Economics of Game Prices

[Gollgagh]

Gollgagh: Hey, man. You're the one who's providing the RIAA with so much money. You're the one helping to enable draconian copyright laws that serve to do nothing but punish the consumer. I have no personal beef with you (I've never even met you), but your money is the reason my music and games have DRM, including the stuff I purchase legally.

uh I think we're talking about different things

never mind

[Bahamut]

Because I'm not interested in picking apart some poor arguments made more recently to get responded to by a block of text due to a lack of understanding, I'm going to just cut to the original post.

I'm actually kind of sad they didn't give the two arguments against piracy that I feel are the most pressing:

1 ) Developers need to make more compelling software... and no, just because 2010 had ME2, a CoD, a Halo, and RDR, that does NOT mean that we're putting out quality titles. The ENTIRE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY, across all consoles + PCs (without iDevices) released 1224 games in 2010. Note: that includes multi-console releases (ME2 coming out on 360 and PC counts as 2 releases)... but even taking that into consideration, over 1200 games were released in 2010, and how many of them mattered? How many of them sold? How many of them were even GOOD?

Hint: If you didn't know that many games were even released, then the answer is "very few".

Instead of studios sinking money into all of this shovelware (I cringe to think about how many of those games were Wii trash titles), how about NOT MAKING ALL OF THAT CRAP. Make less games, and make them ALL BETTER. How about only releasing 500, or 300 games total between all consoles, and using all that saved money to make those 300-500 games all AAA titles? If all of those games were must-have games, you'd be selling more. Which brings me to...

They wouldn't be making the so-called shovelware if it didn't sell so well. It doesn't entitle someone to have a right to piracy for a product he/she did not create. Companies will naturally adapt, although arguably many don't adapt in the best way possible. There is no grave sin committed here though, and frankly it's not really an issue that would make piracy all of the sudden wrong. A crime is a crime.

2 ) Make the games cheaper. No economist ever teaches this, but lower prices == more sales. If you raise prices, your profit per unit goes up, sure, but you sell less of them, so it doesn't matter anyway. That's how you cause inflation and kill economies. Lower prices means more people CAN buy your product, meaning you'll sell more and offset that lower cost. High costs will never break their ceiling of potential buyers, but low cost items can (and usually do) oversell estimations. You know, part of why I impulse buy gum and not video games is because an impulsive purchase of gum only sets me back 50 cents... and impulse buy of a video game sets me back 50$. I only impulse buy games 10$ or less, if even that. So, lower the cost of your games, and get more people to buy them.

Honestly, most people wouldn't pirate games if they didn't feel persecuted in the first place. No one WANTS to steal. People steal because they feel like they're getting a raw deal and want to stick it to the man. Don't fuck over your customers, and you won't have rampant piracy.

You don't seem to understand what made game prices raised in the first place. Development costs have soared this generation, and so publishers had to start charging a higher price in order to maintain their profit margins. Gamers have shown that they readily accept the market created by higher prices in bringing about a rapid expansion of the industry even through a bad economy, and new markets have risen to fill out the price spectrum better. Game prices deteriorate over time, and so the games will get cheaper for those patient enough to wait. The purpose of the higher initial price is to recoup the majority of costs & earn a particular threshold of profit additionally.

The dynamics of the economics is more complicated than the simplified picture you're painting, and considering that you're trying to fit a simple theory to a situation not so simple, it shows that you do not grasp the theory itself. You do not even provide numbers, which I'm sure many of these big publishers already gather and analyze with a team of economists.

Also, you're generalizing your opinions to the general populace, which I'm fairly confident are nonchalant about the issue although I dare not codify it as fact as you have.

Please think about these things before going off on heated rants, you'd be the wiser for it.

[sephfire]

Edit:

Actually that was kind of in poor taste, nevermind. I'm a bit tired and my "funny barometer" is a little wonky.

Carry on!

[eilios]

It's just SMARTER in this day and age to sell digitally. I buy Bad Dudes albums because I like the Bad Dudes and want them to keep making music... but more so that I can have kitschy nerd cred vs. my other nerdy friends when I have physical copies of nerdy music.

Option 1(mentioned): Sell physical copies.

Option 2(mentioned): Sell out to itunes.

Option 3(I'm mentioning this one): http://bandcamp.com/

Not all labels are evil.

[JackKieser]

Jack... everything you just said about supporting EA by playing and buying Madden can be said about any other major series.

Ahem.

Pokemon games are the same every time. They could easily add new pokemon with DLC. You're stupid for supporting Nintendo and giving them $40 for the same content everytime. Lazy programming.

Actually, yeah. That's why I don't buy them anymore.

Mass Effect 2 was just Mass Effect 1 with more characters. It could have been done with DLC, Why are you stupid people supporting Bioware's sloppy effort?

Actually, NO. Because Mass Effect 2, mechanically, had an entirely different engine. A mechanical overhaul like that would REQUIRE a new game

be made.

Mario is the same platformer with slightly better graphics. All these new games could be DLC. Stop supporting Nintendo and their lazy production.

Probably. Mario hasn't really had that many mechanical changes, either, not counting NSMBW. Sunshine, had it been on current gen systems, would have had to be an on-disc game. Which means Galaxy would have to be, as well, though it might have been an update of 64. Galaxy 2 DEFINITELY could have, as the enterprising work of the Galaxy 2+ hackers is showing.

Uncharted is just the same game with new places to go to... etc, etc.

Never played, so I can't comment.

Halo is just more shooting, and it could all have been done with DLC, etc, etc...

After playing 3 and ODST, yeah, it could have been DLC. ODST could have been one big digital expansion pack, because its not like they overhauled the graphics engine or added a ton of new mechanical features. Reach... well, it COULD POSSIBLY have been DLC, but I don't know how they would have implemented some of the gameplay changes without overhauling the engine. I think it could have been done, but I can't say for sure.

Just because you don't like Madden or EA, doesn't mean that other people don't.

I'm not saying you shouldn't LIKE it. By all means, LOVE the gameplay. I'm just saying that, in its current form, you shouldn't BUY it. You should force EA to treat you better, just like Pokemon fans should. Ironically, you're, apparently, both. So, you're doubly screwed.

At least they're playing something they like, even if it's isn't your cup of tea. Ridiculing them(and openly here, of all places) for doing so makes you a far bigger ass then they could ever be.

Again, like what you want. Just don't reward devs / publishers for sloppy or impractical work. Force publishers, if they want to exist at ALL (because they AREN'T necessary anymore), to keep up with the times.

EDIT@Sephfire: Like I said, I'm not one to espouse religion. I just think it's telling when a group that defends child molesting members thinks that even CAPITALISM is evil. I mean, you have to be REALLY BAD to piss off the guys that think raping kids is OK.

[Imagist]

Wow. You clearly don't play games very thoroughly.

I guess you could argue that games within a repetitive series like Madden or Pokemon could be released as some form of DLC or add-on, but that's ignoring the basic fact that they aren't and often for good reasons: they improve the game engine each time.

Maybe the changes aren't always drastically noticeable, but they are there, as any fan of such series will tell you. Each game is different, because they learn from the way the past game is received and strive to improve. Just because you look down on a series and dismiss it (thereby ignoring the facts) doesn't mean its games are the same.

[JackKieser]

Wait, who are you aiming that criticism at?

[The Damned]

Are... are you talking about me, or Jack? If you meant me, I was using those as examples of how a generalized statement can be applied to other examples. Specifically, how one game series could be done with DLC because it doesn't change much. It was all in jest of Jack's comment from before.

I'm probably the biggest Pokémon fan here, what with that remix album and all the trading and news updates I do.

If you meant Jack, then never mind, carry on.

[Imagist]

I thought it was generally accepted forumiquette that if you're not quoting somebody, you're replying to the person directly before you.

Not to mention, you know, logic.

[The Damned]

Well, there's a quote tornado coming down in that last post before yours, so it could be directed at either the quoted, or the quoting, or both.

Too many quote boxes... too many posts. This is getting a little hard to track.

But man, did Sephfire ever get a lot of this week's episode.

EDIT: Holy shit, the Escapist thread for this episode is 900+ posts. Sephfire, you rabble-raiser, you!

[Pyrion]

Actually, NO. Because Mass Effect 2, mechanically, had an entirely different engine. A mechanical overhaul like that would REQUIRE a new game

be made.

Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 were both Unreal Engine 3 games.

The sheer amount of new content developed for Mass Effect 2, combined with the fact that the series was always meant to be a trilogy, is why ME2 was released as a sequel game on its own merits rather than as DLC.

[JackKieser]

I'll respond to Imagist, since I'm pretty sure he was talking to me. Anyway...

I know plenty about Pokèmon, I assure you. I've played the series non-stop, never missing a game from the original all the way until Platinum (that's when I stopped buying them, though I got HGSS as a gift). I've played casually, as a breeder, collector (I was about 25 away from finishing the FRLG dex until DP screwed it up), and competitive battler. I love Pokèmon, as a series and a concept... So feel confident when I say that I know FOR A FACT that Pokèmon could be done as DLC. It can, and I'm sure the Damned can back me up on that. Aside from a graphics overhaul (which, I mean, it's a Pokèmon game; it's not like they're pretty to begin with), there is nothing that was done between RSE and HGSS that couldn't be done with minor engine tweaks and overwriting a few move tables. Seriously, making Hyper Beam a special attack did not take a new cart. If I can teach my GF to make linked lists in Java, I'm pretty sure Nintendo can learn how to add some new Pokèmon using DLC. The ONLY excuse Nintendo might have for Pkmn is that cart space is limited. But, even THAT is a flimsy defense these days.

As for Madden, for all the new "features", each gen really does boil down to basically a glorified re-cast of the teams and players. I'm not saying that EA stops making new versions with Madden 2011 and just NEVER MAKE ANOTHER MADDEN AGAIN, simply that you don't need a new one each year. You really don't even need a new one every 2 years. Just wait 2.5-3 years for a major game overhaul, maybe with a GREATLY enhanced graphics engine and a NUMBER of new gameplay additions that really revolutionize the game, and have one big update DLC each year for 10$. That's all sports games in general need. That's not a generalization... that's even admitted in their marketing (the blurb for M2011 states, and I quote:

"...the all-new GameFlow system puts you in the helmet of an NFL quarterback to execute an authentic, situational game plan, one play at a time. ... Madden NFL 11 is feature-rich including all-new 3-on-3 Online Team Play, improved animations, more intuitive controls, and Madden NFL Ultimate Team..."

That's 4 new features, and 2 of them are nothing more than lists of data points (team rosters and animation files). Seriously, that's not impressive.

Oh, and to respond to Pyrion, the graphics engines were the same. The gameplay engines were not. ME1 and ME2 play nothing alike... Just ask Adepts.

[Pyrion]

Oh, and to respond to Pyrion, the graphics engines were the same. The gameplay engines were not. ME1 and ME2 play nothing alike... Just ask Adepts.

"Gameplay engine?" What the hell is a "gameplay engine?" It's UE3 regardless.

I'm starting to get the impression that "gameplay engine" is a term you made up.

Irregardless, changing the way certain classes are played doesn't mean they'd absolutely have to release a new game just due to that. Hell, Valve changed the very nature of the Pyro in TF2 yet they didn't have to duplicate content and release a whole new game. ME2 was released as a separate game simply due to the fact that the sheer amount of new content made meant that if they were to sell it as DLC, it'd be a multi-gigabyte download costing the equivalent of $50 to recoup their losses per unit sale and at that point they might as well just make new box art for it and call it a new game. DLC isn't supposed to add such a significant amount of new content over the base game in the first place.

[JackKieser]

Do you know how games are coded? There are engines you have to make for everything: graphics, physics, gameplay (in this case, the way the game handles leveling, stat allocation, weapons, and tech/biotics). The "engine" in ME1 for handling stat allocation, for instance, allowed the player to have 60 levels and had all these weapon based stats (accuracy, overheat, firing speed, etc). Notice how ME2 doesn't have 200,000 different skills? Notice how weapons don't have individual overheat values? Notice how drastically different throw and pull work? That all has to do with how their main engine (the UE3 engine) runs the gameplay, what is, essentially a "gameplay engine". These facets of the game are so deep in the coding structure that to change them REQUIRES a reworking of the game's code. It's like trying to take a building and add a floor between floor 11 and floor 12... You can't do it. You have no choice but to build a new building.

EDIT: After specifically reading up on what you're buying when you get an UE3 license, it's obvious that what you're getting is a pre-built graphics/physics engine that comes with a specialized gameplay scripting language (based on Java)... but no gameplay framework to work with, which makes sense. Essentially, your "gameplay engine" is what you build in UE3 using their Java-based scripting language which will eventually control all of your gameplay events. Adding / subtracting from this section of code is... bitchy, to say the least.

EDIT2: "IRREGARDLESS" IS NOT A WORD, DAMMIT PEOPLE STOP USING IT. >_<

[Pyrion]

Do you know how games are coded? There are engines you have to make for everything: graphics, physics, gameplay (in this case, the way the game handles leveling, stat allocation, weapons, and tech/biotics).

Then it's an issue of semantics. Your base statement was that ME2 "had an entirely different engine," which it didn't, cuz in context, "engine" without any additional qualifiers means "game engine." ME2 is a UE3 game, same as ME1. If your point is that Bioware changed the nature of combat, sure they did that, so what? If they wanted to, they could've overhauled the nature of combat in the game, left everything else alone, and called it a "patch." The sheer amount of new content produced on top of what they had in ME1 is why it was released as a new game. It doesn't make any business sense to take that much work and make it a download-only release for a product already released and (by ME2's release date) several years old.

It would be as dumb as Microsoft taking all the changes that went into Windows 7 and packaging them as a service pack for Windows Vista.

[DusK]

It would be as dumb as Microsoft taking all the changes that went into Windows 7 and packaging them as a service pack for Windows Vista.

I've actually heard more than one person say "that could have/should have been done". Not that I don't agree with you, though.

[JackKieser]

Yeah, it's REALLY not that simple. Major gameplay changes can't be easily removed / added without risking pretty serious bugs / code conflicts. When your gameplay changes so much that your 1st and 2nd games COULD be from different series... you should probably just rewrite your game. There's a difference between changing how ONE class plays and changing how ALL COMBAT FUNCTIONS.

Not really comparable.

Anyway, let's get back on topic, since we've strayed pretty far. Piracy. Bad... but nowhere near as bad as the industry makes it out to be. One game pirated =/= one sale lost. Not even close.

[Pyrion]

Piracy. Bad... but nowhere near as bad as the industry makes it out to be. One game pirated =/= one sale lost. Not even close.

"Lost profits." I hate that phrase. One game pirated is one sale that likely will never happen so long as the game costs money in the first place, so why bother trying to appease the pirates by dropping the price? Fuck them. Set the price where you want it, drop the copy protection schemes, stop fucking over your paying customers, and ignore the pirates cuz they aren't gonna give you their money anyway.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/03/pc-game-developer-has-radical-message-ignore-the-pirates.ars

"The reason why we don't put copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count," Wardell argues. "When Sins popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue."

[The Damned]

So feel confident when I say that I know FOR A FACT that Pokèmon could be done as DLC. It can, and I'm sure the Damned can back me up on that.

OK, no. Shut up. I would not back you up on this. You don't get how the game mechanics work. It's a complex system, you don't just add shit to it and expect it to work.

Aside from a graphics overhaul (which, I mean, it's a Pokèmon game; it's not like they're pretty to begin with), there is nothing that was done between RSE and HGSS that couldn't be done with minor engine tweaks and overwriting a few move tables.

Seriously, making Hyper Beam a special attack did not take a new cart. If I can teach my GF to make linked lists in Java, I'm pretty sure Nintendo can learn how to add some new Pokèmon using DLC. The ONLY excuse Nintendo might have for Pkmn is that cart space is limited. But, even THAT is a flimsy defense these days.

The games uses a lot of memory. A LOT. Try saving on your DS games. Even with newer ones with faster saving still take a long time to so it. And that's not counting the overworld map and all the other stuff like audio and sprites.

The biggest problem with just adding pokemon, is that the game itself is designed to only work with the set number of pokemon up to that point. The GBA games were made to take pokemon 001 to pokemon 386. They can't just throw another bunch on there. The game was only designed to support that many. The same goes for the DS games. DPPt and HGSS were only designed to support the pokemon that existed up to that point. Same with gen 5: only up to that point.

This is because, despite what some kid will tell you on GameFAQs, they don't have a thousand pokemon already designed and ready to go. They don't. This is not true, and I wish people would stop saying this. It's supposed to have been from an interview with some of the Game Freak staff, but no one has ever been able to produce said interview. They create the new pokemon when they start work on the new games. Sometimes, they have ones that get cut from one generation and used in the next (namely, Shellos. It had data for it in RSE, but was not implemented for some reason. The data can be accessed, but it doesn't really do much).

Any way, because they don't know what kind of pokemon they will make in the future, they can't prepare the game to accept it later as some sort of download. Even the event-based, super-rare legendaries, like Mew and Shaymin, are still coded into the game. They just don't appear unless something triggers it.

Now, the data for each individual pokemon may be modular, and the games are designed to apply said data to their engine (which is how a pokemon from Gen 3 can be used in Gen4 and 5), but that's only because the games were made to do so.

What you're suggesting is that they make an engine that can be readily modified to accept new data of unknown content (new sprites, moves and abilities for each new pokemon) of an unknown number (how many new pokemon should they add this time? ten? One? Two hundred?) of new entries, just so you can... what? Play the exact same map again, with a slightly different roster? A least each new game adds new music, maps, characters and things to do. No to mention the changes to the stat, battle and move/ability systems to address balance and play.

Aside from the programming thing, there's the issue of hardware. By your logic, we should still be playing Pokémon on the GBA, because it could have been patched to include the new pokemon. I mean, fuck the new lands and characters that each gen brings. Fuck the new music. Fuck the streamlining they do for play balance. Fuuuuuuck the new hardware Nintendo just came out with, because they should have DLC for the GBA. Even if they did it for the DS, you have a very big hurdle to get over first. Even then, you still have a slightly bigger roster set in the exact same setting. You would actually make pokemon more stagnant then it already seems.

Good job! You've fixed everything!

[Kenogu Labz]

You can only do so much with DLC. You can't change the core mechanics of a game with DLC (though you may be able to add slight supplementary changes, depending on how flexible the system is). The point of DLC is that it's downloadable content: it's resources that supplement a game, whether it be a set of weapons, an addendum to the storyline, or other non-necessary material. And, as TD mentioned, save-files would have to have some pretty nasty structure in order to be able to store any progress involving extended content.

And believe me, Jack. Being a software engineering major, I can tell you that it's not simple to make a system such as that. The entire game engine needs to be build with the modularity of DLC in mind, and it's no easy task to make an architecture with that in mind.

[JackKieser]

OK, no. Shut up. I would not back you up on this. You don't get how the game mechanics work. It's a complex system, you don't just add shit to it and expect it to work.

No, I will NOT shut up just because YOU don't know how object-oriented programming works. "It's a complex system, you don't just add shit to it"? What the fuck are you TALKING about? Dude, the fact the EV/IV formulas are like a mile long does NOT give Nintendo an excuse for not making a Pokemon game with DLC.

The games uses a lot of memory. A LOT. Try saving on your DS games. Even with newer ones with faster saving still take a long time to so it. And that's not counting the overworld map and all the other stuff like audio and sprites.

Who give a shit? The DSi has an SD CARD SLOT, dude. The 3DS has ONBOARD MEMORY. Oh my GOD, Mass Effect 2 is on a damn DVD that CAN NEVER HAVE DATA ADDED TO IT, and it has DLC. Just because your game cart is full, that DOESN'T mean you can't have DLC.

The biggest problem with just adding pokemon, is that the game itself is designed to only work with the set number of pokemon up to that point.

So, Nintendo should design the next Pokemon game to be more modular! Your argument is literally, "the old games weren't designed to have DLC, so the Pokemon games can NEVER have DLC". You're. Retarded.

I'm NOT at ALL saying that the old games have DLC systems... I'm saying that, had the games been designed with more modularity, the changes implemented between, for instance, RS and E could have been DLC. IF THE TECH HAD BEEN THERE. If Nintendo was smart, they would have put a DLC engine INTO DIAMOND AND PEARL and offered Platinum as DLC.

If they were smart, they would have designed Black and White to have DLC systems in place to accept more Pokemon, moves, and hold items in a year. Tell me how it's possible for Bioware to do that, but oh no, Nintendo can't.

The GBA games were made to take pokemon 001 to pokemon 386. They can't just throw another bunch on there. The game was only designed to support that many. The same goes for the DS games. DPPt and HGSS were only designed to support the pokemon that existed up to that point. Same with gen 5: only up to that point.

So CHANGE YOUR GAME DESIGN. The GBA games get a pass because DLC didn't exist back then, and there was no tech in place for it on the GBA. The tech is there on the DSi and 3DS, so Black/White and any more games they make DON'T GET A PASS.

This is because, despite what some kid will tell you on GameFAQs, they don't have a thousand pokemon already designed and ready to go. They don't. This is not true, and I wish people would stop saying this. It's supposed to have been from an interview with some of the Game Freak staff, but no one has ever been able to produce said interview. They create the new pokemon when they start work on the new games. Sometimes, they have ones that get cut from one generation and used in the next (namely, Shellos. It had data for it in RSE, but was not implemented for some reason. The data can be accessed, but it doesn't really do much).

This is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT. Who cares when the Pokemon are made? If their game engine is designed well, they could make the Pokemon 1 day or 100 days after release, and still can add them in as DLC. This just means that Pokemon games have badly designed engines that purposefully CAN'T accept DLC, which is something Nintendo could fix if they wanted to.

Any way, because they don't know what kind of pokemon they will make in the future, they can't prepare the game to accept it later as some sort of download. Even the event-based, super-rare legendaries, like Mew and Shaymin, are still coded into the game. They just don't appear unless something triggers it.

Why not? Each Pokemon has the same data: ID, Name, Sprite / Move animations, base stats, variables for IV values (including EVs, natures, personality types, best stats, etc.), move lists, evolution tree... A Pokemon class object, in programming terms, is just a node in a linked list with a set number of variable fields that could contain other lists or classes.

Dude, I learned this in C++ 101.

[DarkeSword]

Your knowledge of programming seems very limited. You're applying first-year CS knowledge to game development. That'll only get you so far.

Also, try not to call people stupid. So much of what you're saying is very naive.

[RDX]

dude calm down its just a video game etc etc

[JackKieser]

To the extent of my knowledge, you have to know first-year concepts to GET to the point that lets you make games, don't you?

I'm fairly confident that I could, with basic C++ or Java, program a Pokemon clone that was text based and had DLC. It's like a year one programming assignment. I made a game that did exactly that in my first year at DigiPen. We didn't know how many maps we'd have, we didn't know how many moves our protagonist or enemies would have for combat, we didn't know how many interactive items would be in the game... but we made the whole game engine modular so we could make an infinite number, and the game could handle it. I have the files on my hard drive, if you want them.

Seriously, it's not that hard.

[JackKieser]

Anyway, so economics of game prices is the topic, huh? Ok. You want to reduce game prices?

All digital distribution. Cut out Gamestop, cut out the publishers like EA. Take the iTunes approach to game distribution; iTunes reduced the price of music by over 50% (average CDs used to be ~20$ for 10-12 songs; now, you can get a full album for ~9.99$, with .99$ songs). Cut out the bullshit middleman, and the price of games PLUMMET. You can have publishers for brick-and-mortar stores, but those stores will be used solely by people who don't have internet connections that can handle the DL speeds.

For the rest of us who ARE net connected, we get any game we want, without worrying about stores being closed, direct to our consoles / drives, at DRASTICALLY lowered prices. Win.