Video Games are an odd medium. It's new, and still trying to find acceptance and identity in the mainstream. Unfortunately, standardized pricing is really holding this industry back.
In the US, prices are pretty standard.With few exceptions, $60 for a new console game is the magic number. But for that $60, what do you get? 5 hours of content? 10? 40? 100? Despite having a standardized price, the value for your dollar can vary by orders of magnitude.
Compare this to Film. If you go to a theater, price is the same for each movie, but the length much more stnadardized. It'll be between 80 and 180 minutes minutes long, which is a significant difference, but by comparison it's much more homogenized. Rarely do people complain that they overpaid for a short movie.
Yet we often hear the complaint that games are overpriced for the content they offer, because every game is basically sold at the same price. Worse, in some cases the response to this complaint is to standardize content by including token multiplayer or online support into games that don't need them in order to justify the $60 price tag. Or padding the gameplay with repetition to give it the appearance of greater length. And the end result is a worse experience.
As long as pricing remains standardized, we're going to have this issue. Unlike film, where sstandard pricing and standard value go hand-in-hand, games have a much wider variety in levels of content. Thankfully, especially with digital distribution, we're seeing a lot more variable pricing in the industry. Here's hoping we can leave this artifact of early gaming in the dust.
Thoughts?
I believe in honesty, civility, generosity, practicality, and impartiality.
