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Jereel Hunter on 09 April 2010
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mirgro said:
Jereel Hunter said:
mirgro said:
 

You see that's the problem. The worth of those games is most definitely less than the set $50. New game releases lose money because a lot of new games just suck, in fact many that make a profit these days deserve to lose money because they also just suck. If I spent $50 on XCOM, Deus Ex, SC1, WC3, and many other titles, some of which will probably be still better than SCII, then there is no reason for SCII to cost more than them. If it is a good game, it will sell just fine, if it isn't then that is the developer's problem, not the consumers'.

You're out on a limb here. You're assuming, by default, that SC2 isnt' going to be as good as a pack of games with a much shorter development time and budget. Not only that, you're not factoring in inflation. SC2 is going to cost easily 4-10x as much to develop as it's predeccessor. That could qualify as a reason to cost more. Inflation brings down the value of money around 3% a year, and it's releasing 12 years later. That's a reason to cost more. It's a good game, and it will sell fine. Inflation, development costs, and piracy are all the developer's problem, and they must pass it onto consumers. They run a business, not a charity. You know, we can see this attitude in some old people who complain that things are too expensive, because back in their day it used to cost 5 cents for a burger. Guess what? That was a long time ago. Minimum wage is higher, average wages are higher, costs are higher, and now the cost of SC2 is higher. 

The medium of video games is just like paintings. You will hardly find anyone charge more than a Picasso painting, or god forbid a da Vinci. Why is that? Because they are of lower quality. Saying "oh yeah I'll pay more for this new age painting" is absolutely retarded. You are just a bad consumer if you do that. The same reasoning is why most current games should be around the $25 mark, not the $60.

That's backwards though. You're setting the cost of a davinci, and saying "well, I think this Da Vinci is worth $XXX, making this new painting clearly worth less." But guess what? a Da Vinci is priceless, and it will go for a fortune. To complain about it's price, because YOU are accustomed to buying(or stealing) new age paintings (whose price you also complain about), means that you're the one with no concept of the true value of them item. You only have a concept of what you want to spend on it. And Surprise! It's less. If you think $60 is too much, then don't buy it. Just like someone with no appreciation of art can complain that a Da Vinci costs too much, someone with no concept of the time, effort, and money that goes into a release of this magnitude can complain about a $60 price tag.

Your problem is that you are trying to shoehorn the price of SCII to the already broken model of pricing. That is not how it works. What should happen is that the title should try to fix the problem. Anchor it at $50 and any worse games than it should cost less than it. I can't believe people exist that actually want to throw their money away.

Not at all. We are VERY fortunate to have SC2 in this pricing model. I'm getting more time/enjoyment out of just playing in the multiplayer beta than I have in 90% of the fully priced games I've bought in the last few years. (with a few exceptions, like the Mass Effect games) If StarCraft existed outside the pricing model, it would cost $100, because people would pay it, and because it's worth it. This is the first game in years that will provide hundreds(or thousands for many) of hours of replayability. Your problem is that you look at a game as an absolute. 1 game is worth X, an amazing game worth 2X. There are plenty of games I don't consider work $5... I don't buy them. And there are games which are worth way more than their price, and I have no problem with paying a few extra dollars to encourage their continued development and high quality standards. I'm not looking to "throw my money away." I pay for quality - I'd rather pay $100 for 1 game like SC2, than get 5 mediocre games for $20 each.

I don't know how much you have been keeping up with piracy, but most recent economic theory suggests that people want to pay for things, albeit a fair price. Piracy arises when someone wants something, but they feel its value is significantly less than what is asked for it. There are two ways to fix this situation. The developers lower the prices of their shittier games, or they they make their shittier games be worth the price they are asking. As a side note, PC developers who are releasing quality games have absolutely no problems. Heck, they don't even have to release "da best" to make money, as shown by recent Total War and Dawn of War releases. PC games only lose money to piracy when they are bad games.

Well, I suppose if it's a "theory" then it must be true. Let me supplement things with a fact - people want to buy things, but everyone wishes what they were buying was cheaper than it is, even if they're already getting a good deal. Piracy arises when people decide they DESERVE to own something, but base it's value on arbitrary numbers they come up with to justify it. You have already, in your prior post, given your arbitrary number that justifies piracy (>$50). Yet you do this without so much as a demo of the final product with which to gauge it's value. It doesn't matter to you if SC2 cost the dev 10x as much to make, and is 10x better than any other game. $>50 is too much. Period. It's good to know that developers who release quality games have "absolutely no problems." I guess some of my favorite developers of the past, which have now folded up, simply didn't deliver quality products.

I didn't forget inflation and budget sizes, because those are used only to offset the fact thatthere are far more people who play games now than there were 10 years ago. There are just more people to buy it. I don't want to say twice as many, but it definitely outpaced the costs over the past 10 years. I also need to see how the minimum wage increased in these past 10 years, because I was under the impressoin that it hasn't in quite a while.

I am sorry but I really didn't see any point you made in that second paragraph, my analogy still stands. In fact you seem to have completely missed the point. I am not accustomed to buy the new age stuff, quite the contrary, the new age stuff is worse than the older stuff, hence there is no reason for it to cost more if it's of lower quality. Your analogy is also laughably bad, you compared the quality of a da Vinci to costs of video games. When you compare things, you try to compare things that are analogous. In your case, I appreciate how much da Vinci is worth because of its quality, and I appreicate how much XCOM was worth because of its quality. I do not care about time, effort, or costs in general of  the product , because I can spend $1 billion a year, for 100 years, and if my end product is crap, it is still crap. Just because I am a shitty painter, or developer, and waisted so many resources doesn't mean I should somehow feel entitled to people's money. If a new game that's really groundbreaking, more so than the olden games, and they ask for more than $50, then they will set a new "highest" standard and all games worse than it should cost less than the new standard. Play off my friend's SCII account I can tell you that SCII isn't the groundbreaking type.

tld;dr Just because someone spends a lot of resources it does in no mean that they are allowed to have a higher price if their end product is bad. If you think otherwise you have some very fucked up sense of entitlement.

First of all, the cost of developing games has well over doubled in the past 10 years. I'm not sure how it is in all states, but at least where I live it was in the $5-$6 range 10 years ago, and it's over $8 now. Also, it's rare that costs can increase AND prices go down in any functioning model. Are there more people to buy games? yes. Are there also more games to choose from to split sales? yes. In the model you're picturing, PC development is a minefield that requires a million sales just to survive. Even quality games may have trouble getting their name out there. With the pricing structure your suggesting, smash hits would sell volumes more, but experience lower profit margins, meanwhile developers would go bankrupt right and left.

I'll simplify the point of my second paragraph for you - You decided on the value of a masterpeice (in this case, SC2 being valued at a maximum of $50) arbitrarily, and then decide that everything else must fall below masterpeices in the pricing structure. You are putting a very low price on something of great value, then expecting other software prices to be readjusted under it. In reality, you need to first gauge what the value of a standard game is, and then if an expensive masterpeice comes along, it can be judged vs its contemporaries.

You may not care how much a game costs a developer to make, but they can justify the pricing with it. do you whine when you see foods of different cost? Do you say "I don't care that you use higher quality beef ingredients, I don't see why your burger costs more than McDonald's"?

Being "groundbreaking" is not the only reason a game can have a big budget. Playing in the SC2 beta has made one thing abundantly clear - what made the original so great is back, and it's taking a great deal of time and effort, but it's there. If you think SC2 needed to be groundbreaking, then save your $60, because you don't know what made the original great. The key to SC2 graduating the RTS throne is balance. Not new gimmics and attempts to make groundbreaking new gameplay features. Balance. That's why chess is the most popular strategy game of all time. 2 players with a completely balanced strategy game go at it. Perfect. SC brought that forward - in a world where every... and I mean ever... other RTS game either 1) carbon copies their races or 2) lacks perfect balance, SC was a game that had 3 completely seperate races completely dissimilar, and yet completely balanced. That took an immense amount of testing and work to accomplish, and it made SC the greatest RTS of all time. SC2 looks like it could claim the throne, and will, at the very least, challenge it.

Also, please don't just make up things that I said, and then argue those made up points. I never said a big budget justifies charging a lot for something bad. A big budget nessecitates trying to make the money back - and a quality product justifies charging it. That's the point I made, and I stand by it.