article on game prices - set to increase?

[Dauphin]

I come it from the angle of this. Suppose you wanted to make the game called Civ2 and assume that the original game of Civ2 had never been written. I would suggest that it would be cheaper now to develop the game we now know as Civ2 than it was then.

Why? Because technology has advanced. Take you art example - its easier to make graphics because the tools to do so have come on leaps and bounds since then.

[Dauphin]

What I am saying is that if a game made 2 years ago is of the same like for like quality as a game made now, then I certainly will not pay more for it now (inflation accounting) than I did then.

[Skanky Burns]

As well as less need to optimise code to achieve the same results due to greater hardware capabilities of the average consumer.

[dunk]

Originally posted by child of Thor
So its all short term thinking driving game development at the momment, and eventualy the money will dry up. Backers/Financers will steer clear of game production if we continue on this tack - it may take another 5-10 years to reach critical mass, but we dont have a healthy consumer friendly games market at the momment. Costs are way to high, Hype way to important and 'bucks per hour' of entertainment given much too much importance in calculating the accountants returns, so to speak.

This is the situation regardless of industry. Long Term Planning is "What do we do next quarter?".

[Urban Ranger]

Programmers aren't necessarily getting better (just look at all those bugs ) but it's getting easier to write programs than in the bad old DOS days.

Back then, programmers pretty much have to deal with raw hardware, nowadays API's are everywhere. On top of that you have toolkits, and they probably also have automated tools to help them along.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Dauphin
I come it from the angle of this. Suppose you wanted to make the game called Civ2 and assume that the original game of Civ2 had never been written. I would suggest that it would be cheaper now to develop the game we now know as Civ2 than it was then.

Why? Because technology has advanced. Take you art example - its easier to make graphics because the tools to do so have come on leaps and bounds since then.

if civ2 were released today, would it sell like it did? I dunno. Galciv maybe the test case - thats been touted as a TBS with relatively low budget, thats had pretty decent if not blockbuster sales. How does Galciv compare to Civ2 in things like graphics, AI, number of civs, units, stuff like that?

Of course other genres may not be similar to TBS in this regards.

[lord of the mark]

heres what phil stein posted on quartertothree

However, of course in the long run, developers and publishers have to make money or they will go out of business. And yet, games cost ~10 times more to develop than they did a decade ago, yet sell for probably 20% less, inflation adjusted, than they did back then. How is this possible? Volume. The overall market is bigger, and publishers invest more money in fewer titles (i.e. shooting for blockbusters, rather than 'B' titles). So the average AAA title now, costing $5-15 million to develop, sells a lot more than what would have been a AAA title in the early 90s (costing ~$500K to $1.5M to develop). If you ask why pubs don't just develop titles at $500K to $1.5M now, and reap the big volumes for even greater profits, the answer is that the consumer market now is interested in flashy blockbusters, the Doom 3s, Halo 2s, and GTAs of the world. There's a viable market making low budget valueware - $19.99 PC games that cost $50-200K to develop. But the $1M budget range is too low to attract the attention of the press and generate buzz, yet too high to profitably chase the $19.99 budget market. So overall, the gam market has split into two classes - blockbusters, plus a few low-budget PC games

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
heres what phil stein posted on quartertothree

However, of course in the long run, developers and publishers have to make money or they will go out of business. And yet, games cost ~10 times more to develop than they did a decade ago, yet sell for probably 20% less, inflation adjusted, than they did back then. How is this possible? Volume. The overall market is bigger, and publishers invest more money in fewer titles (i.e. shooting for blockbusters, rather than 'B' titles). So the average AAA title now, costing $5-15 million to develop, sells a lot more than what would have been a AAA title in the early 90s (costing ~$500K to $1.5M to develop). If you ask why pubs don't just develop titles at $500K to $1.5M now, and reap the big volumes for even greater profits, the answer is that the consumer market now is interested in flashy blockbusters, the Doom 3s, Halo 2s, and GTAs of the world. There's a viable market making low budget valueware - $19.99 PC games that cost $50-200K to develop. But the $1M budget range is too low to attract the attention of the press and generate buzz, yet too high to profitably chase the $19.99 budget market. So overall, the gam market has split into two classes - blockbusters, plus a few low-budget PC games

Well my feeling is that the industry can't complain about what they have created to a greater extent. Since the 90's when the first real leaps in pc power came along(the massive increase in power in the pentiums), and the appearence of dedicated graphics card, it can be argued that it was largely industry driven, the makers of graphic cards and pc componants wanting to encourage users to upgrade every other year etc.
The games industry could have just carried on making very efficiant software(games like Frontier model a whole galaxy - on one floppy disk!!), but decided to play the game, so they decided early on to go down the route of improving graphics above all else(or even at the expense of all else?) - which is the most cost intensive option to take when making a game.

So we end up where we are today with IMHO an industry awash with sexy looking games that get boring far too quickly or are just very short games - all the effort goes into making a game look good.

Is there a way back from here? If there is the games industry doesn't seem to think it has a problem with its current approach(even though more game developers go bankrupt than new ones get created - one of the reasons we end up with just a few very powerfull producers).
And im also not sure taking games into a mainstream market(ie a non-computer game fan one) is the correct thing to do if you want to make cheaper better games?

It might make you more money in the short term, but these customers aren't loyal to your product - when you make enough rubbish they wont be as forgiving to give you the benefit of the doubt next time; they'll just go do something else with their money. We live in a world with plenty of things to waste your money on

Also you run the risk of alienating your past fan-base, who are mostly fairly dedicated gamers. Maybe we're harder to please, but we will encourage the producers to make better and better games, as we actually care about it.

[pg]

What I hope happens is eventually graphics reach a peak. A point where improvements are so slow in coming that graphic expenditure levels off. Look at sound, it's not really getting any better for the last couple of years. I hope that is what happens to graphics too eventually because then gameplay, story, style, etc will become the deciding factor when you want to buy a game.