Archive for video games

Here We Go Again (On the Price of Games)…

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , , on October 24, 2025 by chemiclord

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.

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What is Worth $80?

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , , on April 20, 2025 by chemiclord

Disclosure time: I am a bit of a Mario Kart fiend. For whatever reason, ever since that first game popped up on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, I’ve been nigh addicted to that silly kart racer… even when it honestly wasn’t the best of its genre, much less the only one of its genre.

Let’s be honest, Diddy Kong Racing was doing a lot of what Mario Kart is just getting to doing, but for whatever reason, that game never resonated with me quite like the OG. I’ve put roughly 200 hours into every freakin’ title except 7 (and that was only because I didn’t have the 3DS at that time). I’m reasonably certain I will do the same with Mario Kart World.

So for me… is it worth $80? Sure. Do I like that sticker price? Not really. But I’ll grin and bear it because I’m going to get my money’s worth.

Now I don’t begrudge anyone who looks at that same title, shrugs, and says, “That’s not worth $80.” That’s actually entirely fair. If you’re not someone who is going to put 200 hours into it (and I’d wager a ton of people won’t), that’s not a price tag that’s going to compel a purchase. That’s okay. That’s a lot of money to spend on one game.

But what does grind my gears are the dramatics that a lot of gamers are exhibiting over this price point. You’d think this was some sort of daytime soap opera and they just discovered their fiancée has slept with their rival on the eve of their wedding from the reactions they are vomiting on the web. You’d think these gamers are on the brink of homelessness and starvation with the way they are wailing about how they “can’t afford” these unreasonable prices.

Dry your crocodile tears, build a bridge, and get over it. “Why isn’t this $70? $80 is simply too much! I can’t afford that!” Fuck off. If ten bucks is the breaking point for your budget, then I’m gonna be perfectly blunt and tell you that you shouldn’t be buying Mario Kart World at any price point. You shouldn’t be buying it at $70. Hell, you shouldn’t be buying it at $50 (which is the price point that you’d get it in the Nintendo Switch 2 bundle).

If your financial situation is that tenuous that $10 is simply a bridge too fucking far, then you need to back away and not buy anything at all. If you simply can’t afford it at $80, then you can’t afford it at $70. Likewise, if you can afford it at $70, then you can find that extra Hamilton in your budget. You don’t have to like it (like I don’t particularly), but you can do it. Don’t pretend you can’t. Don’t pretend like you’re going to have to subsist on beans and rice for three months because you put that extra cash down on a video game.

Drop the sob stories. Drop the drama. There is a perfectly acceptable to reason to reject that price point, one that doesn’t require you to make yourself look like a damn fool.

“It’s not worth $80.” There ya go. That’s all ya need… and that’s all that Nintendo is going to listen to at the end of the day anyway.

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On The Price of Games…

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , on October 30, 2018 by chemiclord

In a post made just a few days ago, I made the comment that gamers were part of the reason why the financial environment of games it so terrible.  And I want to expand on that, because just that throwaway sentence in and of itself comes across as a bit unfair.

Jim Sterling (I guess you could call him a gaming pundit) has an excellent video on the topic of game cover prices.  You should watch it if you haven’t already, because it offers a lot of good counterpoints and context for what I’m going off about here.

 

First, what is he correct about? He’s absolutely right that adjusting the cover price of games won’t stop the predatory practices “AAA” publishers do now.  The toothpaste is already out of the tube, and there’s no getting it back in.

He’s also correct that worrying about major “AAA” titles going the way of mobile pricing is too little, too late.  We’re by and large already there.

But I also think he makes the same sort of mistake most pundits of most disciplines make; focusing too heavily on the top and the bottom of the food chain, and wind up ignoring the middle.

Right now, independent studios have one of two choices; either they stick to budget “retro-styled” titles that require little development costs, or they sell their souls to a major publisher.  You don’t hear more and more tales of big publishers buying studios whole hog because these studios want to be wage slaves to a big soulless corporate entity… it’s because unless they want to keep making titles that look like they came out of RPG Maker, they have to.

The independent studio is basically extinct at this point because it simply isn’t financially solvent to be in operation… and a large part of that is because a $60 price point for a modern styled game that doesn’t have huge financial backing is too massive a risk for any potential indie studio to make.

The profit margin for the sort of game Sterling wants is so paper thin that one title that doesn’t sell like gangbusters means that studio is dead.  Good luck finding too many people willing to take that chance.

There’s no salvaging AAA publishers at this point, and we really need to stop trying to shame them into doing the right thing.  If we want the sort of deep, immersive titles of old, we’re going to need to be willing to pay more for them.  That’s where the games we remember could potentially be found… but if we don’t show the willingness to support those attempts by putting more up front, the studios that might be willing to take that chance aren’t going to.

And that is something we have stubbornly and petulantly refused to do for nearly two decades at this point.  Then we wonder and complain why things keep getting worse.

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Why are Video Game Movies so Bad?

Posted in Grumblings with tags , , , on May 29, 2016 by chemiclord

This is a question that seems to come up more than once, and usually after the latest “big studio” attempt to transition from the console to the big screen.

And sure enough, the topic has churned up now that Warcraft and Angry Birds stumb…

I still can’t believe that’s a thing.

But the fact that it is a thing ties into Problem #1:

Problem #1: Hollywood is picking up some REALLY dumb games.

This really isn’t something that’s too hard to figure out, especially since Hollywood has a really hard time producing good movies from screenplays developed right in their wheelhouse.

So, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that when they’re looking to adapt a video game, they’d point at the top sellers list and go, “Ehhh… that one.  Get the rights to that one.”

Which is how you wind up with Tetris: The Movie.

And I wish I was making that up.  Truth can be stranger than any fiction, and leads to Problem #2:

Problem #2: Let’s be honest… video game storytelling has traditionally stunk.

Sorry, but it’s true.  You know it.  I know it.  We all know it.  And that very painful trait isn’t something that translates well into a medium where the story has to carry the work.

Scoff at Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Bros. for how awful those movies were, but really… how many people have actually read the companion material for the really popular games in the medium’s history (i.e. the ones that actually get tapped to make that jump)?

For the longest time, video game stories were an afterthought.  The gameplay itself was expected to be the carrying element.  It’s only fairly recently that the storytelling in video games has reached a point where it reasonably is expected to be a primary (if not the primary) element in the quality of the product.

We’re only now reaching a point where the likes of Mass Effect or Assassin’s Creed will start drawing interest from major studios, the latter of which is actually being filmed as we speak, and one that I think has the narrative chops to make said transition well.

Except for Problem #3:

Problem #3: The Uwe Boll Effect

For all the blatant cheesecake and horny male pandering, underneath the Dead or Alive series hides a remarkably coherent plot (albeit a weird one).  So, obviously, the answer is to completely gut that plot, ignore everything about the characterization, relationships, interactions, and how events entwine… and instead mash together something that barely resembles what your audience has already demonstrated they resonate with.

This is hardly a problem with just video games.  Books to movies like to do this too; there seems to be a pathological urge by directors and screen writers to put their own “stamp” on the work by arbitrarily changing things.

At least with books, you can argue that cinematography requires some changes (things that happen in a book, like internal thoughts, don’t really translate well, for example).  But video games, being a visual medium itself, generally shouldn’t require that much narrative meddling.

There’s a bunch of other tripwires involved, but these are the three big ones from my angle, and until those have been resolved, I’m afraid we’re not going to be seeing too many good video game movies in the near future.

 

 

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