to mod chipping NES for example, I still have no clue where my parents would have gotten their hands on those 200-in-1 NES cartridges, since they were not sold openly in any games store. I've always wondered how people ran into them.
422745 No.16539088
>>16539067
My dad purchased Super Metroid for me, out-of-box at a pharmacy. It was in a small town between two other slightly larger towns. It was sold in a blister pack and cost $20.
1fc3c6 No.16539420
>>16524734
Trucks and bandwidth were never remotely the expense involved in creating any media. That's like saying the main expense of writing a research paper is the ink and paper.
People running to 'free' offers are often retards using communist tier thinking. Like education or medical is free, I'll only have to pay 20% of my income of a few thousand every month fpr 4 decades.
If media is free, most likely it's propaganda wanting to castrate you. Watch all the porn, pbs, and government networks you want. Companies will pay you to product test and hand over medical information in hundreds or thousands. Using websites that track and sell all that information under the guise of free didn't truely save you money. If that's your aim find the offers to sell your information and buy less shitty entertainment with the profits.
b69857 No.16539435
>>16521150
>10% ROI
Don't do this
d21b47 No.16539452
>>16521142
New games on release day and the following two months: 60$ for the full experience, dlc must come free
Game after a couple of months till the rest of the year: 30$, extra content sold separately
After the first year: 5$ / free (depending on the type of game), dlc sold separately
For indie games, divide by 5 each of the previously mentioned games. Any game from a superseded console or that otherwise has no way in hell of being able to be hosted legally anywhere due to loicensing should just be free by default, if they can't sell you a game without having to make an emulator of previous consoles there's no reason why you can't just keep yours.
See I think it's totally fair for a company to want to make back their money and then some, but after the first couple of months realistically speaking your game's pretty much off the radar for anyone else.
e70a0c No.16539562
Get a load of all these commies thinking they deserve to dictate the price of my product
fc79a2 No.16540817
>>16521142
Imagine if quality = f (price). Then I don't feel bad paying MORE for better.
>>16521292
Get more money or play cheaper games. Arrrr
a9ef7e No.16540820
>>16539562
Get a load of this kike thinking he deserves to get money.
384fff No.16542427
>>16521150
>failures and shortfalls don't exist
>companies should constantly be on the edge of collapse to make me happy
great business advice from the all-knowing consumer
cf77a7 No.16542515
>>16521142
impulse buy = monkey island 20 meme
researched buy = monkey island 20 meme adjusted for inflation
Anything that costs more than the inflated monkey island meme you have had pirated and really enjoyed the shit out of it.
498aeb No.16542525
>>16540817
Or just not spend money on shit I can get for free that doesn't hurt anybody in any way?
9559c2 No.16542721
>>16542627
and never play online? or only play with my 3 retarded friends, who clearly are not available on command to come and play with me? thanks but no thanks, what you want to say is: Pirate and kill single player games
d5aeea No.16542756
>>16542721
<and never play online?
>what are pirate servers
<pirate and kill single player games
>implying pirating makes any mark in producer revenue
>implying they will run out of soulless consumer paypig bugmen
>arguing for paying for binary information
lol fag
ad1412 No.16542807
>point and click
Let's be honest with ourselves Monkey Island wasn't really a video game. It's a choose your own adventure, essentially a slightly more sophisticated VN. You shouldn't by paying anything for that trash.
ad1412 No.16542827
>>16542627
>chad isn't ironic
>virgin isn't actually the superior choice
that's not how that shit /cuckchannel/ meme is mean is met to be used
d5aeea No.16542840
>>16542827
>pepe must only be sadfrog
that is you
3f51e9 No.16542862
>>16542756
<implying they will run out of soulless consumer paypig bugmen
this argument works if you're a shit eating retard who only plays AAA garbage.
2d924d No.16542865
>>16542827
>memes cannot evolve past their original meaning
May as well say we can't call people cucks because they're not literal cuckholds.
498aeb No.16542869
ad1412 No.16542878
>>16542840
>ebin reddit memes must be posted on all image boards
that is (You)
>>16542865
Oh please I got banned form /v/ for talking about my bulge. Just ask Mark it's true, he will remember because it wasn't that long ago.
d5aeea No.16542921
>>16542862
Not really, have you seen the "people" who hype indie games?
>>16542878
>muh memes can't change
d5aeea No.16543095
>>16542921
> Not really, have you seen the "people" who hype indie games?
I refer to the ones who supported NMS or who support star yidizen
29d98c No.16543251
>>16521142
>In a perfect world scenario, how would a video game's true price be determined?
Redpill is there is no ways to find this true price.
>t. economics major
3f51e9 No.16543273
>>16543095
neither are representative of lesser known games or indie titles. star citizen has the budget of AAA game.
yakuza games barely reach 100k(before steam releases) sales in the west. not all indie games will sell as much as cuphead or hollow knight.
if all the games you play are popular with bugmen, you probably have shit taste.
000000 No.16543278
>>16542921
>i can't create original content so I butcher an already existing meme
that's what I'm hearing
d5aeea No.16543347
>>16543273
> neither are representative of lesser known games or indie titles
Take Hollow Knight then
>>16543278
> that's what I'm hearing
What are you blind and have the computer read the posts aloud or something?
d5aeea No.16543352
>>16543273
Also some good games are free, e.g. spelunky, la mulana, cave story.