Games - what are they worth?

http://www.bit-tech.net/preview/columns/games_piracy_value/1.html

 

I'll juyst quote a good post made on the whole piracy arguement awhile ago on slashdot

"It's not piracy either. Piracy is an illegal act of violence, detention, or plunder committed for private ends by crew or passengers of a private ship or aircraft against another ship or aircraft on the high seas or in a place outside the jurisdiction of any state.

It's called copyright infringement. Calling it theft, piracy, etc is a manipulative attempt to confound discussion by depicting copyright as a piece of owned property which can be stolen when in actuality it is nothing more than a government run incentive program to fund the arts.

Not too many people will stand up and say that they think stealing someones car is appropriate behavior. Not too many people would say it's appropriate to steal a CD from a music shop. But if you ask them "Do you think it's appropriate behavior for people to borrow their friends CD and make themselves a copy", you find a very different response. Case in point, the article.

For all those people out there who constantly parrot "Whatever, it's stealing" whenever the subject comes up, do stop. It makes you look stupid, it's rather offensive to regurgitate such transparently manipulative crap in a forum that's presumably frequented by more intelligent people, and it rather quickly kills any discussion of the real issue: Should copyright be granted at all, why, and what limitations on its scope will result in the greatest benefit TO SOCIETY."

pretty much covers what I feel about some parts of this article about the whole "piracy" issue

but I completely agree with the fact that todays games are so rediculously priced. this is the main reason I havn't bought the psp as the games for that are around the same price as a normal console yet I would play on a psp even less than I would a normal console which isn't much in the first place.

It's not that I'm not a frequent gamer, I received half life2 and cs:source for free from buying my ati card which gave me a free voucher and I completed hl2 within a couple of days if launch and racked up quite a few hours on cs:s I also play enemy territory each day for a couple hours solid but thats a free game. If the prices came down alot I mean more than 50% I'd consider buying some of the new titles but until that happens I'll gladly download what I think is worth it and with the majority of stuff I've downloaded games wise has been uninstalled + deleted the same day which to me shows even more that it isn't worth paying for some of the stuff being made now

 

Download distribution would work if there is a cut in price because of the lack of printed manuals, media etc...

Along with this I think perhaps a semi rental approach. You pay a fee say £5/£10 to have the game for 2 weeks at which point the game either stops working or you pay a further £5/£10 to extend the game time available.

This would continue until you had reached a pre-set payment limit for the game so if the game was £30, you would effectively pay 3 payments before the full unlock key was sent.

I would have no problem paying a nominal charge to allow me to play a game for a certain time before deciding, is this a game I want to continue playing.

I imagine the counter to this argument is play a demo beforehand, but most demo's may be a single level which may not be indicative of the game experience.

Another benefit of this kind of distribution is that piracy is occuring becuase of the initial outlay for a game. I remember when Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights came out at the same time. Both games were around £35 in Game.

£70 is a lot to stump up, but if for instance you only paid £10 over 7 weeks it might not feel so bad, especially as you might decide you prefer only 1 of the games and therefore 'suspend' your rental/purchase of the other game.

 

Digital distribution networks need to pay for servers and bandwidth so youll not get cheaper games that way, especially as clogged as the internet is already.

p2p doesnt = warez. It's like saying that you own a car automatically means you go over the speed limit, or the fact that i own a knife means that im gonna go out and stab someone.

If x360/ps3 games come out at £60 then there will be even more copyright theft. Consumerism means people will want to play the games. Consumerism created by the digital evolution and advertising, just like kids wanting, NEEDING to play GTA games even though they are underage. They dont care how much it costs to make, they just wanna play it no matter what.

 

I really do not care what price they sell games for as long as they eventually find there way to the bargain bin. I learned a lesson a long time ago when I got the (then) top of the line Atari 5200. This unit sold for a premium compared to the Atari 2600. The games also sold for a premium, but I had to have as many as I could afford. Then Atari discontinued the 5200 and the games still on the shelves started selling for next to nothing. I watched the same thing happen with each new console, and then again with PCs. I have learned that the key to being able to play all the games you want, without going broke is patience. If you wait long enough the game you want will drop in price. This strategy is very cost effective for PC gamers because you can buy middle class hardware for a decent price and run one or two year old games at their max graphics settings. Console gaming is similar. Right now I can by an Xbox or a playstation 2 for around $150, much less if I buy used, and most of the games that originally sold for $50 can be had for $10 or $20. These prices will drop even more when the next-gens ship. Another advantage of patience is that there is plenty of time to read all the reviews of a game so I never shell out money for a lousy game. Of course I concede that if everyone started doing this then the gaming industry could not survive as it is. However, I feel that there will always be people, with enough money or lack of sense, that have to have the latest and greatest.

 

Hell no. One of the first things I do when I play a game is turn the "Music Volume" right down and leave Winamp playing in the background. I want to choose what I listen to from a selection of more than 10 songs, thank you very much.


As for the pricing arguments. I think that games (like CDs mentioned in teh article) are well over priced. I have a GameCube and apart from Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart which I bought when I got the console the rest have been bought in the sale or from the FS Forum here and elsewhere.

Whilst I like the idea of shorter games being cheaper, I don't think it would really work. Half Life (1) probably has about 20 hours of gameplay, let's say, but would Valve charge £400 per copy because you need it to play CS? My point is that playability and longevity is subjective. I'm not much of a gamer, but at home I've got Far Cry installed and I played it for an hour before I got bored, whereas at work here I've got Q3a installed and play it regularly on a lunch break or after work waiting for the next train.

Most people would probably argue that Far Cry is worth far more than Q3a because it's got great single player, and loads of mod cons and technology and looks 'teh pretty', but I would strongly disagree. I get far more enjoyment and for far longer from Q3a than I do from Far Cry.

As for HL2 and all it's uberness. Wouldn't know, haven't got it. If that Goldeneye:Source every sees the light of day, I might be forced into buying it.

 

The argument of number of hours of entertainment = value leads you down the road that a Movie should be practically free given the possible 1.5hrs of viewing pleasure and Music CD's could cost £000's as they can give you years of enjoyment!

 

thats silly, why wouldn't you re-watch movies?

honestly the only games i've bought and thought were worth buying have been games with a strong MP component
RTCW
UT2004
Guild Wars
BF2
and HL2 although i never really played it online

 

this is just my opinion.. agree or disagree as you like, but dont call me ignorant or belittle my intelegence becasue of it. You can view downloading games/software as not stealing. Go ahead and justify it whatever way you will. When it comes down to it, its wrong. Doesnt matter what you classify it as. Its wrong. Theres no point getting into the technicalities of what kind of "wrong" it is, or becoming pretentious over what kind of wrong it fits more appropriately. Obviously, if you dont understand that its something thats wrong, youve never had to work in a team (or alone) spending long hours producing something that then people take and enjoy for free when that wasnt your intention from the start.

However, my opinion there doesnt mean that I dont think current games are priced on the steep side. I would enjoy it if they were cheaper, and most companies can afford it. Then again, I dont think games are priced all that bad. It really depends on the game, the quality of the game and how much I will enjot it. Here in the states right now we pay 9.75 to see a movie. The average movie these days is 1.75 hours. So if you use that as a template, a 10 hour game would be about $50.00 USD.

But, there are many factors aside from play time that come into the picture such as quality, graphics and style. When it comes down to it, you cant draw up a pricing model based on one or all of the above factors. The weight of each of these is going to differ from person to person since its opinion based. What looks like a great game to one person may make someone else shrug and say "eh....". Just like you pick and choose which movie you go see in the cinema. You have the freedom to pick and choose which game you buy. You wait for a movie to come to dvd when its not something incredible but slightly sparks an interest, on the flip side, you can wait for a game to hit the bargain bin if it does the same.

In all honesty, I dont think the situation is really all that bad if you know what you want and do your research before hand. You can get a feel for what style of game you like, whos your favorite developer/publisher etc etc etc and do your thing. I have always liked the idea of renting a game as someone in an earlier post pointed out. I really like the idea of once you pay up to a certain price point you then own the game and no longer need to pay (a concept I never really thought about.)

I do think with the recent sucess of MMORPGs and their monthly fee, that all software from microsoft to EA will start working on figuring out how to lease/rent their software for a monthly fee. Some things still need to be worked out though, since that works great for software like windows/office which is used over long periods of time and not so well for games when one can last 10 hours and another 80.

 

I just thought i'd plug this free and open source game, Nexuiz.

 

Personally I think the current pricing is fairly reasonable,well just about.

True, but physical distribution also has the high street retailers taking their cut, as well as shipment costs, so digital distribution should work out cheaper in the long run.

I don't think using any set of criteria to set the price would work to well. The publishers and their advertising departments would just have a field day trying to come up with as many reasons as possible to justify the highest price they thought they could get away with.

To add another point to the arguement, There are a few games I have played over the years I would have considered better value for money had they actually finished them!
A recent example being VTM: bloodlines. A game full of little glitches and typos and one showstopper of a bug that would have prevented me from actually completing the game had I not been able to find a work around on the net

 

For me, decisions that go into purchasing a game include, how long is it, is it replayable, and is it fun. Graphics quality means crap if the game isn't fun to play and doesn't last longer than a few hours. Yes, we all like "the pretties," but few people in the real world can afford to have bleeding edge computer components to achieve "the pretties." Many people have computers that don't even meet the minimum system requirements of some of today's games, myself included.
I'm not going to drop $50+ on a game that only takes 15 hours to finish and might replay once in less time than that. That's one of the reasons I own so many RPGs. 50+ hours of gameplay for KOTOR was a great. Plus you could play it all over again and it would be almost completely different based on your choices. Neverwinter Nights was 40+ hours for the original game not to mention all of the expansion packs that came out and it was endlessly replayable because of the many different characters that you could create. I bought Halo2 at full price because I could play it for endless hours online with countless other people. I was originally going to purchase Republic Commando, but when I heard it was only 15 hours long I decided to wait til it was a budget title. I might even rent it from the video store and save an extra $15 bucks (under the assumption that budget titles are $20).
I'm tired of developers and publishers making games that take a bleeding edge computer to run, and aren't fun. I usually wait til games have been out for a week so I can read their reviews online to get an idea of their fun level. I've heard too many people complain about the repetition in Doom3 for me to ever care about playing it. I don't care how pretty it is. Same goes for FarCry. Pretty game. Pretty boring game. Developers spend so much time and energy making games pretty that they forget to add any other engaging element. Why should I reward them for that?

 

@bindi,
The idea of online distribution incredibly reduces the total overhead necessary. CD printing costs money, production costs money, the paper topping costs money, the ink costs money, the manual costs more money, the box costs yet more money. All of these moneys are going to other companies who are also out to make their own profit, so they're charging more than it costs. The beauty and curse of outsourcing is that you may not have to buy all the machinery up front for yourself, but you eventually do buy it...for someone else.

Online costs bandwidth and servers. It allows direct distribution, or could even be designed for a P2P idea, which could reduce costs considerably. If this makes its way into the cost of the game, people won't even mind sharing a little smidgeon of their bandwidth.


As for this article, I agree that things are a tad overpriced. I think the problem we have is that EVERYONE thinks their game is worth the same as everyone else. We need a reality check for producers and distributors more than anything. Guess what, guys...killzone is not halo, or UT2k4. Doom3 is not HL2, or Farcry.

I don't think these pricing models suggested will work because of ego and the inability to admit you do not have a superior product. Not to mention, to tell everyone you have a superior product means more people are likely to buy it.

Personally, I think we need to get back to the shareware model. Where people can buy a portion of the game for cheap, or free. And buy the rest if they want/like it. We've gotten down to time demos, movies, and beta weekends as the only previews. I want to see a working, fun game. And not time-limited. I played doom1 shareware for quite a while before I bougt the game. It hooked me.

If we do that, people will know enough beforehand to believe the hype or not. So games that are not any good and can be quickly cut in price.

 

p2p wont work for distribution because, like steam, theyve got to keep COMPLETE CONTROL over it. Paying for servers, techs, bandwidth, power, housing for your servers around the world, load balancing, update development etc. End users DO mind sharing their bandwidth if they wanna play online but if they have no choice then i spose that would be good.

 

First of all, great article! I really like that Bit-Tech are starting to post more articles lately

I couldn't agree more. I have never bought a game because of the graphics and never will. Gameplay is, by far, the most important thing in games.

For example: Deus Ex is one of my favourite games of all times. It's based on the UT engine, and has pretty silly animations. That doesn't mean the game is bad... In fact, I like to think the developers (ION Storm) used more resources on getting the gameplay to where they wanted it to be. I have no idea how many hours of play this game has, cause I don't sit down and count the hours I play it, but I've completed it about 10 times now and it's still a great game.

I kind of like the idea of paying more for a longer game, however, if games like Deus Ex and Half-Life 2 was half the length they are, I'd still pay a great deal more for them than other games of the same length, because of the actual quality of the game.

Good games are like good movies - If the game or movie makes you feel as though you are part of the world, that's usually a good thing. There's plenty of factors that contribute to getting a game or movie to this point, but one of the strongest factors has to be music. HL2, DX and NWN are 3 games that all had (in my opinion) great soundtracks, which increased the "atmosphere"-feeling of the game world. I doubt HL2 would be the same if I had say Foo Fighters or Iron Maiden playing in the background, no matter how good their music is

In my humble opinion, the future is digital distribution. What are the benefits of having a game in a DVD cover? A thin, boring manual and a CD with a label on it? That's about everything that's shipped with games these days. On the other hand, if publishers had included a proper manual and possibly some other goodies like the old games did (Red Alert, Civ2, Warcraft 2 etc), I would probably have a different opinion on this case.

 

Personally, I like the patience approach. You get time to see what other people think of the game, and by the time it gets cheap, most, if not all, of the bugs have been worked out. Also, I'm a fan of the 1-2 year old games, plus mid-line rig. Check sig for example, semi-decent rig, but plays everything up to Farcry, CoD, Source, and HL2 fine. And I haven't really payed much for any of those games, aside from HL2 (but that was the silver pack, so I got 13 games for $60, not a bad overall price.).

 

Sorry for Long Spam

After quite a lot of tweking and with quite similar price components I had no problem playing Farcry (highest settings for 35-50FPS, mid-high set. 40-70FPS), HL2 (High (no AA, AF though) 40-60FPS). Haven't played CoD though... and can;t play Source for one reason

Heck I can even enjoy Battlefield 2 with my rig, though not on high this time. Now it's more Middle settings (although geometry and few others are on high). Older video cards can hardly cope with complex shadows and AA/AF filters, water reflections can sometimes make a big difference but that totally depends on a graphics engine.

Mine: AMD Athlon (barton) 2800+, Abit AN7, 1256MB of slow ass RAM, MSI FX 5900XT 128....

As for the gameplay.... YES it is the most important factor for game enjoyment, however not for quick BIG BOOM sales. Example: When I first turned on SW KOTOR I though WTF? The graphics in were quite terrible (interior of the ships), very repetitive and not exciting at all. After 5 mins of exploring the games has been forgotten until much mich later in the year, when I was bored and had no new games to play. After 2 hours of forcing myself to focus on the positive aspects of the looks of the game, I got so into the story that I played that only game for about 4 days till I finished it, and then I got the second KOTOR without even considering. Now quite many of people I know did not force themselves to bear the first fw hours of a game and they just put it away (surely not buying the sequel). THe other example is DOOM3. That was a blast remember? Damn those sales were going on everywhere and then 2 months later the game has been forgotten (almost forgotten- to the fans of Doom3). And how many considered buying Doom 3 something expansion (fear, devil, hell something expansio, I truly did not pay attention to that thing). Many people are even thinking that Quake 4 might be quite dissapointing because it is using Doom3 graphics engine. That's what amazing graphics and lack of good gameplay lead to.

So what I'm saying is that graphics are important... quite important for sales to go up and to gain new players however then gameplay has to take over and keep those gamers waiting for the next sequel.

 

When I started earning, I started paying, I get my DVDs from ebay/play/amazon/cdwow or out of the discount bin in the video store all about £3-5. PC Games I buy several months after they first come out for £12-20. If I get a console (Gamecube and Gameboy) I cast about in the bargain bin and on amazon/play for cheapies. PC Hardware comes secondhand, usually the previous generation. Theres no way I'd pay for games at the price they come onto the market at, DVDs are getting better (who wouldn't pay a £8-11 for a really good film?) and CDs have dropped in price (though anything more than £8 for an album is still a ripoff).

Thanks to the net prices are more managable and I don't mind paying for an original. Would I pay for DRM music? No, plain and simple. If an album won't play on my PC, can't be copied onto my minidisc etc then whats the point in buying it? My server hosts music to every PC in the house, its like having a jukebox in everyroom. My minidisc can carry 5-6 albums on a single disc so I'm never short of something to play and I bought the music so why shouldn't I be able to listen to it however I want? I'm not giving it away to other people. I'm certainly not paying to have my choice curtailed. DRM is a dead end, low prices and trust in consumers is the way forward, just think how much cheaper CDs/DVDs/Games would be if there was no copyright protection, sure there would be several people who copied the stuff but they were never going to buy brand new anyway and theres no way to stop them buying second hand so just give in and lets move forward. Flexibility and choice is king.

 

Retail packaging ins't what it used to be. The last couple of new games I've seen come in a small box with little more than a Quick Install Guide card and the CD's in paper sleeves. What ever happened to jewel cases? I can look into my CD case at home and see almost all old titles and no new ones simply because paper sleeves don't belong there. Full manuals? As little as I usually read manuals, I still like to have a hard copy around. Having to open up a PDF is, in some cases, not all that convienent.

I remember some of my older games. It always seemed like there was pride put in those boxes. Every disc had its own/shared jewel case. Full manuals were printed. Some games would come with cool little extras in the box like a mini action figure or a poster. If HL2 had come with a cool poster, I probably would have put it up.

On the other hand, I realize its a double edge sword. You want more, you pay more. However, given the current state of retail sale of games, the only thing you are getting over online distribution is cd/dvd media and some meaning leaflets from alienware or nvidia. I feel cheated by that sort of thing. If I'm going to pay $50 for a game, it better come with a damned jewel case and a manual. I suppose this is where opinion is a problem. I understand compromises to save cash and given that savings is passed onto the customer, I would even support it. However, there are titles I where would want to see no compromises. I'd pay $50 for Half-Life 2 for a full manual and DVD/CDs in cases. On the same coin I'd rather pay less for a game I was't quite so interested in that didn't come with jewel cases or a manual. There lies the problem of opinion. What I feel is a game where compromises can or can't be made will differ from the next guys opinion of the same titles.

I suppose its a simular point to the comparision with movies. If you feel a movie is worth it, you would go and spend $10 to go see it and wait on movies you are less interested in.

 

all my recent games have come in DVD boxes with a full manual :\