Lol, and for another $79.95 you can get the 'Collectors Edition' that includes a book all about the making of the Mona Lisa.

I think the reason indie gaming has been hitting its stride is that people are getting tired of paying $60 for what they perceive as an incomplete game. The innovation and soul that has arisen from these retro styled games has really changed the industry and what consumers expect in terms of quality.

These games are a quarter or less the price of a AAA title because they require less resources. Nowadays, blockbuster games are developed by 200-300 staffed studios. The indies only require a handful of people making these games (and even that is changing), but they are essentially creating different products. While they can get away with weird game mechanics for the sake of innovation, the budgets that are on the line aren't as big a gamble as they are in games being developed by top-tier studios.

People laud games like Journey and Minecraft, but look at what they are missing in comparison to big games like Halo or Uncharted. Journey is 2 hours long, and Minecraft is visually less enticing than a pile of buffalo chips. The point is, whatever type of game a consumer is pining for will inevitably have something missing from it, because resources are finite. If Minecraft had Crysis 3 graphics imagine how sick that'd be? But also just think about how expensive it'd be too? It would barely make a profit, even with the 20 million or so sales it has. If Journey 2 were any longer, I wouldn't enjoy it much considering the gameplay is rather shallow. It was an inspiring emotional experience while it lasted, but the developers knew that a game limited to mechanics of running around, jumping, and chirping can only entertain for so long before it wears out its welcome.

So for those arguing that games don't offer what they used to, you may be right, but you always have the option of getting an indie game like Cave Story if the past is what you crave. If you want a something that is more flashy, then expect the game to be missing chunks of what those games offer or make up rising inflation and developmental costs through DLC.

If you want a game that does it all, stop being a gamer because it never is going to happen. Even the games that come close to hitting every milestone of epicness (great story, long playtime, replayability, immersive graphics) will have its naysayers. GTA and Skyrim are incredibly successful in the aforementioned, but people nitpick about the bugs or how past versions do things the newer iterations can't. And if you expect every game to do what these do, then you'll have to wait 3 to 5 years between each proper installment, because creating that level of experience requires lots of time and lots of money (two things many studios don't have much of).

@ 1 now they are just leaving tings completely  out now ,now when they have the power to make tings look diff so people like u wont feel they are looking at the same ting and this is wat u glorifying cuts the play time substacne and replay value! but then decide to add a mulit player for this lack of creative and pass off a 3-5 hr campaign

@2 u win with that 1 cause i never took interest in those games( Doom/Wolfenstein) cant remeber duke being like that so i maybe wrong

@ 3  these stories arent fleshed out and that is due to the short campaign thats y i like rpj mainly japense thats a story ! mw and bo story are like this begin and end no middle no fillers no nothing then i have to buy 1 or 2 more games or dlc to get  a worth while story 

@1

But if they did that the game would cost more. And wouldn't you be one of the first to complain about a higher price then ? The gaming market is still too small to justify Hollywood like budgets for average sized projects. Buy more games (and even more important not always the same franchises) and publishers can allow developers to make games with higher budgets, thus being able to give you more content for the same price.
Call of Duty is only so short because people care about the multiplayer most and games like Skyrim can only offer 150 hours of main and side quest content coupled with thousand NPCs, hundreds of accessible buildings etc. because people buy it.


@3

You're talking about an action game, furthermore one that is about soldiers in a war. What action movies do you know that have a deeper story ? They're called action movies for a reason.

It depends on who makes the game, but in general....yes that's sadly true.

The people who made Star Wars: Force Unleashed had DLC made when the game released because the studio fell apart, and DLC was still released. Plus the DLC affected the main story.

Gears of War is also the same, with various features of multiplayer edged out when the original game released (Horde Command pack). However RAAM's Shadow does legitimatly feel like DLC.

Yea....this is sad..

While that may be funny that isn't true for the most part. Some companies do that such as Capcom but more often than not they create new content for DLC.

i think this fits quite nicely in here

That was amazing