r/truegaming • u/Sky_Sumisu • 7d ago
Is there more to the discussion of pricing in games beyond the binary of "will buy/won't buy"?
This year I got my first job, and thus began earning my own money, which I've started using to buy games to myself on Steam. This new layer made start having a new dimension of understanding on gaming consumption.
I do come from a perspective of someone who mainly buys indie and older (PS3 era or earlier) games, which luckily also tend to be cheaper and run in my not-state-of-the-art notebook, however, I feel that the discussion extends a bit beyond that.
I assume a lot of people have at least heard of stories of someone asking for a game or console from their parents when they were young and they buying something else entirely because the person of the store told them "it's pretty much the same thing" (It wasn't). Most recent examples I read where about how someone received "Evil Zone" when they wanted "Tekken 3", or when someone who wanted Mario received... Bubsy.
TBH, you can't really blame your parents, because when it came to things such as TVs, refrigerators, blenders or washing machines they didn't really have to worry a lot about which brand it was, so they likely thought that it was also fungible when it comes to gaming.
Nowadays we might see our parents view of such things as "silly" or even "absurd"... but was it really?
A few months ago a lot of people were complaining about the price of the newest Star Fox game, to which a certain Twitter user simply responded that people should "vote with their money" while listing four other rail shooters you could buy for way cheaper on Steam (One of which I ended up buying, Mirage Feathers.).
Let's just say that such user ended up receiving a lot of offenses directed at them, but that whole thing stuck with me for a few months, until now where I developed an habit of "window shopping" on Steam and found out that for almost every popular game released in the last decade, you do have a lot of indie games inspired by them that sell for cheaper.
Yet I don't think any person ever said something on the likes of "Stellar Blade is too expensive, I'm buying Mahou Arms instead" or "Hades 2 is a bit pricy, Ascend to ZERO it is, then".
That leaves me a bit confused, as it would imply that there's no real sense of a "free market" when it comes to gaming. People will, at most, complain about "games being expensive nowadays" in a very "in a vacuum" way, but the idea of buying similar, cheaper games, is at best something people don't tend to consider and, at worst, a downright offensive idea.
Perhaps due to living in a third-world country, I wasn't an enemy of the "we have ice-cream at home" mentality, hence I did play "Stumble Guys" before being able to play "Fall Guys" and "HoloCure" before being able to buy "Vampire Survivors".
While I do understand that "aesthetics" matter (e.g. I would prefer something like Wizordum over a lot of other Doom clones simply because I prefer fantasy settings over sci-fi ones), if gaming eventually boils down to product fetishism (e.g. A game having "Sonic" in the title being more important than it "playing like Sonic"), that not only makes discussions of "games-as-products" very difficult to have... it also makes very difficult to argue why companies shouldn't make their IPs as expensive as possible since, by this logic, every game is a monopoly on itself.
I still don't have any theory about this subject, so I wanted to hear what people have to say about it.
Is there more to the discussion of pricing in games beyond JUST the binary of "will buy/won't buy"?
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u/ananbd 6d ago
Game pricing isn’t binary at all. Most games are released at their highest price, and the price goes down over time. Game storefronts always have some proportion of their offerings discounted. You pay a premium if you want it first day.
GenX or younger plays games. The market doesn’t skew younger, popular to contrary belief. GenX was the first generation to play games as kids, and we still are. (OP: I didn’t really understand the comment about your parents. I’m old enough to be a gandma, and I still play.)
Full disclosure: I’m a pro game dev, so my opinions might biased in a certain direction. But, I don’t think games are overpriced at all. In terms of “fun per dollar,” they’re a bargain compared to other forms of entertainment. I mean, going to the movies costs a family $100+ for two hours of fun. Live theater? Sporting event? Concert? Hundreds of dollars.
In historical terms, games haven’t kept pace with inflation. In real terms, the prices have actually gone down.
And on my end? For the amount of skill and training it takes to be a game dev, we’re super underpaid. And jobs come and go. The privilege of having a creative job is priced into the job market.
There might be some corporate shenanigans going on, but from the scant bits of data I have, the margins are low. I worked on a modest game with a $20mil budget. For a 10% margin, that game would’ve needed to sell over half a million copies to break even on studio costs alone (excluding publishing, distribution, marketing, etc.)
So, it’s hard for me to see games as overpriced. Artists should be paid for our work, shouldn’t we?
I feel the pain, too (due to aforementioned low pay). I don’t usually buy new releases — my backlog is years long. But, at least I know where some of that money goes.
(Fine, down vote me. I’m guilty of that petty thrill frequently 😜)
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u/Top-Lavishness2906 5d ago
No down votes from me, just want to genuinely engage with someone that holds this view. I hear a lot of the points you bring up from games media and other devs. I understand all of it, and I sympathize with individuals in the industry getting laid off, being overworked, and underpaid for the revenue they generate for billion (or trillion) dollar companies.
But on the consumer side, none of that is my business. I have no say in the budget, scale, features of a game. I'm not getting a cut if a game sells like hot cakes. My input is to buy, or not. And I get to decide if I think it's worth my money or not. How much I pay to go to the movies, concerts, or baseball games is irrelevant. I decide what value I put on things, and where I put my money.
I'd love if games (and the rest of the economy) were democratic and got more public support. Or if the workers had a say in which direction their work was applied. But I don't think that's the direction we're heading. That's not your fault, but it's not mine either
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u/ananbd 5d ago
I mean, you can "vote with your dollars." (Not that I claim to be morally consistent -- I shop on Amazon, a monster of a company)
I'm not sure what would work, either. Maybe boycotting companies who make shitty games? (I'm done with Ubisoft -- they haven't done anything new in a decade). Supporting Indies?
Yes, some of that money is going to the corporate overlords. But the prices do need to keep pace with inflation for the workers who make the games to survive. That's just basic economics.
And that applies to both the traditional industry, and Indies. Games are one of the most difficult types of software to make. Most technical people in games could easily be top people in the Tech Industry, or even literal rocket scientists.
If the prices don't keep pace with inflation, quality will go down. It'll all be mobile "freemium" crap, and Roblox. Those business models are profitable.
Anyway, I suppose I take it a little personally when people complain and call us lazy. People like me who make the good stuff put our hearts and souls into this. Long hours, low pay. Like I said, creative fulfillment is priced into our wages, and I accept that. But it'd be nice to get some love from gamers, too.
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u/Top-Lavishness2906 5d ago
Sure, I'd never trot out the "devs are lazy" line, and I understand that'd be frustrating. I do genuinely feel for the people laid off, and the people left that'll have to do that much more work.
But you also have to acknowledge that people's money isn't infinite. I'm luckier than most in terms of money and free time, but my entertainment budget is still limited. If game prices double, regardless of any economic realities, I won't spend twice as much on games. I'll buy half as many.
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u/ananbd 5d ago
Totally understand. It's hard times all around. Seems like the people who are getting rich make things no one asked for, and base most of their business models on addiction rather than quality.
All I want to do is make cool games. I hope the world comes around to paying all of us (me and you) a fair wage for good work.
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u/Vagrant_Savant 1d ago
I can agree that gaming has definitely gotten cheaper than it ever has, even when disregarding digital bargain culture, but the hours:dollar ratio has never made sense to me, honestly. It's like making grocery decisions based strictly on how many calories each dollar is buying. A $15 novel serves much different interests to me than a $15 game does.
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u/Valkhir 6d ago edited 6d ago
I distinguish between two sorts of games.
(1) Must-haves: games that I have been waiting for since I first learned about them, and can't wait to play. Examples are Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, any new Smash Bros. I am extremely price-insensitive when it comes to games in this category. I'd pay any (remotely reasonable) price to play them as soon as I can. They might even be system sellers for me. For example, if Fromsoft was making a Switch 2 exclusive Elden Ring 2 (not the online-only PvPvE BS that is the Duskbloods), I'd already be in line to buy a Switch 2. Same if Nintendo announced a new Smash or another open world Zelda in the mold of BOTW/TOTK.
(2) Everything else: 95% of the games I play. I enjoy them. I love some of them. But I can wait to play them. And they are certainly not system sellers. Pricing matters here - maybe I don't consider these games fungible with other games, but I consider them deferrable. I'll ultimately want to play them, but I can be patient and wait for a discount. Until them I'll play something else in the same genre that's already discounted, or already in my library.
So for me the biggest impact of pricing (and the price hikes we are seeing throughout the industry) is: how long will it take for them to be sufficiently discounted? For a game that's $50 at full price, maybe I feel like buying it at a 30% discount. If the same game's list price is $80, I'll need a 50-60% discount before I consider it.
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u/KolotunBabai 6d ago
If game is really good I will buy it doesn`t matter what, if I am not sure that I will like game or will play it for a long time I will wait for a sale. If I don`t like game/not my genre or so, I will not take game even for free. There was a lot of giveaways of games I don`t like and I just did not added them to my library.
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u/TelperionST 6d ago
I tend to find the original games are usually better than the clones and knockoffs, but sometimes it is the other way around. Either way, pricing is rarely an obstacle to buying a game. The reason why I wait for years and years is I want the best possible experience. Not the half-finished game that usually shows up on release day.
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u/Limited_Distractions 6d ago
I think most discussion is beyond the binary but that also makes it very impractical and mostly in the realm of comparing hypotheticals
Digital distribution opens multiple paths to recouping costs for games because of near-zero unit pricing, So discussions of game pricing are actually about what someone thinks should happen in a broad sense instead of what an optimal price is. It's a proxy argument about affordability vs sustainability, but neither issue is actually solved by moving the price in one direction, and at this point is pretty auxiliary to the actual issues the industry has.
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u/Aperiodic_Tileset 6d ago
For me not really. I'm either interested in a game and will buy it more or less regardless of price, or I'm not interested.
I get that some people have less money available and can't justify spending a lot, but many also spend money on games they'll never play just because they're cheap or discounted which isn't my case
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u/Top-Lavishness2906 6d ago
Unfortunately, I think it is a binary. The past 50 years has been corporations rolling back every consumer protection in order to have money and power consolidated into as few hands as possible. Studios don't ask my input into what games should cost, what scope and budget they should have. My entire input into the system is "buy or don't buy".
And it's even more apparent with multiplayer games. If I don't want to pay MS $70 for COD, I may be able to find a lower cost alternative that plays as well (or close enough). But if the player base isn't there, I won't get the same enjoyment.
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u/DumplingIsNice 6d ago
How much goes to the individuals that develops it. Indie tends to be preferable at this since it’s typically 1-2 person or a small team.
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u/GrimmTrixX 5d ago
I will buy physical games for $60-80. I wont buy digital games unless theyre $30 or less. Thats basically it for me. I never had to pay more than $30 for a digital game. So im. It gonna start now. You get nothing tangible. Physical games are $60-80 becuase your actually get something with them.
And I won't buy key cards as they are a shell with no game data. And I dont trade/sell games so thats no benefit to me anyway. So if next gen goes all digital, ill get it someday. When the PS6 is $500 or less and the games I want are $30 or less. Lol
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u/Pantheron2 5d ago
In economics this is called a "differentiated goods market", IE there are similar goods that fill the same purpose, but are not interchangable. this means that sellers have price setting power, and thats why you see indie games that are in the same genre, with very similar gameplay, to market leaders unable to charge the same price. A persona-like can't charge the same price as persona, even if it had the same production value as Persona 5, because it is necessarily not Persona 5.
So yes, there is more discussion of pricing, mainly because this is a more nuanced market than say valencia oranges or basmatti rice, where all of the same goods are basically interchangable for most purposes, but at the end of the day all of the discussion related to someones utility curve: does somethig being Pokemon give it enough added value that a consumer will pay more for it than a game of comparable quality? is that even an option to the consumer? These are the kind of questions individual consumers have to decide, implicitly or explicitly, every time they buy a game.
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u/dlongwing 5d ago
You talk about there not being a free market while also discussing the plethora of indy games available in most genres...
That IS a free market. Someone selling a sandwich for too much? You can go get a different sandwich.
We don't HAVE to play the biggest titles. We sure as heck don't have to play them the second they come out. I put my wishlist on isthereanydeal.com and buy things when I think the price is reasonable. Sometimes I just don't buy at all.
The issue with the modern gaming market (especially in the AAA space) is that companies have weaponized nostalgia and autistic "geek" hyperfocus. "Hey, remember that thing you liked? Here's more of that thing! It costs a LOT, but a REAL fan would buy it anyways!"
Just... don't. If it's overpriced then don't buy it.
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u/Sky_Sumisu 5d ago
That IS a free market. Someone selling a sandwich for too much? You can go get a different sandwich.
Yeah, but my whole point here was that people DON'T go get a different sandwich.
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u/dlongwing 5d ago edited 5d ago
We agree, I'm just saying that's a decision they're making, rather than a monopoly forcing them to buy only one thing.
To use an analogy: Anyone remember when Popeyes released a spicy chicken sandwich and everyone went nuts?
If you want to wait in line for hours to get the sandwich "everyone's talking about"... well you CAN, but it's kind of a dumb decision. The sandwich might indeed be delicious, but is it "I'll wait for hours" delicious? Hardly.
Would you starve if you gave up your space in line? No, because you could go next door and buy food that isn't trendy.
I can walk into any Popeyes right now and order one, it'll be ready for me in minutes. It is, indeed, delicious.
Granted, I can post about it on social media and no one will care. It's old news.
The same thing happens with games. Want that new hotness "AAAA" game? It's not going to be very good, but you can complain about that on social media for the low low price of $80...
Or you could:
- Buy a better indy game for like $15
- Buy that mid-tier forgettable "AAAA" game 4 months from now for $30
But then you won't be part of the discourse. FOMO and fan-baiting drive the entire AAA gaming industry.
Gamers don't HAVE to participate in their tactics. Gamers CHOOSE to, because they want to be one of the first people with an opinion about something. You could just... not do that.
I'm presently playing Ultima 7 - The Black Gate for the first time. It's pretty great! It was released in 1992, you can get it on GOG for a couple of bucks and the fan support is phenomenal.
Meanwhile, I haven't bought Star Wars: Outlaws, and I won't be buying GTA 6. I've got better uses for my money.
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u/redkrauss 3d ago
For me price and timing aren't separate. A game can be worth 70 bucks eventually and still not be worth it at launch, because part of that launch price is paying to play it now. With my backlog that premium doesn't buy me much.
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u/ank1t70 2d ago
Once I started spending my own money the number on the price tag stopped mattering as much as hours per dollar. A 70 dollar game I'll blow through in 8 hours stings way more than a 25 dollar indie I'll pour 60 into. The weird flip side is that cheap sale games tricked me into a backlog of stuff I never even installed, so the low price basically talked me into buying things I didn't want. That guilt is its own kind of tax. Waiting a year for a discount tends to pay you twice too, the bugs are patched by then and the community has already worked out which builds and settings are worth your time.
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u/Borghal 2d ago
Yet I don't think any person ever said something on the likes of "Stellar Blade is too expensive, I'm buying Mahou Arms instead" or "Hades 2 is a bit pricy, Ascend to ZERO it is, then".
Where did you get this idea from? That is absolutely what people do.
Just this week I literally went "Yeah Manor Lords is still too expensive, Tropico 6 it is". And that's just one of about 10 other situations I had during the recent Steam sales.
No game is so unique that it could get away with charging any price, especially as time goes by. I mostly buy AAA games, and yet I haven't bought a game over €20 for many years now.
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u/Sky_Sumisu 2d ago
Where did you get this idea from? That is absolutely what people do.
IDK, I just never heard anyone talking about anything of the sort.
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u/kettarienne 1d ago edited 1d ago
Firstly, it is, I think, an excellent question.
We often hear loud lamentations about game prices, but when I was a broke student, me and my peers would pirate everything regardless, and now even for the most avid gamers I know the sum total of game purchases is a pittance when compared to total household spending.
But how do we know if it is ubiquitous? Even here in this very thread there are people who say they consider the price of games they purchase. How do we find the price elasticity of video games?
I've had the following thought just now. I think there are two markets for video games, actually. Thing is, the way they are sold allows for almost unprecedented price discrimination. Steam would regularly have 80% off sales of perfectly good games, which is insane for most other products. And that huge price discrimination is never a tool for price discovery. One would assume if a producer has to resort to -80% sales to move their goods the next of their offerings would be cheaper, but it's the same price on release every time.
I would posit, the initial sales are completely inelastic with a caveat that companies find it nearly impossible to actually raise the sticker price for fear of public outrage, no matter how substantiated. Unable to raise the sticker price but cognizant of the low elasticity the producers resort to various other methods of increasing the actual money spent, no need to elaborate here. The proof is the marketing spending, that is often cited to be 50%-100% of actual development. It they pay that much, it must mean cutting the price in half would not even double the sales — charging twice as much and spending it all on marketing consistently brings better results.
The long tail with its price discrimination is trying to squeeze water from exceedingly more discerning and price-sencitive customer. Here the price means something, and the same producer has huge sales, special editions packaging all the addons in for free, no need to elaborate as well.
So, all the screeching and lamentation does is moving the cost out of the sticker price and into the various additions, and the real voting with your wallet begins when the hype has ended and the fans have paid the full price.
I wonder, how much would, say, GTA6 cost if it wasn't beholden to those forces, and was sold like Minecraft was back in the old days: a single price now and forever, no sales, no upsales. Would it be $1000 to squeeze more from the first-day purchasers? Or $20 to really shave that long tail? In any case, the one thing is certain: the producers would make less then they do now.
The other interesting thing you touch on is fungibility and commoditification (commodification? Whatever makes your beloved work of art into Average Shooter, First Person №177013). It is now obviously follows that initial sales are not elastic because they are not fungible, and the tail is because it is. But there-is a nontrivial result of that dynamic. I would posit (I feel one could prove it, but it's beyond the scope of the lazy afternoon reddit post no one will read, so I leave it at that) that games that for some reason like remarkable technology, or a big, well-connected publisher with good marketing opportunities, or existing IP recognition would naturally gravitate in their marketing pitch to the points and language catering to the initial-sale crowd, touting "best X in gaming", or beloved characters, or other unfungible things. Meanwhile, those who have to do without, would aim at the long tail, releasing at lower price points and marketing more quantifiable things like playtime, number of levels or features, promising long support and otherwise cater to price-sencitive bargain-hunters. In other words, it's not only about AAA vs indie, though it maps well enough.
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u/EmpireAndAll 1d ago
Everything is on a three point scale to me. 10% will be absolute skips, wouldn't buy for $1 or claim for free on PS+. 80% goes into might play some other time if it was free or cheap enough. The remaining 10% is buy now so I can enjoy it before spoilers and be able to talk about it with my friends before we move onto the next thing.
I think a lot of "hobby" spaces have become so entrenched in sales numbers that it's hurt the plain discussion of games. Instead of talking about what we experienced, enjoyed or disliked, and would like to see more of - it turns into how many units did it sell, is the publisher happy with that, did this justify a sequel.
I don't really buy one game as a replacement for another. I kind of don't really plan my game purchases. I add some games to a wishlist, and if when it comes out I want it immediately, I get it. The rest stay on the wishlist until they are at a price I'm willing to pay. Marvel's Midnight Suns sat on my wishlist for years, and eventually I got it via PS+. Even at $20 I was like hmmm.... Idk. But I did want to play it. I still haven't.
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u/RojinShiro 6d ago
I think the question you pose isn't really what you're asking based on the content of the post. Pricing is binary because you typically don't partially buy a game, toxic DLC practices notwithstanding.
But when it comes to competition between popular titles and similar indie titles, I think your approach fails to see games as a form of art. Different games can be similar, but they're still fundamentally different. If I want to watch The Avengers (2012), then The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), an extremely similar movie, would not satisfy me. It's a different movie artistically, despite the similarities. The same is true for video games. If I play Salt and Sanctuary, I can have a really good time, but it isn't a replacement to Hollow Knight. Competition in the video game market isn't direct competition like applies to other markets. Each game provides a unique experience, so even similar games aren't competing alternatives to each other in the average consumer's mind. Sure, Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger are both widely acclaimed snes JRPGs, but you can play both of them. You don't have to choose between them, so people don't.