Sticking it to the greedy publishers.

VincentHanna said:
IMO Loot boxes are for rich/lazy people and kids with access to their parents credit cards...I know a guy who has spend literally £1000's on 'Free to play' Candy Crush. I think he's addicted to be honest. I've never played the game myself.

But don't all games require you to play "in a specific manner' to some extent. If I want to unlock certain skills in games I have to do it the way the game is programmed. If I want the best ending for Dishonoured 1/2, I have to play stealthily and not kill everything. I mean you can mess about on GTA V if you want, but to complete the story you have to do the missions and pass them.

At the end of the day, publishers have probably ran some projections and figured they can make more money from people spending real cash on loot boxes, than in lost sales to people that take a moral stance (rightly or wrongly)

EA must make a fortune every year from FIFA and the coins. I know my 12 year old Nephew is constantly badgering his mum to buy them for him.
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Exactly my thoughts, the people who smash in game purchases are generally gamers who are impatient and buy there way through or generally kids who have access to parents money. The hardcore gamers usually play the game to death to get god rolls on weapons/ armour perks etc
 
VincentHanna said:
You're correct, and yet the cost to makes games has gone up ridiculously.

A NES game adjusted for inflation would cost about £130 now.
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This, I definitely remember paying more for games in the SNES-N64 years than now (I think I paid something like 75-80 quid for whatever was the final... final version of Street Fighter 2 was on the SNES).

Plus I imagine game development is more expensive now than back then.

So what do you do? Raise game prices........... which would upset a bunch of people OR diversify your revenue streams....... which upsets a (potentially smaller) bunch of people.
 
VincentHanna said:
A NES game adjusted for inflation would cost about £130 now.
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The cost of manufacturing them (carts with special chips vs disc/download) has greatly reduced and the market size has grown too though.

There is an enormous variance in the cost to develop games too, as the "AAA" titles cost insane amounts to develop while indie games cost peanuts in comparison.

I don't really have a point here, but just wanted to throw in a few extra points that complicate the issue.
 
The Starwars post from the Devs is interesting, as I have said i will use my 10hrs trial to see if it is a system i can buy into, if its not as harsh as the beta seemed then maybe i will get it, but that beta did more to put me off than to make me want to play.
Would have made sense to throw crates and XP at you in the beta show you progression and something to play for. Most beta's (or demos as we used to call them) do, give you a taste and make you want more.
This one showed me everything i was going to hate and rubbed it in my face.
Lets see how it goes.
 
I think peoples expectation on cost of games is artificially low, but its a judgement everyone can only make for themselves.
Some people want 50-100 hrs worth of game time for £50 with no extras, some people are happy to pay £50 for a good 10 hr campaign. Or £20 for a 3-4 hr "experience".

The games i have spent "big money" on are more hit than miss, but i normally only buy "gold" versions of games i'm going to play a lot, and the only one I can think of that i dropped off from that with is BF1 which really left me cold pretty fast compared to other games.
Even BF4 which released as a bit of a mess to say the least i felt I got my moneys worth once i added up all my play time, and the fixes DICE added to the game.

I have a fiend who complains all the time about being "ripped off" for The Division a game he has over 800 hrs logged on playing, i think for less than 10p an hour he really hasn't got much to complain about. That said hes the guy whos opinion is always based on what hes read on Reddit or seen on Youtube, I'm beginning to think he cant form one for himself.
 
House said:
I have a fiend
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Hehe

House said:
That said hes the guy whos opinion is always based on what hes read on Reddit or seen on Youtube, I'm beginning to think he cant form one for himself.
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We do seem to be entering a new age of people just parroting information they have read/heard elsewhere to try and sound like they know what they are talking about, rather than form their own opinion. Always remember that Youtubers are doing what they can to maximise views so they get paid more from the adverts.
 
Interesting news bit on Eurogamer which relates to this topic: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-23-manveer-heir-bioware-mass-effect-ea-monetisation

"You need to understand the amount of money that's at play with microtransactions. I'm not allowed to say the number but I can tell you that when Mass Effect 3 multiplayer came out, those card packs we were selling, the amount of money we made just off those card packs was so significant that's the reason Dragon Age has multiplayer, that's the reason other EA products started getting multiplayer that hadn't really had them before, because we nailed it and brought in a ton of money. It's repeatable income versus one-time income.

"I've seen people literally spend $15,000 on Mass Effect multiplayer cards."

What we're seeing is a "cynical" chasing of the games making big money. "You've seen - what is BioWare's new franchise coming out?" he asked.

"Anthem," the host duly answered.

"Right," Heir said. "It's not a traditional-looking BioWare game, right? If that's what you're seeing from a place like BioWare, owned by EA, a place where I worked for seven years; if that's what you're seeing from Visceral now closing and going to this other Vancouver studio; what it means is that the linear single-player triple-A game at EA is dead for the time being."
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My take away from looking at the games and what they are becoming is what we see today is publishers testing the water for later (as AJ said in his review of SOW) and the thing they seem to be cottoning on to is we don't like pay to win so they are making the grind 4x worse to make us want those 'easy way out' lootboxes just to win (battlefront2) or see the true ending (shadow of war). Yes in battlefront 2 you can win just the same by playing for ages (if the games good then it's not an issue) and in SOW if you grind a lot and play in an optimal way (most will not bother).

So, not pay to win, grind to win...or fork out. Now look at a game like Horizon Zero Dawn where Sony doesn't really need to make extra millions off it they want to just sell consoles from it, no pointless grinding (some games the grind is justified) and no MTs. Just a great game that flows and there is always something new.

I was around in the NES days and gaming has definitely got worse money grabbing wise. It was unheard of until Bethesda added the horse armour DLC to...Morrowind was it? Everyone thought it was a joke, now look where we are.
 
I remember paying £50 for a game 20 years ago.

Games are still £50 today so prices are going up no matter how they tag it on. I kinda glad the price rise is “optional”, that way I can avoid it if I want. Not to mention if the extra is like £2.99 instead of extra £20 price increase in game cost, I can pick and choose how much I spend on top.

So yes, let them have the loot boxes, give me cheaper games in general. Because games should be like £90 in inflation is at play, not still at £50.
 
They do sell miles more games and DLC nowadays though to make up the shortfall, MTs only exist for the big bucks profit at the expense of the gameplay.

I remember (as said above) paying £75 for Street Fighter 2 and I was happy with it because I got the full game. Nothing tacked on later for the whales. I would pay more nowadays if it was the full game and the devs spent an extra year on it in pre-development instead of after launch. Not that companies like EA would need to charge more because they make billions before all the DLC and MTs.
 
VincentHanna said:
You're correct, and yet the cost to makes games has gone up ridiculously.

A NES game adjusted for inflation would cost about £130 now.
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go back say 12 years ago when digital games pretty much didn't exist on pc let alone consoles. If you released a game and it was a flop best you could do is wait a few months drop the price in a fire sale and never spend money producing any more copies of that game. You take the hit on the head move on and 10 years later some youtuber sticks it on a hidden gems list so prices shoot up on ebay.
How ever you look at it you will not be making any more money from that game.


Fast forward to now. You release a game its a flop. Wait a bit and stick it in a summer sale for 75% off, bit of extra money from the game at no extra cost. Then stick the game on something like PS+ or games with gold, again more money for you at no extra costs. Every time theres a sale stick it in there again for 75% off.

My point being is that yes games cost more to make but unlike years past there are ways to make more and more money at little if no cost by sticking them on a steam/psn/xbox sale.

Also look at game sales from 20 years ago and compare them with now. FF6 comes to mind. It sold something like just under a million units at the time and was considered a success. FF13 considered by many to be the worst in the series has sold over 8 million in comparison.

So many times these publishers are being anti consumer with cutting content, loot boxes and the like and the only argument I hear for them to keep doing these practices is "costs have gone up but game prices have stayed the same"

Look at the amount of money companies like EA, activision and Square are making now compared to even 10 years ago. If they were on the verge of bankruptcy then I would give them a bit of slack but the fact they are constantly making record profits while screwing over their customers is wrong and I don't see how anyone can justify that
 
Raymond Lin said:
I remember paying £50 for a game 20 years ago.

Games are still £50 today so prices are going up no matter how they tag it on. I kinda glad the price rise is “optional”, that way I can avoid it if I want. Not to mention if the extra is like £2.99 instead of extra £20 price increase in game cost, I can pick and choose how much I spend on top.

So yes, let them have the loot boxes, give me cheaper games in general. Because games should be like £90 in inflation is at play, not still at £50.
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Games are £90+ though

This Jimquisition episode dispells the myth rather nicely

 
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