Are games being priced cheaply hurting gaming?

glennmagusharvey

We as gamers are consumers, and we definitely like to spend the least amount of money to get the most stuff, at least when considering our own personal finances.  We applaud sales on Steam and Humble Indie Bundle offerings.  But are cheap games having an effect of depressing prices and/or revenues, especially in the independent ("indie") game sub-market?

Discuss.

This thread was spawned from this thread on SteamGifts about indie bundles and the values of games, which also touches on their tradeability (which is kinda unique to Steam.  (FYI I'm "QuintSakugarne" on there.)

Among the comments in that thread is a link to this blog post by Cliffski of Positech Games, the developer of Gratuitous Space Battles.

One of the comments to that is from David Amador of Different Pixel, the developer of Vizati, who links to his own blog post on the issue.  Some comments to this post also touch on distributor registration fees (which is broadly also related to such issues as the costs of console development kits and console developing, as well as publishing costs in general--as consoles can be seen, in a way, as a publishing tool).

Just wanted to throw out some existing commentary about this issue; I don't necessarily endorse any of these opinions (as I haven't yet formed my own).  Not sure I totally agree with Amador on Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars, as point-and-click-style adventures (of which that game is one, kinda) are indeed one of the less expensive genres to produce, but also offer relatively little replay value.

That said, does this necessarily mean that the game isn't "worth" $7.99?  How does one make normative judgements about the value of a videogame anyway?  Perhaps you could divide development and maintenance costs by total expected unit sales, though I know very little about the development budget of these games.  All I know is that it took Carpe Fulgur (the localizers of Recettear: an Item Shop's Tale) about US$20,000 (based on my estimations) to localize Chantelise: a Tale of Two Sisters--and that's localization, not development from scratch.

 

(cross-posted to the Caves of Narshe forums)

Bee

Distributor fees for cheap downloadable games are nowhere near printing fees for solid games.  That, and cheap games are usually of a format more usable with the almighty DLC.

MadassAlex

> games are $100 in stores over here
> "are games too cheap?"
> laughinggirls.jpeg

But seriously, I think the biggest thing harming the market right now has less to do with consumers and more to do with publishers. The games industry, at its highest levels, is run by men who don't really care about games. That's what hurts the industry and the ultimate bottom line. People who work in the industry at lower levels care about games and people who buy games care about games, and both do their part to contribute, be that through consumption or creativity. The moneybags at the top are only interested in making safe games that can make a predictable amount of sales, so they prevent the industry from using proper creativity on the most high-budget productions.

Experienced development teams that have a million ideas for something different and the money to make it happen shouldn't be stuck churning out sequel after sequel -- they should be diversifying gaming at large, and spreading it to an even wider audience. I believe that if there were more diverse game types out there, or effort was spread with more diverse projects, the term "hardcore gamer" would come to mean nothing as the majority of affluent people, young and old, would play games with equal enthusiasm and on equal footing. 

delta534

My opinion is that the 99 cent game glut of the andriod/apple app store does hurt games while steam sales and indie bundles do not. I'm too tired right now to give a lengthy explanation and create the charts and formulas needed for the explanation, but the short version is that the economics of the situation screws over the android/ios dev and while it may seem worse for the indie dev on steam it will works out to a higher profits. 

Naas_Human

The moneybags at the top are only interested in making safe games that can make a predictable amount of sales, so they prevent the industry from using proper creativity on the most high-budget productions.

 

Isn't this also true for other entertainment industries?

MadassAlex

Broadly. But you don't hear about developers or studios with leverage. In Hollywood, a well-known director might be able to bowl over a producer on the basis of past success and recognition. In the gaming industry, the concept of a well-known developer was short-lived and is already a thing of the past. Books are similar to films in that respect -- a well-known author can leverage their own creative might against a publisher if need be. 

I mean, when a new film or book comes out, there's pre-emptive expectation based on the creative person or people behind it. Authors, directors, actors, musicians and so on and so forth. But for games, that expectation is generally based on the series a game belongs to, if any. Often, the publisher is more well-known than the development studio. 

So while it's broadly true that all creative endeavour is restricted by economic concerns, it seems to have hit the gaming industry hardest of all. And unlike books or films, games can't repeat the same thing with a new coat of paint time and time again because they're mechanical, requiring input from the audience. They have to change, progress and become more sophisticated in terms of core design. There's no point in a new game otherwise. 

Publishers certainly have a place, but they shouldn't be demanding such a plethora of sequels. What they should be doing is ensuring that game development cycles remain efficient and evenly spread without draining the development team to breaking point ("crunch time" is the most horrible thing). They should be collecting demographic information and keeping an eye on the market, but they should be doing those things in a way that encourages innovation and creativity. After all, we can observe that time and time again, breakaway hits are the games that give us something fun and rewarding while providing a fresh experience. Stuff like Mario and Zelda when they first came out, or Half Life, Call of Duty or Demon's Souls. All these games, in their original incarnations, were full of new ideas that empowered their genres. 

Sure, there are always imitators -- but that's half the point. A strong game should be imitated in some respects. A really powerful, long-lasting game changes the market because it proves to both its audience and its publisher what this approach is capable of. 

Bee

I think Blizzard is about the only one that was spectacularly successful enough to earn as much of a hands-off approach from their new evil overlords as has ever been seen in the industry, really.

Part of that is that like Alex said, a good director can be enough of a recognizable figurehead that they can get license to do whatever they want.  Now think about how many triple-A game directors you know other than Miyamoto, Sakaguchi, and a few of those wacky art-game guys (and several of them probably won't even be directors).  Hell, think about how many triple-A staff members you know off the top of your head.

I mean sure I know a few because it's my homework for my career.  But you're not going to be able to walk up to a random Joe and say "hey, how about that Tim Schafer" and expect them to think of much of anything, much less the brilliant and lovable writing of 90's Lucasarts.  Probably because they're such an emergent force, you don't really get these tremendously powerful figureheads in video games nearly as often -- they're replaced in the consumer's head by the company as a whole.

Here's another one.  Who do you think of first: Peter Jackson or Vivendi?  Now who do you think of first: Casey Hudson, or Bioware?