It’s weird though, the value of the dollar has dropped since the 1980s, but games still cost $60.
Well, of course smaller studios can charge less for their product in order to make a profit. Their expenditures has to be a lot less, and hence they need to make less money to make a profit.
I can’t understand these complaints, honestly. It’s not like games are some kind of vital necessity. What’s more, I’d say they are luxury goods. So, either you pay for them or just pirate them (or ignore them altogether). Complaining makes no sense.
Exactly. The alternative to most companies setting prices dictated by what they can get away with charging is some kind of state involvement in setting prices, or even in production - you can imagine that in a communist state, there might be a government-run game studio, for example, and it would put out games at a certain price point calculated to be acceptable to the government’s goals and ideals.
I think this could actually work just fine, and think it’d be a great way to solve the problem of copyright. But we also shouldn’t kid ourselves: the government isn’t going to take vast amounts of money it could allocate to healthcare, transport, etc and allocate it to non-essential entertainment like video games. Look at government expenditure on the arts nowadays. So there would be fewer video games coming out in that system, and fewer opportunities for a Hollow Knight to come out of it all.
Given the current administration, bold of you to assume that they would spend a penny more than the absolute, bare minimum on healthcare, transport, etc
Hopefully it’s obvious that when I talk about a communist state or other state initiating huge state-run enterprises like game studios, the current US adminstration is not of much interest.
Not to mention it’s a smaller game. And people will point to that it took 6 Years to make. It really shouldn’t have taken 6 years to make it. What were they doing, working one guy to death on it?
In my experience, most people who complain about the length of time it took to develop something like a game have no experience in relevant fields and don’t understand how long it really takes to do the bare minimum for even a 30 hour game experience, much less to make it a quality experience.
I could hammer out a “game” with dozens of hours of “content” in a week that perhaps a single digit number of people will buy before immediately requesting a refund. Making something good is what takes time. It involves a lot of steps of going back, seeing what works and what doesn’t, revising, and reiterating.
Breath of the Wild by comparison also took about 6 years to make with a team of 300 people. Silksong apparently was developed by a team of 3. While I doubt they were living the high life the entire 6 years, I also have doubts they were working each other like slaves. Therefore I believe they were likely working at a more normal pace for game development, and it simply takes that long to make a quality experience.
Well considering only 4 people work on the game, and one of them only does the music, probably, yeah.
I have to assume that also, it’s a game that is definitely not for everyone, and the price reflects that. If I only got as far as I have in 5 hours and decided to give up, I’d have been sore about $40. As it is I’m going to spend a lot more time with it and I’m already happy with how much entertainment I’ve got for my money.
This is me too. I took a bit longer than expected to get back into the flow of HK (sequels amirite?), but once I did… I’m obsessed lol
Large studios could make smaller games. Fund 10 games for the price of 1 big one. Expect at least one or two to be absolute gangbusters.
I don’t think a flood of low effort games is the solution you think it is…
The latest Call of Duty game, Blacks Ops 6, is estimated to have a budget between $450,000,000 and $700,000,000. 1/10th of that budget ($45M to $70M) is still more than the entire development budget for The Witcher 3 at $35,000,000. The only thing they would likely need to cut back on is their marketing budget of $35,000,000.
You could probably make a hell of a lot of AAA games for the same price as GTA 6.
It’s what indie games already are. Following Sturgeon’s law, 90% of indie games are garbage. We venerate the 10% that aren’t.
This is an interesting point. With the decline in AAA game quality over the past… 5 (?) years, i wonder what percentage of them are garbage vs not. Because IMO, I’ve seen very very few that even twinkle, let alone shine, and i love blockbusters (though 2025 is shaping up wonderfully)
That might not quite be true. You can’t have 1000 people make Hollow Knight overnight. It’s like the old adage of 9 mothers making a baby in one month.
The closest thing would be to split the studio internally into 10 small teams, and have them each make a game over a long period of time; maybe that’s what you were implying.
Well, yeah, that’s how you do it. No reason to have one AAA sized team for ten small games.
Huge gaming studios churning out reskinned versions of the same franchises that have been running for a decade+ with no real original content? $70+. Indie gaming studio putting out original content? $25.
Not to defend big companies, but big companies have larger operating costs and they have more corporate responsibilities, to companies and people who fund them.
AAA game costs tens or hundreds of millions to make. Indie game can be made with 50k.
When game costs +40 million to make, you really cant take much risks and cant expect that the guys with the wallet wont want to interviene with you.
That’s all indirectly what I meant. Spend big money ant take no risks, players get expensive game with nothing original.
I just wanted to point that its not because the companies are some inconpetent cartoonisly evil entities, but its because of real live necessities and i bet there is plenty of talented amd passionate people working there too.
I would also not belittle AAA games. There are plenty of people who enjoy the yearly NHL and CoD releases and thats okay. Its not that differend that some people like mindless action movies and some people like artsy movies.
I think the same gatekeepy gamers that make fun of people just playing NHL or CoD are the same snobby people who make fun of casual players that just like to play match 3 games. Let people have fun.
FC is literally like 75% of EA’s income. I wish they took more risks with stable income like this. The problem is the large amount of people they keep hiring are product managers with business degrees. Stangleholding the creatives who love games with conservative business strategy and market research.
Yes because something like cyber punk is obviously as much work as silk song.
Is cyberpunk part of a franchise? You are missing the point completly.
I mean, technically yes. Cyberpunk was a pre-existing IP before 2077.
There are 4, already wealthy guys, doing it as a passion product.
So to be clear, you think every dev should give up their payday?
in the gaming industry (doesn’t apply to indie games) devs get paid regularly before any game releases, and they maybe get a nice bonus if the game does well. and from then on all profits go to the production company, the devs see nothing of the millions the game they created makes
You’re just describing employment in pretty much any industry, not just gaming. Employees trade the insecurity of potential revenue down the line for a guaranteed fixed payout in advance.
I make software for pharmaceutical machines, my labour alone has literally enabled billions of revenue over the past decade, I’m not seeing any of that either.
Yeah but then after they make all those billys they go on to bribe the government to make everyone’s life worse, and for what? More greed.
Why? How do you come to such conclusion?
They could easily push the price and accumulate even more wealth and peeps would still buy it.
There’s just no way you could ever convince me that a 2d side scroller should ever be over $30.
100%. Terraria should be the standard. If you’re making a 2d side scroller it should hav as much content as terraria/promise to deliver on it later, or be $15 or less.
We have thousands of games that cost even less. You should stop behaving like that Silksong’s price is somehow outstanding.
It’s not that the price in and of itself is outstanding, it’s that it’s one of if not the most anticipated game of the decade and they could easily have charged twice that and still sold millions of copies, but they chose not to. They doubtless would have made more money if they’d came in at a higher price point, but rather than putting profit above all else, they elected to make their game affordable.
Is it uncommon for people to make games for fun, not to get as much money as possible?
Why would they even need more money?
If nothing else, to sustain themselves. The more they profit off one game, the longer they can develop their next project without worrying.
Say one of them has an idea for an awesome 3D Soulslike, but they’d have to triple their team size to make it in a reasonable time frame. They could afford that with more money.
It’s not uncommon for people to make games for fun and to not get as much money as possible from them. It’s less common for companies and studios to not try to get as much money as possible from games, even less common for them to make games purely for fun.
Because generating fun doesn’t pay bills.
Its a really small company
Not wanting to make as much money as possible doesnt mean not wanting to make money at all
one of if not the most anticipated game of the decade
That’s one of, if not the biggest, exaggerations of the decade.
It was literally the most wishlisted game on Steam, beating out all of the AAA titles. And it’s been being hyped for 7 years. If that doesn’t make it one of the most anticipated games of the decade, I’m really not sure what metrics you’re looking for for that statistic.
Hyped for 7 years with basically no action or advertising from the devs, too. They didn’t need to stoke the hype at all.
Hm. Ok. These numbers are rather unexpected for me. It looks like you’re right.
It’s one of the very few games ive been anticipating.
It crashed all major gaming store fronts for several minutes. No other game this decade has done that, and theoretically it should get harder each day as systems scale to handle more traffic. The fact that it wasn’t just one store or half of them is incredible to me and shows how anticipated this game was.
Because it couldn’t be preordered. Surge capacity’s always lower than sustained.
Minutes? Damn near 2.5 hours for me on Steam, and I was seriously trying lol
Silksong was primarily developed by 3 people. For comparison, Baldur’s Gate 3 was developed by around 300. There are probably more than 700 people making Battlefield 6.
Didn’t some AAA studios complain that Baldur’s Gate is “only” 60€ and too high quality, so it sets unrealistic standards/expectations.
Of course they did. They want to sell barely working alpha builds for hundreds of dollars. Good games for a fair price screw up their plan.
I don’t care about Hollow Knight or Terraria or Blasphemous. I am not interested in souls-likes, platformers, or metroidvanias.
How I feel since last few years.
I agree, I think they’re overhyped, low budget kiddie games. Like if I got charged more than $30 for silksong, I’d feel ripped off.
What a dreadful take.
🤡🤡🤡
Don’t feed the ragebaiters/trolls LOL
(Good rage bait though, if intended as such :p)
EA releasing the same game each year for like $80
But the players have new haircuts!
But have you played Ori and the Blind Forest?
No
You should try it. If a jaw-dropping, tear-jerking masterpiece like that can’t pull you in then you are revenant and your soul has already left you.
Freedom of Speech depicts a scene of a 1942 Arlington town meeting in which Jim Edgerton, the lone dissenter to the town selectmen’s announced plans to build a new school, as the old one had burned down,[9] was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol.[10] Edgerton supported the rebuilding process but was concerned about the tax burden of the proposal, as his family farm had been ravaged by disease.[11] A memory of this scene struck Rockwell as an excellent fit for illustrating “freedom of speech”, and inspired him to use his Vermont neighbors as models for the entire Four Freedoms series.[12]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Speech_(painting)
For anyone curious about the source of OP’s image.
OK, that’s a valid opinion and your personal taste. People should not judge that or think it weird, but it’s nothing special either…
May I suggest Satisfactory or perhaps Plan B: Terraform?
Ok?
Is that not a relevant thing to say?
Not OP, so I don’t necessarily feel this way about skong, but have you ever had your feed filled with discussion of something that you just don’t care about? And then you go talk to your friends and they’re also talking about it? Then you talk to a relative and they’re asking you what all the fuss is about? All while you give 0 shits about it?
I’ve been there, and it’s easy to just get plain annoyed at the subject coming up, even if innocuously. It’s the real life equivalent of squidward tuning into boxing because it’s not about cardboard boxes, only to be greeted with 2 cardboard boxes going at it.
And if you’re somehow in doubt that skong has satuarated discussion everywhere
There’s a difference between what you’re saying, and intentionally visiting threads about a thing you supposedly care so little about that you have to announce it for everyone.
I would agree if we were in a Hollow Knight or metroidvania community, but as it appears to me this thread visited TheBat just as much as they visited this thread.
What could they have done to not see this thread? Keyword blocking won’t work, because skong is only referenced in the image, unfollowing / blocking the community has a huge blast radius because it’s the highly generic /c/memes. Etc.
At some point you just exhasperatedly blurt out that you don’t care as much as people are assuming you do. I agree that it’s annoying to hear that too, it’s a bit hipsterish, and it’s mostly unwarranted given the low stakes. But I sympathize with it.
I’m not saying I don’t sympathize, but when this happens to me I just downvote and move on.
As I See it what theBat wrote is as legit as what I wrote.
It’s all just a giant chain of brain farts.
You’re not alone. But we can’t deny that there is a market for them. And if you’re honest with us and yourself I’m sure you have an exception. Mine is Remnant. Loved From the Ashes and I put in a lot of time in the second one as well.
I mean, frankly, I agree with you … but there are tons of other games in other genres of style and gameplay…that are also under $70 bucks, at or close to that $20 mark, that are pretty damn good.
They may not be as meteorically popular as Silksong…
But the point of the OP image is that… you do not in fact need a AAA production budget and AAA ‘graphics quality’ and MTX and FOMO and alo that garbage… to be able to have a successful game.
That you can in fact have a more modest yet also more focused approach, and create a break-out hit.
The point here is not ‘Silksong popular!’
The point is ‘Silksong proves that AAA development paradigms and business practices are ludicrously wasteful and not mandatory; there will always be other ways to be a successful game creator.’
Isn’t silksong an indie game not an AAA game developed by hundreds of people? The 20€ pricetag for few people team seems very fitting, nothing special.
I think the reason the corporations are mad is because the £20 game is better than their £100 game. If too many people realise that you can buy good games at lower prices they will stop buying piles of shit for £100.
I was born at the beginning of the 1983 video game crash before Nintendo revived the medium, and I suspect another crash is in our future. Late-stage capitalism isn’t helping either, but here we are!
Most modern AAA games don’t appeal to my old ass, but I remember games when they were made by people who like to play games. These are our modern indie studios and it brings joy to see them succeed.
Maybe a AAA crash cause they keep aiming for the cash grabs and battle pass/cosmetic slop. But I’ve been buying too many indie(ish?) games lately and I have not been disappointed by the majority of them.
Have you guys all beaten the entire library of PS2 games or something? There are infinite backlog options vs waiting around for this industry to get to a good place, but im all for fighting against this nonsense with our wallets. I see a battle pass in a game I simply avoid it.
$70 is just not that much more than $60.
I think the only people complaining about $70 games are people who don’t buy their own groceries.
I buy my own groceries and j refuse to spend 70 on a video game. Because I have to buy my own groceries.
Prices go up.
While costs go down and wages stagnate. But hey, the CEO needs a new yacht, so you plebs just need to suck it up and spend more.
Costs aren’t down. Game development is more expensive than ever.
In any specific case where a game goes to $70 and the difference all goes into the CEO’s pocket, then yeah, I agree, let’s all boycott. But the employees at games studios need to get paid too.
Ultimately, ten extra bucks just isn’t that unreasonable for a video game. Looking at the historical prices of games, they’ve been lower than they ever used to be even though costs have gone up.
Would I rather pay $60? Of course. But it’s just silly to act like a $70 game is some grave sin against gamer kind.
Choosing to spend more on something is not the same as it costing more. Games are cheaper than ever to develop, the barrier to entry is lower than ever. Hiring 5 studios and 1000 employees to make one game is a decision, its not the cost of doing business.
But the employees at games studios need to get paid too.
I’m sorry, were the developers not getting paid until the price hike? I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t enough money to pay the developers before than. How much did the CEOs salaries go up after that price hike?
Ultimately, ten extra bucks just isn’t that unreasonable for a video game.
Maybe not, but the value certainly hasn’t changed. Why would I pay more for the same value? And that extra ten bucks is being squeezed out of everyone everywhere for everything in life, its not just a problem in the video game industry. Its simply a matter of corporate greed. Fuck the corpos and fuck their simps. They don’t care about you, stop defending their greedy practices.
On top of that, it isn’t ‘just $10 more’. It’s $70 more as it has to compete with games I already bought. What does Battlefield Next offer that Battlefield Previous doesn’t? Yeah, nope, Titan mode on 2142 is still fun. Flying choppers in 1942’s Desert Combat mod is still fun.
And when I do want a new game, look, Silksong is right there for $20. Beats the price proposition on some rehashed game for $70 out of the damn water.
What a weird example to use… You don’t understand the economic difference between paying a small indie studio vs paying 500-1000+ devs making complex 3d games where the work of setting up one character dwarves the work of one sprite based 2d character?
Silksong is a beautiful game worthy of all the praise in the world, but this comparison makes no sense.
Ah, yes, because the take away is that we need 1000+ dev studios churning out yearly slop franchises after 18+ months of crunch to justify their price tag, yeah?
No, but you need different size teams to make 2D jumping game and Skyrim.
No the takaway is that its a bad comparison.
it’s not. one being infinitely more wasteful for a lesser product that costs more doesn’t make it a bad comparison.
It’s a bad comparison, and also what youre saying about it is correct on that it’s wasteful etc. that’s simply a different conversation
no, it’s not. unless there are people protesting outside so-called AAA company offices to only make games with more crunch, bigger empty maps with pointless busywork, more detailed “realistic” looting animations that take so long it becomes a chore playing the game, it’s their choice and waste to do so. no one asks games to cost millions to make, and no one demands them to make billions to count as successful. they pretend this is a demand. it’s not.
No one is arguing with you about the bad practices here friend, it is simply a bad comparison. They’re two different conversations. Just because something is related doesn’t change that
it’s not though. the point is games don’t need to be that costly or pricey to be good.
Why does a taxi ride cost more than a bus ticket? Isn’t that unfair!
Funnily, that’s a terrible comparison too.
Few people fit into a taxi, but many can buy a bus ticket.
Obviously it’s not that simple anyway, I just had a chuckle.Funnily I tried to be ridiculous.
I absolutely agree, compare the amount of skill and effort that goes into a 2d platformer versus something like red dead redemption 2.
It’s like comparing a school play versus an opera, the amount of passion they put in might be the same or often way more but the opera is aiming higher and with a bigger budget.
That’s not to say that an opera is necessarily more enjoyable, just that the tickets are justifiably more expensive
Just by proximity of thoughts you are aligning Silksong with a “school play” which is purposely and unquestionably inaccurate. What about the execution of Silksong strikes you as amateur or childish?
At least compare two performances made by people the same ages, if you’re going to feign a reasonable comparison.
It was not my intent to say it was amateurish or childish, just less effort required, without a value judgement.
Perhaps you’ll find this one more fitting: compare a single story house and a skyscraper. You can prefer one or the other, both can be beautiful, both require skill and expertise to construct but one is obviously more complicated and expensive to make.
Big development team ≠ valuable game
The argument implied here is that because more money was poured into development, the value of the game is higher.
It’s putting the cart before the horse. The business logic on display by the studios is that they deserve a profit for the investment of making the game, and they have a right to charge more because they paid more to have the game made. That’s just … not true, or at least shouldn’t be the logic of the consumer. A game is only worth the value it brings to the player (which is of course subjective).
The argument being made here is that the $1M fancy character creator and it’s dev team CAN be compared to the work of a handful of sprites by an artist - and the fact that the value is either on par or in the small artists’ favor ought to be seen as damning to the larger studios.
To you specifically, @FreddyNO and regarding complex character creators specifically: do you really see value in them? My experience is that they’re something I do once at the beginning of the game, but usually within a couple hours I’m wearing enough new equipment to all but fully conceal every choice I made … save perhaps overall skin-tone; plus in most 3rd person games i spend most of the game looking at the characters backside whereas the c.creator focuses on mostly the face. I get that a good character creator adds cost and complexity - but are you sure it really adds value?
You’re confusing my point about a bad comparison with implication of what I value. I get it, easy connection to make, but they’re two different things
I’m not confusing your point about a bad comparison. I’m confused on your point about it being a bad comparison because I disagree. I believe they’re comparable. If there’s a reason they can’t be compared, perhaps you haven’t explained it as well as you think you have?
I asked about your values because I believe you are trying to to make a point about the economics of large vs small studios, and I want to understand. So rather than imply I was insinuating something (language that suggests I understand you, but am being willfully subversive), could you actually answer what was outright an attempt to understand your point?
Why do the back-end costs matter to the consumer? I do understand the difference between the two and that’s what makes the original meme funny.
Either you’re confused or you disagree. That’s fine.
Those devs have already been paid. You’re not actually paying the devs by buying a AAA game.
This is about returns on investment.
How many more copies would be sold of, lets say, GTA6, if the sales price were to be in the 20-40 dollar range instead of 70 dollar? Would that amount be able to offset the lower price point to satisfy the investors?
yaRrr the $70 games
The video games industry needs to learn to not be afraid of letting games cook for a little longer. Silksong took a long time to come out, but what we eventually got was a good game made by a small team. Imagine if instead of the 500+ team members working on the next annual release of Assassins Creed, they peel off 50 artists, writers and programmers to create a new IP over the course of the next 5-7 years? Kind of like the original decision to do just that which got us… Assassin’s Creed for the original Xbox.
There has got to be a good balance between “Here is EA Sportsball 20XX, that will be $70 please.” where you get an underwhelming and uninspired annual release title with minor changes from the previous year, and Duke Nukem Forever or Cyberpunk 2077 that were trapped in decades-long development hell and released a sub-par, buggy product.
It’s not the $70 price tag that’s the issue, it’s “what am I getting for the extra $10 I am paying for this?”. If the answer is a more polished and refined product, I’m all for it - but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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Arizona Tea is thinking about raising the price of their tea from $1 to $1.29 for the first time in 30+ years, but the fourth Call of Duty game to come out this year needs a 15% price hike.
Let that sink in.
Wait, they didn’t already? I feel like a year ago, it magically went up to 1.25 everywhere by me, so I just assumed they actually raised it. Some good news is I have seen it in grocery stores on sale a lot for .66 a can which kind of works out to the same price as the jug so I will just get a bunch of cans instead.
No, they did not. That’s just the greedy stores near you: https://www.today.com/food/news/why-arizona-iced-tea-costs-more-than-99-cents-at-some-stores-rcna160216
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Damn, four in a year?
I think it’s sad tyre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty
Latest release Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 October 25, 2024
EDIT : What in the name of fuck? So, COD1 was :
[made by] a new studio formed in 2002 originally consisting of 21 employees, many of whom were project lead developers of the successful Medal of Honor: Allied Assault released the same year. [COD 1 released 2003]
MOH:AA :
Development spanned from 2000 to late 2001
COD2 : Released 2005.
So basically, from 2000, they released 3 games within 2 years of each other. After COD2, EVERY SINGLE YEAR a new COD game was released without fail. Holy fuck.
They really might as well have put the annual franchise number on the fucking box. Forget CODBLOPS 7 , just call it COD 2026 (because they always put release year+1 on the fucking product label).
Sounds like the EA Sports model.
