TKO Creations

So, I would never have thought that I’d have a discussion about Kirby beyond the real history behind the character (he was named after the lawyer that helped Nintendo win the rights and trademark to Donkey Kong). But here we are!

So, it turns out that the price for the new Kirby Air Riders has been released, and boy, are some people on social media not very happy that it clocks in at the $70 price point. This is not at all surprising to me. In my almost five decades on this earth, I have seen this unique Five Stages of Grief play out specifically twice (to the former Blizzard developer that snarled at me about it, no this isn’t some “nostalgia” speaking, I was no snot-nosed kid the last two times this happened; I was a grown ass man paying for my own stuff and my memories are very clear).

From the era where games were literally all over the place (those Super Nintendo ads from the early 90s that have game prices anywhere from $35 to $90+ aren’t fake folks, they are very, very real), to the early days of standardized prices, to the bump to $60 in the early aughts, to the now $70 bump… gamers have always bristled when the prices went up. Hell, this current grousing isn’t even particularly worse. So, if I seem dismissive of it to some small degree, it’s for a reason. This isn’t new, and there’s nothing particularly “fresh” about this current age of protest that tells me it’s going to be particularly different this time around.

At least, not specifically in gaming. Economic pressures as a whole are a different tale that has yet to be fully told.

It’s also a big part of the reason why “taking a side” on this isn’t as easy as both “sides” want it to be, because there are legitimate reasons on both sides, in a way that wasn’t exactly true the last few times this happened.

Let’s start with how the industry’s price increases are valid. Yes, it is very true that games and game hardware has not kept up with inflation over the last twenty-some-odd years. Just like with the bump to $60 as the industry standard, there comes a point where a static price point simply becomes untenable, and the industry probably held out longer than it should have.

And I say that because it is very clear that there’s a degree that the complaints are empty. Contrary to what gamers want to believe, people are willfully spending more than they ever have on their games, even adjusting to inflation, thanks to how “free-to-play” games are happily fleecing gamers far more harshly than up front prices ever did. The same community complaining about $70 cover prices generally has no problem dropping $100 a pop on a gacha system slot machine (though they don’t hesitate to complain about it).

They also gripe about $80 games… yet happily spent $60, then $10, then $15, then $20 on increasingly robust DLC packages. This isn’t economic uncertainty speaking here… it’s mere sticker shock, and I personally don’t find that a particularly compelling argument from people who absolutely have the means to pay the extra cost (which I would suspect is a significant majority of gamers).

There is also the simple reality that hobbies are expensive, and gamers honestly get off pretty close to the easiest on that score. Name any hobby, of any slant, in any area of interest, and hoo boy, if you think the prices of games are problem…

Just ask any avid hiker about the costs of just being able to fucking walk through the wilderness. If you are going to be invested in something to the point that you want to genuinely enjoy that experience, it’s simply going to cost you a lot of money. There is a massive degree that it is, to put it bluntly, unavoidable, and a reality that said hobbyist has to accept.

Now, with all that said, there’s no small degree that the arguments of the industry are more than a little bit of bullshit as well. While it’s true that gamers ask for more than they ever did, game developers and studios and publishers overplay that desire.

“Gamers want 8k/120fps with photorealistic 3D effects… etc. etc.”

Do we, though? Do we really? The biggest hardware hit of the last generation didn’t even have 4k capability. Hell, it couldn’t even run a lot of its games at its stated max performance of 1080p. And the “most powerful console of its time” finished in such a distant third that its publisher now is trying to sell their software subscription service to anyone willing to host it.

“Games require so many more people and take so much more time that prices have to reflect that…”

Does it though? One of the best games of the year sold for $50 with a team of (if I recall correctly) 30 developers, not including the contracted work by voice actors and whatnot (which most publishers don’t count in their employee roster anyway).

While I am dubious that smaller teams producing smaller games with less development time sold for less is a replicable answer across the entire industry (play time became a selling point in the “golden age” of gaming because gamers rejected that idea in the 90s and 2000’s), it is certainly possible to deliver a premier experience with less overhead, and its been done fairly frequently.

And finally, there is the reality that the purchasing power and disposable income for a lot of gamers hasn’t meaningfully increased over the years. I am not convinced that group is a majority by any stretch (again, people are genuinely ponying up despite the increases), but its a group that certainly exists, and doesn’t like the idea that the industry is leaving them behind. They can see the writing on the wall here, and that they are being priced out of the games they loved as children as those companies chase the disposable income of those higher up the purchasing ladder.

Yeah, all those words to say… I don’t know if there is a simple answer to this problem. I’d say that there really can’t be a solution until the Great Revolution overthrows this late-stage capitalist world… but considering how poorly communist governments tend to treat games (or any artistic expression, for that matter), there might not be a particularly satisfactory solution on the other side, either.