On Value for Money

Videogame culture discussion
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christian
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On Value for Money

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http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_value_for_money/
Alex Kierkegaard wrote: I never tire of bringing up the example of Tomonobu Itagaki, who, in an interview regarding Ninja Gaiden long before its release, stated that if it was up to him he'd have made the game two hours long instead of twenty. Can you even begin to imagine the possibilities of such a design choice? (meaning a two-hour game made with the budget of a twenty-hour one). I certainly can, and no doubt Itagaki, yet half a decade later and still no one has dared explore them!

It is important to note here that there's nothing wrong with the mere mention of a game's price in a review (in a little box placed beside it, for example, alongside other Wikipedia-worthy factoids, such as the date of publication, the hardware required, etc.), but only with its use as a factor in assessing the game's quality. This is, after all, what always ends up happening, as if the symbols on a sticker on a box could possibly affect the quality of whatever's contained within it!

I guess an example is in order here, to make this last statement crystal clear.

Imagine that someone released tomorrow an FPS that's a decade ahead of anything else on the market, and decided to charge for it A MILLION DOLLARS -- what would that fact tell us about the quality of the game? Of course no one would buy it, but it would still be awesome, it would still be a decade ahead of anything else, and all fans of the genre would still be frothing at the thought of having a go at it at the first available opportunity, and if the following day the publisher slashed the price to $9.99 none of these facts would be affected, except perhaps the number of copies sold per day. This is of course another extreme example, but one that illustrates my point all the more clearly, that point being that all games start out at some arbitrary price, a price set by the publishers -- not according to the quality of each game or to how much money and effort was required to make it, but according to how much they think they can get away with given current market conditions -- and a price which then follows a generally downward trend before eventually hitting rock bottom.

It is at that point that the issue of "value for money" disappears to be replaced by that of "value for time", even for the feebleminded (for the intelligent person it had always been thus), for when all games cost nothing the only question left to ask is whether any of them are worth anything. This is the timeless, the eternal question -- it is the only question worth answering, and it is that which every review that wants to remain relevant after it has fallen off the frontpage must ask -- and answer. And why shouldn't all reviews be written with this goal in mind? Well I say, if only gamers and game reviewers weren't so foolish, they doubtless would be.
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christian
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Re: On Value for Money

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https://twitter.com/epyoncf/status/570345530481516544
Kornel Kisielewicz wrote: If anyone asks me, why do I detest Star Citizen - this is the link I'll point them to : https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Combos/The-Completionist-Digital …
Not a preview, not a video, not even an opinion. But a price tag. For the ultimate super deluxe digital edition that includes so many ships, even RSI asks "Who out there can handle that many ships?"
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christian
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Re: On Value for Money

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Everything Wrong With No Man's Sky's Price - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhc0KVwB9dQ
Everything wrong with No Man's Sky's pricing is you.
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christian
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Re: On Value for Money

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