Would you have become a gamer today?

GGizmo

GGizmo

GGizmo

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I was reading some of the prices of games these days and the average console game is £25+ going up to nearly £100 for the latest special edition assassins creed game.

When I was a gamer back in the day, games costs 99p, £1.99, £2.99 etc. I think the most expensive game I bought for the Amiga was £14.99.

I think if I was a kid today I wouldnt have been able to afford to buy games. If I managed to get a game I'd have to ask my parents for it and even then it would be at the most 1 game per month, maybe less.

I'm not sure how kids get a satisfying gaming experience these days. They are all pushed in to the free to play games, and apparently shamed because they can't afford the latest cosmetic items for that game.

What do other people think? Do you think if you were born in 2010, so you're 10 years old today, would you still have got in to gaming?
 
Compared to my childhood, games have become much cheaper "better value" these days. I remember new games being £30 (PC) to £45 (PS2), and like you said, I simply couldn't afford them. I'd be stuck with the ageing Sold Out range for £5.

However games seem to have been around the £40 to £50 mark for literally decades and inflation has seen the value of £1 half since 1994. Then think that games have gone from a dozen people working on a game for 10 months (Doom 2 - $50) to thousands working for decade (Red Dead 20 - £55). It isn't surprising that games have had to find other revenue streams and as much as I long to be able to buy a game for £50 and it's content complete, I can't say I'm angry about when I think about the numbers. I get to play a game costing hundreds of pounds at a reduced cost because some mug bought the uber deluxe edition that lets you skip gameplay and 1000 Vbux. I don't think those days are coming back. developing and selling Doom, without a retail or online presence or marketing no less, must have been like printing money!

When I was 10 in 2000 I would have loved to have access to a wide range of games I can play for free instead of having to save up! I would have grinded... ground... World of Tanks, Warzone, all that stuff till I knew it inside out. 10 year old me in 2000 or in 2020 didn't have access to Daddy's credit card so loot boxes would have been out of the question and if anything I would have been taught the value of money through gaming. "No son, you bloody well cannot have V-bucks for your birthday to a digital skin that's worth nothing but swaths of 10 year olds seem to accept has a £10(?) value attached to it, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, use the money to buy this whole game instead".

I'm glad I didn't miss the 2000s games though.
 
Think my son has more games than I ever had as a kid.......dunno if thats because I am a soft touch being a gamer as well or that there are many more available, game pass/uplay+/origin access, F2P etc etc.
 
By the time I got into gaming (early nineties 1991-1992) games were £40+. Cheaper Shareware games existed although purchasing was (vaguely recall) phoning some international number with a credit card. Normally saved weekend job money for a game I wanted. I was very lucky that we went to USA for family holidays, so games were 50% cheaper in the US. I stockpiled.

What I would worry about when being 10 nowadays, missing out on traditional toys/hobbies (Airfix, Scalextric, Tamiya) where you built/painted your own. Or if it broke you learned how to fix it. A bit like 90's PC ownership, I learned a skill, whereas now switch on, load steam.

I would say if I was 10 today, I would be a gamer, my taste in games, even to this day has not varied that much to when I was a teenager.
 
Looking back, how 10 year old me had the discipline to save up £60 for a new N64 game is beyond me. Admittedly we could use Game/EB as an internal rental store, that 14 days no fuss return for months on end made sure I got to try a big range of games...

Looking at modern day gaming line up I have no idea how anyone pays for a full price release, seems like you only get 60% of a game, would finish it in the 14 day return period but most you can't resell in the same way.

The DLC bugs me as well, it was around in the 90's (I have all my AoE and Civ expansions) but it was at least clearer what you were getting, the customisable hats seem a complete rip off.
 
You can't be serious, today's games can have hundreds of people working on them, that's a lot of salaries to be paid also you have inflation it's a non question.
 
I think its much easier to get into now than it was for us back then. So many free to play games with tonnes of content. Cross platform gaming is finally becoming mainstream too. Its never been easier to get into gaming!

I am not typically a AAA gamer tho so dont really have the experience of those big prices. I think the last game I paid for that was £60+ was the top version of sims4 on pre order...
 
It’s a more complex question than simply game cost. Firstly the only reason I became a PC gamer was because my father worked for Olivetti and I always ended up with a relatively decent PC for nothing. Growing up I had 386 DX machines through to Pentium 90 (with a whopping 80MB pf RAM) which enabled me to learn computers as well as gaming. On top of this I had various laptops that I would take with me on domestic holidays or to grandparents when visiting. Had I needed (or needed my parents) to actually fund these machines I likely wouldn’t have ever had the exposure, computers were INCREDIBLY costly.

Moving into the Pentium II era, I finally ended up with a mainstream consumer brand (Compaq Presario 5170) and began attending LAN parties between a few close friends. At the same time we (my group of friends) were always pooling whatever money we had to buy whatever old hardware we could find in our local bric-a-brac used goods stores around town/in rhe loot magazine.

Finally onto high-school/sixth form/university when my passion for building/upgrading/benchmarking and gaming took off big-time. I built my first home-built system (though I had upgraded my Compaq and Olivettis previously, the Compaq ended up going from a PII-350 to a PIII-500 and I ditched the onboard Rage Pro for a PCI Voodoo 3 2000), I ended up building a Duron 650 on an abit motherboard, 128MB of RAM and a TNT2 Ultra, all housed in a monstrosity of a beige and translucent green case. We started attending organised LANs like the early Multiplay insomnia series (back when they were actually about the gaming and not the “esports” prizes and stalls).

It’s a vastly different landscape now, you don’t really need to know what you are doing (thanks plug’n’play), you don’t have the same hardware involvement really, and you can get much the same casual experience on a console (or dare I even say mobile device). I fear that had I been 5 or 6 today, then no, I doubt I would have ended up as a PC gamer.
 
Yes. Outside of fringe examples, as far as I can see, gaming has never been so cheap, accessible or culturally accepted.
 
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