I haven’t played it yet, my living room is a mess at the moment which makes console gaming kinda impossible. xD
I fell for the series right from the beginning, don’t know how many times I played through the first one on the classic playstation. But I also haven’t played it in over a decade.
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I got EAs Star Wars battlefront, bro. That game was so barren on release and all ad ons that added actual maps and planets and I believe game modes required expensive paid DLC. When 2 came out EA did release those DLCs for free tho. So that’s cool.
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Except MP is tied to your account IIRC, so if you want to play all of the MP you’re still paying exorbitant money for it.
It’s always been. Indie titles weren’t much of a thing in the early eras of 3D graphics. A newly released PS2 game could cost you 60-75€. But at least they were complete. There were no DLCs or season passes. But EA figured out a way to get more cash for the same game: “expansions” for The Sims.
I’d go even further and say for the last few years it’s an annual money grabbing scheme. Digital distribution is a blessing and a curse.
You don’t get the full package for full price anymore. You don’t even get a game that feels improved anymore (Ubisoft re-used maps in the Far Cry series).
Paying $60 for a complete AAA title is a thing of the past. Nowadays you need to buy DLCs and season passes and possibly even a more expensive edition of the game because of some exclusive bs. And in some cases not even an “ultimate” edition will give you all of the content.
IMO, microtransactions have no place in full-price games. Period. And neither do ads. If I pay full-price I want the complete game with all its content. Not half of it now for full-price and the rest chopped up into “milestones” on a “road map” for another full-price. Fuck “games as a service” and hollow promises of more content in the future.
At the same time I’d call bs if a game was like 20€ but missing half of the content. Beat em ups seem to do that now by locking playable characters behind a paywall and bundling them up in season passes.
As for F2P…so far I haven’t found a good one (that I’m interested in). Most of them made me feel like I’m missing out on “the whole experience” if I don’t buy the microtransactions, so I stopped playing them after a short time.
free games are the best games these days.
Games get dramatically more expensive to produce every generation. Content creation costs increase corresponding to visual fidelity.
And yet, games cost $60 twenty-five years ago. Some cost more; I remember paying $80 for Ultima 7 back in the day. Incidentally Ultima 7 had a production budget of $1 million dollars while Red Dead Redemption 2 had a dev budget of $650 million and a marketing budget of $300 million. Sixty dollars in 1995 is worth $101 today. So production costs went up by a thousand times, but prices dropped by 68%.
How do they stay in business? A couple things. First the market is far larger today, so there are economies of scale. Also most games are digitally distributed, so there’s no need to ship expensive boxes filled with physical media, distribution can be rounded down to free. And yes, that’s right, there’s DLC. Without DLC the current AAA business model doesn’t work. Games would have to be more expensive out of the box.
Now I personally would be fine with AAA games all costing $100 and including everything, no microtransactional bullshit. That would be far better. But I’m not particularly price-sensitive, and I suspect that many people wouldn’t shell out that kind of cash up-front.
And even if the initial purchase was $100 they would add microtransactions anyway because they like money.
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It’s funny how you’re so practical at some things and so irrationally unruly at others.
Yes, but that is a choice. You can make a game at that visual level today, you don’t have to.
There is a reason why a 15 year old MMO that looks like trash by today’s standards is currently shitting on most current PC games in popularity. Including the latest iteration of itself that has been prettied up quite a bit, simplified, made boring while leveling and shoved a store up it’s ass.
Good gameplay and design is valued way more today than it has been a decade ago, at least by a good chunk of gamers. Graphics are at a point of good enough and have been for a while.
Nintendo actually realized that first when they moved from the super expensive N64 to the cheap and dirty ATI built Gamecube. It was underpowered compared to the competition right from the start and it didn’t really matter. The games were great, Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX, Super Mario Sunshine … After that Nintendo has never been worried about the tech specs of their consoles again.
And the Switch is another example of that. Breath of the wild is free microtransactions as far as I know. I would guess that goes for most, if not all Nintendo titles. And … they get by, I think.
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Same as movies.
The question is: Why?
Is a 2005 movie worse than a 2018 movie? Different, yes. 90 Minutes covering a full story arc, filmed in one studio and had one helicopter scene outside, maybe was recorded to film.
Now Movies are upwards of 120 minutes ALL THE TIME, filmed in 8k 3D and shot in 200 different locations.
Now for games.
Look at the feature list of any ÄÖÜ game. 8k textures, 200 billion triangles on all models, needs 11GB VRAM, 180GB Storage recommended.
All ÄÖÜ games are 16x the detail, 4x the size, our biggest one yet.
You get:
- Sandbox
- Overflowing Inventory
- Framerate problems
- “make your own story”
- AI is from Goldeneye 007.
Also DLC for $150 not included.
Yet people play Dota 2, Fortnite, League of Legends and other F2P games. People love indie titles like Cuphead, Goat Simulator, etc. Games where someone cared!
In 6 months, the ÄÖÜ game is half price. The cake is eaten, shareholders are disapointed because the game only made 7.2 billion instead of the promised 7.4
Graphics have been “good enough” to enable any sort of gameplay since the OG Xbox, IMO, and while AAA content creation costs are huge today it’s possible for indie studios to make very good looking games using inexpensive engines and content marketplaces. So it isn’t all bad news. Just really at the AAA level.
Actually, the rise of great looking indie games spurred by Unity and its content market is an extremely positive sign. No hyperbole, we’re in a golden age for gaming.
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