article on game prices - set to increase?

[Dis]

I have copied games in the past. You used to be able to rent games like X-com and copy them to floppies. Such a great game, I wouldn't have minded paying for it. But it was my first foray into computer gaming, I didn't know what was good or not. And I actually got the copies from my roomate who rented the game.

I do get many copies from my brother (legit and pirated). But I never pirate games myself. And I mean never. I prefer to buy games I like. I try to keep my costs low by not buying crappy games. And if it's a game I'm not sure I'll like, I'll borrow it from my brother.

[DrSpike]

I buy games, and pirate games. There are certain games I'll always buy; up until now Civ games were on that list. After the Conquests "let's not bother to finish the game as we're too busy on Civ4" shenanigans I'll probably reconsider, but there are plenty on my no-worries buy list.

[CapTVK]

In the C64 and Amiga days I had a lot of copied games. You shared and traded with your classmates. I gave him something and he gave something back -complete trading mentality-. For the computer geeks it was also a sort of "gotta catch 'em all" -mentality. The more games you had, the bigger the boasts. I was a bit of an exception because i also bought a lot of originals (many also the equivalent of the bargain bin special now that i remember) in those days.


In the present day I only buy PC originals. These days time is a more essential factor for me than price. I don't wanna pay full price AND discover after 8-12 hours I've wasted it all for a turkey.

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar


OK, go on; recommend some of them to me

I can provides truckloads of freeware games if you want but I don't know your particular preferences. One site I always enjoy is Retro Remakes. Which has a large collection of modern day remakes (some good, some bad, some totally lame). They also hold an annual remake compo. Which, on occasion comes up with a few surprises.

The discussion forums at the site-that-may-not-be-mentioned are also a good start. They have a toplevel thread which gives an overview of the many freeware games available.

Wesnoth, Freedroid and ASC-HQ (Battle Isle) are both well done open source games and are available as windows binaries . Check out Happy Penguin for more.


And remember Open Source games are community efforts. Their success is ultimately based on the efforts we put into them.

Nono, many "independant" games often ask for money, usually quite a bit of money, in order to purchase the uncrippled version of their product. Often times this is $20-30 and the quality would not justify the cost

Many independent games are usually aimed at a certain public. Whether the prices charged are fair is up to the player. But you usually get a free "crippled" version to playtest in advance. If we don't like it we leave it at that and move on.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by CapTVK


IMany independent games are usually aimed at a certain public. Whether the prices charged are fair is up to the player. But you usually get a free "crippled" version to playtest in advance. If we don't like it we leave it at that and move on.

Which is the point i think. I can certainly see someone downloading a game that has no demo available, and playing it JUST LONG ENOUGH to see if its worth paying for, which is how im going to interpret what Tass says he does, and I'll assume Doc Spike as well. The crippled version essentially serves as demo. You like it buy it, you dont like it enough to buy it, you dont get the extra features. Seems reasonable to me.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I buy games, and pirate games. There are certain games I'll always buy; up until now Civ games were on that list. After the Conquests "let's not bother to finish the game as we're too busy on Civ4" shenanigans I'll probably reconsider, but there are plenty on my no-worries buy list.

So doc, I suppose one could make a case for "downloading" a game in a genre that one thinks is morally reprehensible, just to check out if that is really the case, no? A genre one consciously didnt support? OTOH even THEN i think there might be something hypocritical if one did such, and then KEPT the game on ones hard drive. Alternatively one who otherwise would even use a canine site might overcome scruples in such a case, no?

[child of Thor]

I just wonder how many of those that do download a game, principly because it has no demo, actually do then go on to buy the origonal if they like the game.
A pirated version as opposed to a crippled version is usualy the full game i think(with probably a few trojans/virus's thrown in ).

If i could walk into a store in town and buy(again!) origonal versions of Xcom1+2 i would(if cheap). I could try ebay, but with all the current fuss over security - i really am very unsure about on-line purchaseing at the momment

I cant help but feel worried for PC software, sure you can get pirated console games, but its much more of a pain and expense to bother? So i can see why in particular console games will increase in price - its a money winner for the game producers.

[Adagio]

At the moment I'm 50% done with the new Larry game, but I'm still going to buy it when it's released... ok, wont be the same day it's released, but the beginning of the next month (money shortage )

[Adagio]

And I downloaded SimCity 4 two days before release, and bought it the same day it was released... (Later I then found out it was a very smart move, because of language problems in the European version)

[DrSpike]

I've bought several games after downloading them; often in the past I played SP and if I liked it bought it to play MP.

[pg]

Yeah, that is a good point. I always buy a good multiplayer game because I know I'll get my money's worth. Multiplayer is really like a critical feature for me because even if it's bad there will usually be a player effort to fix it. I play multiplayer like 5:1 to one over single player. I don't much like MMORPGs however.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Still, IF (as the article stated, and i dont see anyone really disputing it) the price of games has been steady, that means a decrease after inflation. All that theyre talking about is raising prices to offset that. I dont see that they need to INCREASE quality to justify that.

The flip side of the coin is, the size of the gaming market has also been increasing, sometimes much faster than inflation.

[Dauphin]

I would say the flipside is that you would expect 'standard' games to get cheaper in real terms, just as you expect 'standard' electronic equipment and other technologies to get cheaper in real terms over time.

Also, what you are paying for is the labour cost of programmers, isn't it? So I would only really expect innovative or higher quality games to cost more in absolute terms, and about the same in real terms.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The flip side of the coin is, the size of the gaming market has also been increasing, sometimes much faster than inflation.

well thats a question of the supply side, the cost factors effecting the supply curve, not the reasonableness on the customer side.

The market has been growing rather slowly on the PC side, much faster on the console side. Although if we're going back 10 years or more, i suppose there IS considerable growth on the PC side. Of course there are also a lot more titles. But i suppose the big sellers today have much bigger sales than the big sellers 10, or especially 15 years ago. Which is how the prices have remained stable - despite increasing costs, those almost entirely fixed costs have been spread over more sales.

How would one compare this to films say?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Dauphin
I would say the flipside is that you would expect 'standard' games to get cheaper in real terms, just as you expect 'standard' electronic equipment and other technologies to get cheaper in real terms over time.

Also, what you are paying for is the labour cost of programmers, isn't it? So I would only really expect innovative or higher quality games to cost more in absolute terms, and about the same in real terms.

electronic equiipment gets cheaper largely through Moores law, and general experience curves in manufacturing. Are there similar experience curves in coding? IS the cost of programmers stable? Per hour? amount of code in recent games? and IIUC theres plenty of other labor besides coding, there all that art, design, and QA. Look at the list of credits on your game. (not all full time of course, but still)